The statement by the allies at NATO’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, regarding Ukraine’s future recalled a similar vague promise made 15 years ago by an American president in Bucharest, Romania. In April 2008, President George W. Bush called on the allies to extend invitations to Ukraine and the former Soviet republic of Georgia to join the Atlantic alliance. No serious effort followed Mr. Bush’s remarks, as France and Germany, among others, objected. Russia invaded Georgia four months later.
At Vilnius, despite pleas from Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy for a firmer commitment, NATO members only mustered, “we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO was talked about in Washington throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, but an array of pragmatic and political considerations proved too difficult to overcome: Ukraine was viewed as a deeply corrupt and unstable country with a shabby economy. Its sheer size raised practical concerns about the alliance’s capability to defend it from attack. And Russia had a naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Jeffrey Engel, the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, discusses the origins of today’s controversy over whether NATO should welcome Ukraine into the alliance. Since the negotiations over German reunification in 1990, the questions of when and where NATO should expand has caused serious friction between Washington and Moscow. Then as now, the problem of security for central and eastern Europe presents a challenge to NATO’s unity.
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