When fighting with Russia ceases, and even if Ukraine has lost substantial territory, it will come away with the most powerful military in Eastern Europe.
In fact, due to its influx of arms, the size of its military, the seasoning of its forces, and its role in defending democracy, Ukraine may come away with the most powerful military in Europe.
After all, it is far from clear that big states like Germany and France possess the will to sustain a major war, and no state on the continent will possess so many soldiers as Ukraine.
An astonishingly high proportion of its 44 million citizens will have been trained to fight, with an unusually diverse trove of military equipment – and Ukrainians will have proven that they can fight well.
Hence, Ukraine would make a strong ally and a powerful anchor to any military alliance.
NATO may well wish to make it a member for the strength that it would bring to the table. But even if it does not grant it membership, Ukraine might form its own alliance system, and the most natural allies of Ukraine would be other states at risk of Russian attack.
The most obvious state that might join such an alliance is Poland, which has shown great solidarity with Ukrainians throughout the war.
Yet, Georgia may share even more in common with Ukraine, given that it has also been carved up by Putin; and Moldova is often seen to be at risk of attack as well.
An alliance of all these states with Ukraine would represent 92 million people, but could grow substantially larger.
If relations with Russia became strained at some point, Armenia might also wish to join such an alliance, as might Belarus and Kazakhstan, thereby adding 31 million more people.
Ideally, such an alliance would attain the sponsorship of powerful NATO states like the US and UK, which would agree to arm its members in the event of attack.
They would have a strong incentive to do so given the role it would serve as a buffer against Russia.
Yet, this new alliance could work closely with NATO in any case, given that all its states would be members or partners to it.
If the recent global declines in democracy are reversed, Ukraine might become the anchor to an alliance of young democracies.
But the most important thing at this stage would be for Ukraine to acquire sufficient support to prevent another Russian attack – and the more states that can pledge to it in mutual defense the better.
The idea that Ukraine needs to be a member of NATO in order to be secure springs from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the association works and why it is effective.
NATO works by consensus, which means that 30 member states need to agree to every action it takes. Hence, NATO does not agree to much, and what it agrees to is rarely substantial.
NATO is not likely to take strong military action in defense of its members, especially if it comes at the risk of provoking a nuclear war. And it is not likely to risk admitting a member that could drag it into a war. It is for precisely this reason that France and Germany refused to grant Ukraine membership in 2008, when Ukraine and Georgia looked set to join.
In this way, according to former NATO Secretary-General James Stavridis, it is one of the most conservative organizations in the world.
NATO is conservative in that it is risk-averse. It is also conservative in that it is slow to change, and that’s also the result of its decision-making process.
Yet, as historian Timothy Andrew Sayle notes in his epic history of the alliance, NATO was an effective hedge against the Soviet Union, and it may continue to prove a hedge against Russia, because it binds together the alliance of democracies.
NATO does not guarantee that its member states will defend one another against attack, for as we have seen with sanctioning Russian oil and natural gas, there is always a danger that free riders will not pull their weight.
And it is always possible that the wrong set of leaders of major NATO states will produce inaction in the event of an attack on one of its members.
Rather, NATO provides just enough of a sense of security to the citizens of states like France and Germany that they are unlikely to cave to Russian demands.
And the likelihood of it acting is just ambiguous enough to keep Russia from attacking any of its members. So, while there may be no telling which NATO states might fight back in case of a Russian attack, the idea that they might is enough to rally their citizens to their mutual self-defense.
Yet, as the frontline in the fight against Russia, Ukraine needs a more ironclad commitment, and it is arguably more likely to get it from other frontline states.
What Ukraine needs from NATO is not troops but an arms guarantee, which some of its most powerful states like the US and UK may be happy to provide, if only because such an alliance would serve as a buffer against Russia.
However, if Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova form a military alliance with other frontline states like Poland, the security it brings them will paradoxically make them more attractive to NATO.
Each state would be more attractive, because if each is committed to the protection of all, then all of them together would make each of them stronger, and none of them would be as likely to be invaded.
However, there is an added psychosocial benefit that forging such an alliance would have for Ukrainians. It would further differentiate their country from Russia while further strengthening their sense of national identity.
Meanwhile, the sense of independence could further strengthen Ukraine’s willingness to resist aggression while further deepening its commitment to its own sovereign, democratic institutions.
~ Theo Horesh is the author of four books on global affairs, including Convergence: The Globalization of Mind. His writings can be found at theohoresh.substack.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
