There will be no fast track for Ukraine’s membership of Nato, but, short of that, the security alliance’s annual summit made clear to both Moscow and Kyiv that western support for the latter is unwavering and that speculation about internal disunity is largely Russian wishful thinking.
Ukraine was inevitably the central preoccupation in Vilnius over the past few days, a binding agent that has reinforced and strengthened the alliance. A new Nato Ukraine council has deepened the integration of Kyiv into alliance planning and operations, while the go-ahead for Sweden’s membership, after Turkish objections were withdrawn, will bring Nato numbers to 32. And the agreement by the US to supply Nato-member Turkey with F-16 fighter jets marks an important political rapprochement.
The war in Ukraine also concentrated minds on the US imperative of member-states reaffirming their “enduring commitment” to each raise defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP.
The meeting also saw promises of more armaments for Ukraine from France, Germany and Norway.
While the summit communiqué spoke of Ukraine’s “future ... in Nato”, it was deliberately ambiguous about a timeline, promising to “extend an invitation” when “allies agree and conditions are met”, a stark contrast with the recent fast-tracking of Finland into the alliance. Underlying the reluctance are US and German fears that Ukraine membership while the war is continuing would embroil Nato itself directly in the fighting by triggering the article 5 mutual defence clause, bringing all members into the conflict. It is a scenario which Kyiv, for all its talk of immediate membership, is, unsurprisingly, coy about.
In the interim, in the short and medium term, “security guarantees” from Nato are seen as the more limited objective of supplying the means of defence, arms, munitions, training, and the economic means to sustain them … what one US official has called creating a “defence-oriented force that would present too hard a target for any future Russian aggression”.
That should not, however, include the supply by the US of cluster bombs, the use of which is banned by a convention signed by 111 states including many Nato allies and Ireland, but not the US, Russia or Ukraine. Cluster munitions have a record of causing indiscriminate civilian casualties, with unexploded munitions potentially causing fatalities decades later.
The convention does not prohibit signatory nations from conducting joint military operations, including Nato manoeuvres, with non-signatories. But it requires signatories to “discourage” the use of the weapons by such joint operations partners. Its friends must not give Ukraine a carte blanche for their use.