Friday, November 7. 2008
Posted by Kyle Atwell in
US Foreign Policy on Friday, November 7. 2008
Ukraine and Georgia were previously anticipated to take the next step toward full NATO membership, attaining Membership Action Plans (MAPs), at an upcoming December NATO Ministerial. However, Georgia’s conflict with Russia and the destabilizing, perennial internal political squabbles between President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko in Ukraine has made a 2008 MAP for either country all but impossible to imagine.
Steven Pifer, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, believes that in this situation, it would be unwise for the US to push hard for MAPs in December. Instead the US should develop a Plan B for moving Georgia and Ukraine toward membership:
Rather than pursuing a quest certain to end in diplomatic failure, Washington needs a Plan B. It should aim to shape a December outcome that sends positive signals to Kyiv and Tbilisi while making clear that NATO does not concede Ukraine or Georgia to Russia’s geopolitical orbit.
Seeking MAPs in December, only to fall short, would not be good for Ukraine or Georgia or for their long-term NATO prospects. Likewise, it would not be good for the U.S. government to make a big diplomatic push to persuade allies to agree to MAPs – and fail again, as it did in Bucharest.
Pifer outlines his own Plan B proposal here.
The US State Department appears to have come to the same conclusion that a December MAP is out of the picture; US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor announced this week that Ukraine may still qualify for a MAP in 2009, according to Trend News. Taylor qualified this statement by saying progress in Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership will require evidence of political stability in a country that has been far from politically cohesive in past months or years.
While working at NATO during the Bucharest Summit in April, I felt there was strong sentiment in the NATO corridors that both Georgia and Ukraine would achieve MAPs this December. The US pushed hard for the two countries to be granted MAPs at Bucharest, but these ambitions were vetoed by skeptical countries like Germany, certainly heavily influenced by Russian opposition. It was determined however that the MAP issue would be revisited in December, and all Allies agreed the question is not if Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO Allies, but when.
Given Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Ukraine’s disastrous political infighting, it may seem the skeptics were right to hold off for now. In fact, Taylor’s suggestion of a 2009 MAP for Ukraine may be over-optimistic in itself, according to Taria Kuzio who published an op-ed, highly critical of President Yushchenko, in the Kyiv Post:
If Yushchenko follows Leonid Kravchuk in serving only one presidential term, then the last chance he has of fulfilling his dream of being the president who takes Ukraine into the preparatory stage of NATO membership will be in 2009, his last year in office. Ukraine, though, could also fail the test of political stability in April 2009, during NATO’s 60th anniversary summit when Ukraine and Georgia could again come under consideration for membership action plans.
Yushchenko’s preference for pre-term elections over compromise, because of his loathing of [Prime Minister] Tymoshenko, means that a new parliamentary coalition and government will not be in place until March 2009, a month before the NATO anniversary and too little time to show NATO doubters, like Germany, that Ukraine is politically stable.
It seems like Georgia and Ukraine's bids for NATO membership have been bundled together up to this point; it may be time to change this. Georgia and Ukraine are two different countries in different political situations, and each may very well progress toward NATO membeship at its own pace.
Popular support for NATO membership in Ukraine currently and consistently hovers in the low and below 30 percentile; it is hard to imagine Ukraine will be an ideal candidate for NATO membership in 2009, even if it does get its political house in order.
On the other hand, with some 70% of Georgians desiring NATO Membership, Georgia's leadership and population are motivated to join the Alliance. The Allies should leverage this motivation to encourage positive democratic reforms within Georgia, while moving it closer to NATO membership as previously promised. NATO's decision regarding Georgia's membership should be determined by Georgia's actions, not Russia -- by whether or not Georgia progresses toward meeting the qualifications of a good NATO Ally.
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