Ambassadors from the North Atlantic Council – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) principal political decision-making body – visited Ukraine on October 30-31, for a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the commission’s meeting, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who led the delegation, addressed the parliament in Kyiv (Nato.int, October 31).
Comprising all 29 (imminently 30) allied countries’ ambassadors to NATO, the delegation also visited Ukraine’s naval academy and the port of Odesa. A NATO group of four minesweepers (Romanian, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish) and two Island-class coastal guard boats just gifted by the United States to Ukraine were anchored there for the occasion (UNIAN, October 30, 31).
The NATO-Ukraine Commission is the decision-making body overseeing NATO-Ukraine relations and cooperative activities. It also provides a forum for Ukraine and the alliance’s consultations on common security concerns; and it regularly reviews Ukraine’s activities under the Annual National Program of cooperation with NATO. This meeting was the first that the Commission held in Ukraine following this year’s democratic change of regime in that country (Nato.int, October 30, 31).
Mr. Zelenskyy paid a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels in June, as the freshly elected president. His government looks set to continue the NATO integration agenda it inherited from Petro Poroshenko’s presidency and the Verkhovna Rada of the 2015-2019 convocation. They set Ukraine on a firm course toward integration with the North Atlantic Alliance while also founding Ukraine’s bilateral strategic partnership with the United States. This bilateral relationship is far more productive to Ukraine’s national security and defense than its relations with NATO collectively, although the two relationships are ultimately inseparable.
Ukraine attained the status of country aspirant to NATO membership during Mr. Poroshenko’s presidency. At his initiative, the Parliament enshrined the goal of NATO membership in Ukraine’s laws on national security and foreign and domestic policies (June 2017) and in Ukraine’s Constitution (February 7, 2019), so as to safeguard Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations against hypothetical abandonment by another leadership.
The new government in Kyiv can now build on that legacy. It has identified four priority areas for Ukraine-NATO cooperation to be included in the Ukraine-NATO Annual National Programs (ANP) from 2020 onward: 1) strengthening Ukraine’s naval forces, special operation troops, logistics, cyberdefense and military police; 2) consolidating civilian control and democratic oversight of the security and defense sector; 3) developing a modern military education system; and 4) strengthening national resilience to hybrid threats. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for Euro-Atlantic integration, Dmytro Kuleba, and Defense Minister Andriy Zahorodniuk coordinated these priorities at NATO headquarters in Brussels, ahead of the North Atlantic Council’s visit to Kyiv (Ukrinform, October 31, November 1).
NATO will not entertain Ukrainian appeals for a Membership Action Plan (MAP) any time soon. Such appeals had become an irritant in the relationship, as they did in Georgia’s case – and for similar reasons, namely, Russia orchestrating territorial conflicts to render these countries ineligible for NATO membership. Ukraine‘s new government has decided to refrain from appealing to the alliance for a MAP, anticipating a negative answer. Moreover, reopening the MAP issue at this time would jeopardize the summit meeting with Russia, Germany and France (the “Normandy” format) that Mr. Zelenskyy so eagerly seeks (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, October 3, 16, 17, 31).
Mr. Zelenskyy’s government takes the position that it could advance inter-operability and de facto integration with the trans-Atlantic alliance through incremental steps, with NATO’s assistance but in the absence of a MAP. That movement, however, would be slower and more trial-and-error prone without a Membership Action Plan. The MAP entails closer, deeper and better-resourced NATO mentoring of the aspirant country’s progress, compared with the Annual National Program. The ANP is basically a national commitment, the MAP is a mutual commitment between the aspirant country and the alliance.
The NATO-Ukraine Commission’s concluding statement (Nato.int, October 31) repeats verbatim what every NATO communique has said about a Ukrainian MAP for years. Ukraine should “make the best use of the tools available, in particular the Annual National Program.” Also invariably from year to year, “in light of Ukraine’s restated aspirations for NATO membership, we stand by our decisions taken at the Bucharest Summit and subsequent summits.” This passage alludes to the 2008 decision that Ukraine (and Georgia as well) “will be members of NATO.” Merely alluding to that decision without actually quoting it, however, dilutes the statement’s value in terms of commitment from NATO and incentive to the aspirant country (see EDM, July 30, 2018, and August 1, 2018).
NATO’s official, collective position holds that: a) a MAP is a necessary prerequisite to Ukrainian (or Georgian) eventual membership; however, b) Ukraine (or Georgia) is not eligible for a MAP. As duly expressed by Secretary General Stoltenberg in Kyiv, “the MAP is an indispensable stage for membership aspirants,” and a “MAP is indeed an obligatory part of the process of membership accession.” Nevertheless, Ukraine must use other instruments to prepare for membership, instead of applying for a MAP (Ukrayinska Pravda, November 1).
At the NATO-Ukraine’s Commission’s meeting, discussions covered reforms in Ukraine’s security and defense sector, as well as NATO assistance and modernization programs for which this NATO membership aspirant country may be eligible. Although Ukraine is defending against military aggression from Russia, all assistance programs under discussion between NATO and Ukraine are non-lethal; and the discussion itself, in its third year by now, looks somewhat inconclusive at this point.
NATO’s Enhanced Opportunities Partnership (EOP), launched at the alliance’s 2014 Wales Summit and further developed since then, groups together Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Australia, countries selected from a pool of 24 NATO partners that includes Ukraine. Those enhanced opportunities include regular political-level consultations with NATO on security matters, deeper access to interoperability programs and exercises, information-sharing with allies, some postings at NATO headquarters and staffs, and closer association with allies in the preparation for NATO operations (Nato.int, accessed November 6).
President Zelenskyy asked NATO during the commission’s meeting in Kyiv to accept Ukraine into the EOP group of countries. The commission’s concluding statement, however, was noncommittal: “Allies acknowledge Ukraine’s interest in the enhanced opportunities and will consider this [request].” Ukraine had previously presented this same request at the alliance’s summits in Warsaw 2016 and Brussels 2018. Both times, NATO deferred its decision, using the same wording – simply acknowledging Ukraine’s interest (Nato.int, accessed November 5, 2019; UNIAN, October 31).
The Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP) combines Trust Funds to support NATO partner countries’ military-related programs. In Ukraine‘s case, six Trust Funds were announced at the alliance’s 2014 Wales Summit for the following spheres of activity: Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4); Logistics and Standardization; Cyberdefense; Military Medicine and Rehabilitation; Military Career Transition; and Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Allied countries, individually or in small groups, volunteer to provide financial support and expertise for projects run by each Trust Fund under the CAP. The funding target for all six of them was reported to total only $9.5 million at the time of NATO’s 2018 Brussels Summit. Trust Funds for Destroying Stockpiles of Weapons and Munitions and for Radioactive Waste Disposal have been added, and the total funding is reported at some $40 million in “pledged” funds.
According to Ukrainian experts, CAP’s Trust Funds are under-resourced and understaffed (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, November 2-8; Nato.int, accessed November 5). Mr. Zelenskyy suggested during the commission’s meeting in Kyiv that CAP and its Trust Funds need to be expanded and their activities intensified (Unian, Ukrinform, October 31).
The Defense Education Enhancement Program (DEEP), on the other hand, is the largest of its kind in any of NATO’s partner countries. It operates in eight defense education institutions and five training centers throughout Ukraine (Nato.int, November 4, 2019; see EDM, July 30, 2018 and August 1, 2018).
Almost all of those programs and activities relate to Ukraine’s Annual National Program (ANP), the suboptimal tool available to a NATO-aspirant country for membership preparations in the absence of a Membership Action Plan. The NATO-Ukraine Commission is mandated to review the ANP’s implementation, and it began that review at its Kyiv meeting. The commission will hold a follow-up meeting in Brussels to complete that review and discuss the ANP for 2020.
In the legislative field, the commission recommends for Ukraine to adopt secondary legislation stemming from the law on national security. That law, adopted in 2018, is a framework law on civilian control and democratic oversight of Ukraine‘s security and defense sector. The secondary legislation must address as matters of priority the parliamentary oversight of security agencies and defense institutions, state procurement of defense articles, the protection of state secrets, and the reorganization of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) (Ukrinform, October 31).
NATO’s 70th anniversary summit, to be held in London on December 3-4, will differ from the alliance’s summits of recent years in that partner countries have not been invited and partnership programs are not scheduled for discussion.
In Ukraine’s case (as in Georgia’s), NATO’s partnership programs are an indispensable and much-valued addendum to the country’s bilateral strategic partnership with the United States. It is the U.S. that does the heavy lifting in terms of troop training and exercises, arms deliveries, logistics, or intelligence sharing – and correspondingly bearing the costs.
The article above is reprinted from Eurasia Daily Monitor with permission from its publisher, the Jamestown Foundation, www.jamestown.org.