Letter: Ukraine Needs a Roadmap to NATO Membership
This commentary and open letter signed by 46 foreign policy experts, including CGA CEO Doug Lute, originally appeared in Politico on July 5, 2023.
The upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius that begins July 11 will take place at a time of danger and opportunity. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revisionist ambition to remake the security order in Europe has foundered in Ukraine and exposed cracks in the foundation of his regime. But Putin has yet to abandon his goal of establishing control of Ukraine or his belief that he can outlast Kyiv and the West. Leaving Ukraine in a gray zone of ambiguity invites Russian aggression.
The alliance will convene in Vilnius as Kyiv’s counteroffensive enters its second month. It now seems that most NATO allies, not just the Central and East European states that have long understood the dangers of the Kremlin’s revisionist policies, lean toward a more ambitious agenda for Vilnius. We present these ideas to help the administration and NATO allies move toward a successful summit, one that brings us closer to restoring a stable and secure Europe.
This means taking steps to ensure that Ukraine 1) wins this war and reestablishes full control over its internationally recognized 1991 borders; and 2) is fully anchored in the security and economic arrangements that from 1945 until 2014 made Europe a continent of peace, prosperity and cooperation. The transatlantic community can only be stable and secure if Ukraine is secure. Ukraine’s entry into NATO, fulfilling the promise made at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, would achieve that.