Should Ukraine Join NATO? The Problems of Being in the Alliance
With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support of pro-Russian rebels in Donbas, Ukrainians have begun to look to the United States and NATO as their protectors. In 2020, President Vladimir Zelenskiy stated that Ukraine needs a NATO membership action plan. A few months later, Minister of Defense Andrei Teran also said that Ukraine needs a NATO membership action plan in an interview posted on Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense website. Clearly, there is a strong political will on the part of Ukraine’s leadership to join NATO.
Several polls taken since the Maidan revolt in 2014 indicate that a substantial portion of Ukraine’s population support joining NATO. According to the Democratic Initiatives Fund, 47 percent of Ukrainians believe that joining NATO is the best way to maintain their security. NATO membership is particularly popular in Western Ukraine, where, according to Pew Research, 68 percent of Ukrainians support it. This poll also shows that a substantial number of Ukrainians living in the Russian-speaking east outside Donbas, 38 percent, also support joining NATO.
The question remains, however, whether NATO has the ability to defend Ukraine if attacked by Russia. The logistical obstacles of moving forces and equipment to Ukraine from the United States and Germany are high and possibly insurmountable. There is also the question of whether Ukrainians fully understand the consequences of being a part of NATO. Ukrainians want to be in NATO to be fully protected from what they see as an aggressive neighbor; however, they could easily find themselves in a war over an entirely different reason than why they joined in the first place. Considering the strategic and operational level problems posed by joining the alliance, Ukrainians should consider other avenues for ensuring their national security.
The Logistical Problems
Any NATO war against Russia over Ukraine will have to be led by the United States. It is one of the few members who can fight a major air-land-sea war against Russia and win. The British army is too small, with only 80,000 active-duty personnel and 30,000 reservists, while Germany owns “helicopters that cannot fly, tanks that cannot shoot and minesweepers that cannot sweep” as Mr. Konstantine Richter wrote in Politico. Judging by the aforementioned excerpt, Germany’s military has one of the worst readiness levels in its history. Many of the other members, excluding Canada and France, have not seen significant combat action or overseas deployments since 1944–45. The burden of responsibility for defending Ukraine will fall on the United States.
The problem with this burden falling on America’s shoulders is that it has no troops in Europe save for the 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker), 41st Artillery Brigade, and the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade in Germany; there is also the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, as well as various sustainment brigades and military police. It is absurd to believe that such a force could stop several Russian armoured and mechanized corps.
The United States would have to bring a large number of forces from North America and other theaters of operation in a short period to fulfill its treaty obligations to defend Ukraine. However, the United States has not practiced doing this since the Campaign Reforger Exercises of the Cold War. These exercises were meant to prepare the US military for moving forces from the US to Europe in the event of a war with the Soviet Union, where they would collect supplies and equipment at prepositioned stock sites throughout West Germany and then march to the front. In the case of a war in Ukraine, these troops would arrive in Germany, where the majority of these sites remain, collect their supplies and equipment, and then embark on trains and travel several hundred miles east. It is doubtful that the US is prepared to deploy corps and division-sized units in this fashion.
The Task Force Charlie Conundrum
The results of asking the army to move large amounts of forces from one point to another when it is not prepared to do so can be seen by reading about the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The military wanted to conduct a full-scale invasion of Cuba to rid the island of Fidel Castro once and for all. This operation called for moving American forces to ports on the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast, from which they would sail to Cuba and invade. This force was called Task Force Charlie.
One component of Task Force Charlie was the 1st Armored Division stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. It was tasked with relocating to Fort Stewart in Georgia from whence they would go to ports in Georgia and Florida. The army quickly discovered that Fort Stewart did not have enough railroad siding to park the 660 flat cars containing the 1st Armored Division’s men and gear, even though nearby Hunter Air Force Base had a railyard which, together with Fort Stewart’s railyard, would have provided adequate space for parking the division’s flat cars. Once the division was finally able to move to its designated ports, its soldiers found that the USNS Comet did not have enough space in its holds to accommodate the size of the division’s tanks.
It took over two weeks for the division to move from one point in the US to another for an invasion of an island 90 miles away from Florida at the height of the Cold War in the middle of a nuclear standoff. These problems were encountered because the United States had not prepared for an invasion of Cuba the way it had for a massive movement to Germany in the Reforger exercises.
Politicians are unknowingly putting the United States, Ukraine, and other NATO members in a similar situation. If Russia invaded Ukraine, the US would struggle to move corps sized units to its prepositioned stock sites in Germany. But, at least they have practiced this with the Reforger exercises. What they have not practiced is moving corps-sized units to Ukraine from Germany. The US and its NATO allies may quickly find that their armies are unprepared for a deployment of that scale, just as the US Army was unprepared to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a result, it will take longer than Ukrainians expect for NATO forces to reach them. By the time they reached Ukraine, Ukrainian forces could be defeated with the Russian army dug in, resupplied, rested, and waiting.
The problem of moving American and NATO forces from Germany to Ukraine by rail will be further compounded by the fact they would be making this move under combat conditions. The Russians cannot be expected to sit idly by while massive amounts of NATO troops are relocated to Ukraine. The Russians know where all the railroads, bridges, and rail yards are located, as Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and would possibly target them with everything in their arsenal.
One alternative is for US forces to arrive by ship to the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Izmail; however, their proximity to Crimea presents another problem. The Russians would use Crimea as a base from which to launch attacks against American shipping in the Black Sea. They would not even have to sortie their fleet; instead, they could disrupt shipping using land-based anti-ship missiles and aircraft, conducting stand-off attacks from afar. Moving naval and logistical assets into the Black Sea would be very risky and dangerous considering that the Russians likely have more missiles than the Americans and their allies have ships.
To be fully prepared for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO would have to relocate its prepositioned stocks to Ukraine, likely the western half so that they are not overrun in the opening moments of a war, and they would have to regularly train for large scale deployments to Ukraine as they did with the Reforger exercises. It might even be the case that NATO would have to establish a permanent presence in Ukraine as it did in West Germany during the Cold War. Considering Russia’s response in 2008 to Georgia’s attempt to get closer to the European Union and NATO, Russia could very well go to war to prevent what it views as an enemy from establishing a permanent presence on its near abroad.
The NATO Conveyor Belt
Permanent alliances inevitably lead to wars over issues that had nothing to do with the alliance’s original purpose in the first place. In short, they are conveyor belts for unnecessary wars. The British Empire learned this lesson by guaranteeing Belgium’s independence from France in the 1830s, only to be thrown into a war with Germany over the same issue in 1914. The result was catastrophic for Britain, and she would lose her empire a generation later.
Ukrainians believe they are entering this alliance so that they can be protected from Russia. Any foreigner who has spoken with the average man on the street in Kiev knows this. There is no doubt that Ukrainians would flock to their color to defend their nation in the event of a war with Russia, but would they be willing to send their sons to die for some other country in the alliance?
Take, for example, the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey over Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, or America’s recent troubles with China. Would Ukrainians be enthusiastic about participating in a full-scale war with Russia over something in Syria or the Caucasus? If China and the United States went to war over Taiwan, would Ukraine be willing to send troops to the Pacific?
The Ukrainian people and their leaders must seriously consider the consequences of locking themselves into a pact with nations that do not share their interests or policy objectives. Ukraine’s strategic goal is to be safe from Russia; Turkey’s strategic goal seems to be expansion at the expense of Russia’s Middle Eastern and Caucasus allies, while one of America’s policies is to protect its allies in the Pacific from the Chinese. Ukraine has no apparent interests in these regions, so why should it go to war over them?
The Prussian Alternative
Ukraine finds itself in the same position Prussia found itself throughout its history. Prussia was a resource and manpower poor kingdom surrounded by France, Austria, Sweden, and Russia. Frederick William responded to this challenge by creating one of the finest armies the world ever saw, an army that would eventually crush France and Austria and bring Russia to its knees in 1918. Ukrainians should look to themselves, as did the Prussians, instead of locking themselves in a permanent alliance and depending on someone else for their defense.
The road to self-dependence is not an easy one, and Prussian men like Frederick II and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher knew this all too well, seeing their nation nearly wiped off the face of the earth by Russia and France in the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars, respectively. But Prussia rose from the ashes to become one of the most dynamic economic and military powers the world has ever seen. There is no reason why Ukraine cannot put itself on a similar trajectory. It certainly has more advantages than Prussia did, with a population of 40 million people, a large agricultural economic sector, and the military-industrial complex it inherited from the Soviet Union.
A nation can only depend on itself to defend its interests. The Carthaginians were dependent on mercenaries in its land forces during the First Punic War. These mercenaries revolted, severely crippling Carthage’s war effort. Carthage eventually fell to Rome. Indeed, Rome fell partly for the same reason; employing barbarians in its legions. One of these barbarians, Flavius Odovacer, a general in the Roman army, overthrew the child emperor Romulus Augustulus, leading to the collapse of the western empire. More recently, Poland entered into an alliance with Great Britain and France, only for those powers to sit behind the Maginot Line while Poland was consumed by Germany and the Soviet Union.
Dependence on another for one’s well-being breeds vulnerability. If Ukrainians want to be a truly independent nation, they will endeavor to create a combat effective military capable of defending their new nation, not delegate their responsibility to defend themselves to someone else.
