2023-07-11 22:03:36
Innsbruck (OTS) – Kremlin chief Putin has given the western security alliance meaning and purpose again. It’s about Ukraine and the future European security architecture.
Not so long ago, NATO summits had the character of navel-gazing. The debate revolved around the purpose of the organization and internal burden-sharing. The members gave the image of a western rift rather than an alliance, provoked by controversial statements by heads of state like Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. NATO almost became a victim of its own success in the Cold War.
But then Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale attack on neighboring Ukraine – not least because it had begun to drift west from Moscow orbit. And with the hot war, it gave NATO something it could not develop on its own: the Alliance regained a strategic purpose, an operational challenge, and a shared awareness of the need and cost of collective security.
The much-maligned NATO is suddenly a sought-after partner again. This is e.g. the accession of Finland and probably soon also of Sweden, which had remained non-aligned or neutral during the Cold War. In fact, Ukraine is already firmly integrated into the western alliance. From a purely formal point of view, NATO plays no role in the war. But the coordinated support of its members is now seen as a crucial factor in Ukraine’s survival as a separate state.
At the start of the NATO summit yesterday, it was still unclear what words and assurances the alliance would use to express its relationship with Ukraine. It was about a formula that on the one hand makes it clear that the future of Ukraine lies in NATO, but on the other hand does not draw the alliance directly into a war with Russia. The tug-of-war over the formula overshadows the commonality on the fundamental issue: NATO is determined to continue to support Ukraine and at the same time to use the war to contain Russia in the long term.
The West and Ukraine are bound by fate. Your future depends to a large extent on how the war ends and what comes afterwards. When it comes to reconstruction and post-war structures in Ukraine, the EU will be the main focus. But in the military conflict with Russia and in the future security architecture in Europe, NATO is likely to play the leading western role again. This will not happen without internal conflicts of interest, as the current summit has already shown. Nevertheless, the phase of the existential crisis is now followed by one in which NATO appears more strongly as an alliance and directs its activities outwards.
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