NATO’s Outgoing Leader Stoltenberg Reflects on Missed Opportunities in Ukraine (Part Two)

(Part One)

Executive Summary:

• NATO’s outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has called for maximizing military assistance to Ukraine to change Russia’s calculus and bring Moscow to the negotiating table. This scenario spells, however, a territorial compromise at Ukraine’s expense rather than victory in war.
• Stoltenberg cautions against trying the “freeze” model of conflict management as seen in Ukraine in 2014–2022 under the Minsk agreements. This message contradicts suggestions by some Western commentators to “freeze” this war in place. 
• Additionally, Stoltenberg enunciates a foundational concept for NATO to adopt and implement: “There can be no sustained security in Europe without a stable Ukraine. And no lasting security for Ukraine without NATO membership.” However, winning the war is the only possible guarantee of Ukraine’s “irreversible path to NATO.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) outgoing Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has offered reflections on NATO’s Ukraine policy in valedictory statements for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Faz.net, September 14) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels (NATO, September 19). Acknowledging, directly or indirectly, NATO’s twin failures to deter Russia from invading Ukraine again in 2022 and to arm and train Ukrainian troops ahead of the invasion (see Part One, EDM, September 23), Stoltenberg also assessed prospects for a negotiated solution to the war, the negative experience of the 2014–2022 “freeze” model, and the outlook for Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations.

War Outcome

According to Stoltenberg, “The more weapons for Ukraine we are able to deliver, the more likely it is that we can reach a peace and end to the war. And the more credible our long-term military support [for Ukraine], the sooner the war will end.” These remarks seem to take issue, first, with the escalation-management approach that prolongs this war indefinitely and second, with the naysayers to Ukraine’s NATO membership. Yet, the policy objective is not to win the war but merely “to change Putin’s calculus” by maximizing the war costs to Russia, bring Putin to the negotiating table, and make him accept Ukraine’s right to persist as a sovereign, democratic country. In any case, “Russia has to be part of future peace talks.”

Wars underwritten for “changing the opponent’s calculus” are, however, self-defeating. In Ukraine’s case, this implies a compromise settlement that would turn military frontlines into political demarcation lines cutting across Ukraine, leaving large parts of the country essentially in Russia’s hands. Making Russia a party to the settlement could result in giving Moscow a voice and role in the post-settlement arrangements affecting Ukraine. The mere survival of a rump Ukraine after two rounds of territorial amputations would inescapably be viewed as Russia’s victory over Ukraine, NATO, and the West writ large.

Crisis Management

Stoltenberg warns against trying the “freeze” model of conflict management again, as seen in Ukraine in 2014–2022, bookended by two Russian invasions. “The Minsk agreements [2014, 2015] did not bring peace. … Although the situation remained static for a long time, there was almost daily fighting.” In contrast to the Minsk armistice, “any future deal must be backed by strong military support to Ukraine and credible security guarantees to ensure lasting peace.”

These are significant cautionary notes amidst multiplying suggestions by Western commentators to “freeze” this war in place. Stoltenberg’s remarks seem to reflect some lessons learned at NATO from that experience.

Crisis management is one of NATO’s three core tasks (collective defense, crisis management, cooperative security), yet the Alliance has undertaken this particular task in distant expeditionary operations, never in its immediate eastern neighborhood. The resulting security vacuum has allowed Russia to invade Ukraine twice, potentially threatening NATO member states from territories seized in Ukraine. NATO never developed a crisis prevention policy geared to Ukraine before 2014, nor a crisis management policy from 2014–2022. Instead, NATO passively took onboard the Minsk agreements, routinely endorsing them politically at every NATO summit during that period. The Alliance has come a long way from that after 2022, its level of commitment in Ukraine far surpassing the crisis management model but still equally far from providing security guarantees to Ukraine (see EDM, July 17, 18, August 6, 7, 14).

Ukraine’s NATO Membership Prospects 

Stoltenberg enunciates a foundational concept for NATO to adopt and implement: “There can be no sustained security in Europe without a stable Ukraine. And no lasting security for Ukraine without NATO membership” (NATO, September 19). This is almost certainly the most enduring among the insights he shared in these valedictory remarks.

NATO internal politics on both sides of the Atlantic seem, however, hard to convert to this vision. Stoltenberg insists that “NATO’s door is open. Ukraine will join,” but these are the unrequited pledges in the same words dating back to 2008. Nor is “Ukraine closer to NATO membership than ever before” as a result of the Washington summit’s decisions (see EDM, July 17).

Replacing the Open-Door metaphor with the Bridge metaphor in the official communiqué matters little. Far more consequentially, the Joe Biden White House has switched the United States from the supporters’ camp to the naysayers on Ukraine’s NATO membership since 2021. Following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, most NATO member states seem to believe that decisions on Ukraine’s membership must await the “end of the war.” No such end state can, however, be expected in the age of Russian hybrid wars.

According to the summit’s communiqué, Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is “irreversible.” The word “irreversible” was supposed to appease Kyiv and reassure its supporters within NATO. However, it guarantees neither eventual membership nor a timeframe for it. Nothing is “irreversible” in an alliance of 32 member states, every one of whom has the right to block the accession of an aspirant country. The assurance of “irreversibility” also overlooks the danger of regime change in Ukraine if the country and NATO itself lose the war to Russia. In that case, national exhaustion and demoralization could pave the way for a government that would return Ukraine to nonalignment or neutrality in Russia’s orbit. Winning the war is the only possible guarantee of Ukraine’s “irreversible path to NATO.”