Why can't NATO prepare and announce a pathway for membership for Ukraine now?

 The glory, honour, dignity and respect of and for Russia, at home and on the world stage cannot and will not be resurrected on the back of a tyrannical, megalomaniacal, psychotic and hollow president who deliberately kills opponents and bullies his neighbours.

No matter how many thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and Russians are killed in no matter how many battles in military, cyber and stealth engagements, Russia will have to endure the castigation of the world, (save and except China) for what is apparently about to take place in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Not only is the paradox screaming; so is the incontrovertible evidence that the “west” including NATO really has no perceived, prepared or ready spine to get into a third world war. Nor should it. The world, and that means every single citizen inhabiting the planet, and all of our children and grandchildren now alive and prospectively born into the last half of this century and beyond, cannot either comprehend nor tolerate nor absorb the ravages of another war. Any sentient human being, regardless of where s/he lives, or where s/he was educated, trained, or professionally accredited, knows cognitively, affectively, ethically, morally and spiritually that the spectre of violence that we are anticipating is and will be, throughout history, considered another epic page in the litany of “man’s inhumanity to man”….and furthermore no sentient human being, regardless of the office he or she holds on the world stage, can or will be able to sleep nights, if this slaughter takes place.

At the same time, all of this “talk” about serious and dramatic sanctions, the likes of which the world has not seen, is little more than a puff of smoke in the eyes and the mind of Putin - public relations bafflegab, certainly not serious diplomacy. The strutting and the huffing and the puffing of Putin is analogous to the “three little pigs story, of the wolf blowing the houses made of thatch and sticks, but not of bricks. In this case, the ‘west’ including NATO seems analogous to the first two houses, made of thatch and of sticks respectively. The spectre of a brick house, however, is clearly not visible or even contemplated by the ‘wolf’ Putin.

What would a brick house, in Ukraine, actually look like?

Perhaps it would entail, not the announcement of sanctions, or even a portion of the planned sanctions. In spite of the facts that, according to the letter of the conditions, or the hoops, through which Ukraine must pass, in order to be admitted to NATO, those steps have not been completed, nevertheless, a timetable with specific conditions to be met, to pave the way for Ukraine’s admission to NATO now, would demonstrate, not only to Ukraine, but also to the world and especially to Putin, that his huffing and his puffing and his threats to blow their house down, are in vain. And Putin’s threatening to take it over, and make Ukraine another puppet in the Russian orbit is nothing less than blowing their house down. Bullies, insurrectionists, and anarchists, all three groups of which Putin is an honourary member, seek and find a crevice of apparent weakness, (thatch, sticks, in the fable) through which to “blow” their over-weening bombastic power. They tell lies that distort and pervert truth and reality, in order to bolster their distorted and perverted conception of the world, in order to justify their attitudes, beliefs and actions. And of course, they all know where their like and their ‘kin’ are hiding. And in hiding they conjure spectres, or perhaps fantasies, that are designed to bring them even more power and influence than they already have and are already mis-managing.

The wolf has no legitimate arguments to justify his need to blow their houses down, except his own in ordinate emptiness and need for control. And, neither does Putin have any legitimate arguments to justify his apparent obsession to bring Ukraine ‘back’ into the Russian orbit, except the hollow dream of glory.

The question of the intersection of Russian glory and honour with life on the ground has already been  rusted, hollowed out and defamed by the very actions of the Putin regime. And more territory, along with lists of individuals (including LGBTQ) opposed to the Russian take-over of Ukraine to be murdered or sentenced to camps, will not revive whatever glory Russia and the Soviet Union ever had. The argument that autocracies, (and even that is a euphemism for tyranny) can adapt more quickly, and make more decisive actions without the impediment of public debate, transparency and accountability hardly holds water. It is specious at best and irreconcilable with the preservation of and the protection of human rights. Autocracies, dictatorships are defined by the adulation of a single usually a male, and characterized by multiple actions designed to preserve that individual in power. It is the astonishing to note the arrogance and hubris to which many such autocrats cling that as trump himself so brazenly declared, “I alone can fix it!” referring to his perception of the ‘carnage’ that was the  America he inherited upon his election in 2016.

Condoleza Rice, former Secretary of State, and Russian scholar, now executive director of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, prior to his being tabbed by Yeltsin to become leader of Russia, described her first meeting with Putin, noting that he stood by himself in a corner, exhibiting a shy demeanour which only modified later into confidence and the megalomaniacal, as she put it in an interview with Fareed Zakaria yesterday on CNN’s GPS. The United States has been horrifically tutored in the ways and means of the megalomaniacal from 2016 through 2022 and beyond by a former occupant of their Oval Office. It is not transference to “envision” Putin and trump in the same mental, operational and megalomaniacal frame. The comparison is warranted, although both parties will protest its application to their leadership.

Dancing to the Kremlin’s demands, however, by western leaders, only exacerbates the situation in favour of the Kremlin and Putin’s overweening ambition and political and historic and legacy-building ego. Honourable, perhaps morally and ethically warranted and justified, but nevertheless, hollow, empty and ineffectual in the end.

Tyrants understand only one thing: not threats, and not vague promises, and not public relations poses, but the power of action.

And in this case, the power of action is not contained, defined or exemplified by the words and scuttling of these western leaders who diminish their stature, and their capacity to ‘bell this cat’ (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) by failing to take action.

Zelensky pleads for the announcement of immediate sanctions on Russia and Putin and his coterie of oligarchs. He has even, in a recent visit to the Oval Office, raised the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Blinken pushes back saying that to announce sanctions now leaves the west and NATO without anything left in their quiver upon the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.  Reports (New York Times) indicate that Ukrainian leaders believe they have achieved the level of democracy and human rights that would qualify their nation for NATO membership. Only in the mid-nineties, Biden himself, then Vice-president of the U.S. argued for the admission to NATO of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to “mark the beginning of another 50 years of peace” for Europe. Now, conversely, Biden uses statements like, “we do not think in cold war terms today” a statement that seems worthy of contesting given the conditions Putin is imposing on western world leaders and the people in their domains.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, argues that the issue is not even on the table, except for Putin having put it there, and therefore no one should be discussing it as a relevant issue in the current public debate. However, one of the specific arrows in the at-least “imagined “quiver” of the west and the European Union, although specifically opposed by Germany and France, (and NATO membership require a 30-vote member consent) is the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine.

All signs seem to point to the public figures in the debate declaring that Putin, rather than driving NATO members apart, has brought them together. If that is true, and if Germany is really going to accede to the closing of Nordstream 2, the natural gas pipeline from Russia, that could provide heat and energy directly to Germany in the event of an attack on Ukraine, then it would seem to be an appropriate occasion for NATO to consider actively the issues around Ukraine’s potential membership, to set out a deliberate, public, transparent and thereby challenging path, both for Ukraine and for Putin, and in the process force Putin to face the prospect of a united, fortified and willing force before he makes a final decision to invade Ukraine.

Of course, such a decision by current NATO members would be highly risky, and highly provocative. And yet, is not the spectre of Putin’s nearly 200,000 fighters, along with fighter jets, missiles and cyber-threats a highly risky prospect. And this prospect inflicted on the world by Putin, is not going to impact only the nation and the people of Ukraine; it will impact the whole world, because, along with the carnage and the loss of lives and the trauma that will be inflicted, this predictable invasion will again demonstrate that the west really has no answer for such a dictator.

And it is the failure to confront dictatorship when they threaten, not merely illegally and illegitimately, but factually, the right to decide their future of a self-respecting, independent people. Having surrendered their nuclear arsenal in the 1990’s, as part of their move to independence, at the time being guaranteed safety and security by Russia, Ukraine now sees that the Russian commitment was nothing more than hot air. And for that failure, according to their Foreign Minister, appearing on 60 Minutes last night, Ukraine holds the U.S. and the west “partially responsible”. Even that aspect of the situation is getting far less attention than the headline-grabbing shuttle diplomacy between Macron and Putin and between  Blinken and Lavrov. It would seem that, at least in the western media, that aspect  warrants no attention.

From the broader and more penetrating perspective, however, (a perspective not exactly appealing to American media) it would seem that we need to hear those less known and less publicized features of the context, in order to better understand the complexity of the situation.

We are all, today, and for the foreseeable future, Ukrainians, not Americans, and not Canadians, not Germans or Russians. And for the time being, we all have to be pulling oars in the same boat as Zelensky, and that includes the active participation of all NATO members, not necessarily in a narrowly-defined military aspect, by putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, but by moving their policies and their

timelines and their conditions out into the open for all to see.

Russia not only has no ‘right’ to invade; it must have no “option” to invade Ukraine.

And in order to remove that option NATO members will have to adopt a broader perspective than the legal, literal, compliance perspective that currently clouds, or perhaps even blinds their vision of the whole situation.

The United Nations, another product of the last war in Europe, also has a role to play here, in pressuring NATO members to come to a conscious awareness that a war in Europe is an event the world cannot contemplate let alone tolerate. And, if we are to move to a global theatre in which collaboration, negotiation and compromise are to rule, with concomitant muscle, the west and the democracies will have to find the spine that, for example, many of the liberal organization like the Democratic Party in the U.S. seem to have lost.

Leadership, in today’s world, where facts are drowned in conspiracies, and where raw power trumps reasoned debate, and where military and cyber subterfuge trumps transparency and accountability, and where dictators throw weight around too often with impunity, and with the endorsement of specific cult-addicted media (think FOX in the U.S.), requires a far more disciplined, courageous and creative response. As Zelensky himself told the Munich Conference, the systems designed to ensure peace and security of world order after the last war in Europe are no longer adequate. They are not holding, and this moment in history demands their re-invention.

And a first step in that direction would be to design, and to acquire a unanimous vote from all 30 NATO members, to publish a pathway to membership for Ukraine.