You're reading: NATO membership for Ukraine could set off war between Russia and the West, warns former British defense secretary

LONDON — Western opinion makers have once again warned Ukraine off pursuing NATO membership, a prospect that could trigger war between the West and Russia.

Speaking at the Chatham House “Ukraine’s Transformation: Assessments and Solutions” Conference in London on July 5, former British Foreign and Defense Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said that, under the Article 5 mutual self-defense provision of the alliance’s treaty, NATO member countries are required to defend a member state attacked by an outside power.

“The only responsible way of allowing Ukraine to become part of NATO would be if the United States, France, Germany, Britain the other member states were quite literally prepared to go to war with Russia,” he said.  “If an application from Ukraine is made, what NATO has to consider is not just would the Ukrainians like to be members or NATO or have they met certain democratic standards, it’s whether NATO itself would be able to deliver the commitment membership requires.”

Ukraine started developing relations with NATO in the early 1990s but cooperation between the government and the alliance has significantly grown since Russia launched its war in 2014, seizing Crimea.

The Verkhovna Rada voted to enshrine Ukraine’s commitment to gaining NATO membership into law in June.

Ukraine hopes to meet entry requirements by 2020 but Western opinion makers have repeatedly brushed off the country’s need to form part of the alliance.

James Sherr, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, said NATO membership was “neither possible nor necessary for Ukraine now or in the foreseeable future.”

“The only justification of admitting a state to NATO is if its membership will strengthen the security of that country and of NATO as a whole,” he said. “In current conditions…it will be even more damaging for Ukraine than having the relationship is has.”

However Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, said NATO has been slowly backtracking on a commitment made at a 2008 summit, where both Ukraine and Georgia were assured they could eventually become member states.

“We are not making an application today,” she said.

“We are asking for training, we are asking for defensive weapons, we are asking for moral and political support and we are asking for unity. And we are asking for our colleagues from the outside (to stop) hesitating all the time with regard to sanctions, with regard to political support, with regard to economic support.”

While the European Union extended and the U.S. stepped up sanctions against Russia in June, policymakers from both powers have been criticised for failing to take a tougher stance on key projects. Among them is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a project that would weaken Ukraine’s role as the transit route for Russian gas delivery to Europe, depriving Ukraine of $2 billion in transit revenues yearly.

Klympush-Tsintsadze said Ukraine’s eastern borders were not just borders of Ukraine, but eastern borders of Europe and NATO.

“We are already contributing to the security of NATO,” she said  “We are forgetting that by cyber attacks, by information attacks, by economic attack, Russia is already at war with the West.”