Senior Ukrainian officials have voiced concern that NATO has provided no clarity regarding Ukraine’s membership prospects.  Specifically, when might Kyiv receive a membership action plan, known as MAP?

Ukraine has already waited a long time. It will have to wait longer. That is unfair, but that is the reality.

Speaking in New York on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly meetings, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba complained that the MAP process “has been dragging on for an indecently long time…there can be no endless integration.  Everything must have its certainty and its clarity.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed similar concerns earlier in the summer:  “If we are talking about NATO and MAP, I would really like to get specifics – yes or no.”

Kuleba and Zelensky’s frustrations are entirely understandable.  However, they will remain disappointed.

Over the past three decades, Ukraine’s interest in NATO has steadily grown.  In 1994, it was among the first to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace.  In 1997, NATO and Ukraine established a “distinctive partnership” aimed at deepening Kyiv’s relationship with the alliance.

In 2002, Ukraine announced that it would seek to join NATO, but Kyiv did little to prepare itself or follow up.  After the 2004 Orange Revolution, which led to the election of Viktor Yushchenko as president, the new Ukrainian government adopted a more serious approach. In the first half of 2006, it appeared headed for a MAP. Moscow did not express strong opposition, and many assumed that NATO leaders would approve a MAP at their November summit.  However, Yushchenko’s appointment of Victor Yanukovych as prime minister derailed things, especially in September when Yanukovych said he had no interest in a MAP.

Yushchenko asked again for a MAP in January 2008, with support from Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. This time, the Kremlin made its opposition loud and clear. President George W. Bush nevertheless supported the request.  However, Washington curiously did no lobbying with other NATO members on Kyiv’s behalf.  Only when alliance leaders gathered in Bucharest in April did Bush urge his counterparts to approve a MAP for Ukraine, but having heard nothing from Washington, positions had set against the idea in key European capitals, including Berlin and Paris. Ukraine did not get a MAP, though NATO leaders stated “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.  We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

The language about “becoming” members seemed a concession to Bush, who failed in his MAP goal since, 13 years later, Ukraine continues to wait.

NATO has no fixed checklist of what countries must do to qualify for a MAP, that is, an aspirant for a MAP cannot present a fully checked scorecard and automatically claim one.  The decision to bestow one ultimately is a political call by alliance members. What is unfair is that Ukraine today arguably has made as much progress toward meeting the criteria for membership as had other countries when they received their MAPs, for example, Bulgaria and Romania in 1999 or Albania in 2007.  Indeed, Ukraine has probably done more.

The reason why Ukraine waits is also unfair. NATO’s 1995 enlargement study said, “No country outside the alliance should be given a veto or droit de regard over the process and decisions.”  Yet the Kremlin has, in effect, exercised such a veto. Allies appear unenthusiastic about a MAP now, particularly because there is no good answer to the question “if Ukraine joins NATO tomorrow, does the alliance then find itself at war with Russia?”

Unfortunately, life sometimes is not fair. That is the reality for Ukraine.  If the alliance could not reach a consensus on giving Kyiv a MAP in 2008, it will not do so now, when Ukraine remains mired in the low-intensity military conflict that Russia inflicted has inflicted on it since 2014.  Indeed, one reason why the Kremlin keeps that conflict simmering undoubtedly is to obstruct Ukraine’s efforts to forge stronger links with the West.

There should be candor between NATO and Ukrainian officials about the state of play with MAP, as there should be on Washington’s part.  True, corruption remains a problem that Ukrainians must deal more effectively with, but it does not block a MAP.

What should Kyiv do?  Here are three recommendations.

First, stop asking for a MAP, especially in public. In the current circumstances, the answer will either be silence or no. Neither helps NATO-Ukraine relations.

Second, load up Ukraine’s annual national program with the substance of a MAP – U.S., British, Polish, Lithuanian and Canadian diplomats at NATO can advise on this – but, critically, do not call it a MAP.  By all appearances, the negative reactions—both from Moscow and from within the alliance—are to the title, not the contents.

Third, having agreed a program with NATO, implement, implement and implement more.  Implementation has not always been Kyiv’s strong suit.  The more Ukraine does to strengthen interoperability with NATO military forces, meet alliance standards, and complete democratic, economic, military and security sector reforms, the better it will prepare itself for membership.

That should be Kyiv’s goal now.  It should seek, without a formal MAP, to do everything it can so that Ukraine is ready, when the political circumstances change, to take advantage and advance its membership bid.

Steven Pifer is a William J. Perry Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. 

Originally for Kyviv Post

What we know for sure is that North Korea can build the bomb because the tremors from deep inside the Punggye-ri nuclear test-site tunnels have been detected around the world six times. The most recent blast in September 2017 was more than 10 times the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions. With these explosions, North Korea joined seven other countries known to have detonated nuclear devices.

Read the rest at Global Asia

Rose Gottemoeller is the first female Deputy Secretary General of NATO and the first woman to lead a major nuclear arms negotiation. As the US chief negotiator of the New START treaty, her new book Negotiating the New START Treaty is hailed by Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, as one “future negotiators would benefit from reading” and by William J. Perry, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, as “the definitive book on this treaty or indeed, any of the nuclear treaties with the Soviet Union or Russia.”

Read the rest at The Academy of Diplomacy

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons pose a far greater threat to the safety and security of Americans than is reflected in our public discourse. While the United States must maintain a strong nuclear deterrent as an important tool of U.S. foreign and defense policy, an oversized global arsenal of nuclear weapons makes Americans equally unsafe. It is time to reinvigorate arms control discussions to seek reasonable reductions that will make us all more secure.

Too many nuclear weapons increase the risk of theft by terrorists or other nefarious actors, encourage more countries to develop nuclear arms, and raise the risk of nuclear war. Reasonable arms control measures, taken in conjunction with adversaries like Russia, make Americans safer by diminishing the large Russian nuclear arsenal, reinforcing norms against the development and use of nuclear arms, securing or eliminating nuclear material from theft or misuse by terrorists, and saving money that can be used to strengthen the United States military’s conventional deterrence against costly and destructive wars. 

In order to achieve those goals, Washington and Moscow have cut their strategic nuclear weapons since the height of the Cold War. Through the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which the U.S. and Russia recently extended, both countries each reduced their nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads arming no more than 700 deployed strategic ballistic missiles and bombers.

Yet, despite these historic cuts, the United States and Russia each still have far more nuclear weapons than either side could conceivably use in a conflict, and at least ten times more weapons than any other country in the world. This actually makes Americans less safe, rather than the other way around.

In 2013, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that the United States could safely reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads by one-third. The Biden administration should use that study—along with the current Nuclear Posture Review– to set the United States on the path to reasonable reductions. 

The Biden administration should aim for new negotiations between the United States and Russian to limit each country’s armed forces to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. The agreement can be executed incrementally, and the sides might informally agree once negotiations began to deploy no more than 1,400 strategic warheads, as an early confidence-building measure. This first step is an easy and safe one to take, as there have been times over the past decade when both countries already deployed fewer than 1,400 strategic warheads.

As part of a bold new vision for arms control and strategic stability, U.S. negotiators should seek an agreement that encompasses all U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads, including reserve (non-deployed) strategic warheads, and non-strategic nuclear weapons. Negotiators should work to limit all nuclear warheads to no more than 2,500 each, with an embedded sub-limit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads within the overall aggregate limit. Even with the dramatic arsenal reductions outlined here, the United States would maintain the ability to deter and, if necessary, defend against any global adversary.

Such a nuclear arms reduction agreement would have significant additional advantages for the United States:

First, it could position Washington and Moscow to press China to freeze or limit its build-up of nuclear arms as long as the United States and Russia are reducing their nuclear arsenals. 

Second, such an agreement could give the Pentagon additional resources to support wider force modernization requirements for nuclear and conventional forces alike, including new ballistic missile submarines and the B-21 bomber. If we have the forces to deter conventional conflict, we dramatically reduce the prospect of nuclear war.

Third, such an agreement would bolster America’s non-proliferation credentials and leadership. A new U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reductions treaty may not lead North Korea to abandon its nuclear program overnight, but it would increase the ability of U.S. diplomats to urge third countries to pressure and sanction outliers such as North Korea.

Right-sizing U.S. and global nuclear arsenals strengthens deterrence, reduces proliferation risks, and lowers the threat of nuclear war to the United States and our allies. The Biden administration has an opportunity to reduce that risk. It should seize it.

Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation. Steven Pifer is a William J. Perry Research Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Originally for Defense One