Toward a NATO-like security guarantee for Ukraine

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had good cause to be optimistic following his recent White House meetings with Donald Trump and the leaders of the European “coalition of the willing.”

While a concrete peace plan has yet to emerge, Trump appears to have come around to the European position that security guarantees will be vital if any peace deal is to stick.

This is real progress. But what shape would security guarantees take in the case of Ukraine, and will they be enough to deter the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from breaking the peace at some future date?

Talk of security guarantees is nothing new. Zelensky and his European allies have been stressing their importance for much of the conflict. But what does appear significant is the way in which the latest proposals have been framed.

It has been suggested that Ukraine should be offered security guarantees that resemble what Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called an “Article 5 model.” This is a reference to the defence provision of NATO’s founding treaty, which specifies that an attack on one member is an attack on them all and requires a collective response.

NATO’s Article 5 is the gold standard of security guarantees. The wording is open to interpretation, but no one doubts that the principle of collective defence it embodies is the core purpose of the 32 nations that make up the alliance. Article 5 is backed by a credible force that outclasses Russian military might.

Certainly, questions hang over Article 5’s reliability. The provision has only ever been activated once – following the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001. But the unusual circumstances of that single invocation do not render the provision any less valuable.

The fact that European allies came to America’s assistance (rather than the US coming to the aid of Europe) means Article 5 is a symbolic resource in transatlantic relations, which NATO’s European members can wield to remind the US president of his country’s commitment.

This is important. Trump has periodically suggested the US would not be prepared to defend perceived alliance “free-riders”. But the agreement at NATO’s Hague summit in June to raise defence spending among the allies went a long way to head off a transatlantic rupture by allaying Trump’s fears on that score.

Worries that the American military presence in Europe would be summarily withdrawn have so far proved unfounded. The US president now praises NATO as being engaged with America in what the White House has called a “new era of shared responsibility.”

Levels of commitment

The true effect of Article 5 lies in the wars that have not occurred rather than those that have. Under Putin, Russia has attacked both Georgia and Ukraine.

It has not invaded a NATO ally. This is why Ukraine has always been so keen to become a member of NATO, something that has been accepted in principle by most members of the alliance for some years.

But since the invasion of Ukraine, that route to an Article 5 security guarantee has been expressly ruled out by the Trump administration, as well as by NATO itself. Instead, the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, has referred to “Article 5-type of security guarantees for Ukraine.” What has still to be publicly discussed is precisely what this might entail.

Some of the parameters are, however, becoming clear. Trump suggested that he wants Europeans to be “the first line of defense”, with the US providing intelligence, weapons (paid for by Europe) and air support of some kind. He was quite clear that there would be no US “boots on the ground.”

Ukraine’s European allies are now mulling over what their role as guarantors of security for a peace deal might look like. It has been reported that the head of the UK’s armed forces, Tony Radakin, will tell a meeting of military commanders at the Pentagon that the UK is prepared to send troops to Ukraine – not as a frontline fighting force, but to provide security at ports and air bases.

How many members of the coalition of the willing are prepared to do the same remains uncertain.

Patchwork of agreements

What went unmentioned at the White House meeting was the significant set of security and defense commitments Ukraine already enjoys with the NATO allies. Since the G7 Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine of July 2023, Ukraine has signed bilateral security and defence agreements with 27 of NATO’s 32 members.

Typically, these provide for consultation within 24 hours if Ukraine is attacked, in order (as Ukraine’s agreements with the UK and France both put it) “to determine measures needed to counter or deter the aggression.”

There are also common provisions for military capacity building, recognition of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and post-war reconstruction. Taken in the round, these agreements thus already provide the political basis for a comprehensive and effective set of security guarantees.

Two more things are needed. First, the bilateral US-Ukraine security agreement of June 2024, signed under the previous US president, Joe Biden, needs to be reaffirmed by the Trump administration. Second, the Europeans need to convert their latticework of agreements with Ukraine into an effective security and defense mechanism.

This can be done as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has suggested, by continuing to arm the Ukrainian military. But if the Article 5 parallel means anything, it will require – as Rose Gottemoeller, a former NATO deputy director general, pointed out on the BBC – an effective deterrent effect. And that means US participation.

With minimal involvement by the US, the question is whether the Franco-British-led “coalition of the willing” is up to the task – and whether there is the collective political will to organise and deploy a deterrent force in the face of Russian objections.

These are the debates playing out in Europe and across the Atlantic – and which become daily more urgent, as Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine continues to gather momentum.

Mark Webber is professor of international politics, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.