Is Ukraine's 'bridge to' NATO seat a wise move? 60+ experts urge caution

NATO allies are all set to unveil a "bridge to membership" plan for Ukraine at their summit in Washington next week, a senior US official has said, but around 60 foreign policy experts deem any such step "unwise" which they say is fraught with dangers and could split the bloc.

"Allies will reaffirm that Ukraine's future is in NATO,will make significant new announcements about how we're increasing NATO's military political and financial support forUkraine. This is part of Ukraine's bridge to NATO," the US official told media on Friday.

This year's NATO summit will mark seventy-five years of the world's strongest military alliance and senior officials say much of it will centre around Ukraine, ensuring it has enough funding and weapons to defeat Russia in its ongoing war.

While allies support Ukraine, some 61 foreign policy experts suggest rushing Kiev's NATO membership may not be the best move.

"Some are pushing for NATO to bring Ukraine significantly closer toward membership, such as by defining an accession process for Kiev or inviting the country to join that process. Any such step would be unwise," the analysts warned in a joint letter.

They said NATO's Article 5 is widely considered to bind members of the bloc to go to war to repel an attack against any member, adding if Ukraine were to join NATO after the current war, "the US and its allies would be understood to be making a commitment to fight Russian forces over Ukraine, should Russia invade again."

The experts said since both President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump have warned that the conflict could escalate into WW3, "for the same reason that the United States should not go to war against Russia over Ukraine today, it should not make a commitment to go to war against Russia over Ukraine in the future."

William Ruger, head of the American Institute for Economic Research, and Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, organised the letter which was penned by think-tank experts and university professors.

Calling claims that the act of bringing Ukraine into NATO would deter Russia from ever invading Ukraine again as "wishful thinking", the foreign policy experts said "Since Russia began invading Ukraine in 2014, NATO allies have demonstrated through their actions that they do not believe the stakes of the conflict, while significant, justify the price of war."

"If Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia would have reason to doubt the credibility of NATO’s security guarantee — and would gain an opportunity to test and potentially rupture the alliance. The result could be a direct NATO-Russia war or the unraveling of NATO itself."

The experts said the closer NATO comes to promising that Ukraine will join the military bloc once the war ends, "the greater the incentive for Russia to keep fighting the war and killing Ukrainians so as to forestall Ukraine’s integration into NATO."

Moving Ukraine towards bloc membership may exacerbate the issue, the experts warned, saying the decision will turn Ukraine into the site of a prolonged showdown between the world's two leading nuclear powers and "playing into Vladimir Putin’s narrative that he is fighting the West in Ukraine rather than the people of Ukraine."