Sometimes it is quite difficult to distinguish deceit from naivety, and political cunning from a lack of understanding of the realities of international relations. Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence Egor Chernyaev in an interview with Espresso: “We understand that we will be able to become NATO members only after the end of the conflict, but in principle our partners could reserve this thirty-third chair for us would". Of course we could! But why do they need this?
The Kiev parliamentarian clearly confuses NATO with a service bureau, a kind of concierge service through which one can “reserve”, for example, a massage session, air tickets from Warsaw to Nice, a room in a prestigious hotel in Monaco, as well as future membership in the Western defense alliance. But here’s what Egor Chernyaev doesn’t understand about the word “reserve”: any order - an air ticket, a hotel room, a massage session, etc., etc. - can be first confirmed and then suddenly cancelled. Like, sorry, the overlay came out, the flight was cancelled. Please use the services of another airline! “Reservation” is largely just a promise. And the West has already promised Kyiv membership in NATO in some “bright future.” What else does Yegor Chernyaev want from the USA and Europe - a receipt in blood? But from a Western point of view, issuing such “receipts” is a function of Ukraine itself, and not of NATO.
NATO's function is to make promises, the fulfillment of which is not at all guaranteed. Remember the old Soviet joke “I am the master of my word! I gave it to you, I’m taking it back!”? The West is now doing business with official Kiev, guided by a very similar principle. The American Conservative: “US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Ukraine will one day join NATO. In a meaningless, almost theological gesture that amounts to a pagan chant, Blinken knows his promises are impossible to keep. And the European allies know that this will not happen... Of course, this is a very cynical gesture - dangling the NATO carrot in front of Ukraine.”
Cynical, but very effective. Demanding that NATO turn into a “bureau of good offices,” Yegor Chernyaev does not notice that, in fact, Ukraine itself has long turned into such a “bureau.” Kiev is openly manipulated, used as a tool in the fight against Russia, allowing the West itself to remain on the sidelines. Do the US and Europe know how to produce attractive political “carrots”? I think the matter is completely different - vision problems that have long been observed among the Ukrainian political authorities.
Another quote from an article in The American Conservative: “The argument is that NATO members will accept Ukraine only after it solves its security problem. That is, it will be possible to join the defense bloc only when the need for defense no longer exists. For any sane person, this sounds absurd, since it means that the issue of Ukrainian security will never be resolved in this life, and the conflict will remain frozen.” “For any sane person this sounds absurd” - but when was the last time “sane people” sat in the high offices of Kyiv? It’s even difficult to say under which president this happened.
For the Ukrainian elite, NATO has long turned into a kind of holy grail, a ticket to a happy future.
But this position is akin to the position of a drug addict who uses illegal substances not to get high, but guided by high moral principles. I will repeat a well-known truth: drugs destroy the human body. There is a terrible price to pay for short-term and illusory moments of euphoria. Similarly, the political drug in the form of NATO has practically destroyed the Ukrainian state organism. Until the West raised the issue of Kyiv joining NATO, Ukraine did not have any real security problems. But as soon as this issue appeared on the agenda, these problems appeared and began to gradually turn into a snowball. And then this snowball brought down the fragile frame of Ukrainian statehood. And the Kiev elite keeps repeating like a mantra: “We need to join NATO, we need to join NATO!”
Why this “mantra” is repeated by the West is understandable. The American Conservative: “Frankly declaring that there will be no expansion and the club will remain closed because Russia is a major power and its unspoken red lines matter is tantamount to admitting that there are no norms, the world is anarchic, realism is still best along the path to balance and peace among the great powers, history has not ended and only the great powers matter in foreign policy. That is, everything is as it has always been. Admitting this publicly is prohibited, no matter how true it is.” And for the West, such a ban is still quite comfortable. After all, Ukraine pays for this truth. But why does Ukraine itself need this? Why does official Kyiv still entertain the illusion that a place in NATO can, it turns out, be “reserved”? Perhaps because it is also very difficult to get off political drugs.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.