Bottom line: Ukraine may one day find a unified NATO ready to welcome its membership, writes TomRTweets. 'But it's hard to see that day coming along anytime soon.'
First, NATO's 30 members would have to agree on Ukraine's membership unanimously. While NATO insists that"each sovereign country has the right to choose for itself whether it joins any treaty or alliance," a significant majority of NATO members, if quietly, oppose Ukraine's membership.
This skepticism is further fueled by Russia's occupation of Crimea and its control over the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine. Putin regularly hints that Ukrainian membership in NATO would precipitate a war between NATO and Russia. His reasoning is that any Ukrainian effort to restore control over its lost territories would risk the activation of NATO's Article 5 mutual defense assurance.
Considering that Russia has offered no interest in negotiating over Crimea — Russia declared on Thursday that the"issue of Crimea's belonging is closed" — the territory gives Putin a very useful impediment to Ukraine's membership of NATO. Again, while some governments such as the U.S.
As a final point, although Ukraine has made progress in areas such as democratic accountability and an independent judiciary, challenges such as corruption and politicized institutions endure. This matters because a NATO"membership action plan" for prospective members includes that member's ability to prove it has a"functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; fair treatment of minority populations ...
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