this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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And how would "properly armed" be different to NATO? Putin wants Ukraine to be demilitarized. The options for actual reliable self defense for Ukraine are either NATO membership or a nuclear arsenal.
Nukes are one option. Otherwise giving Ukraine the ability to rebuild its military and arsenal, in particular defensive weapons like Anti-Air and Anti-Missile capabilities.
A Ukraine with nukes is as bad for Russia as a Ukraine in NATO. Russia wants to rule again over "its" (aka Soviet) lost "sphere of influence". This is textbook imperialism and if that's what you want to defend here, fine. Just don't expect me to agree.
Worse for Russia I'd argue. A NATO member state still lays under the pressure of political power of the pact. Ukraine armed with nukes is something that could go south with a future leadership change for the worse. And despite all the propaganda, Russia very well knows that they aren't actually threatened by NATO - at least for as long as they don't attack member states, which is where the issue lies. They want Ukraine, that's why they don't want them in NATO. Can't invade and annex them anymore once they're part of the pact.
..which is why we urgently need to dump the general rule of "frozen conflicts prevent accession into NATO" and change them into tailormade agreements. Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine: so far, Russia has an incentive for frozen conflicts to steer these countries on the course it wants. We should no longer allow this.
The EU accepts countries with border disputes into the union (in fact there's a couple very fun ones between member states, generally low-intensity though, e.g NL and DE even agreed to disagree in perpetuity), the EU is also a defensive pact, trouble being getting into the EU is quite a bit harder than getting into NATO: Vastly stricter rule of law and democracy standards, on top of that trade integration, economics and everything.
OTOH the EU is also not above creating new ad-hoc treaty structures with unimaginative names so a... DCENSV, "Deep and Comprehensive European Neighbourhood Security Vehicle" is absolutely within the realm of possibilities. People are basically waiting for Trump to move while preparing responses for every scenario, very little if any of this kind of preparation will reach the public eye.
I mean... North Macedonia joined NATO in 1995.