Ukraine Now Borders on NATO

Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic became official members of the North Atlantic Alliance on March 12. Their foreign ministers presented their letters of credence to State Secretary Madeline Albright in Independence, Missouri, where President Harry S. Truman declared NATO formed exactly fifty years ago.

From now on Ukraine borders on the world’s strongest defensive alliance across its Polish and Hungarian frontiers. NATO’s expansion eastward, so vociferously opposed by Russian politicians for so long, is now an accomplished fact. And this is just the beginning. Membership applications have been received from Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, practically all of Central Europe. Not all countries are prepared to join the Alliance economically, but they have all decided on their Western orientation: NATO and the European Union, which form the world’s most powerful defensive and economic bloc.

NATO expansion has once again sharpened the issue of Ukraine’s direction in foreign policy. Kyiv now has three opportunities: (a) a decisive turn to the West, following Central Europe, making NATO membership a foreign policy priority, a goal still remote but which should be reached; (b) the Belarusian variant or strict adherence to a military and political alliance with Russia, and (c) keeping up its ill-famed “multi-vector” policy, balancing between West and East, in which case there is a growing risk of turning into a buffer state being regarded as an ally by neither Moscow, Brussels, nor Washington.

In any case, the choice seems to have been made for Ukraine in Moscow, namely by Liberal Democratic leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In an interview with Czech television he declared, “You have just turned into our enemy,” and promised to send troops to Belarus and set up a Russian-Belarusian-Ukrainian-Serbian military bloc. Big deal, some will say. Who the hell does he think he is after all? However, in certain situation the man lived up to his image of the Russian leadership’s mouthpiece.