Emma Ashford
At last week’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels, newly minted U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that the position of the U.S. government was that Ukraine will not join NATO. Although greeted with horror by some in Washington and in European capitals, Hegseth’s remarks were in fact more a public statement of reality than a genuine change in policy. This position had been telegraphed throughout the Trump campaign and transition, and even the Biden administration had been skeptical of Ukrainian membership any time soon. The risks of admitting Ukraine to the alliance—reflected in widespread opposition to it in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere—have long made this reality perfectly clear to all.
Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently acknowledged that NATO membership is probably not on the table. He has focused instead on making a different case to Ukraine’s Western backers: if NATO membership is not available, then his country needs equivalent security guarantees from Europe or the United States to prevent Russia from starting a new war in coming years. With the Trump administration insisting that no U.S. troops be sent to Ukraine, the conversation in European capitals is increasingly focused on whether and how European states can provide “security guarantees” through their own deployments.
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