Gabor Horvath: Not To Expect Much From the NATO Summit

19.04.2023 0 By NS.Writer

Gabor Horvath

NATO can hardly invite countries that are in altercations with their neighbors, much less those at war with nuclear power. Regarding the expected NATO summit regarding Ukraine and Georgia… One of Lithuania’s goals for the July 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius is to invite Ukraine to become a member of the Alliance. Back in 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, NATO countries recorded the prospect of membership of Ukraine and Georgia. Newssky asked the deputy editor-in-chief of the Hungarian newspaper «Nepsava» (The Word of the People) Gabor Horvath for his opinion on the prospects for the two countries.

Without trying to predict the possible turn of events until July, I’m on the side of cautious skepticism. NATO can hardly invite countries that are in altercations with their neighbors, much less those at war with nuclear power, because it would mean immediate participation in those conflicts of all 31 current members of the alliance. There is no desire in the West to enter into war with Russia, so the current conflicts must be first resolved before Ukraine and Georgia can be invited. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the two countries can’t have special relations with NATO including certain guarantees of security and military assistance, but it would probably take a different shape from full membership.

The support of the Baltic states and Poland is not enough to push through an invitation. The US as the major force of the alliance, should be behind any such moves, together with the two other nuclear power in the alliance, the UK and France. I don’t see that coming — unless some unexpected glitch happens like Russia using weapons of mass distraction against Ukraine or drawing current NATO members into the conflict. The latter is a real threat, for example, any move on Moldova could set up a second front, this time probably involving Romania, where there are US troops and a significant anti-missile base. The same is true in the case of a Russian attack on the Baltic countries or Poland. While these are real possibilities, they would represent a very serious miscalculation on the Part of the Kremlin, thus we should deem them somewhat unlikely.

Currently, there is one more real impediment on the road for Ukraine: NATO requires a unanimous decision on accepting new members, and as we can see, Turkey and Hungary are delaying their support or even Sweden. In the case of Hungary, the bilateral relations with Ukraine should significantly improve — and the ties between Budapest and Moscow lose significantly — before there would be an opening for political action of this nature. So far there are no signs that the Orbán-government would change its policy on Ukraine in the short run and understandably, Ukraine is not to relent either at this stage with the war going on.

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