Neutrality: An Alternative to Ukraine’s Membership in NATO

Eugene Rumer is the director and senior associate for the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

This Ukraine Policy Brief is part of the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine's Future and the Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security.

It has become widely accepted that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia. In less than six months, the prevailing narrative has shifted from achieving victory to avoiding defeat. The early successes of the Ukrainian army in 2022 inspired war aims that included the total liberation of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and holding Russia accountable for its war crimes. Those aims no longer appear realistic. The conversation among Ukraine’s supporters has evolved to ending the war on terms that would prevent Russia from achieving total victory. The question now is how to get Russia to agree to a cease-fire and negotiate an end to a war it is currently winning. The prospect of long-term Ukrainian neutrality after the war could bring Russia to the table.

As the war’s three-year mark approaches, Ukraine simply cannot overcome Russia’s structural advantages—people, economy, and land—even with help from its Western partners. Russia has a larger population and can draft more men to fight; its economy was nearly ten times the size of Ukraine’s before the war and Ukraine’s consequent losses, which some estimates put at half a trillion dollars; and its size makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Ukraine to effectively target its military infrastructure. Ukraine’s partners—the United States, other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Japan, and South Korea—are not joining the fight. Ukraine is reaching the limit of what it can accomplish alone.

The False Promise of NATO Membership

Ukraine has asked its partners for security guarantees—NATO membership or at least a short and clear path to it—as a precondition to negotiating with Russia. NATO allies have made it clear that they are not prepared to admit Ukraine. Even the most committed supporters of Ukraine in NATO are willing to invite the country to join NATO only after the war is over.

From the Russian perspective, there can be little doubt that the allies’ pledge of NATO membership to Ukraine after the war would be a deal breaker in any cease-fire negotiation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For the Russian leader, Ukrainian membership in NATO is an unacceptable outcome. He made that clear in his infamous 2021 article about the alleged “historical unity” between Russia and Ukraine, in which he laid out his predicate for the war. Coupled with the false but firmly held narrative in the Russian security establishment that NATO broke its promise not to expand the alliance to the east, the prospect of Ukraine in NATO is an invitation for Russia to continue its murderous campaign.

Regardless of whether NATO membership is a realistic prospect for Ukraine, it would hardly be a panacea for Ukraine’s security predicament. The allies’ commitment to NATO Article 5 is described as “iron-clad.” But the language of Article 5 is something different. It commits member states to

“. . . assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

This language leaves wide latitude for members to act individually and collectively, does not contain an automatic call to arms, and puts diplomacy at the forefront. The use of armed force is part of the alliance’s toolkit, but it is not the instrument of first resort. More likely than not, diplomacy would have to be exhausted before anyone would move to extend NATO’s conventional, let alone nuclear, umbrella over Ukraine.

That leaves Ukraine two paths forward. The first is the path that Ukraine is on now—a slow, grinding, and open-ended fight with the growing risk of a major breakthrough by the Russian army that would then leave them no choice but to accept Putin’s terms for negotiations. The other path is to offer Putin a compromise to satisfy some, but not all, of his conditions and enable him to claim victory while preserving Ukraine as a sovereign state.

Nobody knows if Putin will accept a compromise—perhaps not even himself. His army is gaining ground, but the gains have come at a terrible price. The economy has performed above expectations, but inflation, high interest rates that threaten to choke off growth, and labor shortages are real.

The exact shape of a compromise is also difficult to predict. But it would probably have to include territorial concessions by Ukraine whereby Russia would hold the territories that it has seized; Ukraine would have to agree not to try reclaiming them by force; and Ukraine would have to give up its aspirations for NATO membership and accept neutrality, or “a non-bloc status,” which was described by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a recent interview as “the key principle.” What a compromise cannot include is a cap on Ukraine’s capabilities to defend itself from another Russian aggression.

Those terms will be difficult for Ukraine to accept. But in reality, it would not be conceding much. The goal of regaining all territories within the borders of 1991 is beyond its grasp. NATO membership is not in the cards, either.

Neutrality as Security

Since Finland and Sweden, both formerly neutral, joined NATO when Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine, conventional wisdom has held that neutrality or nonalignment is no longer viable as a security model in Europe.  The experiences of Finland and Sweden during and after the Cold War suggest otherwise. Both have long been among the most successful and widely admired societies in the world. Both have parlayed neutrality into a far more prominent role in world affairs than their small size would suggest.

While remaining outside NATO and navigating a carefully calibrated diplomatic course in their dealings with the Soviet Union (and subsequently Russia), both have developed and maintained highly capable militaries. These days, when Europe is facing the most serious threat to its security since the Cold War, no NATO member states have done better than Sweden and Finland in terms of military preparedness. Both countries have relatively small standing armed forces but maintain a large pool of highly trained reservists to augment them in the event of a crisis, as well as stocks of equipment and ammunition. Sweden has maintained a close and productive security relationship with the United States since the 1950s and Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994.

Neutrality does not mean a security dead end or being relegated to the Russian sphere. Finland came out of World War II having lost 15 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union and relocated 400,000 of its citizens from the occupied territories. But it had stood up to the vastly bigger Soviet Army, inflicted heavy losses on it, and preserved its independence and sovereignty. Finland had no choice but to navigate a careful foreign policy course—in 1948, it signed a treaty with the Soviet Union that imposed limits on its foreign and security policy and prevented the acceptance of U.S. assistance under the Marshall Plan. But it remained independent and free, with a market economy and vibrant, democratic politics. It joined the European Union (EU) in 1995 after the Cold War was over, and NATO last year.

This is not to say that Ukraine should replicate the Finnish, Swedish, or some other model for its security policy after the war. There is not one model for it to follow: each country’s security policy is determined by its size, geographic location, history, economy, and politics. Rather, Ukraine can pick elements of different models that best suit it.

Toward a Ukrainian Model

Building on those countries’ experiences, Ukraine could develop its own blueprint for security policy. Neutrality or nonalignment should not keep it from maintaining trained, highly capable, and well-equipped armed forces backed by a large pool of trained reservists. Having struggled with mobilization during the war and most likely unable to retain its wartime strength (estimated at 900,000 troops), Ukraine will have to rely on conscription and develop a large pool of trained reservists to be activated in a crisis. The Ukrainian defense industry has been praised for its agility, innovation, and ability to rapidly deliver weapons to the frontlines. With new investment, it can build on this record after the war. Other investments will be required—in deep, layered fortifications along the line of contact with Russia, including minefields, air defenses, early-warning systems, and electronic warfare capabilities.

While the defensive capabilities Ukraine will need to develop will be costly, it will have one significant advantage over other countries that had previously embraced neutrality: it is the largest country entirely in Europe. As Russia’s experience in the current war has demonstrated, Ukraine’s size by itself is a powerful deterrent to any attempt to conquer it.

In addition, any future cease-fire or armistice should bear the imprimatur of the UN Security Council. Additional security measures could be negotiated and implemented, such as a demilitarized zone and an international peacekeeping force also authorized by the Security Council. None of this will be easy, but just as neutrality, it should not be dismissed out of hand as impossible or irrelevant.

Moreover, Ukraine’s ties to the West—political, economic, and security—will be deeper than they ever were before the war. It will have a real opportunity to join the EU. It will receive reconstruction assistance for its economy and, having signed multiple bilateral security agreements with NATO member countries, it will have their support for rebuilding its defenses.

This in turn puts the spotlight on Ukraine’s supporters in the West. As many of them have said in the past two and a half years, Ukraine has been fighting for itself and for them. They owe Ukraine help to rebuild its economy and its defense to position it to deter and defend against the threat from Russia that will not go away with a cease-fire or even a peace treaty.

Conclusion

NATO allies have to recognize that their new frontier—the Iron Curtain, the inner German border, the East-West divide—runs from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and along the border between Ukraine and Russia. Save for brief periods in its history, Russia has always had a difficult relationship with the rest of Europe and has always viewed countries to its west as threats to its security and domestic stability. In the West, Russian insecurity and hostility toward Europe are considered a paranoid worldview, but one that has guided Russian foreign policy for a long time. Expecting reconciliation along that line even after Putin is gone is naïve and dangerous.

The standoff with Russia will require NATO to mobilize its resources in ways that it has not done, even during the Cold War. Support for Ukraine needs to be an integral part of this effort. Ukraine’s and the West’s ability to succeed in this new Cold War will be the true indicator of victory in the hot war that is being waged now.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.