Why did NATO not extend to include Ukraine along with the Baltic States back in 2004?

Question

Note: This is somewhat related to this question

According to CNBC, one of the goals of Russia is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

I am not sure if this is related to not having a direct border with NATO or because Ukraine is a former Soviet state. This map shows NATO's expansion since 1997 and after the Baltic States have joined NATO, Russia has a direct border with NATO.

I assume the fact that Baltic States are part of NATO makes a difference, despite being the former Soviet States. This makes me wonder what prevented Ukraine from joining NATO earlier and possibly benefiting from the membership nowadays?

I am specifically interested in the reasons why not joining in the early 2000s when Russia was more affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union than it is in the 2020s.

Answer 1

They are not strictly comparable. For one thing, Ukraine did not ask for membership until 2008.

• The Baltics are very separate from Russia and Russian culture. Their absorption in 1940 was a provision of the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact. Likewise, Poland's history with Russia has been of a distinct nation being oppressed by an outsider nation. Long story short: they were in the lump of countries that were forcibly absorbed into the Warsaw Pact without any wish to join and coerced into remaining.

• Russia and Ukraine share much greater religious, cultural, historical and linguistic ties.

• Ukraine has had a number of leaders since independence, some of whom were fairly closely aligned with Russian leaders.

So in 2004 did Ukraine request NATO membership in time to accede? It did not.

Relations between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1992.1 Ukraine applied to begin a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) 👉in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned, was elected President.4

Was it perceived to be important to all parties? No, probably remaining unaligned seemed more possible at the time. The West might have been more accommodating of Russia's fascination with its near abroad states, Ukraine's own political landscape was more divided on the subject and Russia had yet to invade Georgia in 2008.

Russia itself was more accommodating and the gradual collapse of its influence via the Orange revolutions had not started.

On the other hand, the 2004 accessor states were perceived to have been unfairly coerced into the USSR. They are also much smaller militarily and in fact NATO has been fairly careful to limit exercises there. Most are at the brigade level. There is nothing for example that ever compared to Russia's late 2021 massing of about 100k personnel near Ukraine.

Ukrainian accession would be very different as it would position a NATO country with a large home military force right next to Russia and saying "it's just like the Baltics" is missing a lot of subtleties. I suspect this is as true in 2022 as it was in 2004, the main difference is that Ukranians are much more distrustful of Russian intentions than they were then.

Last, Ukraine might have thought that their security needs were already covered by the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed in 1994 by which Ukraine agreed to give up its share of Soviet nukes in return for Russia guarantees.

2. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in selfdefense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Answer 2

Ukraine and Georgia are seen as strategic buffer states against the EU-NATO by the Russian Federation in a way that the other states from ex-Soviet Union are not. Because of this, Gorbachev insisted that NATO not extend eastward to include these countries.

Now, according to Adam Tooze, a historian, the independence of Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union precipitated an economic disaster. GDP per capita halved between 1990 and 1996, recovering to 80% of its 1990 level by 2007, and has stagnated ever since. This contrasts painfully with its neighbours, Turkey, Poland and the Russian Federation.

Thus, given its struggling economy, the basic options before Ukraine was alignment with the Russian Federation, or with EU-NATO or balancing between the two. It was the latter option that was preferred until the colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine in 2007 when the decision began to look more stark.

In 2008, George Bush's administration attempted to force the issue. It encouraged both Georgia and Ukraine towards NATO membership and wrangled the other NATO members in the 2008 NATO Bucharest meeting to promising them membership. This realised the fears of the Russian Federation and when Georgia attempted to make good on this promise by first attempting to clamp down on the breakaway state of South Ossetia this precipitated a massive counter-attack by Russia. This was Moscow signalling to Washington and to regional actors not to make good on NATO's ill-judged promises at Bucharest.

This is more or less what is happening in the current crisis in Ukraine especially after one has noted the semi-autonomous Donbas province which is more aligned to Russia than the rest of Ukraine.

Answer 3

At that time, NATO was engaged in some other conflicts, like Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, restarting the Cold War with Russia was not a good idea at that time. Also, since Ukraine was more divided at that time, the whole eastern part could have split away, not just Crimea.

The problem is not just direct border with NATO, but rather the length of this border and, more importantly, the Ukrainian border being much closer to Moscow than the Baltic one. Theoretically, by placing missiles in Ukraine, NATO could destroy Moscow without getting a response, because of the very short flight time.