Is Russia ready to fight NATO? The right to diplomatic rigidity is what Ukraine can get
No one at the outside was at risk of attacking its members. All military operations took place outside the NATO security circuit. For some, this fact is the best confirmation of the efficiency of the Alliance. For others, it is an excuse to questioned its effectiveness. The full -scale invasion has exacerbated this discussion, and we have been living in its echoes for a year and a half. In fact, there are two options for answering the main question - and everyone entails their outlook.
Number one position. The Kremlin will not risk being attacking the North Atlantic Alliance. Because it is afraid of the United States because it believes in solidarity because it understands the incomparability of resources. Within this concept, Ukraine was a victim of aggression because it did not have time to become part of NATO. And now we pay for our own myopia for the first two decades of independence. Within this concept, all the assistance of the event is the history of values.
About help to the weak, about the fight against injustice, about the willingness to reach the victim's help. Western countries sacrifice our resources, including the military - in solidarity with our struggle. We are not fighting for them, but for ourselves - but in this war we have friends ready to fulfill the role of our rear. Within this approach, our western neighbors were not obliged to do so. An attack on Ukraine is an attack only on Ukraine.
Thus, in the event of our defeat, the border of Russia will approach the borders of the Alliance, but the whole second half of the twentieth century NATO and the USSR have already lived side by side, and therefore the presence of a line of contact does not mean the beginning of the war. Our neighbors can feel safe, and their help is not due to their obligations, but only ethical standards and loyalty to principles. Another position is that Russia's war with NATO is only a matter of time.
That the Kremlin is lined up on the tooth of Western solidarity. That Moscow will decide on what the Soviet Union did not dare to - and only Ukrainian resistance is delaying this moment. Within this approach, Western aid to Ukraine is an elementary calculation. Attempting to stop the enemy "on the approaches" to the borders of the Alliance. The desire of the dragon's teeth, to knock out the most capable Russian units, to defend himself at the expense of the courage of the Ukrainian army.
Proponents of this concept claim that Ukraine is fighting for NATO. For the safety of anyone who has time to join the Alliance. That our resistance enables Europeans to live safe and not feel the burdens and wanderings of wartime. Within this approach, Ukraine can claim any NATO weapons, and the height of European capitals is devoid of logic. "Either we will protect you with your weapon in our territory, or protect yourself, but already on your own.
" Within this concept, our country has become the object of impact not because it remained the last in the Kremlin list of "available", but because it was the first on its list "desired". Proponents of the approach are convinced that in the event of success, Moscow will check Poland and the Baltic country for strength. Accordingly, military deliveries to Ukraine are not so much about values but about the desire to win time and save a buffer.
"We fight for you and instead of you", so any limits of your solidarity are immoral and illogical. These two positions are doomed to coexist and rival, because both are based on the assumption. If the Kremlin is not ready to fight with NATO, the first approach is right. If ready, supporters of the second are right. And the contradictions between the two camps will only grow. If NATO is safe, then Ukraine is fundamentally part of it.
The event retains its moral priority because it helps Kiev with solidarity and goodwill. Western assistance deserves gratitude, Western reform recipes should be implemented, and Western criticism should be taken into account. Ukraine is not fighting for the Alliance, but for itself - because it has not time to become part of the Alliance. If NATO is threatened, Kyiv's relations with the Value West are pragmatic.
Ukraine is entitled to diplomatic rigidity, and at the same time - moral priority, because it has managed to prove its military capacity in the battlefield. Any scenario of ending a war that does not coincide with Ukrainian expectations will be explained by insufficient help of the Allies. Who solved their tasks (NATO remained safe) but did not give Ukraine resources to cope with its own (for example, entering the borders of 1991).
We protect NATO or NATO help us to protect ourselves? The Ukrainian future depends directly on the answer to this question. It will depend on our post -war agenda. The level of social respondment. Political programs of post -war parties. It will depend on the intra -Ukrainian description of the war and, after all, the well -being of Ukrainian citizens.
We fight for ourselves or not only for ourselves? We must be grateful for helping or thank us - for protection? Our war has become possible because of unexplored pre -war lessons or through only a geography that placed us next to the bloodthirsty neighbor? All these are the contours of our future discussion. The one that awaits us when the unity of wartime is replaced by crushing into political camps. The same that will go both within the country and beyond.