Ukraine NATO move angers Moscow

Prospects for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis took a turn for the worse Tuesday, when parliament voted to relinquish the "nonaligned" status the country has maintained since its independence and instead seek to join NATO. Russia, whose entire Ukraine strategy has been based on preventing the Western alliance from establishing a base on its doorstep, immediately condemned the move — but there's little reason to believe NATO will be in any hurry to accept the defense obligations attached to awarding membership to a country locked into a potentially hot war with its more powerful neighbor.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Ukraine's renunciation of its neutral military and political status a "counterproductive" step that would only boost tensions around the crisis in Ukraine’s east.

"It will only escalate the confrontation and creates the illusion that it is possible to resolve Ukraine's deep internal crisis by passing such laws," TASS news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.

Addressing deputies in Kiev before the vote, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said the decision underscored the country's determination to pivot toward Europe and the West.

"This will lead to integration in the European and the Euro-Atlantic space," he said.

The amendment passed easily, receiving 303 votes — 77 more than the minimum required to become law.

Although Kiev first announced its intention of seeking the protection of NATO membership in August, following what it deemed the open participation of Russia's military in a separatist war in Ukraine's eastern provinces, it is unlikely there will be much enthusiasm for such a move on the part of many of the key NATO states.

Foreign policy graybeards such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinski warned at the outset of the crisis that a political solution required taking the option of NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, recognizing that incorporating the former Soviet Republic into the Western alliance would be deemed a hostile act by Russia's security establishment.

Even though a NATO spokesman in Brussels responded to Tuesday's vote by stating,  "Our door is open and Ukraine will become a member of NATO if it so requests and fulfills the standards and adheres to the necessary principles," there's plenty of wiggle room in that statement. 

NATO makes decisions by consensus, and the response to the conflict over the past year by many of the Western European members — led by Germany — made clear that the alliance has very little collective appetite for confrontation with Russia. Article IV of NATO's charter would oblige the alliance to take collective military action in response to any attack on a member state, and that would oblige it to go to war in Ukraine's defense were the former Soviet Republic to become a member. The experience of Georgia's brief war with Russia in the summer of 2008 appears to have put the kibosh on that former Soviet Republic's moves to join NATO, and warnings by German Chancelor Angela Merkel against Ukraine attempting to join the alliance suggest Kiev could find itself in the same limbo on NATO's periphery as Georgia now occupies. 

Those NATO members least inclined to admit Ukraine to the alliance can be expected to cite the organization's rules for expansion to make their case. Those rules stipulate that "states which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles," adding that "resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance."

And the positions staked out by the key players thus far suggest that prospects for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev would become more remote if Ukraine became part of NATO, making it even less likely that Ukraine could muster a consensus in the alliance to admit it as a member.

With reporting by Reuters