JRL NEWSWATCH: “NATO Wants to Show Support for Ukraine, but Only So Much” – New York Times
“Admitting Kyiv is a nonstarter as long as the war with Russia is raging. But the member nations want to show they are supporting Ukraine ‘for the long haul.'”
“… Ukraine … ultimately [wants] … a formal invitation to join NATO. … [A]lliance officials agree that is not going to happen at … festivities … [in] Washington in July. NATO has no appetite … a new member that, because of [NATO’s] covenant of collective security, would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945. … NATO [is] searching for some middle ground … short of membership but meaty enough to show that it is backing Ukraine ‘for the long haul,’ as … NATO [S]ecretary [G]eneral [Jens Stoltenberg] [said] this week.
What that will be has so far proven elusive, according to senior Western diplomats involved in the discussions. … An undercurrent to the urgency is NATO’s desire to “Trump-proof” — as it has been called in recent months — Western support for Ukraine should former President Donald J. Trump be re-elected in November. Mr. Trump has long disdained NATO, deriding its members for not paying a “fair share” of security costs and, in February, suggesting that if a European member of the alliance were attacked by Russia, he would not help defend it if it had not been paying its share. …”