NATO’s false promises raise misguided hopes in Ukraine – POLITICO

And while the costs of false hopes hit Ukraine in particular, they also increase the risk for the Americans and other NATO members. The longer the war drags on, the greater the risk of escalation. This is already evident in the “salami strategy” that the USA is pursuing: It is sending more and more long-range weapons to Ukraine and authorizing their use against targets in Russia.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has already used its own capabilities to attack Russian radar stations designed to provide early warning in the event of an American nuclear attack. And last month, submunitions from a US-supplied missile fired by Ukrainian forces fell on civilian beachgoers in Sevastopol, Crimea, likely after being intercepted by Russian air defenses.

These events are a major concern. Attacks on early warning systems undermine Russia’s confidence in its ability to respond in the event of a US nuclear first strike, thereby increasing the risk of Russian nuclear use. More likely, however, is that Moscow will respond to attacks on its territory using US weapons by finding ways to directly attack the US or its enablers. Ukraine’s attacks on Russia also raise questions about whether the US can deter Kyiv from engaging the country in direct conflict if the situation escalates.

Analysts who see themselves as supporters of Ukraine often stress that the West must not give in to “nuclear blackmail” because escalation to nuclear war is unlikely. But the proper term for “nuclear blackmail” is “nuclear deterrence,” and that requires not certainty that disaster will occur, only fear of it. These commentators seem to believe that our ability to deter Russia relieves us of the burden of being deterred by Russia—like playing coward without understanding that the risk of a collision is mutual.

This logic is wrong in any circumstances, but especially in the case of Ukraine, where the US and Russia are clearly in Russia’s favour. The risk of nuclear war may be small, but its apocalyptic consequences require that we strive to keep it that way.

And yet this week NATO continued its irresponsible policy towards Ukraine: it raised false hopes, made peace less likely and war more dangerous. Another summit, one marked by realism, would have admitted that Ukraine cannot win in the grand sense it has defined as victory, and that NATO will not defend it.

This would have led to better prospects for a reasonable peace in Ukraine, not to mention improved security for NATO.