The NATO alliance is struggling between two narratives: NATO should do whatever it takes to support Ukraine in its effort to defeat Russia vs NATO is losing steam and should encourage Ukraine to trade land for peace.
The first narrative has been articulated by President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Joe Biden since the very early stages of the war in late February and March 2022. The second narrative is a counter-narrative that has been articulated at different times by different people, including Henry Kissinger, since last summer.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking last week at a press conference, made remarks posted on NATO’s official website that made it clear that the European countries were having difficulty providing Ukraine with the military hardware they promised them. Stoltenberg referred to the race of logistics against Russia.
Stoltenberg said, “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rate. This puts our defense industries under strain.” Although he was committed to moving forward, he certainly expressed some doubts about NATO’s capabilities to fully back Ukraine.
And both The New York Times and Politico, according to Andrew Korybko, an American international relations analyst who discussed the two narratives recently in The Rio Times, have generated articles that rely on authoritative sources that confirm this weakening of the NATO resources to enable the Ukrainians to fight the war.
The struggle within the top levels of the NATO countries is offset in the international theater by the ceaseless enthusiasm and moral fervor of Zelensky. Time magazine’s man of the year is without doubt a forceful, inspirational and influential leader. Yet his narrative is so determined and so unyielding that the “compromise” narrative, in Korybko’s words, is gaining strength.
There is at this point no one narrative animating the NATO countries or the NATO countries and Ukraine taken together. There is division, different perceptions and rival moral norms.
The new narrative that has emerged in recent months is more complicated than the Zelensky narrative because calling for some kind of peace settlement that involves a trade of land for peace and an invitation to join NATO is more nuanced than standing for the complete defeat of the enemy.
Moreover, the evolving alternative narrative is partly a reflection of the division between NATO and Ukraine. Zelensky and even Biden often talk as though NATO and Ukraine are one when in fact that is clearly not the case. The alternative narrative may in the end just be the self-realization that Ukraine is not fighting a war alone with Russia at all.
Rather, NATO is supplying Ukraine with the means to fight this war. The actual weakening of the resources may just reflect the reality that the NATO countries are not Ukraine and lack the drive, moral purpose and national pride of the citizens and political leaders of Ukraine.
The Ukrainians are incredibly heroic and though they are fighting alone they are fighting with American, French, British, German and Polish weapons, along with military support from dozens of other countries. Those who want the killing to stop, Putin not to be humiliated to the point that he turns to nuclear weapons and some Ukrainian territory to be ceded to Russia are probably coming more from the NATO countries than Ukraine itself.
There are surely Ukrainians who support the alternative narrative and Europeans and Americans who support the Zelensky narrative. But the moral wedge between the two narratives is essentially the factual difference between NATO and Ukraine.
At a certain point, Zelensky, Biden and the other NATO countries’ leaders must get on the same page. They are either determined to win the war unambiguously and force Russia out of Ukraine or they will recognize that there is a middle ground where Ukraine retains its sovereignty, cedes some land and becomes a part of NATO and therefore secures the future security of its people.
The writer (dmamaryland@gmail.com) is the editor of the interdisciplinary volume Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework (Springer, 2014), and has taught political philosophy at five US colleges and universities.