Close the Door on Ukraine's NATO Membership

Keeping the door open to Ukrainian membership in the alliance has been destabilizing and irresponsible.

Ukraine won’t be getting any closer to NATO membership at this week’s summit:

NATO leaders will unveil new steps to train and arm Ukraine at an alliance summit this week but will stop short of concrete advances toward its membership in the Western bloc, underscoring questions about how Kyiv can prevail in its grinding war against Russia.

Ukraine shouldn’t be in NATO, and the alliance has been wrong to keep stringing the Ukrainians along with the promise of a future membership that will always be deferred. The original promise made to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 was one of the alliance’s biggest blunders in the post-Cold War era, but refusing to take back that promise has been an even bigger mistake. Keeping the door open to Ukrainian membership in the alliance has been destabilizing and irresponsible, especially when the alliance wasn’t ever going to let them pass through the door.