Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of the New Europe Centre
So, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (not to mention the head of his office, Andriy Yermak) continues to publicly insist that Ukraine is negotiating with a number of partner countries on security guarantees. That it is security guarantees that are enshrined in the agreement with the UK, and that a similar document is being prepared for signature, apparently no less pompous, with France. And Poland, as we heard from the president (not Prime Minister Tusk, which is significant), joined the Vilnius Declaration on security guarantees. Let’s try to understand in more detail why there is such insistence on defining as security guarantees what is not, in fact, security guarantees, and why it is dangerous. We will also outline what should be paid special attention to in the following documents.
Why they should not be called “security guarantees”
A few Ukrainian diplomats and politicians used to tell me that they really believed for a long time that the Budapest Memorandum provided Ukraine with security guarantees. In fact, they did not understand the differences between guarantees and assurances (it is not for nothing that the Ukrainian version of the document contained the word “guarantees”), and our partners allegedly did not explain these details to us at the proper level, had no experience of such negotiations, etc. The most radical of my interlocutors even claimed that “the Americans simply deceived us”. Whether no one really understood these subtleties, or whether the problem was actually unprofessionalism or a banal lack of English language skills, history will judge, but the American side has definitely drawn conclusions from this story.
Now, everything is very honest and clear: it was the Americans who immediately set the record straight: there should be no use of the word “guarantees” in the security sector. Instead, they suggested calling it security commitments, understanding the toxicity of the word “assurances” in Ukraine. (It is a pity that they did not explain this to their British partners, who – and this is not just Rishi Sunak – still sometimes use this term). That is, the wording “security commitments” appeared as a substitute for the word “assurances” rather than “guarantees”, which is indicative and automatically leads to parallels with the Budapest Memorandum, which – like it or not – has served and will serve as a starting point in the issue of international security guarantees.
Yes, there is no legal definition of “security guarantees” in the US, but the political interpretation is very clear, regardless of the administration – the willingness to go to war to defend a country. Relatively speaking, those who are confused about where security guarantees are and where they are not, should answer a test question: do the commitments undertaken by a country oblige it to defend Ukraine or just help it defend itself? And do they oblige in a legal sense or just politically? Obviously, the agreements provide for the latter, and on both issues.
However, it seems that we are “happy to deceive ourselves” – to call what we have defined as security guarantees at best as security obligations. At best, because it is very difficult to provide even specific commitments, such as long-term financial ones. The agreement with the UK is proof of this: it was possible to fix aid for only one year out of the ten provided for in the agreement, rather than by analogy with the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel, where the amount of aid was determined for 10 years (the latest one, from 2016, was about $38 billion).
It is important to emphasise here that the issue is not in the agreements; they contain everything that could be contained at this stage and in the current circumstances, and we must pay tribute to those who negotiated on the Ukrainian side. And the issue is not that the text of the agreements does not contain the phrase “security guarantees”. It is also absent from the agreements between the US and Japan and South Korea, which provide for these security guarantees. The problem is that the president (not to mention the head of his office) insists that these security guarantees exist. At the same time, the president refers to the agreements with Israel as a “model” security agreement, rather than the US agreements with South Korea: that is, there is still some kind of inexplicable admiration for the Israeli model at the highest level, which, frankly, has not proved to be the best, because aid to Israel at a critical moment was stuck in Congress at the same time as aid to Ukraine.
I don’t see any problem at all with calling security commitments security commitments, as agreed with the American side. Nowadays, any long-term commitments of partners, especially security commitments, that are written down on paper sound no less powerful and reassuring than what we ourselves have defined as security guarantees, taking advantage of a legislative gap that would clearly define such guarantees in the United States.
Why is this happening? Perhaps because the Ukrainian leadership, which in recent years has repeatedly challenged established diplomatic formats and formulations, has decided to be creative in defining what constitutes security guarantees and what does not, imposing its own vision. Some might say: why should the Americans really determine what constitutes security guarantees and what does not? After all, the first agreement was signed not with them, but with the British. And some European capitals do not particularly object to Kyiv calling it guarantees. However, there are good reasons to believe that although the first security agreement was signed with Britain, the United States remains the country that actually defines the framework for not only the Vilnius Declaration but also for building on it with specific documents – sets the ceiling of ambition, if you will – and is the one that really sets the framework for the Vilnius Declaration. Britain, France, and other countries go as far as they are mandated to do so by the United States. It was the Americans who set the framework not only in terms of terminology (“security commitments”), but also in terms of the status of the documents – political, not legal. And all currently effective security models in the world are tied to the United States in one way or another. Perhaps, over time, European countries will be able to take the lead and provide guarantees on their own, to decide where and how to send troops without the US green light, but this is not the case now: it is the American definition and understanding of security guarantees that dominates.
However, the most likely explanation for the tight linkage in the discourse of the top leadership to security guarantees, from what I have heard in various government offices, is that, according to the results of specially conducted focus groups, Ukrainians positively perceive only the term “security guarantees” as something really serious. If this is true, then security guarantees are not about real security at all, but about real votes. The strategy is so-so: it can only work if there is no new wave of aggression from Russia during Zelenskyy’s term in office and Ukrainians are not convinced that we have no real security guarantees again. It will no longer be possible to write it off as “we have been deceived again”: official Kyiv has itself determined that these are security guarantees. So maybe it’s better to start talking about security commitments now, or at least guarantees of support, if someone really wants to guarantee something?
What is NATO for then?
The insistence on calling the security commitments of our partners to support us security guarantees is dangerous not only because it misleads a part of society into thinking that we finally have real security guarantees. This story is also dangerous because it calls into question the expediency of our movement towards NATO. After all, when a number of such agreements are signed, the question may arise: why do we need NATO if we already have a whole bunch of security guarantees from other countries? In other words, by devaluing and blurring the concept of “security guarantees”, Kyiv is weakening our position in the context of our movement towards the Alliance. Although it may well be that even gradual accession to NATO – an invitation to the whole of Ukraine, Article 5 only for the controlled part – could provide a greater level of security than “security” agreements.
If anyone should be interested in positioning the agreements as “security guarantees”, it should be those who are sceptical about Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance. They say that you already have guarantees, so why do you need NATO? I have already heard such accusations from some interlocutors, including officials, from NATO member states in response to questions about the agenda of the Washington Summit. In response to the accusation that the agreements are not really about guarantees, they add that the head of the office of the president of Ukraine and the president himself consider them to be full-fledged security guarantees – why should they not believe them?
One way or another, by positioning the agreements under preparation as security guarantees, Kyiv is essentially playing along with those countries that want to sell the document as the result of the Washington NATO summit on Ukraine. And they even plan to sign it closer to this event, if not on the days of the summit. Here, we should pay tribute to those countries that were ready to start the signing process now, six months before the summit, including the UK and France, which, according to some reports, even wanted to be the first to sign.
At the same time, there is no point in positioning the agreements, which, by the way, are still more often referred to as memoranda between Western partners, as a kind of transitional stage to NATO membership, a kind of bridge. In fact, Ukraine is and, unfortunately, may remain for a long time in a situation where we need to talk not about bridges, but about the existence of several parallel roads: there should be a parallel road to the main road, the high-speed motorway that is NATO membership, which can be used to reach the goal if the motorway is undergoing repairs or a serious accident. Bilateral agreements – especially if they are strengthened – can be such a detour and be useful even after Ukraine’s membership in NATO (what we at the New Europe Center call the NATO plus model). Moreover, with the potential arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, there is a risk that each US security commitment will be reaffirmed by a separate agreement/document. It is possible that even if the security agreement is signed in the next six months, before the US election, it will have to be re-signed if Trump wins.
How can the remaining agreements be strengthened now? First of all, to increase the elements of strategic uncertainty, such as the one that exists in the agreement between the US and Taiwan (Taiwan Relations Act). This is partly reflected in our security agreement with the UK. Namely, in paragraph 4 of Part 8, which somewhat veiledly, but still refers to the possibility of changing the provisions of this agreement. There is also a useful experience of revising Japan’s security agreements with the United States: the first document was signed in 1951 with rather vague security commitments, but the revised agreement signed in 1960 has quite clear commitments to protect Tokyo in the event of aggression involving US troops. That is why it makes sense to include clearer elements of strategic uncertainty and closed annexes in agreements that are not yet finalised. This is to ensure that Putin does not really understand what a country’s reaction to a new round of escalation on the part of Russia will be. Of course, increasing strategic uncertainty requires not only wording, but also appropriate communication by Western leaders without the mantra that the American (or German) military will never fight in Ukraine or for Ukraine. However, in any case, this will work better than self-hypnosis about security guarantees.
Originally published in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia