Therefore, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – not to mention the head of his office, Andrii Yermak – continues to publicly insist that Ukraine negotiates with a number of partner countries precisely on security guarantees. That exactly the security guarantees are fixed in the agreement with Britain and exactly such a document is being prepared for signing, obviously no less pathetic, with France. And Poland, as we heard from the president (not Prime Minister Tusk, which is telling), joined the Vilnius Declaration specifically on security guarantees. Let's try to understand in more detail where such persistence comes from in identifying as security guarantees what they are not, in fact, and why it is dangerous. And we will also try to outline what should be paid special attention to in the following documents.
Why can't they be called "security guarantees"
Once several Ukrainian diplomats and politicians convinced me that they really believed for a long time that security guarantees were provided to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum. And in fact, they did not understand the differences between guarantees and assurances (it was not for nothing that the word "guarantees" appeared in the Ukrainian version of the document), and the partners did not explain these details to us at the appropriate level, there was no experience of such negotiations, etc. The most radical of my interlocutors generally claimed that "the Americans simply deceived us." It will be seen in the future whether no one really understood these subtleties, whether the problem was unprofessionalism or a banal lack of knowledge of the English language, but the American side definitely drew conclusions from this story.
Now everything is very honest and clear: it was the Americans who immediately clearly identified the main points: there should be no discussions about security guarantees. Instead, it was proposed to call it security obligations, understanding the toxicity of the word "assurance" in Ukraine (it's a pity that they did not explain this to the British partners, who – and not only Rishi Sunak – still sometimes use this very term). That is, the wording "security obligations" appeared as a replacement for the word "assurance" and not "guarantee", which is indicative and automatically suggests parallels with the Budapest Memorandum. Which, whether we like it or not, serves and will serve as a starting point in the issue of international security guarantees.
Thus, there is no statutory definition of "security guarantees" in the he United States of America as such, but the political interpretation is extremely clear regardless of the administration – the willingness to go to war to defend this or that country. Conventionally speaking, those who are confused, in which case exactly it is about security guarantees, and in which case it is not about them, should answer such a test question. Do the commitments undertaken by this or that country oblige it to defend Ukraine or simply to help it defend itself? And is the obligation in a legal sense or just a political one? It is obvious that the agreements envisage exactly the second option, and on both issues.
However, it seems that we ourselves are "happy to deceive ourselves" – to call "security guarantees" what, at best, we defined as security obligations. At best, because even concrete commitments – say, long-term financial ones – are very difficult to provide. The agreement with Britain is a confirmation of that. After all, it was possible to fix the aid for only one year out of the ten provided for in the agreement, and not by analogy with the Memorandum of Understanding between the USA and Israel, where the amounts of aid were determined for 10 years (the last of them from 2016 was about 38 billion dollars).
Here it is important to emphasize: the issue is not in the agreements, everything that could be done at this stage and under the current conditions is concentrated in them, and it is necessary to pay tribute to those who conducted the negotiations on the Ukrainian side. And the issue is not that there is no phrase "security guarantees" in the text of the agreements. It is not even in the agreements between the USA and Japan and South Korea, which precisely provide for these security guarantees. The problem is that the president, not to mention the head of his office, insists that these security guarantees are in place. At the same time, the president appeals not to the agreements of the United States of America with South Korea, but to agreements with Israel, as a "model" security agreement. That is, at the highest level, there is still some inexplicable admiration for the Israeli model, which, to be honest, did not show itself in the best way, because the aid to Israel at a critical moment got stuck in the Congress of the United States of America at the same time as aid to Ukraine.
I don't see any problem at all with honestly calling the security obligations just security obligations, as was agreed with the American side. In our time, any long-term commitments of partners recorded on paper, especially security ones, sound no less powerful and reassuring than what we ourselves have defined as security guarantees. At the same time, taking advantage of a legislative gap that would clearly define such guarantees in the United States of America.
Why does this happen? Perhaps because the Ukrainian leadership, which in recent years has repeatedly challenged established diplomatic formats and wording, has decided to be creative in defining what constitutes security guarantees and what does not, imposing the Ukrainian vision. Some will say: why should the Americans really determine what are security guarantees and what are not? After all, some may say that the first agreement was signed not with them, but with the British. And in some European capitals, they do not particularly object to calling it exactly guarantees in Kyiv. However, there are good reasons to believe that although the first security agreement was signed with Britain, the United States of America remains the country that actually defines the framework in terms of not only the Vilnius Declaration, but also its reinforcement with specific documents – sets the threshold of ambition, if you will. Britain, France and other countries go as far as the mandate of the United States of America. It was the Americans who set the framework not only for the terminology ("security obligations"), but also for the status of the documents – political, not legal. And all the currently effective security models in the world are connected to the United States of America in one way or another. Perhaps, over time, European countries will be able to take the lead and independently provide guarantees, decide where and how to send troops without the "green light" of the United States of America, but at the moment this is not the case: the American definition and understanding of security guarantees is dominant.
But the most likely explanation for the strict attachment in the discourse of the highest leadership to security guarantees, from those that I heard in various government offices, seems to be that, according to the results of specially conducted focus groups, Ukrainians positively perceive as something really serious only the term " security guarantees". If this is indeed the case, then security guarantees are no longer about real security at all, but about real voter votes. The strategy is not very successful: it can only work if there is no new wave of aggression from the Russian Federation during Zelenskyy's tenure as Ukrainian President, and Ukrainians are not convinced that we have no real security guarantees again. Simply saying that "we were deceived again" will no longer work: the politicians in Kyiv themselves determined that these are security guarantees. So, maybe it's better to start talking specifically about security commitments or at least support guarantees, if someone really wants to guarantee something?
And why is NATO needed then?
The insistence with which the President of Ukraine calls the security obligations of partners for support security guarantees is dangerous not only because it misleads a part of society, as if we finally have real security guarantees. The danger of this story is also that it calls into question the expediency of our country's movement towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). After all, at the moment of signing a number of such agreements, the question may arise: why do we need the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), if we already have a whole bunch of security guarantees from other countries? That is, by devaluing and blurring the concept of "security guarantees", Kyiv thereby weakens our position in the context of the movement towards the Alliance. Although it may well be that even a gradual entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – an invitation for all of Ukraine, Article 5 only for the controlled part of the country – could provide a higher level of security than "security" agreements.
If anyone should be interested in positioning the agreements as "security guarantees", it should be those who are skeptical about Ukraine joining the Alliance. Someone might say, so you already have guarantees, why do you need the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? I have already had to hear such objections from some interlocutors, including official ones from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries, in response to questions related to the agenda of the Alliance's Washington Summit. In response to the objection 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. In such a case, why should they not believe them?
One way or another, by positioning the agreements that are being prepared as agreements on security guarantees, Kyiv essentially plays along with those countries that want to sell the document as a result of the Washington NATO summit on Ukraine. And they even plan to sign the document closer to this event, if not during the summit. Here it is worth paying tribute to those countries that were ready to start the signing process now, six months before the summit, in particular Britain and France, which, according to some information, even wanted to be the first to sign the document.
At the same time, it is also not worth positioning the agreements, which, by the way, Western partners continue to call memorandums among themselves, as a certain transitional stage to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership, a kind of bridge. In fact, Ukraine is and, unfortunately, may continue to be in such a situation for a long time, when it is necessary to talk not about bridges, but about the presence of several parallel highways. There must be a parallel road to the main road, the high-speed autobahn, which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership, by which you can get to your destination if suddenly there is a repair or some serious accident on the autobahn. Bilateral agreements – especially if they are strengthened – can be such a bypass and come in handy even after Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (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 security commitment of the United States of America 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 elections in the United States of America, in the event of Trump's victory, it will have to be re-signed.
How can the remaining agreements be strengthened now? First of all, to increase the elements of strategic uncertainty, such as the one that is, say, in the agreement between the USA and Taiwan (Taiwan Relations Act). In part, this found a place in our security agreement with Britain. Namely, in point 4 of part 8, which is somewhat veiled, but still talks about the possibility of changes to the provisions of this agreement. There is also a useful experience of revising Japan's security agreements with the United States of America – the first document was signed in 1951 with rather vague security obligations, but the revised agreement signed in 1960 has fairly clear obligations to protect Tokyo in the event of aggression with the use of American troops. That is why it makes sense in agreements that have not yet been finalized to lay down clearer elements of strategic uncertainty and to provide for closed attachments to documents. This is necessary so that Putin does not really understand what the reaction of this or that country will be to a new round of escalation from the Russian side. Of course, increasing strategiс 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 or for Ukraine. However, in any case, it will work better than self-suggestion of safety guarantees.