Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin says no third country has veto power to join the alliance
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin has said that the United States supports Ukraine’s aspiration to become a NATO member.
“We support Ukraine’s defence reform and its aspiration to become a NATO member”, – he said Tuesday after talks with Ukrainian Defence Minister Andriy Taran.
According to the US minister, each country can determine its own foreign policy and “no third country has the right to veto NATO membership”. Austin reiterated that US support for Ukraine’s sovereignty “is unwavering”.
The North Atlantic Alliance adopted a political declaration at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members of NATO, but refused to grant the Membership Action Plan (MAP) to both countries, which represents the first step in the legal procedure for joining the organisation. Brussels experts estimate that in 12 years Kiev and Tbilisi have rather distanced themselves from the prospect of joining the alliance. NATO does not accept states with unresolved territorial problems, as their membership could drag the entire alliance into military conflict.
In February 2019, the Verkhovna Rada approved constitutional amendments enshrining Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO, with language on the “irreversibility of the Euro-Atlantic path”. Ensuring that Ukraine’s armed forces are fully compatible with the armies of NATO countries by 2020 is enshrined in the military doctrine adopted in 2015. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, commenting on a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in late September, admitted that there was still no understanding regarding the timeframe for Ukraine to receive MAP in the alliance.
At the moment, Hungary is blocking the work of the Ukraine-NATO commission due to the aggravation of bilateral relations with this country. Tensions have arisen since the Ukrainian parliament adopted a new education law in autumn 2017, which stipulates that only Ukrainian can remain the language of instruction in the country’s educational institutions. Budapest sees such decisions by Kiev as a violation of the humanitarian rights of 150,000 Hungarians living in Transcarpathia.