UKRAINE-POLAND-LITHUANIA AND THE LOGIC OF SMALL SECURITY ALLIANCES

Abstract

The subject under consideration is analyzed in the context of Ukraine’s progress towards Euro-Atlantic integration. What was once seen as an “ambiguous object of aspiration” during the era of “multi-vector” foreign policy (up to the mid-2000s), when Ukraine–NATO relations were limited to separate programs and optimistic rhetoric about potential membership “in the future,” has by now undergone fundamental changes. The inevitability of Euro-Atlantic integration was clearly recognized by Ukraine’s political leadership with the outbreak of the “hybrid” war in 2014, and it acquired the status of a constitutionally enshrined imperative of foreign policy even before Russia’s full-scale invasion. At the same time, important shifts have taken place in the positions of major global players, including the most influential members of the North Atlantic Alliance, who determine the substance of its collective decisions. The significance of Ukraine in the architecture of European security has become evident. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s attempts to revise the international order and to restore its geopolitical influence over the territories of the former Soviet empire have turned the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership into one of the key questions both for Ukraine and for the Alliance itself. In possible scenarios of peaceful settlement, this matter has repeatedly come to the forefront. As can be observed, Ukrainian diplomacy, Ukraine’s potential security guarantors, and—in a particularly sharp form—the Trump administration have been ready to consider concessions regarding NATO membership. However, this does not remove Euro-Atlantic integration from Ukraine’s strategic agenda, although it does alter its format, pace, and timing. As an alternative to full membership, functional “mini-alliances” have been proposed. These include both hypothetical institutional frameworks, such as a Ukraine–United Kingdom–Poland alliance, and already operating security groupings, such as the Lublin Triangle. Lithuania and Poland, which directly border states that generate the challenges of neo-imperial revanchism in the modern world, clearly understand these threats and are constantly exposed to them. This creates objective incentives for deepening cooperation in the military-technical, informational, organizational-administrative, and other spheres, in order to ensure security and maintain an adequate level of defense capability through the joint efforts of the three states.