Abstract
Pope Francis’s statement about NATO expansion provoking Russia to invade Ukraine raises the question about whether it is legitimate to support NATO generally and its expansion after 1989 in particular. This article argues that the right of nations to self-determination and legitimate defense and the ethic of solidarity as understood in the Catholic social tradition can justify NATO’s existence and enlargement. The author concludes that not only was NATO enlargement after 1989 justified, but it should also be open to Ukraine and other countries in the region in accordance with these tenets of Catholic social teaching.
Keywords
Introduction
The current war in Ukraine has generated a vigorous debate within the Catholic Church about whether or not Catholics can support NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries sending arms to Ukraine, and more generally the use of lethal force to halt Russia’s war of aggression and genocide. 1 As was widely reported, in May 2022 Pope Francis named NATO “barking at Russia’s doors” after the Cold War as one of the causes of the war in Ukraine. 2 Catholic leaders in Ukraine, including the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church His Beatitude Sviatoslav, sharply criticized the pope’s view, though he did not name him directly. 3 Several Catholic scholars have articulated a similar view to Pope Francis. However, no Catholic ethicist has undertaken a scholarly analysis of the reasons for NATO expansion and whether this expansion is morally justifiable. In this article, I examine whether Catholic ethics can justify the expansion of NATO after 1989 and in the future, adding countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because many other Catholic scholars, including myself, have already discussed the war in Ukraine more comprehensively, I turn to this question as it represents an underexplored, existential issue for Ukraine and other countries in Europe that may suffer a similar fate at the hands of Russia. 4
My argument holds that nations have the right to self-determination, the right to self-defense against an unjust aggressor, and that membership in NATO can be a legitimate means to preserving these rights. My argument thus goes against the thinking of many North American Catholics writing on issues of war and peacemaking today, many of whom reject NATO expansion, unequivocally call for arms reduction, and urge exclusive adherence to nonviolent peacemaking approaches in wars, including in Ukraine. 5
Catholic Stances on NATO
Modern popes have generally accepted the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with some even embracing NATO unambiguously. Even though he exhorted nations towards disarmament, Pius XII saw NATO as a “necessity in a deeply divided world” but also recognized the member nations’ “sincere desire to maintain peace.” 6 His sober acceptance of a world not yet marked by peace caused him to deem members of the NATO forces “authentic armed services, sworn to the defense of those divine and human values.” 7 While acknowledging it is “sad” to need the services of NATO, he stated that we must accept this “reality” and “trust” that NATO will pursue “genuine peace.” 8 Pius XII’s support of NATO helped Christian Democrats in Italy and West Germany ratify the NATO treaty despite “left-wing opposition,” even as the Vatican did not want him to be perceived as the “chaplain to NATO.” 9 He reportedly pushed the Italian government to join NATO. 10
John XXIII on the other hand moved away from expressing such views and siding with NATO in the Cold War. He attempted a new kind of Ostpolitik, open to dialogue with communism and the Soviet Union. 11 However, like Pius XII, Paul VI spoke on numerous occasions to members of the NATO Defense College. He acknowledged their potential to ensure international relations marked by “liberty and security” and “protected from all violence or unjustified intimidation.” He also prayed that they may “always be witnesses and instruments of justice and peace.” 12 According to P. Peter Sarros, who served as chargé and ambassador of the Presidential Mission at the Vatican, Paul VI even supported NATO’s modernization program, which was necessary to “maintain the balance of power in Europe.” 13
Pope John Paul II continued the practice of speaking directly to the NATO Defense College. In April 1989, he expressed confidence in their “ability to make some contribution to world peace” and “the authentic development of humanity.” 14 He was at the heart of what former US ambassador to the Vatican Francis Rooney calls “a remarkable relationship” between the United States and the Vatican in the 1980s, as they collaborated to help defeat communism in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe. 15 During the war in Bosnia in 1994, the pope prayed that NATO soldiers use “their professional training and skills . . . to defend and uphold the rights of all, especially the victims of injustice and force.” 16 Recalling the horrors of World War II and the continued fighting in Bosnia in 1995, he contended that “the diplomat and the soldier naturally have different functions, but they have a single goal: to create a more human society, more just and therefore more peaceful.” 17 John Paul II repeatedly called for humanitarian intervention to stop the slaughter of Bosnians, arguing that the international community had a “duty to disarm this aggressor,” which included the use of force “if all other means have proved ineffective.” 18 At the same time, he criticized NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign in Kosovo to stop the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovar Albanians. 19 He also objected strongly to the war in Iraq. Nonetheless, John Paul II still believed that NATO soldiers could undertake the “noble service of peace and the common good.” 20
Pope Benedict XVI did not speak as regularly and directly to the NATO Defense College as his predecessors, but he did recognize them in his general audiences and pray for their “service to the cause of peace.” 21 According to Victor Gaetan, Pope Benedict grew frustrated with “the U.S. tendency to militarize foreign policy after the Cold War.” He also normalized diplomatic relations with Russia and strengthened the relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church while tensions grew between Russia and NATO around the issue of its eastward expansion. 22 He hosted Vladimir Putin at the Vatican in 2007 and reportedly shared concerns over Western secularism and same-sex marriage. 23
Pope Francis’s comments about NATO “barking at Russia’s door” betrayed a critical view of the organization. Nonetheless he has conveyed “good wishes” to members of the NATO Defense College “in their efforts to promote peace.” 24 Like John XXIII and Benedict XVI, Francis has said little else publicly about or to NATO. He insists on Vatican neutrality, and he allegedly believes that “Russian imperialism” and “American imperialism” are equally dangerous. 25 As a prelate in Argentina, Francis embraced the idea of a “Latin American patria grande,” a widespread idea in the church there seen among other things as a counterbalance to “North American economic and cultural hegemony.” 26 Like Benedict, Francis has appeared to be less sensitive to Russia’s history of aggression in Eastern Europe than John Paul II. For example, he lauded Russian Tsars Peter I and Catherine II and “the great Russian empire” in September 2023, which caused much consternation. 27 Massimo Faggioli contends that as the first contemporary pope from outside the sphere of NATO, his concern for the “recent revival of Russian imperialism” represents but one of “a wide range of geopolitical and geo-religious coordinates that are shifting.” 28 Francis’s disposition towards Russia marks a change from many predecessors, most notably the Polish pope, John Paul II, whose homeland experienced Russian hostility, aggression, and occupation for centuries. 29 As John Allen points out, a shift away from allegiance to NATO among the most recent popes corresponds with the demographic shift in the Catholic Church. When Pius XII was pope, about half of all Catholics were Europeans, whereas today more than two-thirds hail from the Global South. 30 In short, the modern popes have not denied NATO’s right to exist and its ability to promote peace, even if some of them have been more positive about it than others, with the most recent two popes shifting allegiances elsewhere.
Some individual Catholic scholars, peace activists, and groups have strongly criticized NATO. For example, Catholic ethicist Christine Gudorf has argued that NATO acts out of “self-interest,” not “humanitarian purposes.” 31 Throughout the late twentieth century, Western European Catholics (and more broadly Christians) devoted to peace were largely, though not unanimously, critical of NATO. 32 Some members of the Catholic Worker Movement have deemed NATO a capitalist and imperialist tool used for the enslavement of peoples and have called for a world without NATO. 33 Catholics in the Global South have critiqued NATO military actions in their countries. For example, in 2011 the Pakistani Bishops Conference organized a protest against a NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. 34 In 2019 peace activists from around the world, Catholics among them, protested in Washington, DC, on the seventieth anniversary of NATO’s founding, declaring “No to NATO—Yes to Peace.” Some believe that NATO is “incompatible with Gospel nonviolence.” 35 As was mentioned above, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 incited a fresh round of critiques towards NATO by some Catholic scholars, who blamed NATO for backing Russia into a corner by expanding NATO to its borders. Eli S. McCarthy thus states, “the current crisis was seeded in part by NATO’s expansion after 1997 into 14 additional countries, including former Warsaw Pact countries and three former Soviet states.” He calls on NATO to remove troops from Eastern Europe as part of what he calls “integral disarmament.” 36 Gerard Powers contends that NATO expansion represents a “continuation of Cold War thinking” that Russia viewed as “a provocation and threat.” 37
On the other hand, Catholic writers and some bishops have supported NATO’s existence, sometimes staunchly. In a 1994 essay, George Weigel argued that expanding NATO to include Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary was necessary to stem the “gravest threat to progress toward the evolution of a peaceful, undivided Europe,” namely a resurgent Russian imperialism. 38 More recently Weigel has contended that NATO is not responsible for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and does not pose a threat to Russia. 39 In 1999, the Polish Bishop Sławoj Głódź, who was then field bishop of the Polish Army, celebrated a mass on the occasion of Poland’s accession to NATO. During the homily he prayed for “divine blessings and the grace of the Holy Spirit” for NATO, which “is the guarantor of the independence and sovereignty that Poland fought for and prayed for” after its post-World War II subjugation by the Soviet Union. 40 Bishop Głódź added that NATO has existed to “serve peace” not “for aggression and domination” of weaker nations. 41 During the same year, Auxiliary Bishop Marko Sopi of Skopje-Prizren welcomed NATO peacekeepers’ presence in Kosovo, where they prevented more strife in his view. 42
After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the spokesperson for the Diocese of Helsinki Marko Tervaportti stated that the Catholic Church was in support of Finland’s joining NATO, and Ukraine’s bid, because “a just peace is evidently not wanted by the Russian government.” 43 German theologian Heinz-Gerhard Justenhoven disputes the notion that NATO expansion to Eastern Europe partly caused Russia’s aggression against Ukraine by providing evidence to the contrary. 44 The German Justice and Peace Commission, which is sponsored by the Catholic bishops’ conference, released a statement that cautioned NATO from getting directly involved in the war, but affirmed both Ukraine’s right to self-defense and the transfer of weapons to help Ukraine repel Russia’s war of aggression. The commission encouraged strengthening the German military and meeting its financial obligations to NATO (which Germany has neglected for years). 45 Catholic voices from within Ukraine, such as the former rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University Fr. Bogdan Prach, have called upon NATO to enforce a no-fly zone and admit Ukraine into the alliance as soon as possible. 46 Students from the university created a video appealing to European and US students to advocate for Ukrainian NATO and EU accession and a NATO-enforced no-fly zone. 47 In addition, the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations issued an appeal to NATO countries for “urgent delivery of additional air defense equipment” and F-16s to “stop Russian terror.” 48 The vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Sophia Opatska, rejected the claim that NATO expansion provoked Russia’s war. Rather, the 2014 Revolution of Dignity’s fight for freedom and democracy on the Maidan (Independence Square) in Kyiv roiled Putin, who shortly thereafter annexed Crimea and initiated war in Eastern Ukraine. 49
The Case for NATO and Enlargement
Pope Francis’s statement about NATO expansion provoking Russia and the divergent assessments of the legitimacy of NATO by Catholics raises the question about whether it is legitimate to support NATO generally and its expansion after 1989 particularly. The remainder of this article argues that principles of Catholic social thought can indeed yield support for NATO’s existence and enlargement. In particular, the right to self-determination, the right to legitimate defense, and the ethic of solidarity undergird the argument.
The Right to Legitimate Defense
Although it should be obvious from some of the papal statements cited above, it is worth briefly reiterating that the Catholic Church still maintains that people and nations have a right to legitimate defense, including recourse to force, if needed to repel an unjust aggressor. The reason for recalling this teaching is twofold. First, modern popes have confounded the matter by repeating statements like “never again war” (Paul VI) or “no to war! . . . war is always a defeat for humanity” (John Paul II). 50 Pope Francis has given some the impression that the use of force can never be justified with statements like the following: “We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!” 51 In the context of the war in Ukraine, he reiterated that talk of a just war is no longer justified. 52
In addition, Catholic scholars and advocates of nonviolence have implied or claimed that the Catholic Church has eschewed the just war tradition and singularly embraced nonviolent approaches to conflict. They also contend nonviolence is the only morally licit response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. 53 Space precludes a full examination of this debate. Let it suffice to say that indeed the modern popes have called upon Catholics to prioritize nonviolent approaches to peacebuilding and maximally limit the use of force, as Lisa Sowle Cahill has contended. 54 However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church still maintains that “legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. To this end, those holding legitimate authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their charge.” 55 Moreover, what Francis teaches in Fratelli Tutti has not contravened John Paul II’s teaching in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae: “‘Legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the State.’ Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason.” 56 Elsewhere John Paul acknowledged that “in this world a totally and permanently peaceful human society is unfortunately a utopia.” Therefore, Christians “have a right and even a duty to protect their existence and freedom by proportionate means against an unjust aggressor” as a requirement of basic justice, even as they “strive to . . . prevent every form of warfare.” 57 After discussions with members of the Church in Ukraine, Pope Francis admitted that Ukraine has a right to defend itself and that supplying weapons for legitimate self-defense can be morally justified. 58
The Right to Self-Determination of Nations
Catholic social teaching has long insisted on the rights of peoples and nations. In his apostolic exhortation addressed to the leaders of nations involved in World War I, Pope Benedict XV insisted that “nations do not die,” even when they live under foreign domination. He urged them to give due consideration to “the rights and lawful aspirations of the peoples.”
59
Pope Pius XII affirmed the right of states to “freely unite to form a juridical community,” as opposed to being subsumed by an empire.
60
In his landmark encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII articulated the basis for the teaching: Our predecessors have constantly taught, and We wish to lend the weight of Our own authority to their teaching, that nations are the subjects of reciprocal rights and duties. Their relationships, therefore, must likewise be harmonized in accordance with the dictates of truth, justice, willing cooperation, and freedom. The same law of nature that governs the life and conduct of individuals must also regulate the relations of political communities with one another.
61
Among the rights of all nations are “the right to existence, to self-development, and to the means necessary to achieve this. They have the right to play the leading part in the process of their own development, and the right to their good name and due honors” (PT, §92). Although he wrote infrequently of the rights of nations, Paul VI noted that “sovereign nations . . . are entitled to manage their own affairs,” which include devising their own policies and determining the type of government. 62
More than any other pope prior and since, Pope John Paul II forcefully affirmed the rights of nations, including the right to self-determination. 63 This should not be a surprise, given the constant threats to the Polish nation and its people over the centuries, including being partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria three times, vanishing from existence from 1772 to 1918, occupation and destruction of the country by the Nazis, and the subjugation, killing, and deportation of millions of Poles by the Soviets. 64 As his friend and compatriot Fr. Józef Tischner opined, “you cannot understand John Paul II’s thought if you do not realize that it arose from the world of Auschwitz and Kolyma.” 65 In addition, John Paul II’s abiding concern for the rights of nations can be located within a historical trajectory dating back to the fifteenth-century Polish scholar and priest Paweł Włodkowic. According to the pontiff, Włodkowic’s defense of the rights of pagans to retain their own lands at the Council of Constance in 1414 demonstrates Poland’s key role in “introducing the law of nature into international relations in theory and in practice.” 66
In his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, the pontiff referred to the “rights of the individual nations” and decried situations when “a nation is deprived of its subjectivity, that is to say the ‘sovereignty’ which is its right.”
67
He expounded on this right in many of his speeches. For example, in his speech upon the fiftieth anniversary of the UN, John Paul II spoke at length about a nation’s “fundamental right to existence” and “to its own language and culture.” Given its relevance to the argument here, it is worth noting the following passage: Unfortunately, even after the end of the Second World War, the rights of nations continued to be violated. To take but one set of examples, the Baltic States and extensive territories in Ukraine and Belarus were absorbed into the Soviet Union, as had already happened to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the Caucasus. At the same time, the so-called “People’s Democracies” of Central and Eastern Europe effectively lost their sovereignty and were required to submit to the will dominating the entire bloc.
68
On his first pilgrimage to his homeland as pope in 1979, he denounced “‘all forms of political, economic and cultural colonialism’” and maintained that “genuine peace’ requires recognizing the “‘objective rights of the nation, such as the right to existence, to freedom, to sociopolitical subjectivity, and to the creation of their own culture and civilization.’” He added that nations should be able to choose “alliances” that foster these rights. These remarks were a rebuke to the Soviet Union’s dominance of his homeland, as he made them in a meeting with First Secretary of the Communist Party Edward Gierek. 69
Application to NATO Expansion after 1989
A nation’s right to self-determination and its right to legitimate defense supports the argument for NATO and its expansion after 1989. If a nation or group of nations believes that the only way or best way to protect its rights is to join a defensive alliance, making that decision is justified. One of those rights is the right to legitimate self-defense, with the ultimate goal of restoring and preserving peace. This is precisely the rationale for NATO’s existence, as Pope Pius XII noted and the North Atlantic Treaty itself states. 70 In this regard, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stated in their 1986 pastoral The Challenge of Peace that “NATO is an alliance of democratic countries which have freely chosen their association,” unlike the Warsaw Pact. 71 Pope John XXIII correctly stated that no single nation can tackle the complex problems of the modern world, “especially . . . the preservation of the security and peace of the whole world” (PT, §134). He hoped that the United Nations could develop into an “effective safeguard” of universal human rights (PT, §145). All popes since have expressed the same hope. However, when it comes to protecting the rights of nations, the UN has repeatedly failed. For example, the UN proved incompetent during the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. The organization simply cannot guarantee the safety of entire peoples and sovereignty of nations: 1) especially against an aggressor like Russia, and 2) given the stark disagreements on the UN Security Council about what constitutes a war of aggression (as the war in Ukraine has made tragically clear). 72 Thus, countries have the right to join effective defensive alliances such as NATO.
NATO has welcomed European nations for almost seventy-five years with its “open door policy” once they meet the criteria, which include establishing a stable democracy and free-market economy, protection of the rights of minorities, commitment to peaceful means to resolve conflicts, willingness to contribute to NATO’s military operations, and ensuring civilian-military cooperation. 73 After the fall of communism, many of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe pursued NATO membership. Although many of them regained their sovereignty from the Soviet Union without bloodshed, their memory of centuries of Russian and Soviet aggression and colonization prompted them to believe NATO membership constituted the best guarantee of their continued existence and independence. 74 Many close observers credit Vaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, the leaders of the nonviolent revolutions that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia and Poland, with convincing the Clinton administration that their countries deserved consideration for NATO accession. 75 Havel, who became president in 1989, initially did not see a need for NATO after the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe. However, after seeing the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) mishandle crises in Europe in the early 1990s, some of which involved Russia (e.g., Transnitria), he realized that only NATO could effectively ensure peace and stability. 76 Wałęsa, Poland’s first democratically elected president, initially proposed a Central and Eastern European organization (what he referred to as “NATO-bis”) that would include Ukraine and fall under NATO’s command. However, his position, like that of other key Polish politicians, ultimately aimed at full NATO membership. 77 At the opening of the US Holocaust Museum in 1993, he told President Clinton that “after decades of Soviet domination, we are all afraid of Russia.” 78 Wałęsa later reflected that NATO enlargement was not “directed against anyone,” but it did ensure that Poland and the other new members would not constitute “a no man’s land” that would tempt others “to conquer it.” 79 Hanna Suchocka, Poland’s prime minister in 1993 and Ambassador to the Holy See from 2002 to 2013, declared that “NATO and the American presence in Europe” was essential for the security of the European continent. Many Polish politicians shared that sentiment. 80 Moreover, almost three-quarters of the Polish citizenry supported NATO accession, while only 13 percent wanted Poland to remain a neutral country. 81 Similar levels of support were found across Eastern Europe in a large 1995 study, and have persisted to the present day. 82 After the first round of NATO expansion, the Latvian Foreign Minister said “we can’t sleep” until Latvia joins NATO, a sentiment shared in Lithuania as well. 83 Not only the peoples of Europe continued to see a need for NATO after 1989. For example, in 2002 the USCCB urged Secretary of State Colin Powell to support continuing the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, arguing that UN peacekeepers and NATO are “essential instruments in a global effort of cooperation to end conflicts, ease tensions and restore peace and security.” 84
Like Pope Francis and some Catholic thinkers, renowned scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffery Sachs have argued that NATO is largely to blame for the war in Ukraine. They are not alone, as other scholars, including some from the Global South, have also made this argument. 85 Sachs has explicitly contended that “the reckless US neoconservative push for NATO enlargement” is largely to blame for the war in Ukraine. 86 Hundreds of Eastern European experts admonished him in an open letter for making such claims. 87 After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Mearsheimer pointed to the “Western affront” of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which constituted the “the West . . . moving into Putin’s backyard.” In his account, the Clinton administration “pushed” for NATO expansion, not Havel and Wałęsa. 88 More recently Mearsheimer has blamed “the West, and especially America” for the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 89
These perspectives are problematic for several reasons. First, the evidence shows that it was the will of the people of nations such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and other Central and Eastern European countries to join NATO after the fall of communism. Accounts such as Sachs’s and Mearsheimer’s ignore the agency of these nations’ citizens and their nations’ right to self-determination. Moreover, Russia does not have the right to deny the will of nations to join NATO. In fact, Russia signed the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and 1990 Charter of Paris, which stipulate that nations have the right to join whatever military alliance they prefer. 90 Using evidence from declassified documents, numerous scholars have debunked the myth that NATO promised Russia it would not expand eastward, a promise that would violate its own “open door” policy. 91 Lech Wałęsa confirmed a verbal and written agreement with Yeltsin in 1993, acknowledging Poland’s right to join NATO and that Russia would not see it as a threat. The document is available on Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. 92 Putin himself stated in 2002 and 2004 that if Eastern European nations, including Ukraine, opted for NATO membership it would not be detrimental to relations with Russia. 93 However, after the 2008 NATO summit, which publicly dangled membership to Ukraine and Georgia without specifying a timetable or roadmap, Putin promised to destroy Ukraine if it pursued membership. 94
Unfortunately, Russia has not respected Ukraine’s right to self-determination for centuries, as the Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar demonstrates throughout his book, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. Zygar writes: Not everyone realizes this yet. Many [Russians] are still drugged up, intoxicated by the grandeur of imperialism. We’ve been smoking this drug for centuries, feeding our own vanity. The myth of greatness was spooned down our throats, injected into our veins, and it made us high. We escaped reality, no longer saw what was happening around us, lost our empathy and human aspect. . . . Sure, not only Russia’s intoxicated by this drug. It affects all empires. . . . We are the ones guilty in front of the Ukrainians, Poles, Finns, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kalmyks, Tungus, Yakuts, Buryats, the list goes on.
95
Space precludes lengthy discussion of Russian oppression of Ukraine, which others have chronicled. 96 However, the Holodomor genocide bears mentioning, as it sheds light on present relations between the two countries. From 1932 to 1933, Josef Stalin deliberately starved an estimated five million Ukrainians, as a part of a larger campaign to “prevent loss of control over Ukraine.” 97 When the Ukrainian parliament legally recognized Holodomor as a genocide in 2007, an initiative championed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Putin objected to this “contrived issue.” 98 Rafael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who invented the term genocide, deemed it “the classic example of Soviet genocide.” 99 Many other experts have agreed, as do more than 90 percent of Ukrainians. 100
As historian Timothy Snyder has illuminated, Putin has evinced his own genocidal plans for Ukraine. Already ten years ago, Putin declared that Ukraine must be purged of anyone who had been tricked by the West into believing they are Ukrainian instead of recognizing themselves as Russian. Putin called this “denazification.” 101 Moreover, Putin has revived the ideas of his intellectual hero, the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who “wrote of ‘Ukrainians’ in quotation marks, because he denied their separate existence beyond the Russian organism. To speak of Ukraine was to speak of a mortal enemy of Russia. Ilyin took for granted that a post-Soviet Russia would include Ukraine.” 102 Media outlets and other politicians in Russia have widely echoed Putin’s genocidal ideology, calling for the “de-Satanization of Ukraine” and the disappearance of the Ukrainian national group. In reference to the Holodomor, they have propagated the slogan “We Can Do It Again,” which also appears on Russian bumper stickers. 103 Inside Ukraine, Russian soldiers have gone far beyond harsh words, relentlessly attacking and killing civilians, obliterating critical infrastructure, using rape and sexual violence as a method of population control, and forcibly abducting children to Russia. Thus, a group of international legal scholars found “an escalated pattern of systematic atrocities of such nature to reasonably conclude that Russia is committing an ongoing genocide against the Ukrainian national group, in violation of United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” 104 Other experts have reached the same conclusion, as well as world leaders from more than a dozen nations. 105 Even though the UN stopped short of calling it a genocide (likely to avoid triggering the duty to act in accordance with the UN Genocide Convention), it has documented “indiscriminate attacks against civilians and the war crimes of torture, wilful [sic] killing, rape and other sexual violence, and deportation of children.” 106
Russia’s long history of brutal subjugation, oppression, and genocide has cost Ukraine millions of lives, with between 70,000 to 100,00 killed in the current war and millions displaced. 107 Therefore, Ukraine has a right to the most effective means of throwing off the yoke of Russian imperialism. Russia’s desire to be a “great empire,” which requires Ukraine and other countries in the region to succumb to it, will continue in the foreseeable future. Widely considered the US National Security Council’s foremost expert on Putin, Fiona Hill warned already in 2015 that Putin “is a fighter and he will fight dirty if that’s what it takes to win. He won’t give up in Ukraine or elsewhere in Russia’s neighborhood.” Putin has expressed he wants a “New Yalta.” 108 Adam Michnik, one of the architects of the Solidarność nonviolent ethic, likewise argues that the failure to intervene against Russian aggression in Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea has emboldened Putin to revive the empire. 109 According to Ukrainian Orthodox theologian Cyril Hovorun, the concept of “the Russian world” (Russkii mir), as promulgated by the Russian Orthodox Church and adopted by the Kremlin, pits Russia as the defender of anti-liberal, true Christian values against the degenerate West. An independent Ukraine represents “an existential threat to the Russian world.” 110 Russia’s “peace proposals” do not respect Ukraine’s right to self-determination and amount to complete capitulation to its demands. Putin has bluntly declared the war will not end until Russia achieves its goals of “denazification and demilitarization.” 111 As Alexander Motyl argues, there is no reason to believe Russia would abide by a peace treaty given its long colonial history in Ukraine and that it has already twice violated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the 1997 Ukraine-Russia Friendship treaty, which bound Russia to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. 112 More than 92 percent of Ukraine, with majorities in every region, including Crimea and Donbas, and an 82 percent turnout, voted to leave the crumbling Soviet Union for independence in 1991. Russia theoretically recognized the result but has effectively tried to negate Ukraine’s freedom ever since. 113
Capable nations should do everything plausible, without endangering provision of other basic rights and responsibilities, to help Ukraine win the war and gain NATO accession, both of which are essential to preserving the right to self-determination given Russia’s relentless imperialistic terror towards Ukraine. 114 Kenneth Himes has argued that the ethic of solidarity in Catholic social thought can be “transposed to humanitarian intervention.” Solidarity seeks “movement within the present system toward genuine world order,” which respects human rights and “recognizes duties that extend beyond territorial borders.” This recognition legitimizes humanitarian interventions within states by other entities when there are “grievous and systematic abuses of human rights.” 115 In the context of such long-standing abuses by the Russian government against Ukrainians, I argue that solidarity requires promoting NATO membership for Ukraine as soon as possible as preventive humanitarian intervention to impede more Russian aggression once the current war ends. As Lech Wałęsa has said, NATO expansion is “an expression of international solidarity.” 116
Because NATO will not grant membership during an ongoing war, solidarity requires doing as much as feasible to help Ukraine win the war as expeditiously as possible, including effective sanctions, supporting the valiant courageous nonviolent resistance of Ukrainians, and continued economic and military assistance from NATO and EU countries. An argument from the perspective of the Catholic social tradition that supports NATO’s military assistance must simultaneously urge constraint by the limits of the just war tradition. For example, those limits condemn the US transfer of weapons such as indiscriminate cluster bombs that cannot protect the principle of noncombatant immunity. 117 The principle of proportionality precludes NATO’s direct involvement in the war if it would lead to nuclear catastrophe. 118 In this vein, Fiona Hill correctly contends the US and its allies must prepare for all scenarios while continuing to find ways to help Ukraine defeat Russia without triggering World War III. 119 While acknowledging the precariousness and complexity of the situation, I believe the United States and the United Kingdom (and NATO by extension) owe a debt of justice to Ukraine requiring these steps, as they convinced Ukraine to agree to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which divested Ukraine of its nuclear weapons in exchange for empty promises by Russia to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. 120 In my judgment, nothing short of the guarantee of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty (“an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”) will deter Russia from denying Ukraine’s rights. 121
Solidarity also requires promoting the participation of the oppressed in creating structures of justice. 122 Any move towards Ukraine’s NATO accession must respect the right to self-determination and the will of the Ukrainian people. Some of Ukraine’s leaders have pushed for membership since 1992, while some tilted more towards Russia. In 1997 President Kuchma determined that the Charter on a Special Partnership between NATO and Ukraine was desirable and signed it. 123 In 2008, President Yushchenko sent a letter to NATO that expressed the desire for a Membership Action Plan and stated that Ukraine sees itself as “fully sharing European democratic values.” In response, Putin threatened a missile attack on Ukraine. 124 Ukrainian officials’ hopes were dashed when France and Germany blocked granting a Membership Action Plan to Ukraine, which George W. Bush had promised to deliver. 125
Although the majority of Ukrainians did not desire NATO accession earlier, public opinion has evolved. Ukrainian scholar Oxana Shevel demonstrates that Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the war in Donbas, Putin’s “Russian Spring” in response to the Euromaidan struggle for democracy and freedom, prompted a steady rise from little support for joining NATO in 1993 to 93 percent in June 2023. 126 Dymitry Kuleba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently argued it is time for NATO to “stop making excuses.” Among his arguments in favor of NATO accession, he noted that 82 percent of Ukrainians expressed a desire to join in a 2023 International Republican Institute poll. A majority throughout the entire country supports joining NATO. He correctly indicates that Russia’s tacit acceptance of Finland’s recent accession, even though it too shares a long border with Russia, reveals Russia does not really fear a NATO attack. 127 Unfortunately, the recent NATO summit in Vilnius revealed that membership is still a long way off, even if a new Ukrainian-NATO Council gives Ukraine more direct channels of communication with NATO. 128
Peace requires much more than the absence of war. The vision of peace in Catholic social teaching posits that respect for the human rights of all persons is the linchpin of peace. 129 Ukraine cannot achieve this kind of peace under the thumb of the autocratic, imperialistic, xenophobic Russian regime. NATO nations also struggle with safeguarding the human rights of all, with recent erosion of democratic norms and ongoing racial discrimination in some member countries, such as the United States. 130 However, case studies have indicated the process of NATO accession stimulated meaningful democratic reforms. 131 Russia on the other hand overtly suppresses myriad human rights and is rightly considered an authoritarian regime. The recent labelling of the LGBT movement as extremist and persecution of LGBTQ persons, along with banning the humanitarian aid work of religious groups like Caritas International and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Orthodox Church in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, reveal just how far Russia has slipped into authoritarianism. 132 In fact, scholars have convincingly argued that fear of democratic impulses spreading to Russia from Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution is the main reason Putin chose to invade in 2014. Cyril Hovorun thus states “apparently, a progressing paranoia regarding the growing agency of the Ukrainian civil society constituted a factor that influenced Putin’s attitude to the events that developed in Ukraine during the winter of 2013–14.” 133 In other words, Putin’s lust for absolute control, not NATO enlargement, primarily drives his decision-making, including the fateful decision to invade Ukraine. Accusing NATO of putatively promising not to expand is a successful element of Putin’s information war, which convinces many Russians (and others) that the US is trying to extinguish their country. 134
Putin and Russian apologists have alleged that the United States orchestrated the Euromaidan to weaken Russian influence in Ukraine. However, this claim overlooks the “extensive infiltration” of Russia into Ukrainian politics at the time.
135
Putin’s assertion fails to account for his own compelling of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to forgo an association agreement with the EU, which sparked the protests at the Maidan. It also ignores the deep desire of many Ukrainians to join the EU and become a democratic nation.
136
In his book on the Euromaidan, Ukrainian scholar Mychailo Wynnyckyj refutes the notion that the Maidan revolutionaries were “nothing more than puppets in a geopolitical game” and describes Euromaidan as “a multifaceted domestic revolution.”
137
In this vein, historian Marci Shore, author of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution, writes: During the winter of 2013–2014 Russian journalists continually asked those on the Maidan who had organized them, what help they got from the Americans. “They simply could not grasp,” one young woman described, “that we ourselves organized ourselves.” Kremlin propaganda, the conviction that American intelligence or some other world-controlling force must be pulling the strings, betrayed not only malicious intent, but also an inability to believe that there could be such a thing as individuals thinking and acting for themselves.
138
Ukrainians have been yearning for democracy and freedom for decades, especially since the Euromaidan revolution and Russia’s invasions. 139 In 2013, the heads of all the churches of Ukraine presented “The Declaration of the European Identity of Ukraine and the Ukrainian People” to the leaders of the EU. In November 2023, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church reminded them of “the immutability of Ukraine’s will to be in the family of European nations.” 140 He obviously referred to Ukraine joining the European Union, but Ukraine will also need to join NATO to preserve its right to self-determination.
The argument for NATO accession, and transfer of arms to Ukraine until the war ends, does not deny that unarmed civilian resistance should play a supporting role; it has helped Ukraine to thwart Russia’s war machine albeit on a relatively small scale. 141 Unarmed civilian-based defense should be offered as an alternative to conscription in NATO countries for conscientious objectors. Catholic social teaching affirms the right to make such a choice, including selective conscientious objection for non-pacifists whose conscience deems a particular war unjust. As Roger Bergman writes, in numerous documents from 1966 onward the USCCB extended the right to conscientious objection of Gaudium et Spes to selective conscientious objection. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church articulated this right in 2004. 142
NATO already promotes civilian “resilience.” With Sweden likely to join NATO in the near future, member states may develop an approach like the Sweden’s “Total Defense,” which includes civilian-based defense. 143 However, nonviolent civilian defense must be seen as complimentary to the ability to react with military force when necessary, as a last resort. While successful nonviolent campaigns are often touted as evidence that nonviolence alone is always the best response, the picture is more complicated. 144 For example, many advocates of nonviolence today point to the successful nonviolent revolutions in Eastern Europe of the 1990s to argue Ukraine could respond nonviolently to Russia. However, those revolutions involved opponents who recognized each other’s right to existence and “shared a common language, culture, and love of their homeland. Nonviolence worked there because of a confluence of social, economic, and political circumstances.” 145 Scholar of civil resistance Sir Adam Roberts correctly maintains that if we examine what happened “undogmatically,” nonviolence was a “central factor” in toppling communism in Central and Eastern Europe along with others, including “defense preparations of NATO.” 146 The fact that the leaders of these revolutions, such as Havel and Wałęsa, saw NATO expansion as essential to a durable peace is telling. In addition, most of the successful examples of nonviolent resistance have occurred within intrastate conflicts, not conventional wars between nations of the magnitude of the Russo-Ukrainian war, as Catholic ethicist David DeCosse contends. 147
Advocating for Ukraine’s NATO accession also does not mean that Ukraine and NATO should not begin to think about reconciliation, properly understood, with Russia. As Daniel Philpott has argued, reconciliation cannot begin until a just peace is achieved, one that restores Ukrainian independence and its borders from prior to Russia’s invasion in 2014. Yet, he offers helpful ideas for postwar reconciliation drawn from historical precedents: a “lustration” policy banning Russian perpetrators of the war from public office, “an international truth commission” that unearths the complete truth about the war and war crimes, trials and punishment of war criminals, reparations akin to what Germany paid for Nazi crimes, and meetings of Russians and Ukrainians, which would be “arduous” but eventually help lead to a “common understanding about the truth of the war.” 148 In his book Just and Unjust Peace, Philpott stresses the importance of creating “socially just institutions” to “political reconciliation,” which is a “form of justice that seeks to restore right relationship.” 149 Writing before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, Philpott highlights the significant increase of resources devoted to the rising number of UN peacekeeping missions after 1987 and greater cooperation on the UN Security Council after the fall of communism. However, the situation has changed since 2014. To reiterate, UN peacekeeping missions are certainly relevant to fostering just peace and reconciliation in some contexts, but often prove incapable of preventing large-scale loss of human life and the usurpation of a nation’s right to self-determination. 150
In the case of Ukraine, NATO is vital to ensuring its continued existence at this time, and the chance for political reconciliation in the future. That is not to say that NATO is a completely irenic or blameless institution. NATO’s war in Afghanistan was tragic and the wrong approach to fighting international terrorism, which is legitimate when done in accordance with the just war tradition norms, as Pope John Paul II acknowledged. 151 The alliance may have made mistakes at times in the way it pursued enlargement, even if pursuing it was right, as Mary Sarotte argues. 152 None of those mistakes justifies the complete eradication of the rights of Ukraine and its citizens by Russia. Furthermore, NATO membership has brought peace and stability to Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and the other new NATO countries in Eastern Europe formerly subjugated by Russia. 153 These countries may have achieved democracy imperfectly, but they have done so as sovereign nations. Ukraine should be given that same long overdue opportunity. The same can be said of nations such as Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, and others if it is the will of their people. This includes Russia. In spite of the current quagmire and disagreements in recent decades, Russia and NATO had a collaborative relationship up until the 2014 invasion of Crimea, starting in 1993 with the Partnership for Peace, then the NATO-Russia Council from 1997 to 2014. 154 NATO stands ready to resume partnership, but Russia must finally recognize the right to self-determination of Ukraine and other nations in the region. 155
Footnotes
Correction (May 2024):
Article updated to include funding information.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work received funding from Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library Scholarship Open Access Reserve (SOAR) Fund.