Ukraine's Formal Security Strategy Now Includes NATO Membership

The government in Ukraine has presented its official security strategy which includes membership in the NATO alliance. Such a declaration will undoubtedly agitate Moscow which objects to US influence in the region and blames Washington for the violent overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych. If Ukraine were let in to NATO the world's two leading nuclear powers could be forced into war.

The US has already increased its involvement in the Ukraine crisis by agreeing to send in troops later this month to train, among others, neo-Nazi militias. One commentator noted that the day the US military is planning on training the Azov Battalion is April 20th, Adolf Hitler's birthday.

The Pentagon might want to work on that PR situation.

Ukraine, locked in conflict with Russian-backed separatists in its east, on Thursday drew up a new security doctrine denouncing Russia's "aggression" and setting its sights on joining the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. Oleksander Turchynov, head of the national security council, told a session of the body that Ukraine saw Russian aggression as a "long-standing factor" and viewed NATO membership as "the only reliable external guarantee" of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.  

Turchynov's comments and the move to draft a new security strategy were certain to raise hackles in Russia, which annexed the Crimean peninsula in March 2014 after a pro-Western leadership took power in Kiev in the wake of an uprising that ousted a Moscow-backed president.

The government in Kiev has been continually agitating for the US to enter the conflict on their side and, not surprisingly, found allies among neocons and nostalgic cold warriors along with their arms industry underwriters. But entering a dangerous conflict so clearly outside the US national interest has split the foreign policy establishment including the traditionally imperialistic Brookings Institution. 

In the final analysis, the US has nothing to gain and everything to lose by starting a war with Russia which is what allowing Ukraine to join NATO would in essence do. Then again, the neocons in DC are so out of touch with reality it is prudent to wonder if they even understand the stakes in allowing Ukraine to enter a mutual defense alliance.