Washington 11 july 2024 : The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has declared that Ukraine’s path to membership of the Trans-Atlantic military alliance is “irreversible”, and termed Russia as the “the most significant and direct threat” to the security of the bloc’s member-states.
In the Washington Declaration Summit, issued during Nato’s milestone 75th anniversary meeting in the US capital on Wednesday, Nato members also patted themselves on the back for undertaking the “biggest reinforcement of our collective defence in a generation”, strengthening the alliance’s “deterrence and defence posture” with a mix of “nuclear, conventional, and missile defence capabilities, complemented by space and cyber capabilities”, and spending more on defence. The declaration also saw a commitment to strengthen the defence industry across Europe and North America, and a warning that rising hybrid threats could escalate to a point that invited collective defence arrangements.
But held in the shadow of Donald Trump’s political rise in US, and Russia’s gains in Ukraine, Nato’s key goal appeared to be aimed at insuring the alliance and its commitment to Ukrainian security against internal political and external strategic shocks.