Retired US general urges NATO to keep Ukraine out of the fight in the name of peace.

Sputnik - Relations between Russia and NATO have reached a level never seen since the Cold War. With the alliance's eastward expansion and plans to incorporate Ukraine into the bloc, Moscow offered a solution to the crisis to the US and its allies, but Washington rejected it.

Ukraine's accession to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) would not serve the critical security interests of the North Atlantic Alliance, and the Eastern European nation should be granted Austrian-style neutrality to avoid accidentally igniting a Third World War, recommended retired US Army Lieutenant General Dell Dailey.

In an article for The National Interest magazine, Dailey and collaborator James P. Farwell warned that "time is running out" to avoid a conflagration and recommended a "balancing" strategy for the US, instead of the traditional "containment" policy toward Russia.

"This notion does not see Russia as a friend or ally," Dailey declared, emphasizing that "balance" would not amount to any kind of capitulation to Moscow, but rather an effort to "find a balance for a stable order in Europe rooted in long-term state-to-state relationships."

Russia, the retired general suggested, no longer has Soviet-style "expansionist ambitions," with nationalism and fears of Western-backed color revolutions reportedly fueling the Kremlin's security concerns.

Thus, Dailey recommended, first and foremost, keeping the post-Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia out of the Western alliance.

"These nations do not have the right to join NATO; membership is by invitation only. Western security interests do not require making them NATO members, and the West does not need to entice them so closely that Russia feels such a relationship is equivalent to membership," the retired officer noted.

"Ukraine could accept a status similar to Austria's. Austria is a democracy that does business with all sides and maintains its independence. This status would not harm the West and would remove the threat that [Vladimir] Putin complains about most. Ukraine needs to be part of this negotiation," he added.

Russia, in turn, should accept Kiev's efforts to build "a successful democracy," according to Dailey, and both Moscow and the West should work toward some kind of "mutual agreement" in order to "stop interfering in each other's internal affairs" and also reach an agreement on missile deployments.

The former general also calls on Russia to make a formal commitment not to use the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline "as political leverage to influence European politics" and to crack down on criminal hacking attacks against the West, whether by the Russian state, its representatives, or transnational criminal groups operating in the country.

The former official also calls on Russia and the West to seek "common ground that recognizes the existential threat posed by China's ambition to establish global military and economic supremacy by 2049," arguing that "China's achievement of this ambition would represent an existential problem, a threat to both sides."

Publicly, Russia has rejected efforts by Western powers to try to build a wall in its relations with Beijing, with Russian officials recently characterizing ties with the Asian neighbor as the "best in its history" amid growing tensions with the US.

 The idea of ​​a neutral Ukraine is not new.

The idea of ​​a neutral Ukraine situated between Russia and NATO, cooperating with both, as proposed by Dailey, is not new and served as the de facto foreign policy of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005).

Kuchma's "multivector" strategy, designed to balance Eastern and Western interests, had the support of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. This balance was disrupted in 2005 with the victory of the Orange Revolution, a Western-backed soft coup in Kiev that brought pro-NATO and pro-European Union (EU) president Viktor Yushchenko to power.

Yushchenko lost the 2010 presidential election, winning only 5,45% of the vote, and was replaced by Viktor Yanukovych, a centrist often described by Western officials as "pro-Russian," but who, like Kuchma, sought to keep Ukraine out of any alliance – be it NATO or the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) led by Russia.

Yanukovych was ousted in a second color revolution in 2014 after attempting to back out of signing an EU association agreement in favor of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). US officials made no secret of their efforts to pull Ukraine westward, with Obama-era Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland openly boasting in 2014 about how the United States had spent $5 billion (approximately R$27 billion) to "promote democracy" in Ukraine since 1991.

The 2014 coup triggered the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West, with Crimea separating from Ukraine and joining Russia, and a civil war erupting in Donbass after local residents refused to recognize the new authorities in Kyiv.

In recent months, the US and its NATO allies have accused Russia of engaging in a military escalation on Ukraine's borders, ostensibly to carry out a supposed "invasion" of the country. Moscow has repeatedly and vocally rejected these allegations and accused the West of fueling fears of war to justify the militarization of the Western bloc in Eastern Europe.

Alternatives for peace

In December, Russia offered the US and NATO a pair of comprehensive security proposals aimed at ending the crisis – recommending that both sides significantly reduce the deployment and operations of troops, missiles, aircraft, and warships in areas where they might be perceived as a threat to the other side.

Russia also urged the US and its allies to abandon plans to incorporate Ukraine or any other post-Soviet republic into the bloc, and requested that NATO limit the deployment of troops and military equipment to countries that have joined the alliance since the end of the Cold War.

On Wednesday (26), the United States and NATO provided Russia with formal written responses to its security proposals. In a press conference, Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that Russia was informed in no uncertain terms that Ukraine would remain free to choose its own alliances.

On Thursday (27), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lamented that the US had not responded positively to the central proposals of Russia's security guarantee concept – NATO expansion to the east and the deployment of offensive strike systems.