Matt Gaetz, the former Florida Republican congressman and short-lived attorney general nominee, suggested in his new job as a host on One America News that Russia be offered NATO membership as a way to end the war in Ukraine.
“I’ve got an idea. Offer NATO membership to Russia,” said Gaetz during Monday’s edition of The Matt Gaetz Show. “Of course, for this carrot, Trump would need to get everything he wants out of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin regarding the end of hostilities, economic cooperation, and territorial disputes.”
“Before you suggest I’m crazy for thinking about NATO and Russia as partners, the idea has been floated by foreign policy thinkers on the right and left for some time,” he added. “In 1997, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on NATO expansion. President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, reflected on groundbreaking cooperation between NATO and Russia.”
“That fruit didn’t germinate because instead of doubling down on cooperation with Russia, the thinking prevailed that we had to expand NATO and encircle Russia. We learned that an animal backed into a corner can lash out,” Gaetz argued. “We chose encirclement over cooperation when people were saying cooperation could be part of our forward-looking path with Russia.”
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War to counter the Soviet Union. While NATO worked to establish a partnership with Russia following the end of the Cold War, all cooperation ceased when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
“Michael McFaul was President Obama’s ambassador to Russia. In 2006, he wrote an article entitled, ‘Why a Democratic Russia Should Join NATO,’” Gaetz went on. “Again, this reinforces that NATO membership is an earned reward, not an entitlement, but why not give Russia a chance to earn it?”
Russia became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme in June 1994. Its goals were to expand political and military cooperation in Europe.
In late May 1997, NATO leaders and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, sharing their wish to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.”
During President Vladimir Putin’s time in power, between 2002 and 2008, NATO and Russia participated in the NATO-Russia Council, the formal meetings of which came to an end amid Russia’s military action in Georgia in 2008.
NATO’s website now states that “The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security.”
“NATO membership for Russia isn’t coming tomorrow, but to make peace, everyone needs to give up something and get something,” said Gaetz. “Everyone needs to feel safer in peace than at war. Making war is easy; all you have to do is attack. Making peace is hard, but at least the Trump administration is making progress. We believe that progress could and ultimately should lead to NATO expansion to Russia if everyone behaves.”
Gaetz’s comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a cadre of European leaders met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.
An administration official said Sunday that Putin agreed at his Alaska summit with Trump on Friday that the U.S. and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee in the shape of NATO’s collective security mandate as part of a possible deal to end the full-scale war started by Russia in February 2022.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, saying that it “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.” He added that it was “game-changing.”
