The Biden administration recently signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement with Ukraine, plunging the United States and the West deeper into a proxy war with Russia.
In a statement released by the White House, President Joe Biden said that “Ukraine’s future is in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” reaffirming the administration’s desire to “expand their defense and security cooperation” and also their “trade and investment ties.”
Biden’s insistence on Ukraine joining NATO is deeply troubling on multiple levels, not the least of which is that Russia views the loss of Ukraine to NATO as an existential threat that could lead to rounds of escalation that end with nuclear war.
This is not hyperbole.
While liberal critics point out that Ukraine is an independent nation and can voluntarily enter into any political or security arrangement it desires, this ignores reality and history — the threat of nuclear war arose during the Cuban Missile Crisis after the Soviet Union directly challenged America’s sphere of influence.
NATO’s Purpose
In this context, NATO proved its worth by countering the Soviet Union and its defensive alliance, the Warsaw Pact. However, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the West saw an opportunity to take advantage of a severely weakened Russia through expansion.
In fact, NATO’s expansion east, doubling from 16 to 32 member states after the dissolution of the Soviet Union — its purported primary reason for existence — makes clear that NATO now serves less as a collective defense alliance and more as a mechanism for maintaining American hegemony and extending its influence militarily, economically, and culturally over Europe and the world at large.
By design, international treaty-based organizations such as NATO and the European Union intentionally subvert national interests in favor of cultivating and maintaining a liberal monoculture. These new cultural and economic monoliths are primarily guaranteed by the U.S. military, which secures existing trade routes while expanding into new markets.
Consequently, America plays a significant role in ensuring the security of European economies through its protective umbrella. In exchange, this umbrella allows the U.S. to advance its own security interests, economic arrangements, and foreign policy objectives, which many European countries feel compelled to support.
This is where the White House’s stated desire to strengthen their “trade and investment ties” with Ukraine takes center stage.
Energy Supply via Ukraine
Mike Benz, director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, recently spoke with political commentator Dan Bongino about the ties between the U.S. intelligence community, the oil and gas industry, and Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma in Ukraine. This discussion highlights how the United States uses alliances such as NATO to exert influence in Europe and confront adversaries such as Russia.
Russia has historically provided all of Europe’s natural gas, which flowed predominantly through Ukraine, making the country a valuable transit point due to its extensive gas infrastructure.
And this existing infrastructure is key. Benz explained:
If you can simply rewire the gas so that it no longer comes from Russia, it no longer comes from Ukraine’s East, but it comes from Ukraine’s West, for example, by piping in U.S. LNG or British LNG up through Poland, through the Baltic Sea, and then connecting it directly to Ukraine, you have the same gas architecture. You don’t need to build a whole new web of energy infrastructure, which is very expensive to build and maintain. You simply reroute it, and now you have basically a trillion-dollar market that’s captured by the West rather than by the East.
This is why Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, Naftogaz, has spoken with Washington and American energy companies such as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton about investing in Ukraine. U.S. energy assistance and eventual NATO admission could help Ukraine become a natural gas powerhouse while also helping it win membership in the European Union.
But that’s not the only place where money can be made. Of the $175 billion appropriated by Congress to date related to the conflict in Ukraine, billions are destined to be invested within the United States, which is set to “revitalize” the U.S. defense industrial base.
Expanding NATO membership also expands the markets for U.S. defense contractors, primarily due to its emphasis on standardization and interoperability, as member states are often required to purchase and depend on U.S.-designed weapons systems and military doctrine.
As always, war is good for business, and the untapped market for postwar reconstruction is even more tantalizing.
Ultimately, NATO’s actions, spearheaded by the United States, belie its professed commitment to “freedom” and “democracy,” revealing a deeper agenda driven by economic and strategic interests. This approach not only perpetuates the conflict in Ukraine but also undermines the energy sovereignty of its member nations, reducing them to vassal states within an American-led order.
As the world grapples with the consequences of this aggressive posture, the need for a reassessment of NATO’s expansion-related effect on global stability becomes increasingly urgent.