The alliance also pledges more aid to Ukraine, but China warns it to stop "provoking confrontation".
Nato members have pledged their support for an "irreversible path" to future membership for Ukraine, as well as more aid.
While a formal timeline for it to join the military alliance was not agreed at a summit in Washington DC, the military alliance's 32 members said they had "unwavering" support for Ukraine's war effort.
Nato has also announced further integration with Ukraine's military and members have committed €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.
The bloc's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said: "Support to Ukraine is not charity - it is in our own security interest."
For nearly 20 years, NATO Allies and partner countries had military forces deployed to Afghanistan under a United Nations (UN) Security Council mandate. NATO Allies went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, to ensure that the country would not again become a safe haven for international terrorists to attack NATO member countries. Over the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan.
For nearly 20 years, NATO Allies and partner countries had military forces deployed to Afghanistan under a United Nations (UN) Security Council mandate. NATO Allies went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, to ensure that the country would not again become a safe haven for international terrorists to attack NATO member countries. Over the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on Allied soil from Afghanistan.
I guess it was a UN operation, not NATO. Aren't semantics fun?!
How does this relate to Afghanistan wanting to have NATO neighbours or not? The original debate was whether Russia was justified to be hostile to neighbours joining NATO, and you brought up Afghanistan as an example.
Yet the Afghanistan neighbours involved in the NATO invasion were not NATO members, they were in fact NATO-hostile. So the lessons seems less "don't have NATO neighbours" but "ally with your trustworthy neighbours that won't sell you out".
And all that said, NATO and the US in the Middle East and Asia is not the same as NATO in Eastern Europe. I agree that the US should fuck off all the way back to where they came from, but Russia is more of a clear and present danger than the US is. At least here. There are no good guys, only the bad one near you with a rifle and the one far away with a loan.
Linkerbaan, put yourself into the shoes of any Eastern European country in 1930, and decide who to ally with. I bet however you answer that question, there will be a nice example why it was a dogshit choice. It is not that much different now, except the collective West seems less bad than the Third Reich was.
Again, look at it from Eastern Europe. What's the good choice?
Being independent is a choice as well, and most tried that. They mostly got invaded by both sides, either being raped and pillaged in tandem or one after the other.
What's the good choice Poland or the Baltics should take?
However you just cannot seem to understand that NATO is also likely to invade Russia. NATO is not the good guys you want to have on your border if you are not inside of NATO.
NATO will lie about WMD's and make up any excuse to invade a country if they want to do so and 10 years later all the brainwashed kiddos here will still tell you that we were right to invade Iraq
Just like Russia does imperialism we also do imperialism. In fact we do way more of it.
There was a buffer zone between Russia and us which was Poland, Ukraine etc. Then we decided to expand NATO into that buffer zone in the last 20 years.
Now we that the last countries in the buffer zone are about to join NATO, Russia decides they have nothing to lose by attacking Ukraine first before it joins NATO because we are not willing to leave any buffer zone
There was no buffer zone. Poland, Slovakia, the Baltics were under Russian military occupation for most of the last century.
Russian soldiers were on the NATO border even back then. Soviet troops suppressed multiple revolutions aimed at creating an actual buffer zone, in 1956, in 1968 and so on. The bullet holes are still there. Some who fought are still alive.
When the Wall fell, all these "buffer zone" countries wanted to join NATO because they knew the Russians will come back.
Ukraine was indeed a buffer zone. Ukraine wanted to be one. Everyone signed that in Budapest. And yet when Ukraine wanted to do something and go its own way separate from Russia, but not into NATO either, Russia invaded in 2014.
Russia broke that buffer zone. And sincerely, Eastern Europe has agency and can decide who its allies are. Russia has always been an enemy, and if you look at Finland, even dealing with the devil itself had better outcomes than giving an inch to Russia.