The Guardian (UK): many predicted that the expansion of NATO would lead to tragedy. But they were not listened to
It has long been clear that NATO expansion would lead to tragedy. Now we are paying the price for the arrogance of the United States, writes American politician and political scientist Ted Galen Carpenter in The Guardian. In his opinion, Washington's attitude towards Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a monstrous political mistake.
The Russian military operation in Ukraine is an act of aggression, which will only add to the anxiety and tension in relations between NATO and Moscow. The West's new cold war with Russia has turned into a hot one. The main responsibility for recent events lies with Vladimir Putin, but NATO's arrogance and deafness towards Russia over the last quarter of a century are also affected. American analysts who advocate a foreign policy based on realism and restraint have been warning for at least a quarter of a century that the further expansion of the most powerful military alliance in history towards another major power will not end well. The conflict in Ukraine has finally confirmed this.
Understanding the Ukrainian crisis - the reasons
"It will be extremely difficult to expand NATO to the east so that Russia does not consider this an unfriendly step. Even the most modest options will lead the alliance to the borders of the former Soviet Union. In some more ambitious scenarios, the alliance will actually surround the Russian Federation." I wrote these words in 1994 in my book "Beyond NATO: Not to get Involved in European Wars", when all the talk about the expansion of the alliance was still reduced to casual chatter at foreign policy seminars in New York and Washington. I added that the expansion "would be an unnecessary provocation against Russia."
At that time, it was not yet public knowledge that the Bill Clinton administration had already made a fateful decision to seek the accession to NATO of a number of former Warsaw Pact countries. Soon, the administration will invite Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and the U.S. Senate will approve their membership in 1998. And this is only the first expansion, and several more waves are coming.
But even the first stage faced resistance and anger from Russia. In her memoirs, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that "Yeltsin and his compatriots were categorically against expansion — in their opinion, the West took advantage of Russia's vulnerability and moved the dividing line of Europe to the east, plunging them into isolation."
Similarly, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott spoke about Russia's position. "Many Russians see NATO as a relic of the Cold War, once directed against their country. They emphasize that they have dissolved their military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, and wonder why the West will not do the same." A very apt question, but neither the Clinton administration nor its successors gave any convincing answer.
The intellectual George Kennan, the father of American Cold War containment policy, shrewdly warned in an interview with the New York Times in May 1998 what the Senate's ratification of the first round of NATO expansion would lead to. "I think this will be the beginning of a new Cold war," Kennan said. — I think the Russians will take it with hostility, and this will affect their policy. I think this is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this. No one threatened anyone."
He was right, but the leaders of the United States and NATO went for further expansion - provocatively including the three Baltic republics. But these countries were not only part of the Soviet Union, but also of the Russian Empire under tsarism. A new wave of expansion has brought NATO to the borders of the Russian Federation.
NATO behaved more and more intrusively, and Moscow's patience was coming to an end. The last relatively friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needs to retreat came in March 2007, when Putin spoke at the annual Munich Security Conference. "NATO is pushing its advanced forces to our borders—" Putin complained. — The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it is a seriously provoking factor that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have a fair right to ask frankly: against whom is this expansion? And what happened to the assurances given by Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are these statements now? Nobody even remembers about them?"
In his memoirs, "Duty," Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, stated that "relations with Russia have been out of control since George H.W. Bush left office in 1993." Among other mistakes of the leadership, he cited the US agreements with the governments of Romania and Bulgaria on the military presence on a rotational basis, calling them "an unnecessary provocation." Having fired a barb at Bush Jr., Gates called the attempt to involve Georgia and Ukraine in NATO "an impossible task." In his opinion, it is reckless not to take into account "the vital national interests of Russians."
The following year, the Kremlin proved that its dissatisfaction with the ongoing NATO invasion of the Russian security zone would not be limited to objections alone. Moscow took advantage of the stupid provocation of the pro-Western Georgian government and launched a military offensive, as a result of which Russian troops reached the approaches to the capital. After that, Russia permanently cut off two separatist-minded regions from Georgia and put them under its control.
However, Western (and especially American) leaders missed one red alert after another. The blatantly presumptuous interference of the Obama administration in Ukraine's internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow the elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine became a brazen provocation and led to a new round of tension. Moscow immediately reacted by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war unfolded with a vengeance.
Could the Ukrainian crisis have been avoided?
In recent months, there has been a last chance to avoid a hot war in Eastern Europe. Putin demanded guarantees from NATO on a number of security issues. Thus, the Kremlin demanded that the alliance reduce the scale of its ever-growing military presence in Eastern Europe and pledged not to accept Ukraine. He backed up his demands with a large-scale build-up of military power near the borders of Ukraine.
However, the Biden administration reacted coolly and evasively to Russia's desire to achieve significant concessions and secure security guarantees. Then Putin clearly went to the aggravation. Washington's attempt to turn Ukraine into a political and military pawn of NATO (even without formal membership in the alliance) can cost the Ukrainian people dearly.
History will show that Washington's attitude towards Russia for several decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a monstrous political mistake. It was quite predictable that the expansion of NATO would sooner or later lead to a tragic, and perhaps even a bloody rupture of relations with Moscow. Astute analysts warned about the consequences, but they were not heard. And now we are paying the price for the short-sightedness and arrogance of the US foreign policy elite.
Ted Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a specialist in defense and foreign policy
