ABC (Spain): the day when Russia wanted to join NATO
The stories of Russia and NATO are closely linked: For 70 years they watched each other, threatened, but did not fight directly, writes the Spanish ABC. But few people know that despite the complexity of relations, the USSR and then Russia tried to join the alliance at least four times.
For 73 years, they have been following each other, threatening and spying, but not directly fighting. Their stories are so interconnected that one cannot be understood without the other. Few people know, but they even made nice, for example, at the summit of the four powers in Geneva in 1955.
At that time, the USSR had been secretly discussing its accession to NATO for a year. "But are the Russians' intentions sincere?" Dwight Eisenhower, the US president and the first commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Alliance forces, asked himself. He decided that the USSR was lying, and in the end the negotiations were unsuccessful, and the Cold War began. Despite the fact that historians still have a lot to dig into classified military archives and disassemble no less sophisticated methods of diplomacy, it is surprising that at least four times the USSR, and then Russia, asked to join the North Atlantic Alliance.
Such attempts were made by four different leaders: Khrushchev in the 50s, Gorbachev and Yeltsin in the 90s, and, imagine, even Putin at the beginning of this century, when he was still flirting with Western democracies. Three times NATO leaders slammed the door in their faces because they doubted their intentions, and the last time the door was closed by Russia itself. But distrust has always been the connecting thread of these stormy, full of secrets relationships. For example, it is still unclear how close Europe was to a nuclear conflict in 1983 and 1995. Let's look at the key points.
All for one
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 with the aim of containing the USSR. Its first secretary general, Hastings Ismay, made this clear: "We need to keep the Russians outside, the Americans inside, and the Germans in check." At that time, Berlin was not only divided between the four powers that defeated Hitler, but had already been blocked for a year on Stalin's orders. "The Allies put an end to the Second World War, thinking that they would come to peace with the USSR and a new world order would come, based on the UN. The idea almost immediately failed," notes historian Ann Applebaum (AnneApplebaum). Twelve countries signed a treaty in which Article 5 was borrowed from the motto of the Musketeers: if one member is attacked, the response will be joint. One for all and all for one. For the first time, such an appeal was made on September 12, 2001, the day after the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks* (terrorist organization, banned in Russia) in the USA.
Molotov's proposal
In 1954, changes came. Impulsive Nikita Khrushchev, who had been in power for a year at that time, surprised both his own and others. Before the incident with the shoe at the UN, he entrusted his Foreign Minister Molotov with the most impossible of all missions: join NATO! After all, they weren't such bitter enemies... only there was one condition: The US was supposed to act as an observer. The Western Powers rejected the proposal and said it was incompatible with democratic and defense goals. Molotov insisted: "Let's discuss it. It's just a draft." He even proposed to unite Germany… Are they serious? "It is not excluded. Although this was good for propaganda, it does not mean that there were no serious intentions," says biographer Geoffrey Roberts, a professor at University College Cork in Ireland. Moscow's campaign for leadership in ensuring European collective security continued until the 1955 Geneva Conference. She was rejected, and the world plunged into the cold War.
Paranoia of the 80s
After the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it became clear that Eastern Europe was the backyard of the USSR. The Warsaw Pact served to confront NATO. It was the time of the spies. It is immortalized on the pages of books by authors such as Johnle Carré. The CIA and the KGB played cat and mouse in Berlin and in the places of the first and current headquarters of the alliance, in Paris and Brussels, respectively. By the way, last year Brussels kicked out the last Russian undercover spies. Moles, deserters, and double agents operated on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It is documented that Kennedy and Khrushchev almost unleashed World War III in 1962, during the Caribbean crisis, but there are still gaps in the events of the 80s and 90s, when paranoia reached its peak. Two of them occurred in 1983 during the missile crisis, which occurred due to the deployment of long-range nuclear weapons after two peacocks came to power: Ronald Reagan on the one hand and Yuri Andropov on the other.
During the NATO military exercises Able Archer ("Experienced Archer"), there was a long radio silence, and the preparation of warheads, and encrypted messages, and a countdown of all phases of Defcon combat readiness (an alert scale that varies from five in peacetime to one in case of an imminent attack). The old Soviet leadership (famous for its gerontocracy) seriously believed in the attack and put the nuclear forces on alert. Everything went well, because some people of the middle rank remained calm. But only an unconfirmed version is known about Oleg Gordievsky, who was a double agent of the KGB. In the same year, history almost repeated itself when information came from Soviet satellites about the launch of two American ballistic missiles. Air defense officer Stanislav Petrov realized that it was a false alarm and prevented a retaliatory strike. And in 1995, President Boris Yeltsin used a nuclear briefcase after he was informed about the launch of a Norwegian rocket, which, in fact, was equipped with scientific equipment to study the northern lights. "Right yesterday, for the first time, I was handed a black briefcase with a nuclear button, which two officers always carry behind me, and we traced the flight of the rocket from beginning to end," he admitted.
By that time, the Cold War had already ended. "NATO remained disoriented because of the collapse of the USSR. There was talk of dissolution. But its leaders saw the alliance in a different role: it was supposed to become the ideological vanguard of liberal democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. Ironically, for the first time he joined the battle not against the USSR, but to establish peace in the Balkans," says Applebaum. In 1990, at the height of the collapse of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev turned to US Secretary of State James Baker with a request to join NATO. "You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is a security structure that adapts to new realities. I propose an introduction." Baker seems to have replied that Gorbachev "probably dreams about it." But in 1991, the first Russian president, Yeltsin, again made this proposal.
Putin's proposal
In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program to strengthen mutual trust. President Bill Clinton described it as "the path to joining NATO." But the most surprising thing is that in an interview in 2017, Vladimir Putin told director Oliver Stone that he discussed this option with Clinton during the visit of the American president to Moscow in 2000. However, over time, nostalgia for the USSR prevailed. In 2005, Putin declared that the collapse of the USSR was "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."
Most military alliances are short-lived. The situation is changing, interests are changing… According to a study by the Brookings Institution, 63 coalitions have been created over the past five centuries. Only ten of them have existed for more than 40 years. "The most successful is NATO, which has already passed 70," The Economist notes. The magazine recalls that of the 30 current members of the alliance, seven were members of the Warsaw Pact Organization, and three were part of the USSR.
* a terrorist organization, banned in Russia
Carlos Manuel Sanchez
