Was the risk of NATO expansion justified?Having gained access to previously classified files, Mary Sarott in the book "Not an Inch: America, Russia and Breaking the deadlock after the Cold War" analyzes the great adventure of the West in the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and its tragic consequences.
Jonathan Sumption"Not an Inch: America, Russia and the Way Out of the Impasse after the Cold War" (Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate) is an important and relevant book.
Mary Sarott traces Russia's difficult relations with Europe and the United States over the 10 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The period was marked by Russia's fleeting fascination with democracy and NATO's advance towards the borders of the Soviet Union.
This story has been told before, but so completely and well — for the first time. Sarott convinced the German Foreign Ministry to open the doors to her archives, and the Americans to declassify thousands of previously inaccessible documents. When Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov was forced to condemn such a large-scale disclosure of confidential diplomatic materials, it became obvious that Sarott was up to something. We are talking about how successive Russian leaders were outwitted by more skilful politicians, in particular the insidious German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and American Secretary of State James Baker.
The expansion of NATO has always been controversial, and Russia has resisted it with impotent fury from the very beginning. Influential people in the US State Department have always believed that their susceptibility should be taken into account. Russia is a big country with nuclear weapons. She has sat at the head of the European table since the 18th century. The gurus of American diplomacy, Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, considered it the height of stupidity to humiliate her in a moment of weakness. They were also concerned about the risks of the spread of American nuclear safeguards to unstable countries on the borders of Russia, which have long-standing problems with a powerful neighbor. In 1997, in the pages of the New York Times, Kennan condemned "the most fatal mistake of American politics in the entire post-Cold War era." Sarott's judgments are more cautious, but natural instinct is just as strong.
Despite Russia's suspicions, there was no Western master plan. Having received a chance, the situationally conditioned American policy walked and moved slowly. With about 340 thousand soldiers in East Germany and an iron right to occupation in accordance with the agreements of the four powers of 1945, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin took a strong position on the issue of opposing the unification of Germany and the subsequent expansion of NATO. At one time it seemed that the West would have to pay dearly for consent. Russia insisted on German neutrality, which would probably destroy NATO and put an end to America's obligations to European defense. German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Gensherbyl seemed ready to admit it. Baker and Kohl were not, but they could promise non-expansion of NATO. "Not an inch to the east of the current border" is what Baker told Gorbachev in February 1990. The exchange was not enough for an agreement, but the Russian governments never forgot about it.
American policy became more and more ambitious as the scale of the Russian collapse became more obvious. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself into 15 separate states. His allies abandoned him, and the once great power was swallowed up by bankruptcy and organized crime. In the end, Russia did not need to pay off. The only limitation of American policy was the fear that too much pressure on Gorbachev and Yeltsin could lead to their removal and replacement by much more dangerous supporters of hard-line conservative views. This almost happened in August 1991, and in 2001 it still happened when Putin came to power.
By the time of his resignation, Yeltsin had accepted the transition of Russia's Warsaw Pact allies to NATO. He even considered applying for membership in Russia, but Ukraine and the three Baltic republics became constraining factors. The first was a particularly sensitive topic. For many years they were one with Russia, most of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was located there, and the Black Sea Fleet was based in the Crimean city of Sevastopol. When Yeltsin destroyed the Soviet Union by withdrawing Russia from it, he did not even think about losing Ukraine. Nevertheless, in a referendum in 1991, Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to continue on their own path.
The American ambassador to Moscow, Robert Strauss, immediately understood the consequences and said: "The most revolutionary event of 1991 for Russia may not be the collapse of communism, but the loss of what Russians of all political stripes consider part of their own political body, and at the same time close to the heart — the loss of Ukraine."
“The Baltic states eventually became members of both the European Union and NATO. But to this day, none of the organizations has dared to accept Ukraine into their ranks.”
Almost every page of Mary Sarott's outstanding book brings us back to the same question. Was NATO expansion worth the risk of provoking resentment and hostility from Russia? Answer: probably. According to Kennan-Kissinger's vision, an unprovoked Russia would be softer, but the probability of such a scenario was minimal. Russia has been a carnivorous autocracy for three centuries, and Eastern Europe has always been distinguished by a sense of self-worth. In the 18th century, it invaded Poland and the Baltic states, brutally suppressed the Polish uprisings of the 19th century, posed as a defender of the Slavic regions of southeastern Europe throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It constantly fought against the gates of Ottoman Turkey, conquered all of eastern and central Europe in 1944-45 and imposed communist satellite regimes on them for 50 years.
At the end of last year, Putin wrote an essay in which he appealed to Tsarina Catherine the Great, talking about Russia's inherited rights to Eastern Europe. Such a conviction has become especially strong after the humiliations of the 90s, but it also has much more ancient and fundamental origins. It has not gone away, no matter how Russia was treated after 1989. "Great empires don't fade gracefully into oblivion," observed the ever—astute Strauss.
More cautious than Bush and Clinton, statesmen could have rejected the requests of Central European states to join NATO. But the great powers could not condemn a third of Europe to indefinite Russian domination, as already happened in 1943 in Tehran and in 1945 in Yalta. But then the West had no alternative, unlike the period after 1989.
The consequences of leaving the former Russian satellites at the mercy of the former owner became very obvious in the next 30 years. Those who did not have NATO guarantees went to the bottom. Chechnya was conquered, Georgia was dismembered, Belarus was bribed, and its democracy was "gone". Crimea has become part of Russia, and Ukraine is fighting a desperate struggle for survival. "To hell with it," Bush replied when he was pointed out the risks of expanding NATO's sphere of influence. The wisest decision.
Jonathan Sumption is a writer, a specialist in medieval history and a former Supreme Court judge.
