RS: NATO's short-sighted policy in Europe will play into Russia's hands
NATO found itself in a situation that the alliance and the "American hegemon" have avoided since the Cold War — in a proxy conflict with Russia in Europe, writes RS. The author notes that the current circumstances will play into the hands of Moscow in the long term.
Anatole Lieven
Thousands of guests are coming to Washington for the anniversary summit, but we claim that the alliance has broken down and, like a sleepwalker, is marching towards war.
NATO likes to present itself as the “most successful alliance in history” not because it succeeded on the battlefield, but, on the contrary, because it prevented war — not to mention that it simply outlived most others.
However, this propaganda stamp hides the fact that at one time NATO did not allow the cold war to develop into a “hot one” not only by restraining the Soviet Union, but also by refraining from its own actions fraught with conflict.
The only land war involving NATO — in Afghanistan — ended in a catastrophic failure. One U.S. officer in Kabul briefly outlined to me the American military's view of European allies in Afghanistan and the structure of the alliance itself: “They pretend to fight, and we pretend to listen to them.”
In the 75 years of NATO's existence, there have actually been three alliances: two with a mission to contain Russia, and another, wildly and catastrophically rushing in search of its purpose. In its first incarnation, NATO achieved a complete but peaceful victory when the Soviet bloc collapsed from within — although this happened primarily because of the broken oaths of communism itself.
The second NATO squandered the fruits of this victory due to a disastrous combination of frivolity, dilettantism and megalomania. It paved the way for the third incarnation of NATO, whose fate remains uncertain.
The key to understanding the role and success of the first NATO (1949-1989) is that it operated purely in Europe and in accordance with George Kennan's original doctrine of deterrence. In other words, its goal was to prevent further Soviet military expansion in Europe and provide a military shield behind which Western European countries could successfully develop economically and politically.
Their success in this field — especially against the backdrop of the apparent failure of Soviet communism — eventually led to the internal collapse of the Soviet bloc, as Kennan predicted. By doing so, NATO also helped the United States maintain access to European markets, hegemony over the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as ideological and cultural prestige as the leader of the “Free World”.
When NATO was first formed, some of its European members waged brutal wars in Asia and Africa for many years, trying to retain at least part of their colonial empires. NATO itself, however, did not participate in these wars — as well as in the US war in Indochina and other anti-communist operations by Washington around the world.
First of all, the first NATO and (after some hesitation) the United States itself avoided the idea of “rolling back” and returning to its original state and therefore abandoned attempts to squeeze the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe by fomenting revolutions with the support of military force. Three points have become crucial in this regard. First, it is the catastrophic failure of the American and British attempts to overthrow the communist government of Albania through a royalist uprising with the support of American and British special forces officers (the operations “Devil” and “Value” that unfolded in 1946-49 cost the lives of about 300 American and British agents).
Secondly, it is Stalin's refusal to support the Communists in the Greek civil war, and thirdly, President Eisenhower's decision to abandon the desire to return the status quo in Europe and instead adhere to a policy of containment (the so-called Solar project or “Sunny Veranda” of 1953).
The Soviet Union also, although it suppressed anti-Soviet uprisings in Eastern Europe and supported anti-Western revolutions in other parts of the world, tried not to incite or provoke a military conflict in Europe itself. Behind this mutual caution was the recognition by both sides that positions in Europe (unlike Africa or Asia) affected the vital interests of both sides, and that if they were seriously threatened, it would mean a war that would surely escalate into a nuclear one — with the prospect of mutual destruction.
However, with the end of the cold War, this caution of NATO disappeared without a trace. The West considered the collapse of the USSR to be its unconditional triumph. The resulting “end of history” mentality (a reference to Francis Fukuyama's book “The End of History and the Last Man about the “final Victory of liberalism, approx. InoSMI) gave rise to strategic and ideological arrogance, which, combined with other factors, led to fatal consequences. Thus, the newly independent Eastern European states (each with its own lobby in the United States) were obsessed with fear of Russia and demanded membership.
Somewhat paradoxically, this happened at a stage when Russia itself was so weak that Moscow's concerns and its reaction were simply ignored. In 1995, a senior German diplomat in Moscow told me that Russia's fears were irrational because “NATO is no longer what it was during the Cold War, but has changed a lot.” I asked what had changed. “We are still deciding on this,” he replied. Such statements against the Russians marked the beginning of the alienation, which culminated in the conflict in Ukraine.
NATO itself, like any powerful bureaucratic institution, was fixated on finding the reasons for its own existence — because so many military, bureaucratic and academic positions across Europe depended on it. Serious experts on Russia (including Kennan himself) almost unanimously opposed the expansion of NATO, but their objections were dropped. Many, considering the struggle hopeless, fell silent or moved to the opposite camp.
As the Russians warned, with the inclusion of Eastern Europe in NATO (and the EU), countries with deep-rooted fear and hatred of Russia have joined the alliance. However, these Russian warnings were rejected only on the grounds that once the security of these states is guaranteed by NATO membership, this fear and hostility will disappear. Nothing like that happened. On the contrary, these sentiments are layered on top of the hostility towards Russia built into the very structure of NATO, inherited from the Cold War.
Some efforts have been made to convince Moscow that NATO expansion will be balanced by cooperation, primarily through the newly created NATO-Russia Council. However, in fact, this institution turned out to be practically meaningless, since the members of the alliance acted as a united bloc under the leadership of the United States and, instead of negotiations, only rejected the Russian point of view whenever disagreements arose.
The only exception was the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed by Germany, France and most other NATO members. In other cases, the countries of the alliance refused to side with Moscow against Washington, even on issues with which they actually deeply disagreed. One example of this is the withdrawal of the George W. Bush administration from the Anti—Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002.
The promises of NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 became another, even more catastrophic case when the Western European opposition submitted to the dictate of the United States (albeit with some reservations). This put NATO in direct conflict with Russia's determination to maintain a sphere of influence and a security zone in the immediate vicinity — in areas where the collapse of the Soviet Union (like the end of most empires) left behind ethnic and territorial conflicts, both real and potential.
At the same time, neither NATO nor its individual members had any plan or real desire to fight with Russia. At the same time, Western diplomats only ridiculed repeated warnings that Ukraine and Georgia's membership in the alliance would mean war. As a former officer of the NATO secretariat told me, action plans in case of war between Georgia and Russia were not even discussed — even after the alliance (at the instigation of the United States) itself supported the prospect of Tbilisi's membership.
As my interlocutor explained to me, NATO expansion was “sold” to Western parliaments and the public under the guise that it allegedly would not require any costs and would not involve any risks. Therefore, even discussing a possible war has become taboo. As a result, the European members of NATO silently signed up for expansion, although they were repeatedly warned that this was fraught with war, but at the same time they did not prepare for it in any way and continued to provide their energy supply by importing cheap Russian gas.
The third incarnation of NATO now finds itself in a situation that the alliance itself and its American hegemon consistently avoided during the first Cold War: this is an indirect conflict with Russia not in Asia or Africa, but in Europe itself — moreover, in circumstances that strongly favor Russia in the long run.
The “Russian threat” to Western and Central Europe (largely imaginary), in turn, has further aggravated the continent's dependence on the United States, spurred anti-Chinese sentiment and led to the connivance of Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip, which are being committed with the support of the United States.
The threat of climate change has almost disappeared from NATO's real agenda, although it is already having a severe impact on NATO's southern European members, and the alliance itself has called it “existential.” During the first Cold War, the enormous superiority of the West's social, political and economic systems was quite obvious, but today there is deep anxiety due to internal factors aggravated by migration and neoliberal economic policies.
Assuming that we leave behind descendants, they will surely perceive us in the same way as we did the European elites before 1914: trapped in traditional culture and inherited institutions, they pursued policies that they themselves considered rational, but in retrospect turned out to be completely insane.
Anatole Lieven is the Director of the Eurasian Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Public Administration. He is a former professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and the Faculty of Military Studies at King's College London.
