It Didn’t Have to Be This Way

I find myself in the unexpected position of agreeing with Tom Friedman’s remarks in his New York Times column:

This is ugly, visceral stuff. Nevertheless, there is a back story here that is relevant. Putin’s attachment to Ukraine is not just mystical nationalism.

In my view, there are two huge logs fueling this fire. The first log was the ill-considered decision by the U.S. in the 1990s to expand NATO after — indeed, despite — the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And the second and far bigger log is how Putin cynically exploited NATO’s expansion closer to Russia’s borders to rally Russians to his side to cover for his huge failure of leadership. Putin has utterly failed to build Russia into an economic model that would actually attract its neighbors, not repel them, and inspire its most talented people to want to stay, not get in line for visas to the West.

We need to look at both of these logs. Most Americans paid scant attention to the expansion of NATO in the late 1990s and early 2000s to countries in Eastern and Central Europe like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all of which had been part of the former Soviet Union or its sphere of influence. It was no mystery why these nations would want to be part of an alliance that obligated the U.S. to come to their defense in the event of an attack by Russia, the rump successor to the Soviet Union.

The mystery was why the U.S. — which throughout the Cold War dreamed that Russia might one day have a democratic revolution and a leader who, however haltingly, would try to make Russia into a democracy and join the West — would choose to quickly push NATO into Russia’s face when it was weak.

He then includes a lengthy extract from correspondence with George Kennan from back in the 1990s:

I am going to share Kennan’s whole answer:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

“We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

It’s EXACTLY what has happened.

And that is one of the things I meant in my first post this morning by “botched foreign policy”. Thirty years ago we should have exerted our utmost efforts at incorporating the post-Soviet Russia into Europe. Instead we went out of our way, as the quote documents, to alienate post-Soviet Russia from Europe. But that’s not all

• We should not have dismembered Yugoslavia into ever-smaller ethnic enclaves, moved NATO troops into them, and bombed Serbia.
• We should not have invaded Iraq, a sovereign state, without Security Council authorization and without having been attacked by Iraq.
• We should not have spent the last 20 years wearing down our military in Afghanistan.
• We should not have deployed our own troops in Syria in aid of the anti-government rebels.
• We should not have allowed ourselves to become dependent on China.

What’s the relationship between those mistakes and the present situation? The dissolution of Yugoslavia began with the EEC’s recognition of Croatia as an independent state. What right did it have to do that? Do you believe that today’s Russia would have approved that recognition by the United Nations? Or was that recognition an artifact of Yeltsin’s Russia? How can we complain coherently that today’s Russia has no right to recognize Donetsk as an independent state?

Is invading sovereign states that have not attacked us and pose no material threat to us right or wrong? After invading Iraq how can we complain coherently that it is wrong?

Is aiding rebels in opposition to the legitimate government of a sovereign state right or wrong? After our actions in Syria how can we complain coherently that Russia has no right to aid rebels opposed to the Ukrainian government?

And with respect to the other two bullet points, if you’re going to make out like a tall dog, you’ve got to be a tall dog.

Do I support Russia? Absolutely not. I agree with Tom Friedman’s conclusion:

Countries and leaders usually react to humiliation in one of two ways — aggression or introspection. After China experienced what it called a “century of humiliation” from the West, it responded under Deng Xiaoping by essentially saying: “We’ll show you. We’ll beat you at your own game.”

When Putin felt humiliated by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO, he responded: “I’ll show you. I’ll beat up Ukraine.”

Yes, it’s all more complicated than that, but my point is this: This is Putin’s war. He’s a bad leader for Russia and its neighbors. But America and NATO are not just innocent bystanders in his evolution.

I have no idea how the U. S. and our NATO allies will extricate ourselves from this mess. I agree with those who are saying we’re all going to lose.