I want to call your attention to this piece by former NATO Ambassador Robert E. Hunter at Responsible Statecraft on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO:
Seventy five years ago today – April 4, 1949 — foreign ministers of the United States, Canada, and 10 West European countries concluded the Treaty of Washington, creating what became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The treaty committed U.S. (and Canadian) power and purpose to Western Europe to contain the Soviet Union. In the subsequent four decades, NATO was critical in ending the Cold War and Soviet suzerainty over Central and European Europe, and playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I materially agree with his assessments. Consider:
Historians will contend it is useless to revisit events and pretend that what happened in 2014 and 2022 could have been deterred. But in this case, there were leaders just after the Cold War who did try to shape European security in a way that might have avoided the current confrontation with Russia. Perhaps Putin always had ambitions to swallow Ukraine and advance Russian influence farther West. But an equally plausible (I would argue more compelling) argument can be made that the West — and later Russia — ultimately forfeited the chance to develop “history” differently.
This passage is crucial:
Even before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the H. W. Bush and later the Clinton administrations had a critical insight: A defeated Russia should not be treated with the harshness meted out to Germany in 1919, with the Versailles Treaty’s so-called War Guilt Clause that required Germany to accept total responsibility for causing the First World War. In Hitler’s rise to power, the treaty proved to be highly useful propaganda for targeting the demoralized and resentful German people.
Bush thus proclaimed the ambition of a “Europe whole and free” and at peace. As much as anything, that meant not stigmatizing Russia and, to the extent possible, enabling it to play a serious role in the new security architecture the West was putting into place instead of simply disbanding NATO and tempting fate.
NATO thus gained Russia’s membership in its flagship Partnership for Peace and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. It also welcomed Russian troops in the post-Bosnia War Implementation Force (IFOR) – the first such military cooperation since U.S. and Soviet forces met on the Elbe River in 1945.
Why, then, did the Clinton Administration proceed to treat Russia as disdainfully as it did? I completely agree with this:
Most damaging to the chances for building shared security and avoiding a new confrontation, in 2008 President George W. Bush pressured NATO to declare that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” This was clearly beyond what any major country could accept (for the U.S.: think Cuba) and violated the 1997 tacit understandings on Ukraine’s position between East and West.
Both NATO and the United States have repeated that pledge regularly ever since — ironically so, since it is virtually inconceivable that the alliance could get the required consensus of its 33 members in order for Ukraine to join.
This geopolitical folly does not justify any of Putin’s actions. But, along with further NATO enlargements and a 2014 U.S.-led government coup in Kyiv, it has helped Putin make the case at home that NATO is seeking to surround Russia.
It does raise a central question: what does NATO want? Its intention is clearly not to incorporate Russia into Europe. That would have been a “Europe whole and free”. Had that been the case when Putin floated the idea of Russia’s joining NATO 25 years ago it would have been taken more seriously. Is it to reject George H. W. Bush’s vision in favor of a new Cold War? How do we benefit from that? Is it to separate Russia from its allies and isolate it? Is it to fragment Russia?
What does NATO want?
For Russia to not invade other European countries.
Corollary- Why do European countries join NATO?
Steve
To offload the cost of their own defense on the U. S.
And why do they need such high defense spending?
Steve
“What does NATO want?”
Tongue in cheek; to stand eyeball to eyeball against the Russians on the banks of the Dnieper River fighting over the ruins of Ukraine. Or alternatively, to engage in a nuclear war.
That’s my take on Sec Blinken’s statement today, “Ukraine will become a member of NATO”.
Dave cleverly avoided answering but the reason they need higher defense spending and the reason they join NATO is their concerns about Russia. They arent worried about France or Germany invading.
Steve
Question: why were Russia’s overtures to join NATO given the cold shoulder?
Answer:
1) because it would have interfered with Germany’s 150 year old plan to Germanize all of Europe and
2) many, like steve, are just plain anti-Russian
Russia IS worried that France or Germany will invade. Why could that possibly be?
In preemptive response to charges that I am pro-Russian, careful reading of what I have written should demonstrate definitively that I am not pro-Russian. I’m just not anti-Russian. The only country that I’m pro is the U. S. I have zero interest in the U. S. going to war with Russia to promote Polish, Ukrainian, or Estonian interests. I think that Russia and the U. S. only have limited areas in which we interact but that German, Polish, etc. interests are not synonymous with U. S. interests.
NATO is irrelevant. The “Biden” administration wants the destruction of the Russian Federation, and its replacement by numerous small statelets that can be dominated by the US, like the other NATO states.
That is the reason behind the 2014 coup that installed the present nazi junta in Kiev. We now know that the Minsk accords were a ruse to give the junta time to build an army. Putin, to his discredit, thought they were serious. So much so the Istanbul ceasefire of 2022 more or less implemented them, which would have kept the Donbas in Ukraine. The US quashed that agreement, and now we have a large scale war in Europe.
Not satisfied with that war, Blinken has now promised early admission of Ukraine to NATO, and an escalation of aid to the UAF. This is an incitement to nuclear war. Putin will try to avoid WW III, but he is the only sane actor on stage. Moreover, Blinken’s statement means that Russia must, and will, conquer al of Ukraine. What they do thereafter remains to be seen, but NATO’s Ukraine will be found in Zelensky’s new house in London.
One should bear in mind that Putin is the moderate in Moscow, Medvedev is the mainstream.
Dave Schuler: To offload the cost of their own defense on the U. S.
European NATO now spends about 2% of GDP on defense, with more increases in spending likely over the next few years.
Dave Schuler: Russia IS worried that France or Germany will invade.
Any rational observer knows that neither Germany nor France nor even European NATO as a whole (as if you could unite them all in a plan to conquer Russia with conventional forces) is neither poised nor capable of successfully invading Russia. Rather, Putin thought he could take Ukraine easily, adding it back into the Russian kleptocracy. Ukraine’s courage created a bulwark protecting western Europe.
and any knowledgeable observer knows that practically EVERY country presently in NATO invaded Russia in the 20th century. US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, etc. I presume that Russia expects one or more country that bears a grudge against it (most of the countries above) will foment a situation in which the U. S. must intervene in a conflict with Russia.
I believe that Russia is paranoid on this subject. I have written that any number of times. They’re paranoid in much the same way that we are. The parallels between Russia and the U. S. have been pointed out for nearly 200 years.
Considering Russia’s paranoia, our conduct over the last 30 years has been, at best, feckless.
I’m reminded of the old wisecrack: “It’s not that I’m paranoid it’s that everybody is against me”. And Woody Allen’s wisecrack: “What’s a three letter word beginning with ‘P’ that means you think that everybody is against you? Perceptive.”
Dave Schuler: and any knowledgeable observer knows that practically EVERY country presently in NATO invaded Russia in the 20th century. US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, etc.
Which is why France still maintains the Maginot Line. You never know.
Putin and the kleptocrats use the elements of Russian society that still fear invasion from the West as a means to the end of looting Russia and other former Soviet countries.
“Eyeball to eyeball “
“With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.”
Henry Kissinger.
Leaders from many different nations want wars to continue, they’re ego- boosting, financially profitable, power concentrating.
But tens of thousands of nuclear tipped ICBMs have the power to end the whole ballgame.
NATO wants the game of limited warfare to continue. All states do. If Russia herself disappeared tomorrow the next day a new threat would appear and require renewed defense spending.
It should also be noted that many of those countries actively supported Russia when they were invaded. That Russia formed alliances with those countries to invade other countries. Anyway, my history is fuzzy. Post WW 2 who has invaded Russia?
Steve