In 1997, George Kennan, the “father” of the US policy to “contain” the Soviet Union wrote, “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian onion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
This is not to say Putin is right, blameless, or anything else. It is to say the Russian actions today were predicted and are at least somewhat connected to US policy, and considering the US role is crucial to finding a way out of this mess.
George Kennan’s a formidable authority. But he was wrong in this case. It’s only because of NATO that its member states in Eastern Europe – particularly Poland and the Baltic states – can prosper. For the first time in their modern histories, their security is not threatened by the Kremlin.
Putin wants to recreate the USSR and its sphere of influence. Imagine what he would be doing now if NATO had not expanded.
The question is, why does Putin (and presumably others) want to reclaim the USSR and its zone of influence? With the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, NATO, led by the US, did not “stand down” but instead “doubled down” on increasing its own zones of influence, rejected various treaties and agreements, and engaged in war and proxy battles around the globe. Without granting any notion of “moral superiority” or “equivalency,” it is not difficult to see how Russian governments might well regard this as a continuation of anti-Russian actions that started with, oh, let’s keep it short and start with Napoleon.
It’s pretty well summed up by the old Hungarian joke about the marvelous new Soviet breed of cows that eat in Budapest and are milked in Moscow.
Canadian farmers made similar jokes about the west and eastern Canada in the 1910s and 1920s.
Except this didn’t really happen. NATO has not expanded its zone of influence or acted against Russia since 1991 unless you define countries wanting to get out from under Russia as an attack on Russia.
Yes, the United States has increased its presence in the Middle East. But that’s not an attack on Russia unless you assume Russia has some claims to that region.
And this reiterates something I’ve said for years now. The rules are different for nuclear powers. They just are.
It was a mistake for Ukraine to have ever given up the nukes it inherited from the USSR when it broke up.
I don’t actually want more countries to have nukes, but I entirely understand why they want them. Afghanistan supported Al Qaeda and got invaded for it, Pakistan supported Al Qaeda and didn’t get invaded. What was the difference? Pakistan has nukes.
North Korea learned this lesson well, and now, can pretty much do whatever it wants, now that it has nukes. We’ll complain, but we won’t actually do anything, because North Korea has Nukes.
It’s time to stop pretending that the rules are different when a country has nukes.
I don’t see how you can say that NATO has not expanded its zone of influence since 1991;
The motive for doing so may be as you suggest, but that is a clear expansion of NATO’s zone of influence, eastward towards the borders of Russia itself. NATO now is on the Russian borders.
One of the Soviet goals for the Warsaw Pact was strategic defence in depth: before NATO armies could reach Russia, they would have to go through the Eastern European members of the Warsaw Pact.
Now, with Poland and the Balts, NATO is right against Russia. That is definitely seen as a threat by Russia, regardless if Westerners see it as simply protecting those countries from Russian aggression.
Quote is from Wikipedia:
The Wikipedia article on the enlargement of NATO has a map showing NATO expansion. It didn’t stop with Germany in 1990. Watching it, I certainly see why Russians would consider NATO has steadily expanded towards Russia.
This is a very good point. We can’t allow the specific circumstances leading to WWII to be used to analyse every subsequent possible conflict in Europe.
Especially now since there is a big third player located outside the Europe/N Atlantic zone.
Who has tacitly supported Russia.
Exactly.
I don’t see this as an action initiated by NATO. The “old” NATO wasn’t pushing the countries in eastern Europe to join the alliance. These countries were eager to join and pushed NATO to accept them in. NATO membership is not something that has ever been imposed on any country.
This argument assumes that US foreign policy is somehow neutral and good and its declared zones of influence are somehow legitimate and non-threatening to other empires that claim zones of influence.
That makes it sound as if NATO had no choice. NATO has continually chosen to expand eastwards since German reunification.
The entry of unified Germany into NATO was itself a controversial move, until Gorby gave it his blessing.
NATO could easily have said that there would be no expansion eastwards past Germany, and encouraged the former Warsaw Pact nations to form a neutral buffer state military alliance amongst themselves. Instead, NATO chose a path that put its membership line right up to Russia’s borders.
ETA: Kropotkin popped in there. I was replying to Little Nemo.
Again from the wikipedia article on NATO enlargement:
It was a conscious policy choice by the Bush I administration, and the Republican Party, to maintain US hegemony in Europe and prevent the European Union from filling the void.
Pretty much the whole 1990s post cold war period was a long series of mistakes. We thought all that shit would just work out “because freedom won”, and it didn’t.
We had a good opportunity to help build new governments in the former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries, but we dropped the ball pretty badly, and let the kleptocrats run away with them instead.
Perhaps if Russia hadn’t, I dunno, snarfed up Crimea in 2014 the Ukrainians wouldn’t find NATO so attractive.
I certainly understand why Ukraine wanted NATO protection. I’ve been responding to the argument that somehow the expansion eastward just happened, and wasn’t a conscious policy choice by the US government.
Carlson, echoing Trump, supposedly argued it is reasonable for Russia to invade Ukraine to secure its borders and that they have no further territorial claims. Perhaps this is old hat these days. If it was possible that the American advisors and intelligence services were going to “have kittens” it would have probably happened after Trump met Putin in Helsinki a few years back. That went superbly.