The Guardian (USA)

Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored

- Ted Galen Carpenter

Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between Nato and Moscow even more dangerous. The west’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibi­lity for this latest developmen­t, but Nato’s arrogant, tone‐deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a US foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmati­on that it did not.

Thinking through the Ukraine crisis – the causes

“It would be extraordin­arily difficult to expand Nato eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” I wrote those words in 1994, in my book Beyond Nato: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars, at a time when expansion proposals merely constitute­d occasional speculatio­n in foreign policy seminars in New York and Washington. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocatio­n of Russia”.

What was not publicly known at the time was that Bill Clinton’s administra­tion had already made the fateful decision the previous year to push for including some former Warsaw Pact countries in Nato. The administra­tion would soon propose inviting Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to become members, and the US Senate approved adding those countries to the North Atlantic Treaty in 1998. It would be the first of several waves of membership expansion.

Even that first stage provoked Russian opposition and anger. In her memoir, Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, concedes that “[Russian president Boris] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargemen­t, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerabil­ity and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.”

Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state, similarly described the Russian attitude. “Many Russians see Nato as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the west should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and

neither the Clinton administra­tion nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.

George Kennan, the intellectu­al father of America’s containmen­t policy during the cold war, perceptive­ly warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratificati­on of Nato’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”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.”

He was right, but US and Nato leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocativ­e step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had Nato perched on the border of the Russian Federation.

Moscow’s patience with Nato’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich security conference. “Nato has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. Nato expansion “represents a serious provocatio­n that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolutio­n of the Warsaw Pact?”

In his memoir, Duty, Robert M Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administra­tions of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, stated his belief that “the relationsh­ip with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George HW] Bush left office in 1993”. Among other missteps, “US agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian government­s to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocatio­n.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into Nato was truly overreachi­ng”. That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests”.

The following year, the Kremlin demonstrat­ed that its discontent with Nato’s continuing incursions into Russia’s security zone had moved beyond verbal objections. Moscow exploited a foolish provocatio­n by Georgia’s pro‐western government to launch a military offensive that brought Russian troops to the outskirts of the capital. Thereafter, Russia permanentl­y detached two secessioni­st‐minded Georgian regions and put them under effective Russian control.

Western (especially US) leaders continued to blow through red warning light after a red warning light, however. The Obama administra­tion’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrat­ors overthrow

Ukraine’s elected, pro‐Russia president was the single most brazen provocatio­n, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediatel­y responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway with a vengeance.

Could the Ukraine crisis have been avoided?

Events during the past few months constitute­d the last chance to avoid a hot war in eastern Europe. Putin demanded that Nato provide guarantees on several security issues. Specifical­ly, the Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce the scope of its growing military presence in eastern Europe and would never offer membership to Ukraine. He backed up those demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders.

The Biden administra­tion’s response to Russia’s quest for meaningful western concession­s and security guarantees was tepid and evasive. Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters. Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.

The Ukraine tragedy

History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportion­s. It was entirely predictabl­e that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequenc­es, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the US foreign policy establishm­ent’s myopia and arrogance.

Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Carpenter served as Cato’s director of foreign policy studies from 1986 to 1995 and as vice-president for defense and foreign policy studies from 1995 to 2011

This piece originally appeared in 19fortyfiv­e

 ?? Photograph: Mindaugas Kulbis/AP ?? ‘Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.’
Photograph: Mindaugas Kulbis/AP ‘Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.’

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