Hall Gardner is emeritus professor of international politics at the American University of Paris. This is the first of a two-part series by Gardner on the project of NATO enlargement.
Part I
The critics of NATO enlargement were correct. NATO enlargement would provoke a dangerous Russian backlash, a new high-tech arms race, a Sino-Russian strategic partnership―plus a loss of Allied consensus that could undermine transatlantic trust.
Now is the time to undo at least part of the damage by putting an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet even if Kyiv and Moscow can begin to iron out their differences, as promised by forthcoming negotiations to be held in Turkey on May 15th, it will still prove necessary not only to find a sustainable peace between Russia and Ukraine, but to also strive to reforge a new, and more cooperative, US-UK-European-Russia-China strategic relationship.
The Open Letter Opposing NATO Enlargement
With the backing of Susan Eisenhower’s think tank, the Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 50 former government officials, experts and academics, signed a powerful Open Letter to President Bill Clinton on June 26, 1997. The letter urged the Clinton administration to put the open-ended NATO enlargement on hold and to consider other options in which the US and Europeans could work with Moscow to forge a new Euro-Atlantic-Russian security architecture.
These alternative options included,
…opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe; developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program; supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe.”
These options could have all been pursued―in working with Moscow to forge new geo-strategic and political economic accords with the US and Europe. Most crucially, the Clinton administration could have worked more vigorously with Boris Yeltsin to significantly reduce conventional and nuclear arms, including the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, and the formal establishment of Nuclear Weapons Free Zones in eastern Europe, Ukraine and Belarus.
In working with all the European states and Russia, the US could have also pursued an “enhanced” Partnership for Peace initiative that could have provided a viable alternative to NATO enlargement by providing an integrated system of security for all of eastern Europe―in which eastern Europeans would be active agents in forging interstate and inter-societal cooperation backed by the US, west Europeans and Russia.
The Open Letter argued that “Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.”
In effect, the Open Letter represented a (largely failed) attempt to prevent Russophobia from once again dominating American global strategy―as it had from the earliest days of the Cold War.
There Were Alternatives!
An enhanced Partnership for Peace (PfP) would have sought to include, not exclude, Russia in the formation of a new security architecture for Europe and elsewhere throughout the world. Once the US and eastern European states were fully engaged in the PfP, Moscow would not have believed that it needed to forge a twenty year “strategic partnership” with China as it did in July 2001— and then again in February 2022 just before the Russian intervention in Ukraine.
NATO membership was not “the only game in town”―as US and NATO propaganda boasted in the 1990s. Not only did the founders of US Containment policy, Paul Nitze and George Kennan, oppose NATO enlargement, but so too did NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), Andrew Jackson Goodpaster (1969-74); NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General Jack Galvin (1987-92); NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (1992-93); and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1993-97), General John Shalikashvili; US Secretary of Defense, William Perry (1994-97).
Along with Paul Nitze and William Perry, all these NATO Supreme Commanders supported the Partnership for Peace as a viable alternative to NATO enlargement. Much as Perry had argued, US strategic priorities should have been focused on conventional and nuclear arms reductions and eliminations, and on enhancing the Partnership for Peace — not on moving NATO defense infrastructure closer and closer to Russian borders.
As an option to NATO enlargement, an enhanced PfP―that could have coordinated and integrated forces throughout eastern Europe backed by conjoint US, European and Russian security guarantees―would have protected a new eastern European confederation. An enhanced PfP―in dialogue with Moscow―could have provided much stronger security guarantees by deploying troops on the ground than did the weak “security assurances” provided by the US, UK, Russia, France and China to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Accords.
As Czech IR Theorist and Cold Warrior George Liska argued at the time, central and eastern Europe could have forged a strategic bulwark that would counterbalance both a united Germany and Russia. For Liska, the Czech Republic and Poland needed to work together to forge a confederation of Central and Eastern European states “that would stabilize the region in depth and for the long term.” Such a confederation would not serve as either a “bridge” or a “buffer” and would “neither be demilitarized nor neutralized.” Instead, a new post-Cold War eastern European confederation would serve as an active intermediary between Germany and Russia that would help bring Russia into a new, and more positive, relationship with the rest of Europe and the United States.
In short, the US and Europeans could have thereby helped eastern Europeans to help themselves, in John F. Kennedy’s expression, by means of working with eastern Europeans to develop their own regional system of security through the PfP backed by overlapping US, western European and Russian security guarantees.
Instead, Washington opted to push for NATO membership to the very doorsteps of a still politically and economically unstable Russian Federation. Ironically, much of the US and NATO high level military brass had opposed NATO enlargement―but the US military industrial complex, as represented, for example, by Bruce Jackson, vice president for strategy and planning at Lockheed and president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, plus most high level Clinton administration officials, such as Anthony Lake and Richard Holbrooke, among others, all strongly supported NATO enlargement as a way to assert US military predominance both over Europe and against Russia.
Moreover, in addition to support for NATO enlargement from US citizens of eastern European ethnic backgrounds, US defense firms also wanted to benefit from major military contracts, such as the 2003 F-16 “deal of the century” to Poland―given prospects that the expected rise of tensions between NATO and Russia would result in greater US arms sales to the region once Soviet/ Russian influence diminished. It goes without saying that the current Russia-Ukraine war has generated massive new US arms sales to Europe and Ukraine.
The Relevance of NSC-68
One of the signers of the June 1997 Open Letter to President Clinton was Paul Nitze who was director of the State Department policy planning staff after taking the position over from George Kennan in 1950. It was Nitze’s team which produced the anti-Communist National Security Directive NSC-68, declassified by Henry Kissinger in 1975, that provided the contours for the militarization of American containment policy after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.
Cold Warriors may have strongly opposed the Soviet quest for “world dominion,” but they―unlike US and European leaders today with respect to Russia―generally sought to cooperate with the Soviets on matters relating to the UN; on nuclear arms control agreements; and on peaceful uses for atomic energy where possible. In the words of NSC-68, to be successful, the policy of "containment" needed to always “leave open the possibility of negotiation with the USSR.”
While Cold Warriors continued to press for the “withdrawal of Soviet forces and influence from satellite areas,” i.e. from central and eastern Europe, they did not advocate for “preventive war” to achieve their goals. And they warned of the possibility of Soviet “misinterpretation” of US intentions and American “miscalculation” of Soviet reactions to US actions as a potential cause of a major power war.
NSC-68 was written just after Moscow tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949, as Moscow and Beijing were forging their 1950 alliance versus Japan and just before the onslaught of the 1950-53 Korean war (a war that was possibly provoked by South Korea) which militarized Kennan’s containment policy against a presumed monolithic Communist threat backed by Moscow and Beijing. As NSC-68 put it: Even in the event of war, over-all US objectives did “not include unconditional surrender, the subjugation of the Russian peoples or a Russia shorn of its economic potential. Such a course would irrevocably unite the Russian people behind the regime which enslaves them.”
In the contemporary post-Cold War situation, NSC-68’s Cold Warrior warnings are still relevant: The longer the Russia-Ukraine war continues, the more dangerous a politically and economically unstable Russia in fear of potential disaggregation will become. And the more politically and economically unstable Russia becomes, the greater the risk that the war will escalate and nuclear weapons could be utilized. And even if Putin somehow loses power, it is very likely that an even harder line Russian leadership―which saw Putin as not being tough enough on the US, Europe, and NATO―will take his place.
George Kennan and a Neutral Germany
Despite the fact that the US did back West German demands to unify with East Germany under a NATO aegis―which had represented a major factor in antagonizing Moscow during the Cold War―Cold Warriors did not necessarily see NATO as a panacea. Neutrality was an option. While the option of German neutrality, as proposed by George Kennan in 1949, was not pursued, the US and NATO did not fully press Sweden, Finland and Austria to join NATO at that time despite fears of Soviet military pressures―even if Denmark and Norway did join the Alliance.
In 1949, before he stepped down as director of the State Department policy planning staff (and before Paul Nitze took his place), George Kennan had argued for a unified, yet neutral, Germany―an option that would have transformed the entire nature of the Cold War. If Washington had pursued such negotiations in 1949 despite the imposition of the Iron Curtain and perceived Soviet threats to Berlin, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey during the “1948 War Scare” of President Truman’s incompetent rule it would have most likely prevented both Moscow and Washington from spending the outrageous sums on defense, while likewise reducing the prospects of a dangerous conventional and nuclear arms race.
Nevertheless, even though US elites refused to pursue the option of a neutral, unified Germany (an idea supported by German Social Democrats) and sought instead to forge a unified Germany under a pro-nuclear weapons, pro-NATO aegis, as urged by Konrad Adenauer and the Christian Democratic Union, Washington was at least smart enough to sustain, albeit reluctantly, its support for Finnish neutrality, and did not press Finland, that had implemented a system of territorial defense, to join NATO, even if Finland had lost some 10% of its territory, including Karelia, to Moscow in the 1939-40 Russia-Finnish war. Washington also backed a more ambiguous Swedish neutrality after World War II before negotiating Austrian neutrality directly with Moscow in 1955.
In the post-Cold War era, George H.W. Bush and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pressed for German unification under a federal and NATO aegis, when Germany could have been unified under either a “neutral” or else a “confederal” basis. Because Washington raised the questionable idea that a “neutral” Germany could go “nuclear” if not a member of NATO, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reluctantly acquiesced to German unification within NATO―with the oral, but not written, promise that the US would not to deploy nuclear weapons or foreign forces in eastern Germany and that NATO would not move “one inch” beyond eastern German borders. (A “neutral” Germany would have no reason to go “nuclear”―if both the US and Moscow significantly reduced their nuclear arsenals, including tactical nuclear weapons, as Gorbachev had argued.)
Despite high level US and European assurances that they would refrain from expanding NATO, Washington pressed for NATO expansion right after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991— publicly to Central European states, but also secretly to the Baltic States and Ukraine beginning in late 1994-95―even in the face of expected Russian opposition. In so doing, Clinton took the advice of National Security Advisor Anthony Lake. In his 17 July 1995 memo recommending NATO enlargement, Lake warned of an “immediate” or short-term “severe downturn in bilateral relations” between Washington and Moscow, but expected a “muted reaction” if the US promised to permit Moscow to enter the G-7, for example.
Like a good schoolboy, Moscow was expected to learn its lessons. Lake lectured that Moscow’s “strident campaigns” against the US and NATO “only resulted in self-isolation.” In Lake’s view, Russia would grudgingly accept “the reality” of American and NATO predominance, like it or not. Washington wrongly viewed Moscow’s agreement to eliminate all medium and intermediate land based missiles (as part of the 1987 INF Agreement) as capitulation. Moscow was again thought to be capitulating when it agreed to accept German unification under a NATO aegis.
Lake conveniently overlooked the fact that the 1983 deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles, coupled with the NATO’s Able Archer military exercises, came very close to sparking a nuclear war. He also refused to see risks involved in humiliating a major power like Russia. And now as NATO-Russian tensions have escalated in a self-fulfilled prophecy, particularly after the US brought the three Baltic states into NATO in the “Big Bang” enlargement in 2004. This round of enlargement put military pressure on Russian Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea / Gulf of Finland regions and thereby threatened Russia’s naval access to Saint Petersburg. Meanwhile, the formerly neutral states of Sweden and Finland moved closer to NATO, before finally joining in 2024―after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022.
A new partition of Europe appears to be in the making―unless a deal between the US, Europe and Russia can be achieved in which Ukraine would formally accept a neutral and non-nuclear status and if the US-Europe and Russia can eventually implement a new European and global security pact.
The Failure to Stop NATO Enlargement
At the beginning of the failed campaign to stop the Clinton administration from expanding NATO in the period from mid-1994 to 1997, Cold Warrior Paul Nitze faxed me in May 1995 a then unpublished editorial, “At What Price an Enlarged NATO” that he had co-written with Robert W. Chandler. I discussed the article in my book Dangerous Crossroads (1997)―which has just been reissued in paperback.
Nitze and Chandler’s article was written after Kyiv had reluctantly agreed―in response to Russian military threats and US promises of financial assistance―to give up its nuclear weapons stockpile leftover from the Soviet Union after signing the Budapest accords in December 1994―an agreement that appeared to freeze, but not settle, an “uncivilized divorce” between Kyiv and Moscow over the division of Soviet assets, debts and currency, energy supplies, transfers and financing, as well as Russian claims to Crimea, plus control over territories in the Donbas and elsewhere in southeastern Ukraine.
In outlining what should have been the basis for US global strategy with respect to NATO, Europe and Russia, Nitze and Chandler analyzed the US-NATO-Russia interrelationship with much greater foresight than did Clinton administration officials at the time. Despite the so-called “end” of the Cold War, the editorial forewarned of an imminent conventional and nuclear arms race if the US expanded NATO without forging new US and European security accords with Moscow.
The editorial explained how Moscow still saw the US as harboring “adversarial intentions against Russia”―that included “the structure and doctrine of US nuclear forces, as outlined in the 1994 US Nuclear Posture Review.” These perceived adversarial intentions resulted in Russian threats not to ratify START II. They also argued that NATO enlargement, could eventually unravel “the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe agreement as well as the 1988 INF treaty.”
Washington, they said, needed to do everything possible to “reduce the possibility that a new Russian threat can come to pass, not how to guard against it. Expanding NATO profoundly affects Russia in its domestic politics and in turn its foreign, or security, policy. Ultimately, expansion may even danger the stability and peace of Europe, as well US-Russian relations.” (italics mine)
Nitze and Chandler then defined what should have been American global strategy:
…With the vulnerability of Russia’s new democracy, pushing for NATO enlargement will likely exacerbate the existing, destructive internal pressures. A wrong move on our (US) part could easily backfire, triggering the rise to power by Russia’s nationalists, sidetracking START II and possibly unraveling other arms control agreements without which NATO will find itself back in a Cold War environment. It is far better to act on the belief that Russian nationalists are growing in political power and be wrong by curtailing NATO expansion, than it is to risk European instability in the face of a new confrontation with Moscow.”
Nitze and Chandler further emphasized that a sustainable global peace would prove impossible without a healthy US-Russian relationship: “Our long term objective should be to promote the engagement not the exclusion of Russia in Europe.”
NATO Enlargement and the Loss of NATO’s Political Cohesion
The risk of a Russian backlash in response to NATO enlargement was not Nitze and Chandler’s only concern. The other major concern was that an expanded NATO membership would risk NATO’s political-strategic unity. NATO expansion would result in a loss of political cohesion and the general sense of consensus that the Alliance possessed during the Cold War.
Nitze and Chandler’s argument against NATO enlargement was not only based upon the strategic problems raised by increasing the number of NATO members, but more upon the quality and unity of those members. NATO’s political and ideological cohesion was not only dependent upon the Alliance possessing common opponent, the Soviet Union/ Russia, but it also depended upon a clear and practical purpose involving “shared common political and economic assumptions, as well as a growing, if uneven, interdependence”―as Nitze argued more extensively in another article entitled “Less is More.”
For Nitze, the whole NATO enlargement debate lost sight of the purpose of the Alliance. As he put it, constructing NATO in the post-Cold War era “to be merely a counterbalance to potential or real Russian ambitions… risks… what credibility (NATO) may have as the contemporary guarantor of European security.”
In Nitze’s view, a military alliance could not be used to “balance” in neo-realist terms against a potential threat, but had to be designed to become “a more focused and politically practical security organization to handle crises.” Moreover, if it truly wanted to preserve peace and security throughout Europe, NATO needed to be “willing to assume an interventionist role in times of crisis.”
Yet the very process of developing an “interventionist role” with an expanded NATO membership meant it would prove difficult to get NATO members with different geopolitical interests engaged in military operations. And there was a major risk that NATO, if it opted to intervene a local conflict, could be seen as acting in opposition to the geopolitical and economic interests of not just Russia, but the interests also of other US or European friends/ allies that were not part of the decision making process involved in such a military intervention — as was the case with NATO’s 1999 intervention versus Serbia in the name of a “humanitarian intervention,” which will be discussed shortly.
And finally, the idea that expanding NATO would magically help to resolve disputes and conflicts among all the old and new member states was a dangerous one. The hope that NATO could become a “conflict resolution organization” could risk either “declawing NATO as an alliance” or else absorbing NATO’s “attention in resolving or suppressing internal squabbles among its members.” As an “integrated Alliance,” NATO was not structured to manage and negotiate either intra- or inter-mural disputes.
Irredentist Claims
Nitze and Chandler warned that not only would expanding NATO into former Soviet spheres of influence provoke conflict with Russia (and other non-NATO member states), but that the Alliance might not be able to resolve disputes with Russia and its allies nor among Alliance members themselves.
Although not explicitly discussed by Nitze and Chandler, new NATO members were supposed to give up all “irredentist claims” before joining the Alliance so as not to provoke disputes and conflict with their rivals. Yet this presumed requirement for NATO membership was unrealistic, if not farcical. Such irredentist claims have remained latent even among old and new NATO members.
Only once unified did Germany give up territorial claims to Poland and the Czech Republic―but the question of Kaliningrad, formerly Prussian Königsberg, remains dangerously problematic. Russian claims and eastern European counter-claims to territories throughout eastern Europe remain controversial as well. In addition to overt claims and counter-claims between Ukraine and Russia over Crimea, the Sea of Azov, and southeastern Ukraine, other claims and counter-claims include those between Poland and Belarus, between the Baltic states, Finland and Russia — to say nothing of those between Romania, Hungary and Ukraine, as well as those between Greece and Turkey.
And now, not foreseen by Nitze and Chandler, Trump has raised historical US claims to NATO member Canada (illustrating submerged geopolitical tensions since the War of 1812-14 that the US lost to Great Britain!) and to the control of Greenland (a self-governing territory of NATO-member Denmark) unless it opts for independence.
While it appears dubious Trump will use force against Canada or Denmark, how Trump will manipulate these irredentist claims in geopolitical terms remains to be seen.
Question of NATO Article V Security Guarantees
For Nitze and Chandler, NATO enlargement should have been “curtailed”―so as not to risk NATO’s overextension and the dissolution of NATO strategic consensus. For if there were a Russian backlash, Nitze and Chandler argued that NATO’s conventional and nuclear defense capabilities should remain in the background―not moved to the forefront into Russia’s security zone in the former Warsaw Pact―where NATO members could be subject to tactical and intermediate range nuclear missiles in the event of direct conflict with Moscow.
Article V posed yet another dilemma in case of major conflict with Russia: Would the US and its NATO allies risk a nuclear attack in order to defend one of the new members on the European periphery? Put another way: What is the likelihood Washington would sacrifice Chicago for Riga in a nuclear exchange with the Russians?
Moreover, as the enlargements of NATO and the EU remained uncoordinated, would NATO necessarily provide security guarantees to EU members in case of conflict with Russia or other states? And would NATO and EU members be able to coordinate strategy if confronted by a hostile Russian bear? And, even more provocatively, would European NATO members come to the rescue of Canada and Denmark/ Greenland against the USA―if Trump did actualize his threats to use force to either?
It has been argued that Trump’s threats to US allies represent mere hyperbole meant to pressure these states into acquiescing to US demands. Nevertheless, such threats are not conducive to building Allied consensus and cohesion and are not helpful for finding ways to better implement more positive relations with Russia, China and other perceived rivals.
In fact, Trump’s claims that NATO members might not be politically willing―or really capable of assisting the US in case the US is attacked or in case the US opts to attack another state and demands NATO support as it did in the 2003 war with Iraq―are symptomatic of a breakdown in NATO consensus in large part due to US political economic and military overextension.
And what if Kyiv does opt to deploy nuclear weapons―which Putin has denounced as a “dangerous provocation”―after Kyiv has developed laser weapons and a significant autonomous drone capability? Given the prospects of greater military escalation between NATO, Ukraine and Russia, it is crucial that the US and Europe now cooperate in working toward a complete resolution of the Russia-Ukraine and NATO-European-Russia disputes.
Wisdom of Former Cold Warriors
Once Clinton won the presidency in 1996 against Republican Bob Dole, who had accused the Clinton administration of “dragging its feet on NATO enlargement,” he could have put the NATO Enlargement process on hold in 1997.
Ironically, one of the major reasons that Clinton was seen as “dragging his feet” on NATO enlargement was precisely because he needed to make a secret deal with Boris Yeltsin in 1995. The deal was that the US would not officially start the NATO enlargement process until it was certain that Boris Yeltsin would win the Russian presidential elections in 1996.
In other words, since Clinton knew that NATO enlargement would provoke a Russian backlash once Yeltsin was out of power, he could have taken steps toward establishing a new system of Euro-Atlantic-Russian security based on an eastern European confederation and the Partnership for Peace, working with Moscow as a co-equal―as urged by the 50 scholars and former US officials who signed the Open Letter.
Yet that was the path not taken. Instead, Clinton opted for a “self-limitation” approach to NATO enlargement which excluded Moscow from the decision-making process. The first stage of enlargement was to incorporate the central European states of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Other states would join at a later date.
Although known to be Russian “red lines,” it was argued by Clinton’s National Security Advisors that the three Baltic states, Romania and Ukraine would join at a later date―but this wave of expansion was to be kept secret so as not to upset Moscow. Nevertheless, after Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were slated for membership by 1997-1999, the Congressional NATO Enlargement Facilitation Act of 1996 pressed for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, as well as Moldova and Ukraine to become members as well.
NATO accordingly began to expand its membership (and with it, the Article V security guarantees) to new members―but with the caveat that NATO would not deploy foreign forces or nuclear weapons on the territories of those new members. Yet that caveat did not convince Moscow of Washington’s presumed peaceful intentions — especially in the aftermath of NATO’s 1999 air war “over” Kosovo against Russian and Chinese ally, Serbia.
In Moscow’s view, the 1999 Kosovo air campaign was aimed more against their longtime ally Serbia than it was at protecting ethnic Kosovar Albanian populations on the ground. Moreover, Moscow regarded the war “over” Kosovo as a major violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act which had promised to “provide a mechanism for consultations, coordination and, to the maximum extent possible, where appropriate, for joint decisions and joint action with respect to security issues of common concern. The consultations will not extend to internal matters of either NATO, NATO member States or Russia.” [Emphasis mine].
Moreover, even though President Putin had offered to help with logistics in supporting the US-led “forever war” in Afghanistan after 2001, Moscow began to see the uncoordinated NATO-EU “double enlargement,” plus the deployment of US missile defense (MD) systems, coupled with NATO promises that Ukraine and Georgia could join the Alliance sometime in the future, as a means to further isolate and “contain” Moscow in the period 2008 to 2014.
In 2009, the Obama administration announced the deployment of MD and radar systems in eastern Europe after George H.W. Bush dropped out of the ABM treaty in 2002―a deployment that Moscow argued, rightly or wrongly, could be used as a defense shield to launch a first strike.
Moreover, NATO promises to expand its membership to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit―coupled with the signing of a EU-Ukraine economic “partnership” in the period 2012-14―were both interpreted as means to reduce Russia’s significant political-economic influence in Ukraine and thus undermine Russia’s “economic potential.”
In effect, Moscow’s valuable logistical support for the US-led Global War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s membership in the G8 and in the NATO-Russian Council (NRC), did little to provide Moscow with a significant voice in US and NATO decision-making. Moscow was unable to prevent the US and NATO from expanding NATO to the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania―which Moscow considered a “red line.” Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin had all consistently warned that deploying NATO’s nuclear alliance and defense infrastructure closer and closer to Russian borders would represent a significant provocation.
Nor did Russia’s NRC membership significantly modify the US decision to deploy MD systems in central and eastern Europe. The fact that President Obama promised to “reset” US-Russian relations, but then refused to engage in talks about NATO with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (during negotiations over a new European Security Treaty in 2008-09) also angered Moscow. Nor did Moscow’s membership in the NRC prevent NATO from promising to expand to Georgia and Ukraine.
All of these factors provoked a Russian backlash, ultimately leading to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, an act of preclusive imperialism that was intended to check Russian fears that Kyiv―under the new rabidly anti-Russian EuroMaidan leadership that had overthrown president Viktor Yanukovych―would someday permit NATO to base its naval capabilities and MD systems in Sevastopol.
Moreover, by exacerbating tensions, US and its NATO allies continued to boost Ukraine’s military through the Crimea Platform, which sought to take back Crimea. These actions were followed by President Biden’s November 2021 US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership which promised closer ties between NATO and Ukraine.
For its part, Moscow boosted its military capabilities and strengthened its 20-year strategic partnership with China by forging, in February 2022, a “no limits” Russia-China strategic partnership. Once its eastern flank was covered, Moscow launched its “Special Military Operation” (SMO) against Ukraine.
The SMO sought to stop Kyiv from violently repressing pro-Russian autonomous movements in the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic.” Kyiv first launched an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO) against those regions in 2014—it was renamed as a “Joint Force Operation” (JFO) in 2018. Concurrently, Moscow sought to prevent Ukraine from regaining Crimea by force. Russia’s military operation was predicted by former US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns, who, in an official memo written in 2008, described Ukraine’s membership in NATO as the "the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite.”
By seizing some 20% of Ukrainian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to carve out a security buffer in southeastern Ukraine that is intended to protect Russia’s control over Crimea and its access to fresh water from the Dnipro river and via the North Crimea Canal―as well as securing access to rare earths and critical raw materials in the region. Moscow also sought to preclude Ukraine from joining NATO or from developing an independent nuclear deterrent.
Once the brutal Russia-Ukraine war began, Moscow’s fears that the US and NATO were seeking to undermine Russia’s “economic potential” were confirmed by US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who said, “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” In addition to US and EU military and financial support for Ukraine that was aimed at weakening Russia, the US and EU placed roughly 5,000 sanctions and export controls on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
Part II will appear on May 14.
Hall Gardner’s books on global politics include Toward an Alternative Transatlantic Strategy (2021) in French and English; IR Theory, Historical Analogy and Major Power War (2019); World War Trump (2018); Crimea, Global Rivalry and the Vengeance of History (2015); NATO Expansion and the U.S. Strategy in Asia (2013); and American Global Strategy and the “War on Terrorism” (2005).
His book, Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia and the Future of NATO (1997) has just been reissued by Bloomsbury Publishing in paperback. Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia, and the Future of NATO: Hall Gardner: Bloomsbury Academic. This article represents a general summary of key points in his forthcoming works in progress, American Myopia: The Risks of the Uncoordinated NATO-EU Double Enlargement, and Reducing the Risks of War Between the Major Powers: Peace through Strength or World War Trump?
Good analysis of the historical background to the current crisis in Ukraine. Thank you for sharing it.
Small typo; ‘exasperating’ should read ‘exacerbating’.