Addressing The NATO Question

As appealing as certainty is, it is unhelpful to seek it on the subject of Ukraine. If the actions of the UK’s Russian ambassador are anything to go by, the Kremlin cannot be taken for its word. But neither, as regrettable as it is to say, can the words of our own politicians. It was outright fantastical if not immoral of our politicians to ‘catastrophise the catastrophe’ by publicly speculating on the likelihood of Putin’s offensive stretching beyond Ukraine into the Baltics, Finland, and Sweden. They know perfectly well that they haven’t the faintest idea what they are saying. 

Given the consequences involved in an all-out-war in Europe, however, what one can be relatively assured of—particularly in light of the prolonged wait leading up to the beginning of the operation—is that the threat of an invasion of Ukraine was the most powerful card that Putin had to play. It is for this reason that it is arguably more accurate to regard this war as a consequence of a seismic diplomatic failure between NATO and the Russian Federation, and not the result of the whims of a ‘madman’ who had already decided on the course to invade Ukraine anyway. 

In December 2021, Putin put forward conditions to NATO for Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian border. This included a ban on Ukraine entering NATO, a limit on the deployment of troops and weapons to NATO’s eastern flank, and the return of forces to where they were stationed in 1997. NATO could have compromised, but they unanimously rejected the Kremlin’s demands and adamantly refused to revise their “open door policy” on membership. This ongoing stalemate has effectively brought us to where we are today with Ukraine, and the question that begs is whether retaining the integrity of the NATO alliance is actually assuring the security of the citizens of the West or placing them in danger, having been based on fundamentally outdated political precepts ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. 

NATO’s foundations are, of course, traceable to the dividing lines left over from 1945, when the final throes of the Second World War brought to an end to the uncomfortable-but necessary allegiance between the United States and the Soviet Union. In character with the conditions it had set for aiding the United Kingdom in its efforts against the Nazi incursion (the lending of military supplies in return for the leasing of land to establish their military bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland), the US set about attempting to rebuild Europe in its image through facilitating economic and social integration between itself and continental Europe. ‘The Marshall Plan’ was the US’ way into Europe, and the Soviets—out of their own socioeconomic volition as communists—had no desire to be a part of it. 

It was this rejection of the US’s vision for a New World Order which effectively laid out the cornerstones for the Cold War. Following two US-backed civil wars in Greece and Turkey, a Soviet coup of Czechoslovakia (which brought the border of communism even closer to the Western bloc), and most significantly of all the Berlin crisis in 1948, the fault lines of the Iron Curtain were very much established.

This strategic aggression from the Soviets motivated the US to solidify security commitments within the Western bloc, and this they did by getting nation-states to jointly commit to the principle of collective defence that would bring all parties into war should an attack on one take place. Commitment to this principle began with the Brussels Treaty signed in 1948, and later evolved with Article 5 into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1952, with the US, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the UK as its original signatories. In 1952, the eastward expansion continued: Greece and Turkey were admitted, followed by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. Given the Soviets’ unprecedented involvement in the Korean war four years after the Berlin crisis, it could be argued that the geopolitical decision behind NATO’s expansion was not entirely disproportionate. 

Having narrowly avoided catastrophe with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and Operation Able Archer in 1983, the Soviet Union to the relief of many would eventually dissolve without major conflict in 1989. Those of an optimistic persuasion could have claimed at this point that the purpose of NATO had been served, that it should be dissolved, or at the very least begin a slow process of remission to alleviate the risk of an aggressive geopolitical counter reaction from developing economies such as China. 

The US, however, chose to do neither, opting instead to all-but-officially oversee the establishment of political legitimacy in Russia to the most pro-Western candidate, Boris Yeltsin, whilst simultaneously expanding eastwards to subsume the states that the USSR had lost. The US not only continued to lobby for the continued expansion of NATO into ex-Soviet countries, but also continued to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs. This was particularly apparent in the 1996 election, when Washington lobbied the International Monetary fund to give Russia a $40,000,000,000 loan as a subtle way of financially aiding Yeltsin’s campaign. If anything was the greatest strategic blunder on the part of the US, in hindsight, it was probably this one. It was US political meddling in combination with Moscow’s permanent ostracism from NATO that effectively made it clear that the West’s parent power would never respect Russia.

Perhaps it was this that put the bee in Putin’s bonnet. Yes, Yeltsin won the election in 1996 against what looked like a hopeful attempt at re-election, but this didn’t change the fact that confidence in him was still waning. Voices within and outside the Russian administration, one being Putin himself, without question were becoming increasingly antagonistic to the US’s continued encroachment on Russian internal affairs. This was all but a few years before the US’s illegal intervention into Iraq and Afghanistan, which in the eyes of those other than Putin was probably sufficient to prove its open double standards in upholding the integrity of international law.

In the meantime, NATO expansion went on with Russia as the encircled enemy. The post-Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia all joined the alliance in 2004, with Georgia and Ukraine entering into “intensified dialogue.” Having clearly judged that the ‘advance to the east’ had gone far enough, Russia committed to the political destabilisation of those regions of interest. Upon the separatist uprisings of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, then-President Dimitri Medvedev sent troops to back the separatists for the purpose of thwarting the country’s realignment with the Western power, presumably on the suspicion that it would have led to military might being brought ever-closer to the Russian border. 

Without question, the intervention in Georgia was a disproportionate act of aggression from the Kremlin. Still, it would be overreaching somewhat to call it ‘unprovoked’. In any case, the West’s response was fairly weak in the end; weak enough to give credence to the argument that had they responded with a firmer hand, it could have prevented the annexation of Crimea six years later in 2014. Taking this view, however, would involve holding to a one-sided account of the events that precipitated the annexation. 

The then-President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych was elected in 2010 with a mandate to both continue the process of European integration and improve ties with Russia. By November 2013, however, Yanukovych had turned his back on the EU association agreement that would have brought Ukraine closer into line with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, opting instead to develop closer economic ties with the Eurasian Economic Union. From this emerged the infamous Euromaidan Protests, occurring predominantly in the Western and thus more Eurocentric section of Ukraine. They, much like the Vote Remain camp today who continue with all their ferocity to claim that wishing for the UK to leave the EU is not something a good, rational person could have done knowingly, believed that ‘their future had been stolen from them’. A series of violent riots spread throughout the country as a result of the declaration of Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the EU deal. 

But rather than to deescalate the situation, or perhaps even leave it entirely as an internal affair for Ukraine to resolve for itself, NATO and the European Union saw an opportunity to bring the rejected agreement back to the table. Then-Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, all but directly accused Russia of encroaching on Ukraine’s democratic sovereignty through intimidating them into the EEU. The EU, however, a bloc widely recognised as an arm of NATO, were more shameless in their delight. This was apparent in the actions of Commissioner Stefan Füle, former EP President Pat Cox, Mr Brok, and Mr Saryusz-Wolski, who all voiced their “strongest support” to those protesting against the government's decision to “depriv[e] them of [a] European future” before stressing that the door to the EU remained open to the Ukrainian people.

Of course, the extent to which the protests and subsequent outcome of Yanukovych’s exile from the country were influenced by NATO’s endorsement, and whether this endorsement was the cause of the political swing in Ukraine is a matter of pure speculation. But what is not speculative is the hypocrisy involved in the West’s reaction to Russia’s counterreaction in the form of its annexation of Crimea. Rasmussen’s response was to state that the annexation was a breach of international law, and more specifically a violation of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which obliged all signatories (the US, UK and Russia) to recognise the borders and democratic sovereignty of Ukraine. Put simply, the Western alliance seemed to forget that the concept of democratic sovereignty entails letting the country decide for itself what future it wanted—and abstinence from involvement in coup d’etats whenever there may be a desirable result depending on the way that it goes.

So while Russia did themselves breach the terms of the agreement by carrying out a referendum of which they had no legal authorisation to hold despite the strong support for rejoining the ‘motherland’, it would be misguided to claim that the agreement had the same legitimacy by the time they stood accused themselves. The uncurtailed dogmatism of this Eurocentrism translates into arrogance given the complexity of Ukraine’s cultural identity, the Russian part of which, since 2014, have said they were willing to risk going to war with Kyiv’s unrelenting pursuit of ever-closer integration with Western Europe. It is indeed demonstrable that such cosyings up to Europe have already come to the cultural (and in some cases economic) detriment of so many nations suffering from the abstract universals of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’.

Thus, the question begs where NATO goes from here. Such questions are particularly pertinent now that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will likely mean the organisation’s project of extension into Eastern Europe will come to a grinding halt (that is unless Russia is forced to retreat because the losses are simply too great to justify continuing). 

One remedy could be to realign NATO’s sights on suppressing the growth of China by reducing its member states’ dependence on imports. The Kissinger Institute on China and the US recently took an interest in Putin and President Xi Jinping’s pact against NATO’s geopolitical strategy in Beijing, which included the public release of a joint 5000-word statement from both leaders who stated their position that NATO’s insistence on continued expansion undermines international security. Whilst the institute perceived the statement as the drawing out of the permanent battlegrounds, though, this is, characteristic of Henry Kissinger, a dogmatic account. Russia and China, because of a joint, and up to this point, now dysfunctional enemy, are united by circumstance, not ideology. It is an alliance unlikely to last for decades to come given China’s own imperial ambition to establish itself as the dominant economic power. This is without mentioning Russia’s possible future dependence on Chinese technology, the security risks of which are already well documented. 

Given the threat of further Chinese military growth in the next few decades, and with China set to become the world’s largest economy in 2028, it would be reckless to suppose that NATO should be disbanded. But with the likelihood that Russia will take Ukraine militarily, it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue against NATO’s need to end its commitment to eastern expansion. If it continues to refuse to move from its red lines, something far more regrettable than we have already seen will probably happen.

It is simply irresponsible to continue to argue that Putin had placed troops on the border of Ukraine because he had already decided to invade. We don’t know this as much as we don’t know Putin’s ultimate end game, if he even knows this himself. All we do know is that the threat of invasion was simply the best strategy he had to gain concessions from NATO, and he was stonewalled. This is not to direct blame away from the sheer criminality involved in this war. But the diplomatic recompense, if there is any, will likely involve, regrettably, accepting that the West misjudged the situation from the start. This they are continuing to do at the potential peril of everyone else.