NATO’s drive to the east and the Russian reaction

We have been bombarded over the past few months with relentless news coverage of a non-event: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But who is really the aggressor?

In December, Russia demanded of the United States and the NATO alliance that they sign a formal agreement that they would cease their activities to bring certain countries, particularly Ukraine and Georgia, into NATO membership and to place offensive weapons, particularly missile systems, within a broader range of countries within Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow has backed up these demands by deploying 100,000 troops near Russia’s border with Ukraine.

We are told that Vladimir Putin’s ultimate goal is no less than the reclamation of the old Soviet empire, conveniently ignoring NATO’s ongoing attempts to expand its own force to Russia’s borders.

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the accompanying end of the Cold War, NATO has been expanding eastward. NATO member Germany was reunited in 1990, and its eastern section, the former Communist German Democratic Republic, became part of the alliance. In 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, all formerly Soviet satellite states within the Warsaw Pact, were admitted.

Other former Communist states followed: by 2004 seven more counties – Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia — had joined. As well, three former republics of the USSR itself, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were welcomed that year.

NATO also saw the accession of Croatia and Albania in 2009, of Montenegro in 2017, and of Northern Macedonia in 2020. These, also, are former Communist east European entities. Even Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state in internal turmoil, is under consideration.

Russia has been clear and consistent in objecting to NATO’s expansion to the east as a threat to its vital security interests. It has been especially sensitive to any expansion into the former republics of the Soviet Union. These include Ukraine and Georgia, which are the current subjects of dispute. And though the United States for almost 30 years has thought that it could ignore the perspective of the Russian security elite, the Russians think this has gone far enough.

The expansion of NATO to include the Baltic states had already brought this American military organization, indeed an American commonwealth of nations, right up to the Russian border. Estonia is only 150 kilometres from St. Petersburg and the three Baltic countries are located astride the military approaches to all of Russia lying between St. Petersburg and Moscow. But the Boris Yeltsin-led Russia of the 1990s was a weak state in internal chaos and unable to do much about this.

Of course it’s easy to say that the Russians are “evil,” and hence their fears should be of no concern. An example of this popped up recently in a remark by former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt:

“I see that Russia complains that the West has a ‘lack of understanding’ of the Kremlin’s security demands. That’s entirely correct. Virtually everything they’ve said in the last few weeks about NATO or Ukraine suddenly becoming a threat to Russia is pure invention. Factually wrong.”

In Bildt’s eyes, it is a verifiable truth that NATO does not threaten Russia. Any claims to the contrary from Russia are “factually wrong.” Therefore, NATO should not make any concessions to Russia.

Maybe Russia is indeed “wrong” in its assessment of NATO, but that incorrect assessment is driving what it does. From Russia’s own subjective position, things look differently. NATO’s claims that it is a purely defensive alliance might ring hollow after its attacks on Yugoslavia in the 1990s and Libya in 2011. Russians might well conclude that maintaining a strong military is the only guarantee they have of not meeting the same fate.

Perhaps Vladimir Putin has taken note of a recent article, “The U.S. must prepare for war against Russia over Ukraine,” by Evelyn N. Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia in the Obama administration, and as former senior adviser to the Supreme Allied Commander, NATO.

“U.S. leaders should be marshalling an international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war,” she writes.

Also totally ignored is that Ukraine is more divided than many realize. It has a very substantial Russian population, especially in the east, many of whom wish to retain close ties to Russia. As for Crimea, which until 1954 had been Russian for centuries, ethnic Russians comprise 68 per cent of the population, followed by Ukrainians at 16 per cent, and Tatars at 12 per cent.

Putin has reiterated his commitment to the Minsk II settlement aimed at ending the fighting in the Russian majority eastern regions of Donbas and Luhansk, brokered with Kyiv in 2015 by France and Germany but never implemented. Why? It’s the Ukrainian nationalists in Kyiv who have been reluctant to grant autonomy to these areas.

The end of the Cold War could well have ushered in a new partnership between Washington, the European Union and Moscow. Instead, the expansion of activities into areas where the West has had no compelling strategic interest has brought forth renewed conflict. We are living in dangerous times.