[This article was first published by Centrum Balticum]
April 4th NATO will commemorate its 75th anniversary. Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine proves the continued necessity and relevance of what has been called “the most successful military Alliance in history”. However, President Vladimir Putin, blames the West and NATO for the current war in Ukraine. It might be useful to recall some historical facts.
December 17th, 2021, two months before Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine, Kremlin sent an ultimatum to NATO and Washington with demands, that if accepted, would have altered the security architecture of Europe significantly. Firstly, NATO had to guarantee that Ukraine or any other state never would become NATO Members; that means ending NATO’s “open door” policy anchored in the 1949 Washington Treaty. Secondly, they demanded that NATO withdraw military infrastructure placed in Eastern Europe after 1997; that is before the first eastern enlargement. And thirdly, it proposed that the US should end all its nuclear deployments in Europe. That would leave Russia with a monopoly of nuclear weapons on European soil.
These proposals would have given Russia a veto over NATO policy and was not acceptable to the Alliance. Although, some allies bought the Russian narrative of a NATO threatening Russian security. This was the old tune from Moscow on how Russia was excluded from cooperative security structures after the Cold War and that NATO enlargement had turned NATO into an offensive military alliance creeping up to Russia’s borders and posing a grave threat to Russian security.
Russia was never excluded from the new post-cold-war European security order. Already during the German reunification process in 1990 NATO declared that “our previous adversaries are our new partners”. Later that year the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), invited all members to celebrate the end of the East-West divide and called for a Europe “whole and free”, as it was coined in the Charter of Paris. When the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russia was accepted as the succession veto power in the UN Security Council. Independent Ukraine on its side was in 1994 guaranteed its territorial integrity and national sovereignty through the Budapest memorandum signed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in exchange for its nuclear war heads.
The first NATO-enlargement came as late as 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when sovereign Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became members.The main argument for eastern enlargement was not military, but due to political and stability concerns. The common understanding in NATO was that the new post-cold-war security order had to overcome the old distrust and animosity in Europe by offering dialogue and cooperation in place of confrontation, also with Russia. In 1997 NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, creating “The NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council”. In 2002 this was upgraded, and the NATO-Russia Council was established and signed by President Vladimir Putin who welcomed the new era of cooperation between Russia and NATO.
Three years later Putin held a speech claiming that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century. In 2007 he held his thunderous speech at the Munich Security Conference where he called out the US as Russia’s main enemy and accused the US and NATO of breaking their promise on no future NATO enlargement. The alleged guarantee against NATO enlargement is said to have been given by US Secretary of State James Baker during the discussions on German reunification. No documents have been found where a NATO expansion is ruled out. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbatsjov himself repeatedly refuted such a deal. In fact, the idea of NATO expansion beyond Eastern Germany could not have been on the agenda in 1990, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed. To argue that NATOs enlargements is responsible for Russia’s two invasions of Ukraine does simply not hold true. NATO is a defensive Alliance with no intention of conquering Russian territory.
Before Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, there were no Allied troops in the eastern part of the Alliance. During the 1990’s US forces left Europe in large numbers and European allies reduced their defence budgets to a minimum based on the idea of the so-called “peace dividend”. The main understanding in most allied countries, was that a major war in Europe was unthinkable in the 21st century.
In NATOs strategic concept from 2010 Russia was named a “strategic partner”. That was changed in 2022, when NATO calls Russia “…the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.” Vladimir Putin’s nuclear sable rattling and latest state of the Union speech leaves few hopes for change. As the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote in Washington Post September 2022, the only way to stop Russia’s “…endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism” is to “… ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without, coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive”. Russia must become a true parliamentary republic, with a radical reduction of power in the hands of one person. This is not a job for the West, but for the citizens of Russia. It will not happen tomorrow, next year or even in a decade. And it will, as Navalny knew, require courage and huge sacrifices.
That’s why, NATO 75 years ago “… founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”, is as relevant and needed as ever!
Photo Credit: The attached photo belongs to NATO and is used under NATO’s newsroom content policy.