Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, both the EU and NATO have expanded further east. Why does this bother the Russians so much? What could the West have done differently, and thus the war could have been prevented?
The war in Ukraine is entering its third week. The populations of cities such as Mariupol and Kyiv are being hit harder by the day under the Russian attacks. A summit between the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia in Antalya, Turkey, came to nothing last week. It is now completely unclear when and how the violence can end.
Russian minister Lavrov once again put the same demands on the table at the summit. Ukraine must recognize that Crimea is Russian, that the "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east are independent states and must state in its constitution that the country will never join NATO or the EU. Lavrov also said that the war is in fact the West's fault, which has forced Ukraine to choose between Russia and the West.
From a Russian perspective
Ukraine, in President Putin's historical vision, belongs to the Russian World. The countries are bound together by centuries of history, language, culture and religion. Putin set out this vision in an article last year. Not only does it reflect Putin's own views on it, many Russians also see Ukraine as an indispensable part of their cultural world. In fact, if Ukraine is encouraged by the West to break free from this unbreakable bond and opt for the West, Russia will have to intervene harshly, Lavrov said.
This is not the first time that Russia has placed responsibility for the conflict with the West. "The roots of this war lie in the expansion of NATO," the Russian Foreign Ministry tweeted on February 28, a few days after the Russian invasion.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, both the EU and NATO have expanded further east. Why does this bother the Russians so much, how has NATO stance towards Russia over the past 30 years? What could the West have done differently, and would that have made the war avoidable? The Russian violence in Ukraine is in no way justifiable. But every war has a history and is rarely the fault of one party. It is therefore good to look at recent events from the Russian perspective as well. On the way to peace, you must also be able to put yourself in the position of the other side.
Geopolitics 101
The link in the Russian ministry's tweet leads to a 2014 Foreign Affairs article by John J. Mearsheimer, a prominent American political scientist (University of Chicago). “NATO expansion is central to a West's strategy to pull Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence and integrate it into the West,” he writes. “Russia is not going to accept this. The first lesson in geopolitics is that great states always resist threats at their borders. The US would also not accept Mexico and Canada joining a Chinese-led military alliance. The West must therefore choose now:they can continue with what they are doing and continue to antagonize Russia, ultimately destroying Ukraine. Or they bet on a neutral, but stable and prosperous Ukraine that poses no threat to Russia. That way all parties win.”
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It was a warning Mearsheimer would repeat often. And he wasn't the only one concerned. George Kennan, the great architect of American Cold War policy, warned against NATO expansion in 1989. Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Nixon, warned in 2014 that the Russians saw Ukraine not as "just another country" but as "core part of their cultural home." And so there is a whole bunch of other important intellectuals with this message.
Broken promise
Although not explicitly stated in NATO principles, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 by the US, Canada and a number of Western European countries as a collective defense against the Soviet Union. The most important article of the NATO treaty is Article 5. An attack on one country is seen as an attack on all. A Russian attack on Poland, for example, is therefore also an attack on the US, France and England. With all the consequences that entails.
In 1989, the Cold War was over and the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe for decades reopened. The hot topic was whether East and West Germany should be allowed to reunite and become a member of NATO. President Gorbachev of the Soviet Union was hesitant about this. Germany had previously shown its military strength. A reunited Germany within NATO could tip the military balance in Europe in the wrong direction. Extensive research by historian Joshua Shifrinson showed that the Americans had indeed made informal promises to the Soviet Union in February 1990. Germany would become a NATO member, but after that, NATO's territory would not expand an inch to the east. In other words, the Soviet Union (which would disintegrate a year later) was allowed to continue to see Eastern Europe as its sphere of influence.
What makes it inconvenient is that Shifrinson shows in his article that in 1990 US policymakers actually already had a different agenda in mind. They wanted to expand American power over Europe at the expense of the Soviet Union, which had lost the Cold War. Central and Eastern Europe should eventually be removed from the Russian sphere of influence. NATO's future eastward expansion was seen as a good way to do that.
“The policy was intended to create the illusion that we are moving along. We had to give Gorbachev something to make him more comfortable with German reunification," Shifrinson is quoted as saying by Robert Zoellick, one of the top US advisers at the time. And President George Bush told German Chancellor Helmut Kohl:“We are going to win this game, but we have to make sure we play it smart.” NATO has since expanded to include Eastern European countries several times:in 1999, 2004 and 2009. "There is clear historical evidence that the Russians can justifiably speak of a 'broken promise' around NATO enlargement," concludes Shifrinson.
Distrust
And there is more that contributes to Russia's distrust of NATO. In 1999 NATO took action against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia. Milosevic was an ally of Russia and carried out a genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. NATO bombed Yugoslavia after a motion to legitimize intervention in the UN Security Council met a Russian (and Chinese) veto. That made the NATO action illegal under international law. In 1999 Boris Yeltsin's Russia was in an economically deplorable and therefore vulnerable state. Moscow watched as NATO, already distrusted by the Russians, launched an illegal offensive on its own against a Russian ally. This fueled fears in Moscow that NATO was no longer just defensive in nature.
In 2008, a proposed NATO expansion sparked war for the first time. The NATO summit in Bucharest (Romania) concluded by declaring that the organization was open to membership from Ukraine and Georgia. In response, Russia invaded Georgia in the summer of 2008, where the pro-Western government of Mikhail Sakashvili had been in power since the 2003 Rose Revolution.
False hope
“That NATO statement was a big mistake,” said Andrew Gawthorpe, a historian at Leiden University who specializes in American foreign policy. The statement, which can be read on NATO's website, is also rather vague. Ukraine should be allowed to participate in the so-called Membership Action Plan (MAP), a kind of preliminary phase for membership. But 'participation in MAP in no way prejudges a decision by the member states', the website also states. “That vague language was because it was a controversial point, including within NATO,” says Gawthorpe. “US President George W. Bush wanted to make Ukraine a member, but other countries, including Germany and France, thought it was unwise. Within NATO headquarters, no one really thought that Ukraine could ever join. It was therefore soon no longer seen as a serious option, because of the Russian resistance. NATO should have said that too. NATO has given Ukraine quite a bit of false hope after 2014.”
“Ukraine is much more important to Russia than to NATO,” Gawthorpe continues. “In the cultural-historical field, but also in military-strategic terms. An attack on Russia, for example by Nazi Germany or Napoleon, has always gone through the Northern European lowlands, and thus through Ukraine. And Ukraine is a large and potentially economically strong country. If it could focus entirely on the West as an EU and NATO member, it could become strong and prosperous. And a prosperous, Western-oriented state at the heart of the Russian cultural world directly jeopardizes the Russian authoritarian regime, because then the Russians see better how things can be done differently.”
Against spheres of influence?
Noam Chomsky, a leading US commentator, also warned against Ukrainian membership in NATO in 2015. “Ukraine as a member of a Western military alliance would be unacceptable to any Russian leader, not just Putin. The Ukrainian government does not protect the country due to the Ukrainian desire to become a NATO member. On the contrary. On the contrary, it threatens the country with a devastating war.'
In 2021, NATO reiterated that Ukraine and Georgia could join in the future. “Russia has no right to enforce its own sphere of influence. In our time, it is no longer appropriate for large countries to tell small countries what they can and cannot do," Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference. Gawthorpe:“NATO, and especially the Americans, always say that they are against spheres of influence, that countries can decide for themselves which alliances they join. But above all they mean that they are against the spheres of influence of other countries, especially that of Russia.”
Russia's objections, and expert warnings against further NATO expansion, have always been known to NATO. What was the reason that it continued on the chosen path? “We don't know exactly what the protagonists were thinking, we just have to wait for more archives to open. One possible explanation is that the US was too focused on the rise of China.” Indeed, that country plays a key role in President Biden's 2021 National Security Strategy. China is mentioned no less than 18 times in the document, while Russia has only 5 mentions. China is "assertive" and the "greatest strategic challenge" in the document. Russia is mainly called 'destabilizing'. Gawthorpe:“It could well be that the US has gone too much on autopilot with regard to Russia because of the focus on China. Perhaps one did not expect that Putin would really be capable of unleashing a major war.”