comments

NATO enlargement and Russia: Die-hard myths and real dilemmas

(Michael Rühle, NDC Research Report, 15 May 2014)One of the recurring claims both by Russia and some members of the foreign policy establishment in the West is that the enlargement of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members was seen as a provocation and a threat by Russia, largely explaining what has transpired in Georgia and Ukraine. This paper by a senior NATO official addresses this and related arguments in detail. Obviously an interested party, but well worth reading.

There are two aspects to this. Firstly is the matter of whether there was an explicit or implicit promise to Russia at the time of negotiations concerning German reunification to not extend NATO beyond the reunified Germany. There certainly was no explicit agreement, and key officials involved at the time (James Baker, US Secretary of State, Michael Gorbachev and then Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze) all assert there was no such agreement of any kind.

Second, there is the matter, irrespective of any promises, whether NATO expansion was a good idea, and whether the Russian response to it was reasonable. On the former, George F. Kennan, who as US ambassador to Moscow authored the famous 1946 "long telegram" that led to adoption of the policy of "containment" of the Soviet Union, strongly criticized expansion in a 1998 New York Times interview. 

At the time Kennan gave this interview, prospects for democracy in Russia seemed far more benign than now, to put it mildly. Kennan says "Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia". So why do it?

The problem with this view is that it takes little account of the views of the new democracies of Eastern and Central Europe who, given their historical experience might wonder what might happen if Russia's democratic experiment were to go sour, leaving them all vultnerable to intimidation and agression.

This paper, as well as addressing the above issues, goes in to some detail to describe measures implemented to reassure Russia at that time and since.

Excerpts   Read the article   Discuss the article   View in graph

No excerpts for this item

RELATED ARTICLESExplain
⌅
Readings
■
NATO enlargement and Russia: Die-hard myths and real dilemmas
□
Why Putin is beholden to Stalin's legacy
□
Russia's surprising military blunders in Ukraine
□
Why John Mearsheimer blames the U.S. for the crisis in Ukraine
□
A lesson in energy masochism
□
NATO members mount huge resupply operation
□
Regathering of the Russian lands
□
Vladimir Putin's clash of civilizations
□
Germany, in historic reversal, abandons pro-Putin Russia policy
□
The Russian spy boss humiliated by Putin
□
War propaganda becoming more militaristic, authoritarian and reckless
□
What's on Putin's mind?
□
Can Russia actually control Ukraine?
□
China's Ukraine crisis
□
Do race academics matter?
□
How China captured Hollywood
□
Putin's spiritual destiny
□
Introducing Race Marxism
□
The West is sleepwalking into war in Ukraine
□
Are we closer to Bradbury's dystopia than Orwell's or Huxley's?
□
Stunning new evidence re Trump spying allegations
□
Would permanently excluding Ukraine from NATO have satisfied Russia?
□
How Russia hooked Europe on its oil and gas
□
Why "anti-racism" should be resisted
□
Free speech in the UK?
□
Taking the low road: China's influence in Aust states and territories
□
The neoliberal war on dissent in the West
□
Fusion power is coming
□
The Silencing: a special report on China and the Uyghurs
□
Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an insider now?
□
A life that doesn't matter
□
America's asymmetric civil war
□
Anomalies in the Chinese Covid data
□
Australia's surprising Covid excess death count
□
Biden's budget priorities and the China threat
□
Big help with a little badmouth
□
Cancelled New York Times journalist's anti-woke manifesto
□
China: Friend or Foe? Oxford Union debate
□
China's sway over Australian universities
□
Covid and Big Pharma: The debate about cheap generic drugs
□
CRT in schools— Virginia puts NSW to shame
□
Data scientist fired from Reuters for questioning BLM
□
Does the CCP control Extinction Rebellion?
□
Facebook versus the BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong
□
Gallant little Lithuania
□
How Britain became Putin's playground
□
How feminism ate itself
□
How our universities became sheep factories
□
How to deal with the "seditionists"
□
If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals
□
Imperial College London cancels Thomas Huxley
□
Intel's groveling China apology
□
Johns Hopkins analysis disputes the effectiveness of lockdowns
□
Killing the Wuhan lab leak theory
□
Meritocracy's cost
□
New study says lockdowns don't work. Fact or fiction?
□
Proposed new terrorism law would exclude jihadists
□
Reuters: FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was co-ordinated
□
Should race matter when choosing Supreme Court justices?
□
The CCP and the problem of "elite capture"
□
The dispensable Mrs Merkel
□
The end of progressive America?
□
The failure of "Latinx"
□
The foolishness of "ugly freedoms"
□
The Ghost of Jim Crow
□
The green threat to effective climate policy
□
The histrionics and melodrama around 1/6
□
The Law of Group Polarization
□
The liberal fantasy of the Capitol coup
□
The Marxist who antagonizes liberals and the Left
□
Victims of the unvaccinated
□
Welcome to the end of democracy
□
What if democracy and climate mitigation are incompatible?
□
What the Right gets wrong about Ukraine...
□
White supremacy: The identarian Left's Theory of Everything
□
Why did scientists suppress the lab-leak theory?
□
Why is the Right so unattractive?
□
Yes, there is a counter revolution
□
Graph of this discussion
Enter the title of your article


Enter a short (max 500 characters) summation of your article
Enter the main body of your article
Lock
+Comments (0)
+Citations (0)
+About
Enter comment

Select article text to quote
welcome text

First name   Last name 

Email

Skip