Some Western Observers Were Caught Off Guard by Russia’s Recent Demands Regarding Ukraine, NATO, and Russian Interests

In February 1990, Gorbachev received “iron-clad” verbal assurances from U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and subsequently from a small army of Western leaders that NATO would not expand “one inch” to the east if the Soviets allowed the unification of Germany. Gorbachev was certainly naive to assume that Western leaders were acting in good faith, although there is evidence that some were. But U.S. leaders began to privately hedge before that month was out and a National Security Council memo in October reveals that U.S. policymakers were considering “signal[ing] to the new democracies of Eastern Europe NATO’s readiness to contemplate their future membership.” Documents reveal that even the ever-pliant Yeltsin voiced alarm over the prospect of NATO expansion throughout the decade. But Russia was going through a period of economic, social, and military weakness and the U.S. and its NATO allies felt they could blithely ignore Russian protests as NATO acted unilaterally in the Balkans and NATO expansion began in earnest in 1999. NATO expansion did not go unchallenged in the West. Fifty former statesmen and policymakers, including Paul Nitze, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Paul Warnke,” sent a letter to President Clinton in 1997 stating their belief that “the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO…is a policy error of historic proportions.” Cold War architect George Kennan, who had long since broken with his earlier containment policies, declared, “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”

When Putin replaced Yeltsin, he held out hope for friendly relations with the West. He was the first foreign leader to reach out to President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. He lent support to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. But his friendship was not reciprocated when the U.S. abrogated the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and invaded Iraq the following year despite fierce opposition from Russia and others. NATO expansion to include seven more former Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics in 2004 poured fuel on the fire. 

Putin publicly unleashed his growing outrage against U.S. and NATO expansion and aggression in his February 10, 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference that threw down the gauntlet against further Western encroachment against Russia’s national security interests. Putin decried the fact that “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders,” seeing it as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust” and asking, “against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

Putin went further. He denounced U.S. unipolarity–a term that neocon theorist Charles Krauthammer made famous when he declared in 1990 that with the collapse of the Soviet Union this was America’s “unipolar moment” that might last three or four decades and then amended that formulation in 2002, contending that it was actually America’s “unipolar era” that would last indefinitely. Putin repudiated the idea that there was “one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making….a world in which there is one master, one sovereign.” He went further to reject America’s unbridled militarism in this presumably unipolar world, stating, “Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force–military force–in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.”  The result was an “extremely dangerous” world rife with  “wars and local and regional conflicts” in which “no one feels safe.” He accused the U.S. of being disdainful of the principles of international law, thereby provoking an arms race as frightened countries sought nuclear weapons to protect themselves. He also indicted the U.S. for placing destabilizing missile defense systems in Europe and for the militarization of space.

Such an American hegemonic policy, he noted, has “nothing in common with democracy,” which must respect “the interests and opinions of the minority.” He deplored the fact that Russians “are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.”

Judging by the questions he was asked, listeners were taken aback by the confrontational tone of Putin’s speech. U.S. press coverage was also hostile. But U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who followed Putin to the podium the following day, recounts in his memoirs that he reported to President Bush that “from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and then in the dissolution of the Soviet Union….The arrogance, after the collapse, of American government officials, academicians, businessmen and politicians in telling the Russians how to conduct their domestic and international affairs…had led to deep and long-term resentment and bitterness.” Gates admitted that he felt but did not mention that the U.S. had “badly mismanaged” relations with Russia after George H.W. Bush left office in 1993. The rapid expansion of NATO, he understood, was a serious “mistake.” The agreement to rotate NATO troops into Romania and Bulgaria was a “needless provocation.” And subsequent attempts to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was “truly overreaching.”

Gates was correct in this assessment. Bush recklessly plowed ahead the following year with his foolhardy announcement at the NATO summit that he “strongly supported” Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. Others understood Bush’s folly and have thus far prevented that from happening. Then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, who currently directs the CIA, wrote an urgent memo back to the White House headlined “Nyet Means Nyet,” telling U.S. leaders not to cross Russia’s red lines. Burns cabled, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players… I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

In 2007 and 2008, Russia was not in a position yet to do anything about the lopsided security situation in Europe. Today that equation and the balance of forces have changed. But NATO’s provocative policies do not reflect those changes as reflected in its disastrous overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, 20 year war in Afghanistan, and new enmity toward China. Western insistence that the door remains open for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO on top of other alliance initiatives that have backed Russia into a corner and Russia’s own dangerous and provocative responses have created the most frightening global crisis that the world has seen in 60 years. If rational leaders don’t prevail on ALL sides and find diplomatic solutions that guarantee the security of ALL parties, including Russia, I fear for ALL of our futures.