The Russo-Ukrainian War III

NATO vs. Russia (Free)

It follows that a wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve well both the short-term and the longer-term goals of U.S. policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence-- and, through the admission of new Central European members, also increase in the European councils the number of states with a pro-American proclivity-- without simultaneously creating a Europe politically so integrated that it could soon challenge the United States on geopolitical matters of high importance to America elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East. - Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997)

Since Russia attacked Ukraine (for the second time) on 24 February, 2022, I have made almost a complete circle in my thinking about the war. As a Finn, I started with an outpouring support for Ukraine. Why wouldn’t I? Wasn’t Russia, again, attacking a peaceful neighboring country without provocation? Symphaties were running high, as you can see from my Tweets during that time (see, e.g., this, this and this).

However, as the war dragged on, I started to ask questions like, why there was no actual push for peace, especially from the Ukrainian side (Europe + the U.S.)? Who’s interest prolonging the conflict served? Why Europe is so willingly committing an economic suicide (postponed only by exceptionally mild winter)?

By mid-September, I had come to the conclusion that something was seriously “off” with the conflict and the narrative we, in the west, had been told. I just could not put my finger on it. I continued to amass information and during the past weekend reached what I consider as a breakthrough, by discovering writings of three notable scholars (two from the U.S., one from Russia).

Probably the most notable of them Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski (quoted in the beginning), was a Polish-born political scientist who served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and as a National Security Advisor for President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He was known for his very hawkish stance towards Russia and China, and as a major proponent of NATO enlargement. He passed away on 26 May, 2017.

Dr. Brzezinski considered the enlargement of NATO to former Soviet states as a very succesful peace project. In 2009, he wrote in Foreign Affairs:

In brief, NATO enlargement was historically timely and also the right thing to do. By the early years of the twenty-first century, the almost total geopolitical overlap between membership in NATO and membership in the EU made it clear that Europe was finally both secure and united.

Yet, he emphasized that “NATO has to be careful not to unintentionally reinforce Russia's imperial nostalgia regarding Ukraine and Georgia”. And, he continued:

In recent years, Russia has occasionally hinted that it would favor a treaty implying an equal relationship between NATO and the Kremlin-created (and somewhat fictitious) Collective Security Treaty Organization, which was set up in 2002.

NATO has been reluctant to consider a formal pact with the CSTO, since that would imply political-military symmetry between the two. However, this reservation could perhaps be set aside in the event that a joint agreement for security cooperation in Eurasia…

This can be considered as something of a change of heart. His ‘hawkishness’ was clearly present in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, published in 1997, which can be considered as his ‘magnum opus’. There he lays out, what can be seen as the carrying principle of U.S. foreign policy concerning Eurasia. For example, Dr. Brzezinski starts his conclusions by noting that:¹

The time has come for the United States to formulate and prosecute an integrated, comprehensive, and long-term geostrategy for all of Eurasia. This need arises out of the interaction between two fundamental realities: America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy.

Thus, it was the view of Dr. Brzezinski that the U.S. should control Eurasian development with the help of European unification. However, he also pointed, indirectly, that the U.S. should not allow unified Europe to become so strong that it would rise to challenge the domination of the U.S. That is, Europe should remain as the subordinate of the U.S., like it had been during the Cold War. It is obvious that close economic ties of Europe, Russia and China would directly challenge the dominance of the U.S. over Eurasia, and possibly the world.

Do we have any proof that the U.S. started to follow the doctrine laid out by Dr. Brzezinski? Unsurprisingly, I have not been able to find any official documents stating this, but the ‘circumstancial evidence’ is quite heavy.

For example, in early 2000’s, there was speculation of Russia wanting to join the NATO. George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led NATO between 1999 and 2003, stated in an interview in 2021 that in the first meeting with President Putin, it became clear that “They [Russia] wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west [Western Europe] that Russia was out of at the time”. Why this was not pursued is a mystery, as it could have truly guaranteed peace in Eurasia, unless it was never the intention of the U.S. to allow Russia to be integrated into Western Europe.

Thus, the question is, how did we get from a decisive period of detente and co-operation in early 2000s to yet another European war? To understand this, we need to familiarize ourselves with the (hostile) history of Russia and NATO.

The NATO and the Warsaw Pact

After the Second World War, it was the intention of Josif Stalin, then the leader of Soviet Union, to build a safety zone surrounding the south-western corner of Russia.² He relied on the assumption that the U.S. would not remain in Europe long after the war and that there would be a typical geopolitical distribution of the “spoils” after a victory over Nazi Germany.

There had been five major invasions in Russian historical memory, where the Russian state had become under existential threat.³ First one was the Polish occupation of the Kremlin in the early 17th century, the Swedish aggressions in the 18th century, the Napoleon invasion of 1812, and two wars with Germany in the first half of the 20th century. In this way, suspicion and fear of the West developed in the Russian mentality, even before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. This is probably, what created the concept bezopasnost, which direct translation is “the absence of threat”, and through which Kremlin views the situation in its neighbouring regions.

When the Second World War ended, victorious Allies did seek a common stance for European security, in vain. Soviet Russia demanded some control over governments it considered as part of the ‘safety zone’, most notably in Poland. However, Stalin had sowed the seeds of mistrust already earlier saying and acting differently during the invasion of Berlinin in 1945. In March, he had agreed to concentrate efforts of Soviet troops towards Dresden, as by request of the military command of the U.S., but in reality he continued to push towards Berlin being the first of the Allied forces to arrive there in April.⁴

The U.S., on the other, made a cataclysmic mistake under the new President Harry S. Truman just two months after. The President signed a document on 8 May, 1945 (at the day, when Nazi-Germany surrendered unconditionally), which ended the economic and military aid for Soviet Union and the U.K. immediately after Germany's surrender.⁵ This was taken rather literally by Leo Crowley, Head of the Foreign Economic Administration with, for example, ships already en route to Europe ordered to turn back. While this was taken as a sign of inexperience of the new president in London, Stalin took it as an effort to pressure Moscow politically. Seeds of mistrust had been planted on both sides.

In 1947, Stalin concluded that the U.S. would not abide to his proposition for the safety zone.⁶ This led to the imposion of Communist regime in Eastern Europe and to the blockade of Berlin, as a show of force. These actions "confirmed" the over-blown assumptions on the size and ability of Soviet forces in Europe in the minds of some western leaders,⁷ leading to, first, signing of the Brussels Treaty on 17 March, 1948, and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, in April 4, 1949.⁸ NATO was immediately seen by the Soviet leaders as the enemy, an 'aggresive tool of American imperialism'.⁹ NATO did very little to ease those fears.

In 1954, as a political maneuver, Moscow proposed that the USSR would be admitted into the NATO. This, naturally, created a political scandal with the West accusing Soviet leadership of propaganda games and efforts to disrupt the alliance.¹⁰ Lord Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General, went far as stating that this was “like an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force.” Also, according to him, it was the job of the NATO to keep “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. Moscow treated this as a proof that NATO was “anti-Russian”. The Warsaw Pact, or Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, was signed on 14 May, 1955, to counter the threat of NATO.

It’s thus obvious that hostilities between NATO and Russia (Soviet Union) were present from the very beginning of the creation of NATO. Hostilities arose from both sides and escalated further.

In 1956, Soviet Union established a principle of “peaceful coexistence” between the competing economic and political systems (communism vs. capitalism).¹¹ However, United States and her allies rejected it and tension began to grow again leading to several crises erupting between the Soviet Union and NATO, which culminated to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

However, Perestroika brought an actual detente. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987, was a breakthrough. It was followed by the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty), in 1990, and the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) in 1991.

In summer 1991, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved and in December 1991 the USSR ended its existence. Moscow assumed that the West and NATO would follow suit, but this never occurred.¹² Hopes arose that a new all-European collective security system “from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” as proposed by Secretary of State Jim Baker in 1991, would emerge. It had also been the vision of Mihail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, that there would be “a common European home,” with former rivals under the same roof. However, the new European security structure was built without Russia, on the basis of NATO and the EU. Europe and Russia did enter to a deepening economic co-operation, though.

The commitment of no further NATO enlargements were never formalized, legally, even though it was discussed. This led Kremlin to envisage the same ‘safety zone’ as Stalin, i.e., Eastern Europe.¹³ Kremlin naturally had no means of controlling this region militarily or otherwise, but it did not want the region to be controlled by a more powerful military alliance and the enemy of Moscow in Europe for decades (NATO) either.

And at this point, Ukraine enters the picture.

Ukraine: the one too many

With Ukraine, the views of the two distinguished political scholars cited above, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sergey Rogov, unite. While “the hawk”, Dr. Brzezinski, would have kept the door open for Ukraine to join NATO, any such move would have needed to be conducted in full co-operation and mutual understanding with Russia. The view of Dr. Rogov was more reserved even to speculation of Ukraine’s entry to NATO, based on the hostile history of Russia and NATO. However, both academics with opposing views on NATO, conclude that Russia should have been heard in all speculations on Ukraine’s future path. Was this done?

There’s a enlightening article by John Joseph Mearsheimer, an American political scientist and international relations scholar who has also served in the U.S. Air Force, published in Foreign Relations in October 2014. There he lays out the worries of Russia’s leaders on the eastward expansion of the NATO in great detail.

For example, Dr. Mearsheimer reports that Alexander Grushko, former Russia’s deputy foreign minister, had stated in 2008 that, “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security”. One Russian newspaper reported that, when Presidents Putin and Bush met, Putin would have stated that, "if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist". These were extremely dire warnings that Ukraine was an integral part of the bezopasnost, a ‘red-line’ for Moscow.

Dr. Mearsheimer also writes that:

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO. It was the plan of President Putin to keep Georgia weak and divided, and out of NATO. After fighting broke out between the Georgian government and South Ossetian separatists, Russian forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance.

Ukraine applied for membersip at NATO in late 2008, but shelved the application in May 2010 under the President Viktor Yanukovych. The EU also pushed eastwards on which Dr. Mearsheimer stated :

In May 2008, it [the EU] unveiled its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy. Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their country’s interests.

So, Russian leadership viewed not just NATO but also the EU enlargement as a threat. The west naturally downplayed this which, considering the mistrust which had brewed between Russia and Western Europe for five centuries, was no surprise, but failed to ease the worries of Kremlin. Dr. Mearsheimer notes: “The West’s triple package of policies—NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion—added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite”.

The turning point came in November 2013, when President Yanukovych of Ukraine rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. This led to major anti-government protests and to the over-turning of Yanukovych's administration. Kiev got a new pro-Western and anti-Russia government, which “contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists”.¹⁴

According to Dr. Mearsheimer, it was clear that the U.S. at least supported the coup with, e.g., Senator John McCain participating demonstrations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, had gone even further by directly advocating for a regime change in a leaked phone conversation. This was too much for President Putin and he took action annexing Crimea.

The 'red-line' has been crossed, likely knowingly and possibly also with the full support of the Obama administration. This can be seen, as both the 'Brzezinski doctrine' in action but going against his recommendation of “not unintentionally reinforcing Russia's imperial nostalgia in Ukraine”.

Alas, it looks like the U.S. wanted to start a conflict in Ukraine in 2013/2014. This is because, it’s really difficult to think any other explanation for the obvious treading of the ‘red-line’ of Moscow, which has to have been known by the Obama administration.

What exactly led to the war, or “special operation”, to break out in February 2022, remains clouded in mystery at this point. However, it most likely originates from the same source than all Russian conflicts in its vicinity: bezopasnost. Ukraine continued to fall to the sphere of western influence (see, e.g., this) and thus became a growing threat to Russia forcing Kremlin to act. Alas, we simply cannot rule out the possibility that the U.S. intentionally escalated the conflict into a breaking point also in February past year.

Conclusions

Geopolitics never died after the fall of the Soviet Union. NATO was not disambled and it continued to expand to the east. Right after the fall of the CCCP, Russia was too weak to respond to its threat, but she started to rearm herself in the early 2000s. This, combined with the “failure” of the West to include Russia to the new European security infrastructure, can be seen as a preparationary measure, from Russian leadership, against the threat it felt. The question is, how real this threat was?

The history of NATO, the lack of genuine push for peace from the West, and the current extremely dangerous rhetoric demanding for “full Russian capitulation” and the change in regime in Moscow, makes me think that the threat Kremlin feels have roots in reality. It seems more and more that the U.S., and NATO, is using Europe to wage a war against her opponent for 80 years (Russia). The Eurasian power structure forming between Europe, China and Russia would have risen to challenge the U.S. hegemony, and this can be seen as the motive for such worst-case scenario.

This scenario implies that all possible resources of the NATO will be used to win the war against Russia. Considering the weak armies in most of Europe, this requires that the most capable armies, like that in Finland, will be ‘harnessed’ to the battle.

I have to admit that, a year ago, I would not have seen myself writing such a scenario, but here we are. I go where the data and analyses lead. No exceptions.

Now, war drums are being beaten and the “gears” of history are turning brutally over Europe, again. We Europeans carry the horrors of war in our history, minds and hearts. Pursuing peace should be our highest aim and as a purely European phenomenon, it probably would be.

The reluctancy of Germany and France to escalate the conflict (at least thus far), by sending tanks to Ukraine, has been no surprise. They know very well the horrors an all-European war would bring. Now, however, we have to acknowledge that the war may be waged outside our Continent by a strong force (the U.S.).

As before, naivety will lead to yet another European war. That’s why ‘realpolitik’ needs to make a snap comeback. Let’s hope we can manage that.

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Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

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1. Brzeziński, Zbigniew Kazimierz (1997, p.193 ). The Grand Chessboard: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Perseus Books

2. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow.

3. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow.

4. Bjol, Erling (1984, p.64-65) Finnish translation. Kansojen Historia, vol 22: Rauhasta Kylmään Sotaan. Helsinki: WSOY.

5. Bjol, Erling (1984, p.67-68) in Finnish translation. Kansojen Historia, vol 22: Rauhasta Kylmään Sotaan. Helsinki: WSOY.

6. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow.

7. Bjol, Erling (1984, p.155-156) Finnish translation. Kansojen Historia, vol 22: Rauhasta Kylmään Sotaan. Helsinki: WSOY.

8. Bjol, Erling (1984, p.150-151) in Finnish translation. Kansojen Historia, vol 22: Rauhasta Kylmään Sotaan.

9. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow.

10. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow.

11. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow

12. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow

13. Rogov, Sergey (2009). NATO and Russia: A View from Moscow

14. Mearsheimer, John J. (2014). Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.