NATO’s Enlargement and Russia

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Foreword A Europe “Whole and Free” Will Not Be Possible Without Russia

Note by the Series Editor

Introduction

Looking for Historical Unlocking Issues of Strategic Stability

Nuclear Deterrence A Guarantee or Threat to Strategic Stability?

50 Years Ago: Kennedy, Brandt, Nixon A Model for 21st Century Statecraft?

A “Great Prize,” But Not the Main Prize British Internal Deliberations on Not-Losing Russia, 1993–1995

The Clinton Administration and Reshaping Europe

Russia and NATO Security Guarantees as a Strategic Challenge for Central and Eastern Europe

Central European Security and Russia

The Ukraine Conflict Lessons for NATO, Kyiv and Their Future Relations

Damage Control The Breach of the Budapest Memorandum and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Lost and Real Chances in Western-Ukrainian-Russian Relations An Interview

Russia as a Security Challenge of Tomorrow Some Clues

Strategic Decentering Moscow’s Ideological Rhetoric and its Strategic Unconscious, 2012–2020

Foundations of Current and Future Security Relations Between Russia and NATO Member States Narratives, Capabilities, Perceptions and Misperceptions

Cooperation vs. Confrontation German-Russian Security Relations Between Geopolitical Poles

On the Misperception of Russia’s Foreign and Security Policies

Russian Military Policy and Moscow’s Approach Towards the West

Concluding Remarks

Foreword

A Europe “Whole and Free” Will Not Be Possible Without Russia

Vladimir V. Kara-Murza

On December 20, 1991, as NATO diplomats gathered at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels to meet with counterparts from the former Warsaw Pact countries, the Russian envoy, Nikolai Afanasyevsky, made two surprising announcements. With the first, he asked for the words “Soviet Union” to be struck from the communiqué, reflecting a reality that would take Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev five more days to recognize. With the second, he read out a letter from Russian President Boris Yeltsin to NATO Secretary-General Manfred Wörner. Vowing to work toward fostering “a climate of mutual understanding and trust, strengthening stability and cooperation on the European continent,” the Russian leader—the first to be democratically elected in the country’s history—affirmed that he was “raising a question of Russia’s membership in NATO … as a long-term political aim.”1

“Formed four decades ago to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, [NATO] now finds itself having to deter a stampede from the newly liberated Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which want to join the Western alliance,” noted The New York Times’ dispatch from the meeting, summarizing the challenge before the Transatlantic community.2

Three decades on, the results of NATO’s response to that challenge have been mixed—as testified to by the questions posed in this volume, edited by Oxana Schmies, that brings together some of the best strategic minds from both coasts of the Atlantic and both sides of the former Iron Curtain. On the one hand, NATO enlargement has been a resounding success, doubling the number of member states and expanding the zone of freedom and security to an extent unimaginable by participants of that December meeting. On the other hand, it has proven to be a dismal failure, having led to a new dynamic of confrontation between the Western alliance and Russia—Europe’s largest country, without which the celebrated goal of a Europe “whole and free” is unachievable by definition.

This question—of Russia’s place in Europe and in the Euro-Atlantic community writ large—is central to any discussion about NATO (and, although this falls outside the scope of this volume, European Union) enlargement, with regard to both analyzing the past and preparing for the future. Indeed, these two goals are closely connected: studying past mistakes is a prerequisite for avoiding their repeat.

It appears that one of the West’s gravest mistakes in the early 1990s was its unpreparedness to deal with the challenge of integrating a democratic Russia as one of its own. So far-fetched seemed the very prospect of a democratic Russia in the late 1980s, so confident seemed the predictions by Western analysts that the Soviet regime was secure and not going anywhere, that when reality altered these predictions in 1991 Western leaders were unsure how to respond. According to contemporary press accounts from the Brussels meeting in December 1991, after President Yeltsin’s statement was read out “NATO officials, from Secretary-General Wörner on down, seemed too taken aback by the Russian letter to give any coherent response.”3

Yet that response—if well prepared and correctly pitched—could have proven crucial at a critical time. As many policymakers from Central and Eastern Europe have attested, the prospect of Euro-Atlantic integration played a key role in these countries’ successful transition to democracy and a free market in the 1990s. Indeed, in his February 1990 address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress Václav Havel, the new president of Czechoslovakia, chose to frame that whole transition in terms of his country “returning to Europe.”4 The promise of a full-fledged integration—not only with the reassertion of former Eastern Bloc countries as “fully European” but also with tangible benefits to their citizens in the form of open markets, free trade, and visa-free travel—served as a powerful incentive to political elites for persisting in and successfully completing the post-communist transformation.

No such incentive was offered to the reformers in Yeltsin’s government. While Russia was admitted into the Council of Europe and the G8—the former giving Russian citizens important protections under the European Convention on Human Rights and access to the European Court, the latter the symbolic status of a respected world power—the benefits of “first-track” European integration remained out of reach. Accession to the European Union—which, under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty, was supposed to be open to “any European state”—was not offered to Yeltsin’s Russia even as a distant possibility; while it was only in 1995 that Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev (as he recalls in his recently published memoir, The Firebird) finally received assurances from the Clinton Administration that the U.S. would be open to future Russian membership in NATO.5 By then, the democratic window of opportunity in Russia itself was rapidly closing for reasons of domestic politics and a botched post-communist transition that would warrant a separate discussion of its own.

It is well known that Russia’s foreign policy is closely linked to domestic political developments. Democratic aspirations at home translate into a more friendly and progressive international posturing; testimony to that are President Yeltsin’s efforts in support of the independence of the Baltic States in the waning says of the Soviet Union—efforts backed by Russian public opinion at the time. The reverse correlation was persuasively demonstrated after Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. Having begun his rule by silencing independent media voices, taming parliament and the judiciary, fixing elections, and going after opponents, he proceeded with a multitude of foreign entanglements, including actual wars in Georgia and eastern Ukraine and, with Crimea, the first state-to-state territorial annexation on European soil since the end of the Second World War. There is no reason to expect a regime that tramples on the rights of its own people and violates its own laws to respect international norms or the interests of other nations.

Just as the retreat from hope and cooperation of the 1990s to confrontation and what some analysts are terming the “new cold war” of today has resulted mainly from Russia’s domestic turn to authoritarianism, so another window of opportunity for East-West relations will likely come from a renewed demand for freedom in dignity in Russian society. The signs of what may be to come are already there, from the recent mass protests in Moscow and Khabarovsk to an increased participation of Russian youth in civic and political life to opposition successes in local elections to a marked decline in Putin’s popularity (however credible it was in the first place, given the inevitable slant in opinion polls under an authoritarian system). A post-Putin democratic Russia may seem as implausible today as the fall of the Soviet system did in the late 1980s. But it is never a bad idea to be prepared. The authors and editors of this volume deserve great credit for helping to lay the groundwork for such preparation.

Vladimir V. Kara-Murza is a Russian opposition politician, author and filmmaker. He serves as chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and vice-president of the Free Russia Foundation.

1 Friedman, Thomas. 1991. “Soviet disarray; Yeltsin Says Russia Seeks to Join NATO.” New York Times, December 21, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yeltsin-says-russia-seeks-to-join-nato.html.

2 Ibidem.

3 Friedman, Thomas. 1991. “Soviet disarray; Yeltsin Says Russia Seeks to Join NATO.” New York Times, December 21, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yeltsin-says-russia-seeks-to-join-nato.html.

4 C-SPAN. 1990. “Czechoslovakian President Address.” Accessed January 19, 2021. www.c-span.org/video/?10917-1/czechoslovakian-president-address.

5 European Union. 1992. “Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht, February 7, 1992.” Official Journal of the European Communities 35: 1-67. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:1992:191:FULL&from=EN; Andrei Kozyrev. 2019. The Firebird: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 269.

Note by the Series Editor

The present volume somewhat departs from the usual format of SPPS volumes in that most of the well-informed texts published in this collection constitute revealing individual testimonies rather than traditional research papers. Many of the authors assembled here by Oxana Schmies have themselves participated, to one degree or another, in the shaping of post-Soviet East European geopolitics. Some academics provide their policy reflections and opinion pieces on burning issues in Russian-Western relations instead of conventional hypothesis testing, process tracing, or theory building.

The volume is both, a unique documentary anthology on recent historical events and a significant intervention into an ongoing heated public debate in Europe and North America. The book was explicitly designed to reach a larger readership beyond the Ivory Tower. It should be of interest to an academic audience in view of the disputational or/and witness character of some of its statements. But its deliberations and recommendations should also be relevant to potential readers active in politics, diplomacy, journalism, as well as various governmental and non-governmental organizations.

A.U., Kyiv, March 2021

Introduction

Oxana Schmies

NATO’s eastward expansion partly addressed and partly exacerbated various unresolved European security problems that followed the end of the Cold War, making the Alliance’s enlargement one of the quintessential issues of contemporary international relations. This is premised on both NATO’s self-image as a political and military organization adhering to Western values, and the fact that Russia has never been integrated into it. NATO and the USSR/Russia have been interdependent since the alliance was formed, necessitating a continued search for mutually adequate security solutions by the West and Moscow. This will remain so at least until a more profound institutional change in or with NATO comes to pass.

A reassessment of NATO enlargement and the historical experience of NATO’s relationship with Russia since the 1990s can help develop a new strategy toward Russia. Since such a strategy is still evolving, now seems the right time for multi-layered policy recommendations. What does this book aim to be?

 It is a look on NATO and Russia primarily from outside of perspective of a “Russian challenge and Western response.”

 It is a look on NATO predominantly in its political dimension.

 It is a look at the period before and after NATO’s eastward expansion.

 It is also an attempt to unveil the thinking of the Russian leadership.

The authors of this volume have interdisciplinary backgrounds in politics, diplomacy, the military and academia. Among them are individuals who shaped the fundamental treaties between NATO (or “the West”) and Russia. The contributions provide a broad kaleidoscope of viewpoints, memories, surveys, interpretations, reflections and evaluations that are meant to stimulate thinking. The volume contains a number of implicit and explicit political recommendations and offers a broad variety of expertise to today’s policy planners and decision makers.

The Messages

The volume contains, at least, seven distinguishable messages:

First: Security issues are and will remain central in the relations between the West and Russia. “Security guarantees” as a regulating mechanism have not stood the test of history. We see that most vividly on the example of the 2014 Russian aggression against Ukraine which happened despite written promises that had been given by Moscow to Kyiv in, among others, the below analyzed 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.1 While the Alliance was not a part of this deal, today the basic treaties building trust between NATO and Russia are in danger.2

Second: History is essential for present and future policy. The origins of the historical treaties and political approaches, for instance, to Western dual track policies should be better understood in their historical contexts and should be more effectively communicated by politicians.3

Third: Persisting historical myths like that of the allegedly given “Western” promise to the USSR not to expand NATO will have to be addressed again and again. The same applies to the non-functional mechanisms in international relations and international organizations, like the OSCE or the United Nations Security Council, that are blocked from acting on urgent matters. Necessary changes should be named and discussed.

Fourth: The main challenges in security issues should be more clearly addressed. NATO can take on this role in its capacity as not only a defense union, but also a political alliance.

Fifth: Only a historically informed strategy can effectively meet today’s security policy challenges.

Sixth: We need to talk more and better listen to each other to get “behind the logic” of the actions of the other side. Only this way, one can better understand the mindset that underlies the actions of the counterpart.

Seventh: The world is changing. The year 2020 has made that clear. And this is only the beginning of even more profound changes to come. Many international institutions have yet to experience this, and they are likely to be modified or even replaced in the future.

Constellations of Today and Tomorrow

The year 2020 has been marked by a pandemic which has put the West under significant pressure. It is also a year that saw the election of a new American President, Joe Biden. His election brings hope for new American strategies for strengthening transatlantic relations, as well as a new approach to Russia. Outgoing President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, on November 22, 2020. On November 25, NATO presented its strategic position paper “NATO 2030.” It lists Russia as the “main military threat to the Alliance” for the next ten years. Whatever the future holds, unresolved problems and the need to deal with Russia will remain.

These problems are often inherited from the 1990s. The end of the Cold War did not solve Europe’s security issues.4 While East-Central Europe, the so-called “Eastern Flank” of NATO, is now protected by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, most of the post-Soviet space has become a victim of the unsolved European security issues.

Above all, Ukraine remains a “testing ground” for Russia’s intentions within the European territory since 2014. Since August 2020, the emerging Belarusian nation is struggling peacefully against the regime of Lukashenko supported by Putin. The people of Ukraine and Belarus need Western support. Entering a “European way” of its further development seems for Belarus to be only a question of time. Russia will presumably continue to play a malicious role in the Southern Caucasus. The Russian population itself is a major victim of authoritarian Russian regime. It should be supported by the West, too.

The US and Europe have to address these new political realities with novel, clear and sustainable strategies. As of early 2021, the time of equivocation is over. Europe is searching for its new security policy role within the transatlantic partnership. The United States too is currently redefining its foreign policy. The year 2021 may thus become a turning point for Western strategic development. NATO’s approach towards Russia for the years to come remains so far undefined.

Information technologies and artificial intelligence are changing the patterns of people’s social and political behavior. Many old systems of decision, checks and balances are no longer functioning. A different world system is emerging where, due to digitalization, individuals get more opportunities for direct political participation and influence reducing or even replacing the predominant actorness of nation-states or unwieldy international organizations. These new constellations must be taken into account by policy makers.

Past and Present

What was NATO like in the 1990s, during the expansion to Central and Eastern Europe, and what is it now? According to Ronald Asmus, an intellectual forefather of Eastern enlargement, NATO was a security umbrella under which (Central and Eastern) Europe could develop and flourish. Yet, the Alliance has not fulfilled this function during the last years. The West has, instead, been often caught in a torturous choice between values and interests and, as a result, is no longer able to provide all countries that choose democracy with a security umbrella and often incapable to resist aggression by Russia, which also takes the most extreme, military forms.

The mission of enlargement was to be no less than a solution to such monumental questions as democratizing Eastern and Central Europe, unifying Europe, and providing security for the entire transatlantic area. This was a colossal mission, a vision, a proclamation, a self-justification … What was right about it? The task, the purpose, the values, and the self-supporting missionary weight. What, however, proved to be wrong with that? The former treaty’s counterpart, Russia, was no longer an enemy, yet did not become either a member or real partner of the Alliance. For the West—and NATO is as a defense alliance for Western values—Russia was and remains its largest unresolved blind spot.

Especially the US-American historical and political researchers dedicate entire journal issues,5 anthologies6 and monographs7 to various facets of NATO’s enlargement process and are re-evaluating it. Historical documents are being published, as soon as the general archival classification period of thirty years is passed in 2020.8 This gives today’s researchers a clearer picture of the 1990s.

The 1990s were full of hopes, and—viewed retrospectively—also a bit naïve, as Gleb Pavlovsky remarks in this volume. The Paris Charter of 1990, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 (see below), and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 were believed to bring security, stability and prosperity to Europe. “Too visionary” as these basic documents may seem today (John Kornblum), they built an international legal basis that has no alternative.

After the watershed of 2014, the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the following gradual break of many communication channels between NATO and Russia, the opportunities to productively talk between both sides have shrunk massively. Predictably, this led to new security risks. New talks and additional transparency about military exercises, prenotification and observation are highly needed now.

The most recent strategy Paper NATO 2030 defines Russia as the “most likely … main military threat to the Alliance” for the next ten years.9 “Breaches” of public international law and international treaties, “aggressive actions,” and “assertive activity” dominate the description of Russia. Thus, her role for years ahead seems be already to be predetermined.

The document’s key passage, however, addresses a different issue, namely, that of political solidarity between the Alliance members in response to Russia’s actions.10 This is the crucial question as the Alliance members often have different ideas about how to preserve or increase security. The geopolitical situation of Europe’s East remains fragile because of Russia’s breaching of treaties, engaging in hybrid warfare, supporting populist leaders and movements, undermining faith in democratic institutions and other malevolent actions. When undertaking them, the Kremlin instrumentalizes the eastward enlargement of NATO of the 1990s to legitimize them. It refers to a “promise” of the West about non-expansion of NATO that was allegedly made to Moscow at the end of the Cold War.

The West, however, never gave a (written) guarantee to the Soviet Union that it would not expand NATO to the East of the GDR border after 1990. This has been clarified by historians.11 Still the Kremlin refers to NATO’s enlargement when justifying its malicious interference in the affairs of other countries. NATO’s enlargement serves as a—if not the predominant—rationale for Russia’s intervention in the domestic affairs of the countries in the post-Soviet space including East-Central Europe. In this regard, “NATO’s enlargement” has become not only a figure of speech, but also a dangerous political tool. It can become a justification for preparing and starting new wars.

The Alliance and Moscow are today not any longer in a confrontational, but in an interdependent relationship. Obviously, this circumstance has, however, not prevented recent escalation of tensions. The political aim is therefore to turn the two sides’ objective interdependence to a positive direction, and make it a source of cooperation. It may be insufficient or even a fallacy to merely believe that “Russia’s leaders shall choose a more constructive path” by themselves. The role of the West remains decisive, and it should turn to historical experience to learn how to deal with the current situation. Within Russia, alarming tendencies in the interpretation of history are increasing, leading to reinterpretation of entire historical epochs by the highest state leadership and culminating in the prosecution of historians and journalists intensified by the Russian state in 2020 and continued in early 2021.

In summer 2020, a number of leading American experts on Russia called the state of relations between Russia and the USA a “dangerous dead end.”12 Following this logic, the danger of nuclear war is becoming, once again, very real. Since the invention of atomic weapons, deterrence has been a basis for Western security policies, yet to proclaim today a necessity for a new strategy is insufficient. An attempt to reinforce existing efforts of developing a new strategy relying on knowledge of first-class experts is one purpose of this book.