It's hard to know who’s playing who in the Ukraine ‘crisis’. On one hand, Russia amassed 175,000 troops at its border with Ukraine, which U.S. intelligence interprets as preparation for imminent invasion. On the other hand, the Biden Administration is warning Russia of ‘dire consequences’ and more sanctions if it does invade.
The wringing of hands in the U.S. media, however, is premature. The conflict’s genesis dates back thirty years to the fall of the Berlin Wall and break up of the Warsaw Pact. (The U.S.S.R. would collapse two years later.) Because the reunification of Germany had become a pressing issue, George H.R. Bush, Mikail Gorbachev, and German Chancellor Kohl negotiated an early reunification and smooth transition.
At the time, Gorbachev made a huge concession by agreeing to German unification under the West German government and to Germany’s membership in NATO. In return, Russia received Western aid and what Gorbachev (and every Russian president since) interpreted as a pledge that NATO would not expand into former East European nations once allied with the Soviets.
These assurances were not written into the formal reunification papers, so there is some disagreement over what was actually said.
According to new documents released only in 2017 by the National Security Archives, however, assurances were given by American officials in a series of meetings with Russia and discussed internally within the Bush Administration, all documented in notes and memos.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today (2017) by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu)
What started out as a good faith effort by three experienced leaders to avert a catastrophe became a point of contention later in the decade. Bush and Baker believe Washington had the most to gain if it helped ease Russia’s transition from Superpower, given its history and bank of nuclear arms.
By Clinton’s second term, however, Russian hawks in the U.S. had gained the upper hand and Clinton ignored whatever promises were made to Russia in the early 1990s. Over Russian Objections, he agreed to NATO membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Russia was still unwinding the old Soviet syatem under Yeltsin, so had little leverage to back up its position.
It’s self-evident that no country wants its enemies encroaching on its border (see Cuban Missile Crisis) which is why Bush and Baker acknowledged Russia’s security concerns as legitimate. In particular Russia sought to forestall a NATO deployment of missiles and troops in former Warsaw Pact countries, an ironic echo of U.S. demands regarding Cuba. Now fourteen countries from the defunct Warsaw Pact are members of NATO.
As talk about Ukraine joining NATO grew louder over the last ten years, Putin put his foot down declaring to NATO not in our backyard. Ukraine is Russia’s neighbor, so fully integrated into the U.S.S.R. that it housed Soviet nuclear missiles and has a large Russian population in its East. Vocal Russian opposition was expected.
Imagine Washington’s reaction if Mexico or Canada entered into a security alliance with Russia. That’s not going to happen because a central plank of U.S. foreign policy since its founding declares that an attack or interference by any outside power in any country in the Western Hemisphere (!) would be considered an attack on the U.S.
So how did things get to this point and where are they going? The State Department charges Russia with trying to recreate its Cold War sphere of influence. This is a bit disingenuous considering NATO countries now surround Russia and countries that belonged to the Warsaw Pact now constitute a large minority membership in NATO.
The optics don’t look good for either Washington or Moscow. A regular feature of the Cold War were bilateral meetings between the two Superpower to map out solutions that, for better or worse, affected smaller countries who may or may not have been included. This crisis is a ghost of the 20th century being played with yesterday’s tactics.
Nevertheless, the stakes are high for Biden and Putin. Mr. Putin already succeeded in one battle. After the Russian annexation of Crimea, its support for Ukrainian rebels in the East and almost 200,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, the U.S. has tacitly acknowledged the seriousness of Russia’s border concerns. It agreed to a bilateral state-to-state meeting (1/10/22) to lower the temperature of disagreement and discuss possible solutions. Ukraine, by the way, was not invited. The crisis in Ukraine will also top the agendas for the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe later in the week.
Mr. Putin is a cagey tactician and is more than willing to keep the West anxiously guessing where he’s going. Several paths have been proposed by non-governmental entities. The U.S. and Russia could both agree to guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality and leave NATO out of it. Ukraine could grant some type of stable autonomy to its Russian-speaking East. All parties have dutifully claimed they don’t want war.
NATO is a different beast from what is was in the Cold War when the two Superpowers faced-off in Europe. Refashioning itself to be a player in the 21st century may turn into its biggest mistake. NATO could have instead declared victory over the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact and left the scene. Popular and populist anger over the huge U.S. subsidies to NATO openly surfaced under the Trump Administration.
The countries added to NATO since the end of the Cold War are not wealthy and can’t afford their own proper defense. If this were a movie, it could be called The Mouse that Roared 14.0.
Don’t expect war anytime soon.