Russia 18

 

Memorandum submitted by Dr Jonathan Eyal

 

Apologists for the frosty relationship between Russia and the West today usually point a finger at a set of mistaken Western policies which, supposedly, "lost" an opportunity for a good "strategic partnership" with Moscow at the end of the Cold War. The arguments are complicated, but they can usually be grouped in the following categories:

 

· The West danced on the grave of the Soviet empire, even before its body was interred. Western politicians proclaimed triumph in the Cold War, oblivious to the feelings of ordinary Russians;

· The West never understood Russia's soul, the country's peculiarities and sensitivities. It offered mechanistic solutions, such as market economy and democracy, despite the fact that there was no agreed Western definition of what these meant, and no chance of forcing these on ordinary Russians

· The West refused to account for Russia's sense of vulnerability. The country was frequently invaded, and suffered terribly at the hands of such invaders. Russia should have been allowed a special role in the former Soviet space, as a reassurance that past aggressions will not be repeated;

· Russia made a concession to the West during the 1989-91 period: it dismantled its outer and even inner empires, without firing a shot in anger. But the West simply pocketed this advantage, and offered nothing in return. Western-dominated institutions remained the same, and Russia was never given a seat at the top table;

· The Warsaw Pact was dissolved, but NATO expanded into former Soviet-controlled territory, pushing its military might right up to the borders of the Russian state. This was not only unnecessary, but also a fatal mistake: it heightened Russia's sense of isolation and provided its military a justification for rearmament;

· All the offers of co-operation given to Russia during the early part of the 1990s proved to be weasel words. Russia never joined the World Trade Organisation. Russian support was sought during the first Gulf War of 1991 but, once granted, Moscow was not consulted over what followed. Russia's opinions were repeatedly ignored in Bosnia and Kosovo during the Yugoslav wars. And even Russia's veto in the UN Security Council was brushed aside when US President George W Bush unleashed the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq

 

Given all these errors, the accusers allege, it was only natural that someone like Vladimir Putin would come along, rejecting the entire premise of the relationship, and demanding a new set of rules. The West lost Russia because it neither cared about the country, nor bothered to understand its true fears.

 

Some of these arguments are beyond the scope of the Defence Committee enquiry; this paper concentrates on only one aspect: the claim that NATO's repeated enlargement waves to the countries of the former Soviet Union were unnecessarily provocative to Moscow, and thereby prompted the difficulties currently encountered.

 

Two decades since the demise of communism in Europe, it is now easy to forget the anguish, self-doubts and contradictory policies applied. The key institutional challenges facing Europe have now finally been answered: the European Union and NATO have embraced most of the nations which wished to join them, from the Baltics to the Black Sea. To be sure, this work is still not complete in the case of some former Yugoslav republic, and there are still lingering questions about the extent of Europe's frontiers: depending on whom one talks to, Ukraine and the nations of the Caucasus are both inside and outside the main remit of Europe. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about one basic fact: for the first time in the continent's history, there has been an explicit and very public admission that the economic prosperity, political stability and military security of every nation, however small of big, however well-developed or economically backward, however 'old' or 'new' ultimately belongs to the same family and is, at least in principle, entitled to the same level of protection and the same voice in the counsels of the continent.

 

For those younger diplomats and public officials who were still in primary school when the Cold War ended, this state of affairs now seems both natural and logical: how can any institution call itself European, if it includes Portugal but not Poland, or Sweden but not Slovakia? But, for anyone who lived during the long period of ideological confrontation on the continent, the same reality will continue to be regarded as nothing short of a miracle. And the fact that this outcome was achieved by fits and starts, by a mixture of conscious decisions and accidents, and often against the prevailing instincts of a majority of Western Europe's political leaders, makes this development even more remarkable. And yet, like all historic events of such a magnitude, the process of NATO's enlargement has created its own myths.

 

Supporters of this process now claim that the effort was deliberate, carefully calculated and measured in its application. It was not: it was a chaotic affair, with decisions taken at the last moment, on the basis of - naturally enough - cold political reasoning, rather than 'scientific' arguments of even basic logic. Countries such as Romania, which made emotional appeals to history or natural justice, failed to be admitted in the first wave of post-Cold War NATO enlargement in 1999. Nor did nations which needed security most - the Baltic states - initially fare any better: they had to wait until March 2004 for admission. Nor was there, despite repeated claims to the contrary, much co-ordination between the EU and NATO in the process of enlargement. The Netherlands and a few other Western governments were briefly attracted to the idea of the so-called 'Royal Road' to integration, of a supposedly seamless co-operation between NATO and the EU in admitting the former communist states as full members. But this came to nothing: Europe's premier institutions continued to lead separate lives and applied their own admission procedures. Ultimately, both of these organisations stumbled upon enlargement as a result of circumstances and the absence of any other viable alternatives, not because they decided early on in the process that this is what they wanted to do.

 

But the critics of the enlargement process are guilty of perpetrating greater myths than the supporters of this strategy. Few are now ready to criticise the EU expansion to Central and Eastern Europe. People may gripe about corruption in the new member states (as though this is a particularly Eastern phenomenon), about the waves of 'unwanted' immigrants, the plight of ethnic minorities such as the Roma people, or even the supposed lack of a European commitment from the new member states which continue to look up to the US for military protection. Yet few would argue that EU enlargement was a mistake. Not so with NATO, however, where critics claim that the same process of enlargement remains the chief reason for the chill in relations between Russia and the West. The critics' arguments are many, and they have been voiced at different times, both before, during and long after NATO's enlargement waves. But they can be largely summarised as follows:

 

· The enlargement apparently broke a promise given to Moscow when the Warsaw Pact dissolved, an undertaking that the West would not seek to benefit from Russia's weakness:

· Enlargement was unnecessary: NATO itself had no further functions to perform at the end of the Cold War, and simply rushed to adopt the East Europeans because it was looking for something to do;

· The new member states will also be consumers rather than providers of security; they add nothing to the alliance, but bring obligations;

· Enlargement ensured that NATO remained an anti-Russian institution, because the only protection which the new member states want is against Russia. So, NATO had no chance to develop good, working relationships with Moscow;

· Enlargement to the countries of the Warsaw Pact may have been acceptable, but incorporating former republics of the Soviet Union proper - such as the three Baltic states - took matters too far, and was bound to anger the Kremlin;

· The process remained open-ended, thereby ensuring that Russia would feel threatened: Ukraine and Georgia are now considered as candidates, increasing fears of encirclement in Russia.

 

It is now easy to forget that in the first few years after the end of communism engagement rather than enlargement was all that Western governments were prepared to offer. And, very frequently, the concept remained confined to words, rather than deeds. Two unspoken assumptions governed Western behaviour towards Eastern Europe during the early 1990s.

 

The first was the belief that the fall of the Iron Curtain affected the East Europeans alone: the West survived the Cold War intact, while the East crumbled from within: 'we', therefore, did not need to change; 'they' had to. Western countries in which much of the economic activity was still state-controlled preached the virtue of privatisation to Eastern Europe. And nations such as Britain - with no written constitutions - offered the former communist countries lessons in constitutional propriety. Everything was predicated on the belief that it was up to the easterners to become people like us; the advice was offered on a take it or leave it basis.

 

The second major assumption of all Western governments - never articulated in public but to be heard, sotto voce in almost every diplomatic communiqué at that time - was a fear that the former communist world represented a 'Wild East', an area populated by violent people who, given half a chance, would love to tear each other apart. The initial feeling was that the process of aping the West would take many decades, and may well fail. And, until the East Europeans learnt to eat properly with a knife and fork and behave in a polite manner, there was no question of giving them a seat at any European top table. The idea that NATO rushed to embrace the East Europeans because it was an organisation in search of a new mission is not supported by any historic evidence.

 

Matters only began to change only when the Westerners started to realise that the end of the Cold War was melting down all existing arrangements, on both sides of the old divide. The integration of East Germany started affecting the entire German economy and political system, while the massive privatisation in the east reinforced the position of Western politicians who advocated rolling back the role of government in their own countries. The appearance of eastern leaders at conferences of political parties in Western Europe and the use of the transformations in the east as a justification for pursuing similarly radical social policies in the West had a huge (if initially unnoticed) impact on public perception. Suddenly, Europe's paupers were teaching their wealthier brethren a thing or two. Eastern European market reform policies helped even Socialist parties in the West to shed their hostility to the operation of a free market in general, and the privatisation of state assets in particular.

 

Meanwhile, many of the dark predictions about the East were confounded. Retribution against communist rulers in Eastern Europe were less violent than the revenge meted out against Fascist collaborators in the West at the end of the Second World War, and with fewer acts of overt injustice. Despite massive drops in the standard of living of a kind no Western nation could contemplate without serious convulsions, the East Europeans continued to vote peacefully in one parliamentary election after another. The expected influx of hungry refugees did not materialise. And there was more politically motivated violence in Belfast or Bilbao at that time than in Bratislava or Bucharest. True, the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia was regarded, at least in its initial stages, as a warning of things to come. But it was none other than the West which argued throughout the Cold War period that Yugoslavia was a unique case, and so it proved: far from sucking all its neighbours into its horror, the wars of Yugoslav succession actually stiffened the resolve of all other Balkan countries to avoid old rivalries. The 'spill-over' effect of Yugoslavia was precisely the opposite from that feared in the West: it not only had a salutary effect on Romanians and Bulgarians - the two Balkan states closest to the Yugoslav conflict and initially assumed to harbour their own ethnic difficulties. It also influenced relations further afield in central Europe: the behaviour of the Czechs and the Slovaks during the crucial period of their country's division in 1991 is case in point.[1]

Either way, a combination of factors - such as the realisation that the East Europeans were not very different from the rest of the continent, that they were perfectly able and willing to exercise their obligations as member of the European family of nations and that leaving them to their own devices was not an option - all contributed to a growing realisation in the West that something needed to be done to adapt the existing co-operation structures on the continent. But even then, the process was slow and incremental. The East Europeans were frequently told to tone down their desires for integration, go back to their capitals and acquire some knowledge of government. The armies of Western experts which descended on the region continued to offer unsolicited advice. And the feeling of superiority about the 'poor cousins' in the east went on undiminished. In one celebrated example, Mr Jacques Poos, the foreign minister of Luxembourg - then acting on behalf of the presidency of the EU - saw nothing ridiculous in warning Slovenia and Croatia that they could not secede from Yugoslavia because they were too small to be viable independent states.[2] There was one rule for the West, and another for the east. There was no rush to integrate Eastern Europe into existing continental institutions, and no triumphalism about the Warsaw Pact's collapse; if anything, there was a tinge of regret - never openly stated, but still quite potent - among European capitals about the tumultuous events which suddenly upset the stately progression of the old European applecart. The Maastricht Treaty, which the EU adopted in 1991-92, was not about integration with the east; it was about improving the arrangements in the West, precisely because of a fear about what developments in the east may mean. The only obsession which prevailed at NATO's headquarters at the time was how to avoid anything which may annoy the Russians, by giving the East Europeans no false expectations. Indeed, it is usually forgotten that Western governments initially counselled caution when Eastern Europe tore up the Warsaw Pact Treaty.

 

Since then, various Russian leaders - including Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin - have claimed that Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised the Kremlin at the time of the negotiations for German unification that NATO would never expand into Eastern Europe, in return for a Soviet (and subsequently Russian acceptance) that united Germany could remain a member of the alliance[3]. We are still not privy to the negotiations between Germany and Russia at that time; most of the sensitive documents have not been released. Nor do we know whether other countries - especially France, Britain and the US - made any such promises. But a few facts are clear enough:

 

· German officials have repeatedly denied the Russian assertions;

· While there is no doubt that the main thrust of the German-Soviet discussions at the time of German unification and, indeed, the discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union were designed to reassure Moscow that its 'loss' in Eastern Europe would not be translated into a Western 'gain', it is highly unlikely that a formal promise to keep Eastern Europe in suspended animation was ever given;

· Even is such a promise was made, it was not codified in any formal agreement;

· Even if such an understanding existed, it clearly became irrelevant once the Soviet Union itself disintegrated in 1991;

· The Russians themselves have never produced a single sheet of paper which can prove that such a deal was concluded. If the issue was so important for Moscow at that time, it is highly likely that the Russians would have insisted on a formal document. Even if such a document was classified, Moscow would have had every interest in making it public since then: its release would have been dynamite in Europe. But they didn't, for a simple reason: no such promise was made, in any shape or form which can be considered as legally or even morally binding.

 

The Initial Phase

 

Nevertheless, while claiming that NATO must remain strong, Western governments initially told their Eastern counterparts that any talk about joining military alliances was 'old-fashioned', yesterday's concern: what the East apparently needed was to pay attention to wider and newer institutions, combining economic reform, respect for human rights and global, all-inclusive security. The United Nations - they were promised - would be reborn to preside over a 'New World Order', based on respect for international law, justice and social progress, all equitably distributed. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) would be transformed into the real pillar for stability. But the reality remained that, after an initial burst of activity during the Gulf War of 1991, the United Nations was plunged into a deep internal crisis as a result of perceived failures in Somalia and Yugoslavia. The CSCE changed its name to the OSCE and managed to establish a permanent secretariat in Vienna, an office for human rights in Warsaw and a High Commissioner responsible for dealing with ethnic minority problems in Europe - great achievements in themselves, but hardly of a nature to create a new European security architecture. Eastern Europe was told that it should put its faith in a set of interlocking institutions, all supposedly performing a pre-allotted role in providing security for the continent. In Yugoslavia, however, all these institutions became involved and usually blocked each other for no particular purpose. The only institution which ultimately did something was NATO; all others were reduced to the lowest common denominator of negotiating peace between leaders who wanted war, or policing ceasefires which did not exist, while feeding people who were still being shot at. The West was not directly responsible for these disasters. But the claims that there would be a new pan-European institution in which the East Europeans would find their security died on the killing fields of the Balkans. Those who still wonder why the East Europeans became so obsessed with NATO membership and why NATO was unable to resist their demands should search through the annals of the Yugoslav drama.

NATO itself was not just an innocent bystander in the European security debate. In common with all other existing European institutions, it also sought to offer the former communist states some surrogate connection, just enough to keep them happy, but not too much, so as not to raise their expectations. The creation of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) was touted in 1992 as an ingenious invention. There was no particular thinking behind this institution, and the NACC ultimately included almost everyone belonging to the former Soviet bloc, all the way to the Sea of Japan. The express aim was to avoid making any distinctions between former communist countries. In its procedures and method of operation, the NACC was no different from the OSCE: a gigantic talking shop where the formal opening speeches usually filled up most of the time available and the conclusions of the proceedings merely restated the questions originally posed during the debate. The military problems of the Czech Republic, for instance, were supposed to be treated in the same forum as the problem of, say, Tajikistan. The best that can be said about the NACC is that it was a necessary prevarication exercise, a mechanism for postponing decisions. By mid-1993 it was already clear that at least the central Europeans were no longer satisfied with the tactics of prevarication.[4] The war in Yugoslavia was growing more vicious, extreme nationalists such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky appeared poised to gain power in Moscow, while Yeltsin's romantic flirtation with the West was already coming to an end. Russian politicians who are now fond of asking why East Europeans demanded NATO membership would do well to recall that the impetus was provided by the sight of tanks firing on the White House, the parliament building, in Moscow; the increasingly frequent and public rows between President Yeltsin and the West; and the rise of individuals such as Zhirinovsky, with an explicit agenda to recreate the old Soviet empire.

 

Partnership for Peace

This was the environment that propelled the alliance into launching the Partnership for Peace project (PfP). Initially described as an 'immediate and practical programme that will transform the relationship between NATO and participating states'[5], PfP merely promised to guide the armed forces of the former Warsaw Pact countries towards compatibility with those of their NATO counterparts - it was certainly not seen as a promise of full membership. Nevertheless, as serious as the alliance was about its PfP project, it found it difficult to overcome the feeling that this was, ultimately, a partnership for prevarication. When the concept was first unveiled, Poland's then president, Lech Walesa, who still commanded huge respect in the West, threatened to reject the agreement, precisely because it was seen as a lollypop, rather than a serious path to enlargement. Worried by the potential embarrassment, the US administration despatched senior officials to all the central European capitals in order to explain its concept. The result was a subtle shift in emphasis: having been created as an instrument for avoiding a discussion about NATO's enlargement, PFP was suddenly presented as a structure which 'neither promises NATO membership, nor precludes this membership[6]'. Once PFP was in full swing, the same concept was presented as the road to NATO membership. Interestingly, however, it was not PfP which dictated either the pace of NATO's enlargement, or the timing of the process; PfP remained the necessary smokescreen for an essentially political debate which was conducted within the alliance.

The real turning point came in January 1994, when the US President began to state publicly that 'the question was no longer whether NATO will take in new members, but when and how'.[7] A variety of factors - which included the already noted demands of the East Europeans to join the alliance, the unstable situation in Russia, the disaster of Yugoslavia and the paucity of other alternatives, as well as personnel changes in the US administration - all contributed to this shift. But, just in case some still believe that the process of NATO enlargement was rammed through by old Cold Warriors determined to exact the last revenge on Russia, it is worthwhile to point out that the one European country which rendered this process irresistible was Germany, the nation which has long claimed for itself the title of Russia's best friend in Europe. As the only major Western state bordering the region, Germany had a practical need for the enlargement: it wished to cease being a frontline state in any shape or form. For the Germans, therefore, the only solution was to work for the integration of the East Europeans into both NATO and the European Union, not only in order to provide security in the heart of Europe, but also to spare the Germans themselves any new 'historic' choices between east and west. The German government did not speak with one voice. While Defence Minister Volker Ruhe, representing a younger generation of Christian Democratic leaders, was one of the first to advocate NATO's enlargement publicly and created quite a stir in the process, Chancellor Kohl, in his typical way, sometimes hinted that he supported the idea and sometimes regarded it as premature, depending on his audience.[8]

 

Germany's noises were heard, particularly in Washington, where the argument on NATO initially proceeded on a different route, only to reach the same conclusion. The Clinton administration concluded that the Europeans were unable to agree on the provision of their own security. It is instructive, for instance, that the decision to launch the PfP programme was also coupled with an increased US involvement in the handling of the war in Yugoslavia. There is little doubt that electoral considerations at home (particularly the potential support of the Polish ethnic lobby) may have helped persuade the US President to adopt this policy. But probably a more compelling argument, however, was the realisation that without a new lease of life, the alliance would simply atrophy; sooner or later, the US Congress was bound to question the purpose of a military arrangement conceived against an enemy which no longer existed.[9] Of course, disagreements on this approach persisted within the US administration. But the ultimate choice was between maintaining the old alliance, which risked becoming irrelevant, and constructing a new, expanded NATO, which at least had a sporting chance of adapting to Europe's new security environment. The debate raged throughout 1994, yet by the time NATO's foreign ministers met in Brussels that December the point of no return had been reached. Predictable grumbles followed from some Europeans about lack of consultation and American high-handedness. However, after the disputes surrounding the handling of the Yugoslav war, everyone was grateful for any policy that promised a return of US power, in unison with the Europeans.

Russia's reaction to NATO enlargement

 

Nobody doubted that the process of NATO's enlargement was a huge gamble: the smallest mishap, on top of the Yugoslav debacle, would have plunged the alliance into turmoil. There was also no consensus about how the process was to be conducted, over what period of time or who should be invited to join. Finally, there was a realisation on both sides of the Atlantic that Russia would fight the project tooth and nail. Given these difficulties, it is remarkable that a semblance of unity was maintained at all. But the price of this unity took it toll on the West's relations with Russia. The Russians were quite right to complain about Western double-talk, of assertions that no NATO enlargement is planned, while everyone knew that this was precisely what was being planned. The Russians were also right be angered about NATO's attempt to cloak in the entire project in 'scientific' pretentions, as though this was just an academic exercise. The Study on NATO Enlargement, published in September 1995 in an effort to prepare the ground and soften Russian opposition, made the earth-shattering discovery that, with the end of the Cold War, a 'unique opportunity to build an improved security architecture'[10] on the continent existed. NATO's future decision to invite some European states to become members, the study claimed, would only complement existing European structures, and would threaten no one. Although the decision on whom to invite belonged to the alliance alone, there was to be 'no fixed or rigid list' of new member states, nor would there be discrimination on the basis of groups of countries; the allies would decide by consensus whom to invite, on an individual basis. The entire debate can only be charitably described as a series of half-truths. But they were necessary white lies which were largely unavoidable, for the following reasons:

 

· Since there was no agreement on how many countries should be admitted, it was better to avoid the subject altogether, until the last possible moment;

· Because there was the suspicion that at least some European countries still opposed the whole idea, governments preferred to pretend that no hard choices were made, until the choices themselves became firm;

· There was no public debate about the purpose of enlargement, largely because of a suspicion that NATO itself may not survive such a scrutiny either in Washington, or in a number of other European capitals;

· Since every East European country understood that the entire eastern bloc could not be admitted in one swoop, nations rushed to stake their claim. Avoiding this bazaar dictated caution, and silence in this case was considered the best option.

 

But there is also no doubt that the Russians themselves - who otherwise were right to be aggrieved about the duplicitous behaviour of some Western governments - were not entirely blameless in this affair. Moscow's opposition to this process was unremitting and crass: it offered the West no option other than abandoning NATO's enlargement. So, Western nations preferred to continue prevaricating, in the knowledge that Moscow would ultimately have to be presented with a fait accompli.

 

Meanwhile, all NATO member states affirmed their conviction that it would be possible to keep both the Russians and the east Europeans happy at the same time. NATO s enlargement therefore became an epic journey in which travelling was meant to be more important than arriving. There is no question that, as a result, the entire process lacked both transparency and predictability. But there is equally no question that a better policy simply did not exist. The story of NATO enlargement is not so much one of anti-Russian plots, as some Moscow politicians still claim, but, rather, one of a series of haphazard accidents, strategies conceived on the hoof and a large dose of improvisation.

 

Despite all the claims to the contrary, the initial list of potential member states was known all along: it consisted of Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Hungary. The gradual disappearance of Slovakia from this list on account of its wretched internal political situation at that time, was subsequently used by defenders of the decision-making process as evidence that NATO paid close attention to the criteria for membership. True, but only up to a point: while the fate of Slovakia indicates that it was possible to rule oneself out of a realistic place in the membership queue, the reality remained that no other state managed to get on to the initial list. The privileged position of the three selected countries - the so-called Visegrad Group - was studiously denied by every government, but remained the worst kept secret in Europe. It is also interesting to note that the credentials of these three countries in central Europe were not seriously questioned; the debate within NATO was, essentially, whether other countries should be added to the list as well. And the answer to his dilemma was ultimately 'no', precisely in order not to annoy Russia too much. There was a considerable amount of sympathy for the three Baltic states, for their suffering during the period of Soviet occupation and for their inherently exposed position. But even Denmark and Norway, who championed the cause of these countries, knew all along that their speedy inclusion into the alliance remained a non-starter. Nor did anyone seriously suggest that the countries of the Balkans where a war was then raging should be included in the alliance. So, the first wave of NATO enlargement suffered from a basic flaw of logic: the more a country needed security, the less likely it was that the country would be accepted as a full member. And, far from repositioning the alliance to meet the new security needs of the continent, the first NATO enlargement in central Europe tilted the alliance even further away from the Mediterranean states, just as the Alliance was pretending to pay more attention to southern Europe. And yet, despite the fact that the first enlargement wave defied logic, it is important to remember that most of the dire predictions which critics made have never come to pass:

 

Alliance solidarity would be broken. Nothing of the kind: the new member states, and those which joined them in the second enlargement wave in 2004, proved to be exemplary members. They did not demand high positions within the alliance's headquarters. Nor did they block the decision-making mechanism: the old perennial trouble-makers proved to be France and Belgium with the notable addition of Germany in 2002, when the dispute over the second Iraq war erupted. The new entrants continue to have a high stake in the survival of the alliance as a coherent organisation; the first to suffer from any slackening in NATO's cohesion will be them.

 

'Freeloading' by the new members. This is another prediction that failed to materialise. Defence expenditure in the new member states proved much more resilient than in the old members. To this day, they continue to spend more as a percentage of their GDP although, of course, their total expenditure is still small. Defence budgets went down in the West, not the east. Indeed, defence ministries in Eastern Europe, until very recently the Cinderellas of the political establishments in those countries, acquired new political leverage: they were able to fight national treasuries for extra money, by citing international obligations to contribute to NATO's defences

 

The enlargement will be costly. It was not. There was no discernible difference in the operating costs of the alliance, and the contributions from the new member states more than covered the additional expenses initially incurred by various NATO facilities

 

Consumers rather than producers of security. Wrong again. Ethnic and historic disputes have not been resolved, but NATO membership put them all on the back-burner. There is no tension between the Romanian government and its ethnic Hungarian minority. The ethnic Turks in Bulgaria are part of that government's ruling coalition. The ethnic Russians in the Baltic states have remained fairly quiet. And although ethnic tensions are now rising again between Slovakia and Hungary, these are manageable precisely because the two countries are now members in both NATO and the EU

 

Civilian control of the military. Critics suggested that the new member states would not be in control of their military. But politicians in Eastern Europe exercised a better control over their generals than does the US President over the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington

 

Pushing NATO towards an anti-Russian stance. There is no evidence that this has happened. The new member states did not veto one single proposal from the West for a dialogue with the Russians. The dispute over policy towards Russia was much more acute inside the European Union, but NATO was largely untouched by such matters, at least until the Georgian war erupted in the summer of 2008

 

Russia's suspicions about NATO are understandable. The organisation not only stood up to the Warsaw Pact for forty years, but also provided a permanent, institutionalised link between Europe and the US. Even the most fervent pro-Western 'democratiser' in Russia must have found it galling that NATO not only continued to exist after the end of the Warsaw Pact, but actually underwent the biggest geographic expansion in its history. And it is equally understandable that the Russia's should dismiss NATO's reassurances as mere weasel words: since there were no major military threats in Europe, it was hard to explain why the East Europeans still sought to benefit from NATO's security umbrella. The clashes between Russia and the West over the handling of the Yugoslav crisis did not help matters either. Most ordinary Russians simply could not understand why European countries took the side of the Muslims in Bosnia at the expense of the Serbs, why the West preached respect for international law but violated a UN Security Council embargo on the sale of weapons in the Balkans by supplying Croatia with weapons, or why Croat and Bosniak crimes against Serbs were ignored, while the Serb's war crimes commanded the West's undivided attention. But, when all is said and done, the fact remains that by adopting a harsh rejectionist stance and by refusing to understand the true motives of Western actions, the Russians only made their case far worse, and virtually guaranteed their own humiliation.

 

One of the most striking aspects of the entire NATO debate - and one which was seldom, if ever, noticed either then or since - is that throughout the period when Russia was voicing its vehement opposition to enlargement, Moscow never thought it appropriate to discuss the matter with the East Europeans themselves. If Moscow objected to Poland's application to join NATO, the best, and most logical approach would have been to discuss this with Warsaw. Russian officials could have suggested talks with the Visegrad groups; they could have even asked for an observer status at the meetings of this group. They could have also offered security guarantees to the former Warsaw Pact countries. And they cold have engaged in a debate with the public of Eastern Europe. True, this would have been far from easy: the old wounds of the Cold War ran deep. But an energetic wooing of Eastern Europe could have persuaded NATO to rethink its enlargement timetable. And it could have resulted in a much more even-handed debate. But that would have meant a Russian acceptance that the East Europeans actually mattered on their own, that they had their own security concerns, that these needed addressing and that Russia had to offer some concessions in return for preventing NATO's enlargement. But, since nobody in the Kremlin ever contemplated any of these things, Russia persisted in conducting its dialogue with the West above the heads of the East Europeans. Russia claimed that NATO's enlargement represented the 'return of the Cold War'[11]. In fact, it was Russia which still abided by Cold War rhetoric, by treating the East Europeans as the subjects, rather than the objects of its negotiations with the West. Moscow expected the West to cut a deal on Eastern Europe, to split the difference between spheres of influence, a diplomatic technique which would not be unfamiliar to Palmerston, Metternich, Bismarck or, indeed Stalin.

 

Not wishing to pick up new quarrels, NATO actually accepted the Russian position: in a major departure from normal procedures, Javier Solana, then NATO's Secretary General, was given a mandate to negotiate with the Russians directly on behalf of all the allies. The result was a deal concluded in Paris at the end of May 1997. In return for a mechanism of permanent consultation with the Alliance and a promise of some concessions in future disarmament negotiations, Moscow dropped its fierce opposition to NATO's enlargement. But, behind all the smiles and ringing speeches at the signing ceremony of this document, the real fight was only beginning. On paper, the Russians had failed in all their original objectives: they were not compensated for the 'loss' of central Europe in the first wave of NATO enlargement, and were given no say over any country which may choose to join the alliance at a later date. More importantly, the consultation body which was established between NATO and the Russians at that time had no powers of decision over NATO's internal affairs. But no sooner had the agreement been concluded, the Kremlin began to claim that its true significance was to prevent former Soviet republics (read the Baltic states) from ever joining. At that time, President Clinton dismissed this as a mere pep talk for internal Russian consumption, and vowed that NATO would not be hindered in what it did subsequently. And so it proved. But, yet again, the Russians lost a chance to improve their links with NATO. The co-operation council established in 1997 achieved nothing of any consequence. And exactly the same arguments were rehearsed when the second batch of East Europeans joined NATO in 2004. The chance for a measured debate was missed, not because the mechanisms did not exist or could not be invented, but because the Russians were not really interested in such a dialogue.

 

A mistaken enlargement?

 

What about the argument that NATO's enlargement was, in itself, a mistake, an unnecessary diversion which should have been avoided, regardless of what the Russians thought or did? This idea is easily disposed of by merely outlining what would have been the outcome in Europe is NATO did not enlarge:

 

· Once it would have become clear that no NATO membership was possible, the countries of the Visegrad Group - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - would have concluded their own military alliance, offering its members mutual security guarantees;

· Romania and Bulgaria would have demanded to join this organisation instantly, but Bulgaria would have been deemed to distant and too irrelevant, while Romania's membership may have been blocked by Hungary because of long-standing ethnic and territorial disputes;

· Poland would have supported the membership of Lithuania into the Visegrad Group, but not that of Latvia or Estonia. Either way, the unity which existed among the Baltic states during the 1990s would have shattered;

· The Baltic states would have turned to their Scandinavian neighbours for security. Irrespective of what the response from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark may have been, NATO's northern flank would have basically drifted away from the alliance, absorbed in its own security arrangements;

· The East Europeans would have never given up on their quest for a wider continent-wide security arrangement. So, NATO would have continued to debate enlargement at all its summits, whether these took place or not;

· The longer this debate lasted, the higher the chances of a fundamental rift between Europe and the US;

· The East Europeans would have turned to the European Union for protection, and would have demanded that the EU beef up its common defence identity almost immediately. While this would have been welcome news to some Western governments, the result would have been precisely what everyone in Europe wished to avoid: an open, zero-sum game between the EU and NATO;

· It is highly likely that, at some point, the Russians would have started putting more direct pressure on the East Europeans. If President Yeltsin briefly threatened to target his country's missiles on Poland on the eve of NATO's enlargement in 1997, the language he would have used towards an isolated Poland would have been much harsher;

· The threat of Russia would have dominated East European thinking and action: regional defence budgets would have soared, money would have been inefficiently spent on territorial defence - something which nobody needs in Europe - and the borders between Eastern Europe, Belarus and Russia would have been sealed;

· Ukraine would have been drawn into this game by the East Europeans, partly as a bulwark against Russia, but also in order to create a buffer zone in the heart of the continent;

· Individual East European countries - and Poland in particular - would have been tempted to negotiate secret security agreements with key Western nations. Within a matter of years, Europe would have been abuzz with rumours as to who promised whom military equipment and protection

 

Europe has been this way before, during the 1920s, when the region established its Little Entente. It was a disaster, which failed to protect its member states, failed to create regional cohesion and ultimately left the countries of the region to be picked up one-by-one by Hitler and Stalin. The outcome would not have been so dramatic after the end of the Cold War, but the result would have still been very serious: the disintegration of NATO, inconclusive arrangements inside the EU, and the renationalisation of defence policies across the continent. It is hardly credible to assume that Germany could have ignored the existence of a security alliance on its borders for long; the Germans would have been pushed into repeating their previous history - choosing between making a deal with Russia above the heads of Eastern Europe, or embracing Eastern Europe at the expense of friendly relations with Russia. Once the Germans were involved on their own, the French, British and Italians would not have been far behind. In short, Europe would have descended into a chaotic period, a never-ending round of anguished debates with no clear security structure. NATO enlargement may not have been a brilliant policy. But it was the ONLY workable policy.

 

It provided all Europe with some major advantages which are so evident that they are usually either ignored, or just forgotten. First, it offered former Soviet satellites the reassurance that their independence is immutable. There is no longer any question that foreign domination over small nations can now return, that they will slip back into spheres of influence. It also eliminated the 'Balkans complex' from which some of the southern European nations suffered. All the nations of the Balkans have believed for more than a century that, no matter what they do, the rest of Europe will continue to regard their region as a disease which needs to be quarantined, rather than as simply a geographic area which needs to be managed through incorporation into continent-wide institutions. The fact that, at the height of the West's preoccupation with Yugoslavia during the mid-1990s, NATO rebuffed the membership applications of countries such as Romania or Slovenia was held as another proof of this supposedly immutable historic fact. This historic complex - which did so much to thwart Western efforts to pacify the Balkans - is now waning. For the first time since they have become independent, countries in southeast Europe are full members of both NATO and the EU.

 

The alliance has also provided a temporary compensation for slower EU integration. For the Baltic states, NATO membership nicely rounded off European Union membership, which will be happening at the same time. However, Romania and Bulgaria have long accepted that they cannot become full members in the first round of EU enlargement to the east. Although there is no legal correlation between the two institutions, the connection is made in the minds of all Europeans. If NATO failed to admit countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, it would have been very difficult for the EU to justify the membership claims of both countries. As matters stand now, the Romanian and Bulgarian governments have an easier time in justifying their decidedly inferior position in the EU[12], because they also enjoy NATO membership. If NATO had failed to invite Romania and Bulgaria to join in 2004, the EU's membership promise to these countries - which materialised only three years later - would have carried little weight. As it was, the EU was not only able to claim that its promise of admitting Romania and Bulgaria was real, but was also able to apply a positive discrimination between Romania and Bulgaria's applications. Largely for accidental reasons, Romania and Bulgaria were bracketed together in their EU membership applications, despite the fact that Bulgaria's progress has been slightly more promising, and the sheer size of Romania's economy and problems puts the country in a separate category. If neither of these two Balkan countries were in NATO, any EU discrimination would have been interpreted as an impossible further humiliation for Romania. But, because both of them were in the alliance, the EU managed to implement a discreet differentiation in the membership applications of the two countries, and was able to ignore the outrage from either applicant during the accession negotiations.

 

NATO membership also promoted normal relations throughout the East European region. The idea of intra-Balkan or intra-Baltic co-operation is as old as the regions themselves and, overall, it remained a myth. All the countries in the two regions experienced the same economic problems. The Balkans had their bloated agricultural sectors, a decrepit industrial base, surplus and largely unskilled labour and an urgent demand for foreign investment. The Baltics, in turn, suffered from small populations, no domestic market base and - at least initially - no obvious economic niche in which they could specialise. Far from being economically compatible, the countries of southeastern Europe and the Baltics were economic competitors immediately after they regained their independence. Nevertheless, with NATO's guarantee in place, these tasks were tackled without rancour. There is no love between the three Baltic states,[13] and almost no serious links between Romania and Bulgaria on Europe's south. But all these countries are now dealing normally with each other; the fiery mix of competition, disdain and fear, has now been largely dissipated. Hidden, informal but popular resentment at perceived old historic injustices, at the plight of ethnic minorities or old territorial divisions will not evaporate overnight.[14] Nevertheless, NATO membership has subtly raised the threshold of acceptability in articulating such demands. This is already clear in what was one of Eastern Europe's biggest ethnic problem: the fate of the Hungarians in Romania. Up to a fifth of the Romanian electorate routinely voted in the first decade after the end of the Cold War for parties whose main platform was the fight against the supposed Hungarian territorial threat to Transylvania. Yet no sane Romanian politician now argues that such a threat still exists. The fact that Hungary itself cannot raise old territorial or ethnic disputes provides additional reassurance. But there is more: claims on the territory of other states have also abated. Over the last decade, quite a few Romanians were attracted by the possibility of a union with neighbouring Moldova. To be sure, this historically romantic view was already waning before NATO issued its invitation to Romania, but it is now truly dead: no sane ordinary Romanian will be prepared to argue that, in order to keep alive the dream of reunification with Moldova - an old Romanian territory initially seized by Russia - Romania should imperil its NATO or EU good standing. A similar effect is observable in Bulgaria as well, where dreams of a possible historic link with Macedonia were already waning, but are now truly dead. Both Estonia and Latvia have their own historic territorial disputes. Yet again, these are largely dead.

 

NATO membership also encouraged an air of normality in the internal politics of the East Europeans. One of the defining disputes in internal politics in every candidate country has been the claim of various leaders that only they would be able to deliver full NATO membership. On the whole, this debate mirrored a much deeper divide between reformed former communists and those who were untainted by association with the past. Ultimately, however, this left-right divide did not matter. An explicitly anti-communist government in Romania failed to gain admission into NATO in 1997. And it was none other than Romanian President Ion Iliescu, once the ideology chief of the communist party in his country who went to Prague in order to receive his country's invitation to join the alliance. The same happened in Poland as well, where it was not Lech Walesa, the anti-communist hero who led his country into NATO, but President Alexander Kwasniewski, a former minor communist official. For those who fought against communism over the last five decades, these twists represented a final, bitter irony. But, seen in a broader context, the effect was overwhelmingly positive. NATO refused to be dragged into the petty local disputes about who was a communist. The alliance stood above ideological disputes. And there were no Western 'favourites' whose claims stood a stronger chance in the West. Those who accuse NATO of never shedding its anti-Russian mantle would do well to ponder this aspect: some of the East European leaders embraced by the alliance were former communists, but were still considered perfectly adequate partners.

 

Probably the most significant - and, in many respects, the most counter-intuitive - outcome of NATO's enlargement has actually been better relations between the East Europeans and Russia itself. Although the region's suspicion of Russia's motives lingered, there is no evidence that any East European country tried to push NATO in an anti-Russian direction. The dialogue between NATO and Russia was influenced by major countries such as Britain, France, Germany or the US, not by the new member states which very often did not raise any objections.

 

The ultimate tragedy of the dispute between Russia and the West over NATO is that a good case can be made that NATO's enlargement was actually in Russia's best interests. Without this enlargement, the countries of Eastern Europe would have been even less predictable and even less friendly to Moscow. Bereft of the responsibilities which NATO membership imposes, they would have dragged Ukraine into a variety of regional alliances, which would have aggravated Russia's security concerns in the borderlands regions. Yet Moscow never accepted this argument, because the Russians assumed that, if Eastern Europe was left in suspended animation, if it was not incorporated into Europe-wide institutions, the Russians would have enjoyed the privilege of picking them one-by-one. The result would have been a disaster for Russia itself. But the Russians have a long history of choosing the worst possible alternative, if this appears to preserve their greater power status.

The lessons which can be drawn from this episode are:

 

· NATO did not rush into Eastern Europe: it had to be dragged into the region, kicking and screaming;

· Russian concerns were not ignored; they were taken into account at every stage;

· Russia could have done a great deal with NATO, had it embraced the variety of co-operative structures on offer. These offers may have been nebulous, but NATO stood ready to flesh them out, so the Russians had plenty of opportunity to fashion the links to their own advantage. They missed this opportunity, because they wanted to miss the opportunity;

· There was never any option of offering the East Europeans just EU membership, without NATO membership. Quite apart from the fact that the EU was not and still is not prepared to shoulder real defence burdens, a division of Europe into two camps, one which enjoys both NATO and EU membership and one which does not, would have created a multitude of problems;

· And, doing neither - ignoring the East Europeans altogether - would have been tantamount to consigning Europe to a disaster.

 

None of the above should suggest that NATO's enlargement process can be open-ended, or that new countries should be invited to join the Alliance with little regard to the tensions which this may bring in the West's relations with Russia. Nevertheless, the reality still is that NATO's enlargement was one of the best decisions Europe has made. It will not save the Alliance from possible future challenges but, even if NATO ultimately does fade away, the process will be gradual, and will affect all European states in the same way. The mutual guarantee offered to the East Europeans is less than explicit. But it is the same guarantee that applies to all the other European states. Finally, far from isolating Russia, NATO enlargement could have been the best bridge to Russia. All provided, of course, that Russian leaders saw it this way. They didn't because, ultimately, Russia's interests were quite different. The Russians wanted to keep the continent divided; the Europeans could no longer afford to.

 

17 March 2009

 

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[1] The West's quick recognition of the Czechoslovak divorce was also largely influenced by the realisation that this was a very different episode from the bloody events in Yugoslavia.

[2] See Noel Malcolm, "Is there a doctor in the house? The EC's fantasies of superpowerdom have had consequences that are all too real - European Community's failure to respond to the crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina", National Review, 5 July 1993.

[3] See Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1995, and Michael Gordon, "The Anatomy of a Misunderstanding", New York Times, 25 May 1997.

[4] See Vaclav Havel's appeal to be "part of the NATO family" in International Herald Tribune, 20 October 1993.

[5] Gale Mattox, Arthur Rachwald, Enlarging NATO: The National Debates, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynn Rainer Publishers, 2001), p.17.

[6] Ibid, at pp. 33-45.

[7] International Herald Tribune, 13 January 1994.

[8]Philip Gordon, "The Normalisation of German Foreign Policy", Orbis, Volume 38, part 2, especially pages 240-241.

[9] See S.R. Sloan, The future US-European security cooperation, (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 4 December 1992) Report to Congress, 92-907 S..

[10] http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/enl-9501.htm, accessed on 15 February 2009.

[11] The International Herald Tribune, 22 June 1996.

[12] Transitory provisions restricting the free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian nationals in the EU will continue for the next five years; all the main EU member states uphold them. And the EU Commission has withdrawn some funds promised to Bulgaria, because of the country's failure to eliminate corruption. While the move was certainly justified, it beggars belief that a similar action would have been taken against other EU states, even those which have fairly inferior state administration standards.

[13] Estonia's offer of financial help to Latvia during the current financial crisis did not endear the Estonians to the Latvians, despite its generosity. And Lithuania was frequently the odd country out in the Baltic trio.

[14] Slovakia's ethnic dispute with neighbouring Hungary flared again during 2008.