Kennan Revisited: NATO Expansion into the Former USSR in Retrospect
“Not one inch eastward” was the assurance given by US Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9th, 1990. Seven years onward, former ambassador to the Soviet Union and architect of many American Cold War policies, George Kennan declared NATO’s expansion to be “the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” Since this proclamation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has grown to encompass twelve former socialist republics. Each, in turn, incrementally formulating Russia’s status as an international pariah.
Kennan was not alone in his fears – they were championed and echoed by Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Sam Nunn, and Thomas Friedman – all of whom warned in the 1990’s of the inevitability of a ‘new cold war’ if NATO were to be expanded without the inclusion of Russia. While its proponents make the case for NATO enlargement on the grounds of historical determinism – that twice in this century central and eastern Europe were the cause of Great Wars – the notion that enlargement would ‘lock in the dividends’ of the Cold War’s end is one firmly dispelled by the Ukrainian crisis.
Kennan was right.
Assessing NATO through the lens of alliance theory, its creation can be deemed an effort to influence the balance of power, stabilise against external threats, and prevent the over-mightiness of a stronger power. This draws one crucial question: what happens when that threat – the same threat that brought about the creation of said alliance – disappears overnight. Without an external enemy, the alliance loses its reason for existence. Enlargement in the wake of the dissolution of the Warsaw pact, therefore, is puzzling. Many Russians view NATO as a vestige of the cold war, inherently antagonistic to their country; they ask why their military alliance was disbanded and why the West ought to not do the same.
As of 1995, a mere 13% of US armed forces were serving abroad. By 2017, this had soared to 22%. In the same year, NATO had amassed 800 battalion troops in Estonia, 1200 in Latvia and Lithuania respectively, and 4000 in Poland; this was atop 250 tanks, Bradley Fighting vehicles and Paladin howitzers – the largest build-up since the Second World War. This accumulation came as defence budgets in the Baltic states began to rise exponentially, with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania spending over 2 billion dollars combined in 2019. There is, therefore, ample evidence to suggest a positive correlation between heightened NATO presence within a region and intensified militarisation.
The critical question here is evident: could this have been avoided?
NATO conduct in the former Soviet Union flagrantly defies every basic principle and platitude of good foreign policy: ‘treat former enemies magnanimously’, ‘do not take on unnecessary new ones’, ‘avoid emotion in making decisions’, ‘be willing to acknowledge error’. I am of the opinion that NATO manages to defy and violate every one of the aforementioned in its stance on Russia. With 1991 came the opportunity to welcome the nascent Russian Federation and the surrounding eastern bloc into the international community; to roll out a Marshall Plan style arrangement to foster the roots of fledgling democracy and market capitalism in the region. Instead came the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine, described by Ted Kennedy as a call for “21st century American imperialism”, squandering any chance of Russian integration, therefore rendering backlash inevitable.
America had taken advantage of a weakened Russia to impose a new world order that excluded them and disregarded their historical need for a buffer zone. Russia, thereafter, was forever condemned to enemy status.
There is much to be said for NATO’s complicity in propelling Vladimir Putin to power. In his exploitation of a post-Glasnost identarian crisis, a crumbling economy, and the deaths of millions due to malnutrition, Putin sold the Russian population a return to greatness – one whose values firmly juxtaposed those of the international community that had spurned their advances. Vladimir Pozner, the American raised journalist and Putin critic described the dictator as ‘especially subdued’ between the years of 2000 and 2007 – his signature upon the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 2002, a clear and positive engagement with a Permanent Joint Council, is often happily forgotten in Western scholarship. This period of détente was marred by George W. Bush’s undertaking of the absurd decision to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the founding document of superpower relations for nearly 30 years, thereafter, directing the Pentagon to build a new missile system in Eastern Europe under the false pretence of Iranian containment.
By way of concluding, one may look to Vladimir Putin’s statement this month: “modern offensive weapons will be deployed upon Ukrainian territory just like in Poland and Romania”. Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, intensely slighted by broken promises and Russia’s relegation from great power status. The situation today is as follows: hundreds of thousands of troops have amassed on both sides of the Ukrainian border. The fate of millions of civilians hangs in the balance. Russia will not tolerate NATO arms on its borders, nor will it tolerate Ukraine’s joining of NATO, a military alliance self-admittedly formed to aggressively challenge the USSR. Pax Americana has long since died; Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan all serve as a testament to the Western failure to police the world in the name of ‘spreading democracy’. The collapse of the USSR was a war won without firing a shot, yet America and its NATO allies failed to follow up its victory with measures to implement democracy and cultivate Westernisation.
Kennan’s prophecy has been resolutely fulfilled, stating in 1998, “this has been my life’s work, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.”
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
Image courtesy of George Bush Presidential Library and Museum via Wikimedia Commons ©1990, some rights reserved.
