Russian Invasion of Ukraine - The NATO Question
A closer look at the complicated historical context of NATO and Russia's relationship
Over the past months, tensions over Ukraine have been rising, with Putin demanding concrete “security guarantees”, like a commitment from NATO not to include Ukraine into the military alliance, and limits on the number of troops and weapons stationed near Russia’s borders. All of these demands have been dismissed in the run-up to this horrific war, as they have been for decades. Seeing as NATO is one of Russia’s justifications for its war, and since the military alliance is such a prominent part of the West’s response to this conflict, a closer look at its long history is warranted.
Clarification: In this article I wrote that “Ukraine is definitely not being run by Nazis who are committing genocide against native Russians, and NATO does not actually constitute an existential threat to Russia.” Because of the still-developing situation in Ukraine, I want to clarify that there also definitely are Nazi’s in Ukraine that seem to hold considerable political influence, for instance through threats of violence, despite not being represented directly in the political process. With regard to NATO, what I meant was that NATO does not want to go to war with Russia, not directly at least, despite them clearly wanting to hurt Russia and its interests as much as they can. The main points made in this article still stand and unfortunately there has only been more death and suffering since it was written, and avenues for making peace remain tragically unexplored.
It bears remembering that in December, as Russian troops near Ukraine’s border were already causing tensions, President Putin said that he wanted to work out “specific agreements that would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to the Russian territory”. Just at what point exactly the invasion of Ukraine turned from possibility to inevitability is unknown, or whether the months of diplomatic talks had been nothing more than a cover for invasion preparations, but to me it seems unlikely that Putin would be making statements like these, as he has been doing for decades, if another solution was not still on the table. Where do these demands come from? Putin believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, a belief that is worth taking the time to think about, considering the many unspeakable horrors of the twentieth century.
The origin of NATO
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the NATO military alliance has steadily expanded closer and closer to Russia’s borders. In 2007, Putin decried this expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust” and asked “what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” What he was referring to here is the assurances that were given to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the time (1990), that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward” and which were “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.”
NATO and the Warsaw Pact were each created in the years following the end of World War II. The main purpose of these military alliances was to provide a powerful deterrence for an enemy attack, since each side could now count on the combined military strength of all its members to defend itself and, especially in the tense decades that followed, each side also had an absolutely staggering nuclear arsenal at its disposal. When the USSR (= Soviet Union), and by extension the Warsaw Pact, dissolved in 1991, NATO continued to exist. U.S. diplomat and historian George Kennan in 1997 presciently said that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era”, and that it would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.” Furthermore, he has stated that “Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions”, which might explain why the U.S. response to Russia’s demands that neither NATO nor Ukraine constituted a threat fell on deaf ears.
Rise of anti-Russian sentiment
On top of decades of Russian concern and uneasiness over NATO’s expansion, there are also years of anti-Russian sentiment, especially in the United States. Again and again, the main policy of the United States government appears to have been to isolate and demonise Moscow at every possible turn. Despite some attempts to adopt a more rational and constructive attitude towards Russia, as former U.S. president Obama advocated, the ‘Russiagate’ scandal surrounding former U.S. president Trump’s election and the ensuing years of McCarthyite hysteria has made any attempt at improving relations with Russia asinine. For example, comparing hacking attacks on the U.S. election with Pearl Harbor, or shaming Trump for not confronting Putin about Russia paying Taliban fighters bounties to kill U.S. soldiers based on intel which the current U.S. administration has admitted it has “low to moderate confidence” in, or suggesting that Russia was directly controlling the U.S. government. It has created a political environment, especially in the U.S., in which influential politicians openly talk of assassinating Putin or of engaging Russia militarily, comparing the unwillingness of the West to do so to the appeasement of Hitler.
Context matters
None of this is to say that the Russian government is innocent in all this, of course. Its global misinformation and hacking campaigns are well documented, as well as its poisoning of political opponents, the use of military force to achieve its aims, and the propping up of despotic regimes like the one in Syria. But with the exception of the overt elimination of political opponents, the same accusations can easily be levelled at the U.S. and other Western governments. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, also in blatant violation of the United Nations charter, claiming that it was a direct threat to the United States because it was supposedly trying to acquire nuclear weapons (like Russia is doing now with Ukraine). And like Putin, then U.S. president Bush also expected the people of the country he had invaded to welcome him with open arms. I could go on with examples of NATO’s bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999 (also in violation of the U.N. charter, using cluster bombs, and killing many civilians), or of its role in the overthrowing of the Libyan government in 2011, creating a massive refugee problem.
Essentially, therein lies the problem. I am not naming these examples to, in some twisted intellectually dishonest way claim that what Russia doing is somehow justified (see the term ‘whataboutism’), nor to say that Russia’s claims are compatible with reality. Ukraine is definitely not being run by Nazis who are committing genocide against native Russians, and NATO does not actually constitute an existential threat to Russia. In fact, Putin himself has expressed a willingness to join NATO in the past, as long as “Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.
I am naming them because history matters. Context matters. It undermines your credibility when you’re claiming the moral high ground when people like former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry unironically say that “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests. […] This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century.” So when Western leaders decry Moscow’s invasion as “an unprecedented act of aggression” and “a blatant violation of international law”, and accuse Putin of seeking to “shake the very foundations of the free world, thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways”, they may well be completely right, but the many examples of them doing the exact things that they are accusing Russia of makes it all the more easier for Putin to simply dismiss the West as “an empire of lies” trying to bring down Russia with “illegitimate sanctions”. Not acknowledging or trying to rectify our own crimes reduces the credibility and effectiveness of our response to those of others.
What should (and shouldn’t) we do?
Ukrainian president Zelensky also wants the West to do more, stating that NATO’s decision not to shoot down Russian planes of Ukrainian airspace amounts to “the green light for further bombing of Ukrainian towns and villages” and that “all the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you”. These responses, while to an extent an understandable reaction to the extreme suffering which the Ukrainian people are going through, are further escalations of a situation that is already extremely dangerous considering Russia’s massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Earlier today Putin was saying that the Western sanctions “are akin to a declaration of war”. He is already responding to what he sees as an “aggressive” response by the West with direct threats of using nuclear weapons. How much more risk can we take before he feels threatened enough to start considering using them?
That is not a wise path to go down, unless we want to bring about more suffering, on a scale that is unimaginable. If we actually want to stand with Ukraine and want to condemn Russia’s heinous and unjustified war, let us begin by being honest about our own crimes as well. It is heartwarming to see how the Ukrainian refugees are welcomed with open arms, but let’s do the same with the many African refugees fleeing the violence taking place in their countries. Let us stand in support of the people of Ukraine, as well as in support of the many refugees trying to reach Europe from other countries. Let us not send massive supplies of weapons to Ukraine, which brings with it the incalculable risks of escalating the conflict and dragging the West into a war with Russia and by extension global nuclear annihilation, but try to de-escalate the situation and instead send the brave people of Ukraine food, supplies, medicines, and COVID vaccines, which are all rapidly running out, so that they are better able to non-violently resist this war.
Let us not only call for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, but let us also recognise our own role in creating the conditions in which a horrible conflict like this can happen, so that peace negotiations can be held in good faith with both West and East looking for a mutually agreeable and lasting solution. And lastly, considering the extremely concerning IPCC 2022 climate report released this week, let us use this opportunity to reduce our dependence on oil and gas and invest in green(er) energy sources, so that we are no longer forced to choose between our moral values and supporting violent and repressive governments.
In short, let us choose cooperation and peace over domination and war. If we want our society to survive, whether it be this year or this century, there is no other way.
→ Want to help? Donate to organisations that are providing humanitarian assistance and evacuation:
The International Rescue Committee is providing food, medical care, and emergency support to families in Ukraine, as well as in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.
Ukraine Take Shelter is an independent platform connecting Ukrainian refugees with potential hosts and housing.
The World Health Organization is providing urgent healthcare to people across Ukraine and to refugees in neighbouring countries.
CORE, the Community Organized Relief Effort, is a crisis response organisation that brings immediate aid and recovery to communities in emergency situations. They are currently providing cash assistance and other vital help to families fleeing Ukraine to Poland.
→ Stay tuned for updates from the 21-year-old Ukrainian xenia, who has managed to leave the city of Kharkiv in search of a safer place to stay than the metro tunnels.
→ Stay tuned for an exploration of the risks of nuclear war and of the long and difficult road to peace.
Edited by Anne van Bergeijk.
Note: Post has been updated to include more organisations and platforms that help Ukrainians.
Note 2: The word ‘only’ has been removed from the sentence “Let us not only send massive supplies of weapons to Ukraine”, since it could potentially be interpreted as a call for sending ‘massive supplies of weapons’ instead of the opposite.
To read more about what the 21-year-old Ukrainian xenia has been going through since the Russian invasion began, go the articles below.
