This is the ‘new normal’, says NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. “Russia has shown that it is ready to challenge the fundamental aspects of the European order by force.” That is why NATO defense ministers decided on Wednesday to examine whether NATO’s presence in the east and south-east of the alliance should be permanently expanded with small, rotating multinational units (of about 1,000 military personnel), such as those now based in Poland and the Baltic countries. .
The urge to act on NATO territory is a signal that NATO is ‘back’, after President Macron called the alliance brain-dead and Trump wanted to get rid of it. As if to underline this, Paris wants to lead such a new multinational NATO unit in Romania. More striking is the warning from the French corner that if Russia attacks Ukraine, the NATO-Russia Act (1997) will disappear in the trash. In that document, NATO imposes itself restrictions on military presence in the east. They therefore no longer apply.
‘This crisis links NATO enormously,’ says a European NATO diplomat. “It’s a threat the alliance was built for.” Extra plus: the intense consultation between the US and allies. Very different from under Trump, and then with Biden’s departure from Afghanistan.
Yet the Ukraine crisis also shows the alliance’s limitations. For some time now, there has been a discussion about whether and if so which promises were made to Moscow in 1990 about non-expansion eastwards. What is certain is that, after the Cold War, it was not possible to integrate Russia into a new European order. The reason has been the same for thirty years: the West assumed the free destiny of countries after long Soviet rule, Moscow continued to cling in neighboring countries to the right to a sphere of influence that had been enforced after 1945.
Geopolitical eras
Political scientist Andrei Sushentsov says on the digital media platform puck that where western politicians think from election to election, Russia (and China) think more in geopolitical eras. The current crisis comes ‘a little late’, but was inevitable. “Putin said years ago that we hoped for too long for dialogue instead of demanding that our interests be taken seriously.” He did this out loud, too, in a flaming speech in 2007 in Munich.
The NATO-Russia Act of 1997 had provided some relatively quiet years, apart from a fierce row over NATO bombing during the Kosovo War (1999). After 9/11, Putin offered Bush Jr. assistance. Then Bush canceled the ABM treaty (which bans missile defense) and the Iraq war started. The limit for Moscow became visible as NATO came into view for Georgia and Ukraine – that was after peaceful, democratic upheavals had taken place in those countries. Putin saw Western conspiracies in this. Now the fundamental question became acute: free will versus the right to a sphere of influence.
Ed Kronenburg, then right-hand man of NATO chief De Hoop Scheffer, remembers a meeting with Putin in 2006. ‘The conversation went well until the end, when it was about Georgia. Then suddenly Putin said: ‘Sorry, but that’s a red line for me’.’ Dealing with this Russian red line became a divisive issue in NATO that continues to this day. Under American pressure and against the wishes of Berlin and Paris, Kiev and Tbilisi were given a split promise in Bucharest in 2008: one day you can join, but we are blocking the way there. The same year, the Georgia War broke out.
Fickle America
Nearly fourteen years and eight years of war in Ukraine later, Europe is again at this crossroads, with a stronger Russia and a fickle America for whom Ukraine is a distraction from China. And with a large Russian force along the border with Ukraine. NATO (which decides by consensus) cannot take its promise to Kiev off the table – but it is clear that this military is worth nothing. For years, Ukraine has been alone in its struggle to survive as an independent country. Kiev’s greatest asset is its own strength, borrowed from previous Russian aggression.
Russia is playing the long game in Ukraine and Georgia, military pressure is just one of the instruments. In fact, NATO watches helplessly, growling beyond its borders. Western capitals are already diligently looking for a diplomatic formula in which Ukraine’s ‘Navo dream’ is crushed without saying so.
That is the balance thirty years after the Cold War: another protracted confrontation with Moscow, or major negotiations, or both. The NATO borders have moved, millions of Eastern Europeans feel free and safer. That’s profit. The price is paid outside NATO borders.