In fact, for all the prominent dissenters in the mid 1990s, the NATO debate balanced a hypothetical future danger—a stronger Russia convinced that the United States was acting deceptively and aggressively—versus immediate short-term gains. NATO expansion was popular politically; Republicans regularly chided Clinton for being “weak” by delaying it. Drawing on the work of Barnard’s Professor Kimberly Marten, Horton concludes that the expansion forces simply outmaneuvered their opponents. Holbooke and Lake were skilled bureaucratic infighters, figures like Secretary of Defense William Perry were not. The issue was settled by 1994, and expansion opponents did not really begin to mobilize until two years later.
Striking is the memoir of Perry, who lamented that a true partnership with Russia would have been possible without NATO expansion. When Perry tried to explain to the White House how Russia viewed it, he was met with an attitude of “Who cares what they think?” He considered resigning and laments that he didn’t fight harder; insisting on one-on-one meetings with Lake or Talbott might have made a difference. “I could have followed up on my consideration to resign,” Perry writes. “It is possible the rupture of relations with Russia would have occurred anyway. But I am not willing to concede that.” Perry and the generals were outmaneuvered by Lake and Holbrooke. Madeleine Albright later acknowledged that two-thirds of the members of the Council of Foreign Relations opposed NATO expansion.
Russia complained but could do nothing but acquiesce to NATO membership for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, European countries without organic links to Russia. Ukraine was a different matter. Even hawkish strategists recognized the difference. Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski—America’s two most prominent foreign policy thinkers from the mid 1960s virtually until their recent deaths—highlighted Ukraine as an especially neuralgic point for Moscow. In the 1990s, the deeply anti-Russian Brzezinski had supported the eventual entry of Ukraine into NATO, while acknowledging it would cause “a major disruption” in American–Russian and Ukrainian–Russian relations. Ukraine’s future membership was proclaimed formally by George W. Bush (in the face of serious French and German objections) in 2008. After Ukraine’s “Maidan revolution” crisis of 2014, in which an elected president was deposed, Brzezinski began to worry how major the disruption might be. He wrote several articles after Russia’s seizure of the Russian-majority Ukrainian province of Crimea, stressing that the United States should support Ukraine but acknowledge that NATO membership was out of the question.
“If you look at the map,” Zbig wrote, “it’s important to Russia on a psychological and strategic point of view. So Ukraine will not be a member of NATO.” It should pursue something “along the lines of the relationship Russia has with Finland.” Henry Kissinger made the same point: “If Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other, it should function as a bridge between them.” Ukraine, he added, “has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then.”
Kissinger also warned against helping western Ukraine dominate the largely Russian-identifying provinces of its east, saying this would lead to civil war or the break-up of the country. Of course, three subsequent presidents pursued exactly the opposite of the policies of those recommended by the veteran strategists, as presidents Obama, Trump and Biden enhanced the scope and lethality of weapons shipped to Ukraine while pursuing the integration of Ukrainian forces with NATO’s—a sort of incremental NATO adhesion by stealth.
The American Conservative |
