NATO, At that time, Russia also wanted to join NATO

 NATO

At that time, Russia also wanted to join NATO

In "Not one inch", Mary Sarotte meticulously describes how the West chose to remove the impoverished and over-armed superpower

Of:

Petter Larsson

PUBLISHED: TODAY 04.00

US President Bill Clinton visits President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow.

US President Bill Clinton visits President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow.

Photo: AP

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In the late summer of 1989, Swedish television showed day after day images from the traffic jams on the border between Hungary and Austria. Hopeful East Germans had driven there on holiday in the hope of being released.

For some reason I remember this ominous species of butterfly better than the fall of the wall. I was 21 and could not believe it. No one could believe it.

The dissolution of the Eastern Bloc was like an exhalation after two generations of Europeans on both sides of the Iron Curtain held their breath in the shadow of the nuclear threat. Everyone knew that it was here, not in the United States, that the tanks would roll in. Now a unique opportunity opened up to transform Europe's future from battlefield to peace zone.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze wanted to dissolve both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Václav Havel spoke of an alliance-free, demilitarized zone in Central Europe. Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin wanted to join NATO. The German and American foreign ministers Baker and Genscher dreamed of a Euro-Asian community "from Vancouver to Vladivistok". And Bill Clinton repeated time and time again that he absolutely did not want to pull down a new curtain of iron through Europe.

And now we stand here.

The Cold War military dividing line moved only a few miles east. Countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus ended up on the wrong side. A nuclear-armed, revanchist Russia is now drawing the line at its sphere of interest in blood.

It would not have been necessary. There were other choices to be made for both Russia and the Western powers, according to Cold War historian Mary Sarotte in Not one inch, her chronicle of the lost decade between the fall of the wall and the election of Vladimir Putin as president.

In the new security situation that opened up, Washington had two important goals. Partly to cultivate good relations with Russia, not least because it was and is the only state with the ability to destroy the United States militarily. At the same time, to incorporate former Soviet states and perhaps even former Soviet republics into the sphere of influence of the United States at the same time.

On the issue of NATO's expansion to the east, these objectives came into conflict with each other.

With meticulous, if not exaggerated, richness of detail, Sarotte documents how, above all, American decision-makers, not without anguish, opted out of Russia. It will be a somewhat one-sided story, where we get to know much more about what considerations were made in Washington, than about how other governments thought.

The conflict between American priorities was mitigated by the fact that first the Soviet Union and then Russia were ruled by two Western-friendly presidents, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and that conflict could for the most part be bridged with money.

The Russian economy was in ruins after the neoliberal shock therapy. GDP per capita was almost halved. Life expectancy fell by five years when alcoholism and unemployment claimed millions of lives. The state apparatus ceased to function.

The United States took advantage of this weakness. Time and time again, the Russians were forced to make geopolitical concessions in exchange for loans and gifts, which were used to keep Yeltsin in power.

Although American rulers were far from having a clear plan and often disagreed, one decision led to another. Sarotte points to three crucial phases.

"Hell, too," was George H W Bush's response.

When the Berlin Wall fell, only one country knew one hundred percent what it wanted. Germany would be reunited at any cost and it would go fast, before Moscow came up with worse ideas and used the half a million soldiers stationed in the GDR.

Washington panicked. Would the price be that the united Germany left NATO? That US nuclear weapons were banned on German soil?

"Hell, too," was George H W Bush's response. The country was the US military stronghold in Europe.

The United States insisted that the GDR be incorporated into NATO. The Germans had to pay the Soviets with D-marks instead. Both American and European politicians also made verbal promises that NATO would not expand into the former Eastern bloc, not "an inch", as James Baker said - which is what the book's title refers to.

But since these promises were never put on paper, the first question of principle was decided: NATO had been given the green light to cross the Rubicon, or rather the Elbe. The Russians have felt cheated ever since.

The second decision was made around 1994-95. The Western powers had then created the Partnership for Peace as an alternative to full NATO membership. The idea was a broad and flexible collaboration where East and West would meet within the same organization, and perhaps create the community from Vancouver to Vladivostok that was talked about. Lots of countries joined, including Sweden, Finland and Russia.

But then Russia attacked Chechnya. There was an outcry through Eastern Europe: The bear is loose! Now we must have NATO protection! Nothing less than Article five is sufficient.

Washington met them: full defense guarantees for all. Moscow concluded that this partnership was a hoax.

The third decision concerned how close to the Russian border NATO would venture. The answer came when Bill Clinton opened for the Baltic states in 1999: there was no far limit. Not an inch of the Soviet empire was no longer forbidden land.

Unfortunately, this happened at the same time as NATO was bombing Serbia.

In Russia, it was considered something outrageous: a "defense alliance" intervened in the internal struggles of a sovereign state without a UN mandate. Belgrade today, Moscow tomorrow.

Relations between the United States and Russia were now ruined. Agreement after agreement on disarmament and weapons control was torn to pieces. When George Bush has been pushing for the accession of Georgia and Ukraine since 2008, and begins to build a missile shield over Eastern Europe, Moscow responds by giving its support to the Georgian breakaway republics, with the outbreak of war in Georgia.

Sarotte is critical. Her ideal is something like the Partnership for Peace, the dream of building security with Russia, not as a defense against Russia. But perhaps a longer time perspective and more flexibility - for example, to ban American nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe according to the Norwegian model - would have been enough to calm Moscow, she believes.

Now we are reaping Russian revengeism instead. And yet her book still does not cover the occupation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.

It is easy to agree with the mistakes afterwards. But it is also far from certain that history could have taken a different turn. Counterfactual speculation is always just more or less good guesses.

Somehow you have to find a way to live with the at once impoverished and over-armed superpower and avoid an increasingly devastating Third World War.

And of course, her story would have looked completely different if it had been written from Tallinn or Warsaw, where you thank your lucky star that you had time to become EU and NATO members before Moscow was strong enough to stop it.

There is now no way back from NATO expansion. But maybe there are lessons to be learned?

It is difficult to think long-term in the midst of a burning war. But no matter how much one opposes the invasion and abhors the regime that carries it out, it remains that Russia will not disappear. When the fighting in Ukraine is over, both Russians and other Europeans will face the same basic question as they did around 1990: How should Russia be reintegrated into Europe in a way that makes us all safer? Somehow you have to find a way to live with the at once impoverished and over-armed superpower and avoid an increasingly devastating Third World War.

The question also has bearing on the Swedish and Finnish debate, which in an unfortunate combination of war acid and fear - rarely the best advisers - is about to drive us into the arms of the White House at rocket speed.

Is it so obvious that the best thing for Swedish security in the long term is to extend the new iron curtain to the North Calotte?

Or are we better served by the fact that there are countries that Russia does not see as direct enemies? Those who can work for the relaxation that would make it possible to breathe again in our generation.