As NATO is set to expand to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, many wise commentators are asking: why? The most obvious justification proffered by NATO enthusiasts is that these countries must be helped. One wonders then why the West, so eager to help, is not yet in a hurry to admit these countries to the European Union.
One also wonders what military threat is faced by these three countries. The enthusiasts point east, to the beleaguered Russia. But nobody ever offers a lucid explanation for why Russia, if she ever gets her act back together, would want to invade and occupy Poland – a poor country of 50 million Catholic fanatics who will be shooting at the Russians from every window. What does Russia stand to gain from another Afghanistan?
A more nuanced answer offered is that, absent Western protection, Poland & Co. will be easily influenced by Russia, and will eventually drift back into Moscow’s orbit. But query whether such drifting poses any threat to the West, particularly the United States? Some American scholars beg to differ:
NATO’s proposed new missions – to stymie the reemergence of a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and to prevent general “instability” in the region – do not have comparable relevance [as did NATO’s Cold War mission] to America’s security interests …. Acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence would be little more than recognition of one of the most enduring realities of international politics: that great powers typically create geopolitical buffer zones to protect their own security and advance their economic and political agendas. The establishment of such a zone does not necessarily portend the kind of aggressive expansionism that could threaten the global configuration of forces favorable to American interests …. Russia is not likely to make a bid for global hegemony for many years to come, if ever. A Russia shorn of its empire and not ruled by an aggressive totalitarian regime would not inherently threaten America’s security merely by acting as a normal great power and carving out a limited sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Undertaking an obligation to help keep Eastern Europe out of Moscow’s orbit would constitute a radical departure in U.S. foreign policy. [During the Cold War] no American administration … was willing to risk war to roll back Soviet power in the region. Yet [today’s NATO expansionists] are apparently willing to incur the risk of a clash with a nuclear-armed Russia to prevent the establishment of a far less menacing zone of Russian influence in that region. How the assumption of such a risk would be in the best interest of the United States is not readily apparent. 1
Furthermore, if the true goal is to protect Poland & Co. from drifting into Moscow’s orbit, then a Western unilateral security guarantee, perhaps backed with stationing nominal “tripwire ” forces in those countries for added reassurance, would appear sufficient. There are plenty of NATO troops in Germany, ready to rush to Eastern Europe’s aid if needed. Why integrate these countries fully into an alliance that, ominously, not only obligates the West to defend Poland when she needs help but also obligates Poland to attack whenever the West orders?
One cynical explanation is that, with the Cold War over, American arms manufacturers simply need business. They have been actively lobbying Washington to expand the alliance and equip the new members with American weaponry. One Beltway insider joked that the lobbying was so successful that
“we’ll probably be giving landlocked Hungary a new navy.”2
Money talks, to be sure, but some NATO enthusiasts have a more profound goal in mind. Russia, they argue, will turn evil again sooner or later; a second Cold War is inevitable. It is therefore imperative to urgently take advantage of Russia’s current weakness to surround her, keep her down and prevent her possible reemergence as a great power.3 Poland & Co. are therefore immensely valuable as observation posts and possible launching pads of a preemptive strike designed to nip Russia’s reemergence in the bud. For example, Pentagon’s planners have considered a war scenario involving NATO’s response to a Russian invasion of Lithuania (which, apparently, is then also considered either a part of the Western sphere of influence or an impermissible conquest for a “resurgent” Russia). 4
Why the belief that Russia will ultimately tum evil and misbehave? It is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy, grounded in a rather old, yet persistent, Western view of Russia. This view, candidly admitted to an American historian by several NATO enthusiasts, compels the conclusion that NATO expansion must occur “to demonstrate once and for all that the Russians never have been and never will be part of European civilization.”5
The logic is easy to follow. Having decided that the Russians are outsiders who should be kept out of the shiny European candy store, the wise Western statesmen foresee that future generations of Russians will inevitably resent being treated as the white Negroes of Europe. God forbid, they may even one day have the means to contest their exclusion, and come knocking on the candy store’s door. Therefore it is necessary to surround their ghetto with as many guns as possible, the sooner the better while their ghetto is still a mess.
The last time Russians were treated as equal partners in European decision-making was when they were part of the Quadruple Entente. Then Europe’s most feared bogeyman was not Russia but France and her infectious revolutionary ideas. Having helped defeat Napoleon, the Russians were briefly given a seat in the corporate boardroom of West Inc.
The seat was gone rapidly, as Russia’s growth quickly changed everyone’s focus. The elder members of the board did not want to share any of their ill-gotten colonial gains with a newcomer. Soon, the British and the Turks were teaming up with yesterday’s French bogeyman to fight Russia in the Crimean War – in order to keep her bottled up in the Black Sea.
Whenever the subject of admitting Russia into the Western club comes up, either as a member of EU or NATO or in some other form, the Western pundits’ reply is unanimously negative. Russia, they say, is simply too big to be absorbed via merger into West Inc. So big that her admittance would dilute everyone else’s interest and make Russia the dominant shareholder of the resulting Russia/West conglomerate.
Alexander III, the last Russian czar to die peacefully, whispered to his son Nicholas II during his last days: “Russia has no friends in the West. They fear our enormity. “6
Nicholas should have remembered that advice when he was lured into sending Russian men yet again to fight a European war. One more time, the promise of membership in the Western club was dangled before Russia as the coveted prize. Nicholas should have known better, and paid dearly. Russia was in the midst of an economic boom. She should have behaved like the outsider the West perceives her to be, and watched Europeans slaughter each other from the sidelines while building up her strength.
In World War II, when Russian cannon fodder was once again needed to help defeat another European bogeyman, the West not only offered Stalin a warm embrace but, once again, the promise that Russia could finally have her empire. But with war complete, it quickly turned out that bad Uncle Joe had misunderstood and no empire was in order. By going ahead and establishing one anyway, Russians had once again misbehaved and had to be “contained.”
True, Uncle Joe indeed represented a depraved regime that would have kept pushing the envelope further if left uncontested. I grew up under that regime. I hated it, and eagerly listened to Voice of America, the only radio broadcast that told us somewhat accurately what the real deal was. I even hoped for an American invasion – anything to get rid of the tyranny that was tormenting my family and the whole nation.
When the tyranny began to crumble, I rejoiced. Now, I thought, the centuries of rivalry and geopolitical chess will be over, and Russians will finally be accepted with open arms into the civilized European family, just as Voice of America always hinted we would be, if only we overthrow the damn Reds.
The Russian people did, getting rid of the bogeyman on their own and voluntarily relinquishing their empire. Yet no warm hugs followed. Instead, as soon as the last Russian soldiers went home, whispers about NATO expansion began. (They were conspicuously absent until the withdrawal was complete; indeed, when Gorbachev was giving away East Germany, Jim Baker assured him that NATO would not expand.)7
As Russian power continued to disintegrate, the Western rhetoric rapidly became more and more blatantly honest. When a Russian diplomat recently expressed concern about NATO expansion during a negotiation, Madeleine Albright abruptly cut him off: “I feel your pain. “8 And now the Westerners are hurriedly surrounding the fallen Russian bear, hoping to tie a strong rope around his testicles so that he could never again have an erection, let alone an orgasm. History repeats itself.
Today, the Russians remain the white Negroes of Europe, gazing with envy from the ghetto at the shiny candy store across the street to which they are permanently denied entrance. True, the West has thrown some handouts their way; most handouts settle in the Swiss bank accounts of Russia’s ruling class – the same damn Reds who never left (an implicit reward from the West for squandering the empire?) Until their help is needed to combat another bogeyman, the Russians’ ghetto will remain securely isolated and the candy store well-protected. Or so the West hopes, anyway.
****
The Russian official response to NATO expansion has been muted. People polled on the streets mostly did not care, preoccupied with survival in a collapsing economy. The Russian leadership did, however, draw a line at the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), resisting Western notions of placing those states into the NATO orbit for now.9 The Pentagon planners’ zeal to include the Baltics indeed smacks of overreaching: most observers agree that “there’s no way the U.S. Army is going to guarantee the Estonia-Russia border’10 and that “NATO could defend the Baltics by only one means – nuclear attack”11 – in other words, not at all, since it is doubtful that the American public relishes the thought of a nuclear shootout in order to defend a region the size of Connecticut which has been a part of the Russian empire for all but 30 years of its history.
However, the NATO enthusiasts press on, and their zeal is easily understood in light of their theory that Russia is a dangerous pariah which must be knocked down every time she tries to get up. They argue that “NATO now has to either expand all the way to Russia’s border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe”12permitting Russia to rebuild a puny empire – an unacceptable outcome in their opinion.
For now, the Kremlin is keeping quiet. However, some commentators caution not to mistake the grudging acquiescence of corrupt Russian elites and beleaguered Russian people for “permanent acceptance.”13 As one scholar sums up:
Russia has concluded it is simply too weak to stop expansion …. After NATO expands, the new European order will rest not on Russian consent, but on Russian weakness.14
The weakness will not last, despite the West’s best efforts to declaw and castrate the fallen bear. Nor will Russia forever be governed by a corrupt and selfish oligarchy whose Swiss bank accounts matter more than the nation’s well-being.
****
When one looks at Russia today, one cannot help but draw parallels to other great nations that had to live through some dark days. In the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, China was a basketcase, a dying carcass of a country being torn up by foreign vultures. Today, China is an emerging economic and military superpower.
In 1918, Germany lay defeated and castrated. Twenty years later, the Germans were back. Boy, were they ever.
In 1945, Japan also lay in ruins. Today she boasts the world’s second largest economy.
Throughout her thousand-year history, Russia has experienced many peaks and valleys. It was invaded by Mongol tribes and Swedish vikings; by Ottomans and Prussians; by Napoleon and Hitler. After some initial successes, the invaders invariably vanished (usually with some help from the Russians), while Russia always emerged from every valley stronger than she had been before. The Ottoman Empire is now a distant memory; so are the Napoleonic Empire and the Third Reich. But Russia remains. And tomorrow, as before, she will rise again.
****
History should never be viewed in snapshots; it is an interminable continuum. Some civilizations flourish and decline; empires and alliances emerge and collapse; balances of power shift incessantly; but great nations always persevere.
Currently, America is enjoying a position of unchallenged global hegemony. But history’s lesson is that dominance is evanescent. So it was with the Romans, the Mongols, the Nazis, and the Great British Empire. Some superpowers vanish in a cataclysmic fireball. Others slowly fade into irrelevance, and may carry on for a few decades and even centuries if no challenger steps forward immediately to test their atrophied muscle. The sad realization of old age and impotence only dawns upon them when Barbarians show up at the gates.
One can already see some chinks in American armor. To most observers, the $4 trillion debt and the decay of America’s inner cities bear no relevance to America’s ability to enforce her will throughout the world. And until a Barbarian shows up on the horizon, the skyline seems bright and cloudless indeed.
But one wonders how long America would be able to afford (and its diverse voting constituencies would be willing to pay for) the maintenance of its global supremacy in the absence of a blatantly hostile foreign superpower like the Soviet Union. Recent polls suggest that few Americans consider foreign policy a top priority. That’s assuming they are even aware what American foreign policy is: in March 1998, only 10 percent of Americans could name even one of the three former Warsaw Pact nations that were due to join NATO.15
One also wonders whether new technological developments and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction may soon reduce the “firepower gap” between America and tomorrow’s Saddam or Ho Chi Minh. It was, among other things, the narrowing of the firepower gap, and the unacceptable casualties it caused, that forced the British and the French to abandon most of their colonies in the 1960s. A heavy toll incurred in defending purported American interests in remote places like Estonia or Taiwan would turn the MTV generation’s current apathy into a vehement rejection of their leaders’ global vision.
It may take quite a while. But the sunset will one day arrive for the era of American global hegemony. It will arrive, because history teaches us that it always does. No hegemony is eternal.
****
I like American sports. I enjoy watching NBA games. The rapid flux of a basketball game, with its constant swings of momentum and frequent last minute suspense, keeps an avid fan on the edge.
I remember one game between the Knicks and Celtics in Boston, played sometime in the late 1980s. Back then, the Celtics were still a dynasty, although one could already notice that Larry Bird had lost a step or two, and that the aging Robert Parrish could no longer outmaneuver a young (albeit still inexperienced) Patrick Ewing in the paint. But the Knicks as a team were still a ragtag basketcase, and the final score reflected the inequitable matchup. In fact, so lopsided was the Celtics’ margin of victory that some Knick player or coach later grumbled about the arrogant hosts “running up the score” at the end of the game, when the outcome was no longer in doubt.
“That’s OK,” the sore loser said. “They’re forgetting that the people you meet on your way up the pole are the same people you meet on your way down.”
Sure enough, within a few years the Knicks were dominating the Atlantic Division, while the decimated Celtics became perennial cellar-dwellers.
****
The strategic wisdom of not running up the score in a blowout victory is sometimes lost on statesmen who decide the loser’s fate after winning yet another geopolitical chess match. Being nice to a loser did not enter the winners’ minds in Versailles in 1919, when the collective approach taken was to dismember, isolate and humiliate Germany. This approach paved the way for Hitler and sowed the seeds of World War II.
Americans were careful not to run up the score on the Japanese in 1945; two atomic bombs were a harsh enough punishment. General MacArthur’s prudently humane occupation paved the way to Japanese recovery and sowed the seeds of a solid U.S.-Japanese friendship.
Today’s American and European leaders have opted for the Versailles run-up-the-score approach in their treatment of a collapsed Russia. Their choice demonstrates not only a lack of long-term vision, but also total ignorance of global history and the lessons it teaches us. Their short-sighted policies are sowing the seeds of hatred that may one day be reaped by tomorrow’s European children. The harvest will mature in a new world, where America will be weaker than she is now, while Russia will be much stronger than she is now.
On that day, we will find that a new generation of Americans will not send its sons to fight, simply because this one promised it would.16
On that day, the shareholders of West Inc. might wonder whether merging with Russia Inc. (despite the risk of Russia becoming a dominant shareholder) may have been a wiser move than spurning Russia and thereby triggering her rebirth as a colossal embittered rival.
And on that day, somewhere in Moscow, a group of Western diplomats will be frantically negotiating with the resurgent white Negroes of Europe, begging them to stop pissing on Europe’s lawn and to stop hurling Molotov cocktails through the windows of Europe’s opulent mansion. They might even belatedly pull out the old bait, promising that they will admit Russians into the European candy store if only they behave.
And a Russian diplomat will stare them in the eye, smile, and say: “I feel your pain.”
It is sad that today’s wise statesmen don’t have the time to watch basketball games, much less the post-game interviews. If they had, they would know that the people you meet on your way up the pole are the same people you meet on your way down.
Vadim Mahmoudov
May 14, 1998
****
1Ted Gallen Carpenter, Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (1994), at 6-7 (hereinafter “Carpenter”).
2Katharine Q. Seelye, Arms Contractors Spend to Promote an Expanded NATO, New York Times, March 30, 1998, at Al.
3Carpenter, at 16.
4Carpenter, at 22-23
5John Lewis Gaddis, The Senate Should Halt NATO Expansion, New York Times, April 27, 1998, at
Al5.
6Lev Gumilev, The Black Legend (1994), at 590 (translation mine).
7Michael R. Gordon, The Anatomy of a Misunderstanding, New York Times, May 25, 1997, at E3.
8Melinda Liu, Eastward Expansion, Newsweek, May 26, 1997, at 43.
9Michael R. Gordon, NATO Is Inching Closer, But Russians Don’t Blink, New York Times, May 2, 1998, at A6.
10Thomas L. Friedman, Bye-Bye NATO, New York Times, April 14, 1997, at Al7.
11Fareed Zakaria, Can’t Russia Join the Club, Too?, Newsweek, May 4, 1998, at 44
12Thomas L. Friedman, Now a Word From X, New York Times, May 2 1998.
13Editorial, Tinkering Perilously With Europe, New York Times, March 1, 1998, at 14.
14Thomas L. Friedman, Not Yet, New York Times, March 24, 1997, A15 (quoting Michael Mandelbaum).
15Alison Mitchell, NATO Debate: From Big Risk to Sure Thing, New York Times, March 20, 1998 at A1.
16Patrick J. Buchanan, Who Lost Russia?, New York Post, February 18, 1998, at 25.
