Breaking a promise to Russia

The Russian European dreamers have included Pushkin, Lenin, Gorbachev and, until relatively recently, President Vladimir Putin. They have all seen their country’s future as part of the “European house”.

But history and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars including Hitler’s invasion, almost up to the gates of Moscow as was Napoleon’s, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of Nato, have shattered the dream again and again.

At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the Nato-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards that goal were being taken.

First, Russia would have a seat at Nato’s table. Later it would join Nato. Later still, the European Union. Some experts said this would happen over ten years, others 20.

Then, smash-bang, the dream came to an end as President Bill Clinton, bucking America’s academic foreign policy elite, decided to expand Nato’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. George Kennan, America’s elder statesman on Russian issues, commented, “It shows so little understanding of Russian and Soviet history.

Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the Nato expanders will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are- but this is just wrong.”

He characterised it as the most dangerous foreign policy decision that the US had made since the end of the Second World War.

The director of Harvard University’s Kennedy School, Graham Allison, reports on an interview given by Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s secretary of state. If you want to talk about wisdom in foreign policy Kissinger has it. His career spans six decades.

Kissinger has talked to Putin many times and concludes that Putin is essentially reacting to the talk of Ukraine entering Nato and the EU. This ignores Russia’s vital interests and Russia’s capacity and readiness to protect those interests. Russia’s security establishment- not just Putin- sees Ukraine as an essential buffer. There would be a lot of people to topple to change Russian policy on Ukraine.

Misinterpreting the drivers and dynamics of events in Ukraine, argues Kissinger, the US has had the goal of “breaking Russia”.

Kissinger suggests searching for a formulation in which Kiev would be militarily non-aligned, thus satisfying Russian concerns about a buffer, but also assuring Ukraine of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, which would require withdrawal of all Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine and Kiev’s control of its borders.

I have been in correspondence with the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union who served President Ronald Reagan. He wrote to me “The problem in Putin’s eyes is far more than Nato expansion. It is the withdrawal from almost all arms control agreements, the extension of Jackson-Vanik for decades after it no longer legally applied, the outrageous Magnitsky Act, the illegal invasion of Iraq, etc., etc..

And on top of that a campaign of personal vilification which undermined confidence in the possibility of coming to reasonable terms in the interest of both our countries”.

Some re-writing of history has gone on. Now Baker has ambiguously denied there was any such agreement.

There has even been an effort to show that Gorbachev himself denies that there was an agreement. And it is true that in the last few years he has said one thing and then another. This is perhaps because he is embarrassed that he never asked for the US/German/British commitments in writing. He has defended that decision arguing, “The Warsaw Pact still existed at the beginning of 1990. Merely the notion that Nato might expand to include countries in the alliance sounded completely absurd at the time”.

Biden has made it clear that the US will not intervene with its own troops in Ukraine nor declare a non-fly zone. So why move American troops into Eastern Europe? Just to show the hawks in Congress and the press that he is standing firm? For what? Nobody is threatening Poland or Bulgaria or the Baltic states.

The West has taken advantage of a weakened Russia when instead it should have been paving the way for Russia to enter the “European House”. History will not smile kindly on the dangerous and counterproductive expansion of Nato or the unnecessary war in Ukraine.