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Is
Bush Looking for Trouble in Europe?
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 2, 2001
LONDON - As if his Star Wars initiative wasn't enough
President George Bush is already considering his next
provocative move - the expansion of Nato right up to
Russia's borders. The world is now in real danger of
spinning off its geopolitical axis. Even a defeated,
militarily moribund, Russia will feel compelled to
respond, at whatever cost of sweat, blood and treasure
better spent on development at home, and the consequences
of this will be felt the world over. It will confirm the
leaders of China in what they are already suspecting,
that the U.S is going through a new period of
imperialistic expansion. And anything that Beijing
decides to do reverberates into Japan, Taiwan and the
Koreas and, further afield, into India and thence into
Pakistan.
The initial expansion of Nato in 1999 that took in the
former Warsaw Pact members, Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic, was in fact the initiative of President Bill
Clinton, a craven attempt to win much needed votes from
the East European Diaspora in America's Mid-West. The
American statesman, George Kennan, described it then as
"the most fateful error of the entire post-Cold War era".
The historian, John Lewis Gadis, made the most telling
criticism: "Some principles of strategy are so basic that
when stated they sound like platitudes: treat former
enemies magnanimously; do not take on unnecessary new
ones; keep the big picture in view; balance ends and
means; avoid emotion and isolation in making decisions;
be willing to acknowledge error…..Nato enlargement
manages to violate every one of the strategic principles
just mentioned."
Despite the virtual absence of Russian aggressiveness
and the collapse of Russian military power, it is clear
that a powerful segment of policy and academic analysts
still believes we should be preoccupied with a
hypothetical Russian threat, perhaps some yet unseen
nationalist seizing power and somehow, out of Russia's
grim poverty, rebuilding Russian military strength, which
as we now know, even in its Soviet hey-day was grossly
overestimated by the CIA. As Professor Lawrence Freedman
recently put it "There is now no particular reason to
classify Russia as a 'great power'".
President Vladimir Putin's dubious attitudes towards
press freedom not withstanding, the Russia of today not
only poses no conceivable military threat it has started
to enjoy the virtues of democracy, as became clear in the
last parliamentary election when the dead wood of
nationalism on the right and communism on the left were
cut down to their appropriate size. Indeed by rights the
initial expansion of Nato provided plenty of ammunition
to those in the Russian establishment who wanted a more
robust military attitude towards the West. It did not
come to pass, which suggests that both Yeltsin and Putin
have bent over backwards not to be provoked.
Yet it does exact its toll. Relations are not as good
as they were in the last years of George Bush senior or
the early years of Bill Clinton. As Professor Dan Reiter
wrote in the current issue of Harvard University's
"International Security", it has worked to push "Russian
leaders away from the belief that the West is a
trustworthy partner in cooperation… Already Nato's
Strategic Concept and its 1999 operation in Kosovo have
reversed a trend in Moscow's doctrinal development away
from the assumption that there are no external military
threats to Russia." Even this week's decision by Russia
and China to sign a "friendship and co-operation treaty"
symbolises a real shift in the foreign policies of both
countries, as mutual tensions with the U.S. push them
together again. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass
reported that China and Russia have come to see
themselves as "the main road-block in the way of
Washington's global policy of spreading its
influence".
All this is profoundly unnecessary. President Bush's
camp is determined to extend the reach of American power,
at the price of being counterproductive. Their argument
that Nato membership strengthens democracy is historical
hogwash- did membership of Nato have any influence on the
lack of democracy in Turkey or the military coup in
Greece in 1967 or heading off the attempted coup in Spain
in 1981?
The carrot of Nato membership is unlikely to influence
one way or another the countries lined up for the next
round of enlargement- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Since the fall of
communism they have all succeeded in establishing
constitutional democracies. If any international body can
secure democracy and even extend it to the likes of
Albania and ex-Yugoslavia it is the European Union.
Including a country in the EU, even if only as a
candidate member, works to strengthen both economic and
political reforms. It is this carrot, which is now
visibly coaxing Turkey towards democracy. In the Balkans
it could have a more benign effect than anything Nato can
do, either in the way of membership or with troops on the
ground.
The most telling argument against the need for the
expansion of Nato and for the expansion of the EU is that
Russia has never opposed the eastward expansion of the
EU. Indeed from Gorbachev on leaders have suggested that
one day they would like Russia to be a part of Europe.
This idea for the future obviously works powerfully at
the Russian sub-conscious. How else can one explain
Russia's reasonableness in the face of continued American
provocation?
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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