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D.C. Dispatch | August 8, 2001
Social Studies
Putin Is Right: Russia Belongs in NATO
The potential prize is breathtaking: the erasure, once and for all, of
the East-West divide in Europe
by Jonathan Rauch
....
On July 18, the globe shifted a few degrees on its axis. Vladimir Putin,
the Russian president, said that Russia does not see NATO as a hostile
organization, but also does not see why NATO is needed. Nothing new
there. But then he said: "The simplest [solution] is to dissolve NATO,
but this is not on the agenda. The second possible option is to include
Russia in NATO. This also creates a single defense and security space."
So far as I could learn, the Bush Administration did not respond
directly to Putin's suggestion. A month earlier, however, as President
Bush and Putin met warmly in Slovenia, Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell told reporters, according to The New York Times, that Bush's
"expansive talk about a closer partnership with Moscow did not, at least
now, take into account the idea of Russia's joining NATO. 'I don't think
he was talking about an alliance in the sense of a military alliance or
a political alliance,' Secretary Powell said."
Wrong answer, Mr. Secretary. Admittedly, it is the same answer that the
Clinton Administration gave. Admittedly, too, it was probably the right
answer a few years ago. But today, the right answer would be something
like this:
"Everyone understands that Russia is not ready for NATO membership now,
and that it may never be. But admitting Russia into NATO should be an
explicit goal of U.S. and European foreign policy, something we work
toward instead of just daydream about. And the time has come to set up a
process leading toward that goal."
For almost a decade, NATO has been bedeviled by a geopolitical problem
that it has finessed rather than solved. The organization was born in
1949 as a mutual-defense pact to counter the Soviet threat. At the time,
Europe's divided structure was a given. Western Europe was in; Eastern
Europe and, of course, the Soviet Union were out. With the end of the
Cold War, the Soviet threat melted away, and suddenly NATO risked
becoming the problem that it had been trying to solve. Its hard eastern
boundary risked perpetuating the Iron Curtain distinction that Western
policy makers dreamed of eliminating.
With its old mission defunct and its old boundaries archaic, NATO
responded during the Clinton era by enlarging. Enlargement, however, did
not solve the identity crisis of a defensive alliance that found itself
without an enemy. With the Kosovo war, NATO found a new sense of purpose
in its first "out-of-area" offensive action. That made sense militarily
and helped with the identity problem, but at the cost of intensifying
Russia's fears.
Those fears are understandable. "When NATO enlarges, division doesn't
disappear, it simply moves toward our borders," Putin told reporters in
July. True, NATO never tires of reassuring the Russians that its
intentions are benign. But any country, even one less prickly and
nationalist than Russia, would feel alarmed if a muscular military
alliance marched right up to its border. At a joint press conference
with Bush in June, Putin put the matter with characteristic bluntness.
"When the President of a great power says that he wants to see Russia as
a partner, and maybe even as an ally, this is worth so much to us. But
if that's the case, then, look, we ask ourselves a question. Look,
[NATO] is a military organization. Yes, it's military.... Yes, it's
moving toward our border. Why?"
This problem is fundamental; words can't solve it. The more NATO
broadens its membership and its mission, the more it alarms Russia. "How
do you bring in the central Europeans without alienating and isolating
the Russians?" asks Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations and a former staff member of the Clinton
Administration's National Security Council. "I can only think of one way
to do it: Bring the Russians in. I think it's still at a stage where
it's a prospect for the future, not for the present. But what you can do
to get around the timing problem is, you start talking seriously about
the idea. You engage Russia in a process in which it begins to think
about ultimately joining NATO, and then you draw up a work plan."
In 1999, the alliance admitted three new members (the Czech Republic,
Hungary, and Poland), and another 10 or so are knocking on the door.
Among the most determined, and best qualified, are Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, three Baltic nations in formerly Soviet territory. Their
inclusion in NATO is a prospect that the Russians view with dismay,
verging on horror. In November 2002, at the NATO summit meeting in
Prague, the alliance will issue its next set of invitations. If the
Baltics are on the list, the Russians will hit the ceiling. If the
Baltics are not on the list, everyone will assume that NATO allowed
itself to be intimidated by the Russians.
So why not invite in the Baltics and the Russians-the former soon, the
latter when practicable? That gives NATO's enlargement a whole new cast.
If the Russians reject the offer, the onus is on them and expansion will
continue apace. If they accept it, as Putin hints they would, then
NATO's expansion becomes a joint project in which the Russians take
part. For that matter, the same step would help allay Russia's anxiety
over the Bush Administration's proposed missile defense program. "You
can't drive the Russians bonkers by rolling NATO right up to their
borders and expect at the same time to get a missile deal," says
Kupchan.
If NATO keeps growing without making a positive effort to draw in
Moscow, Moscow will respond, probably by shopping around for
countervailing coalitions. The most logical partner for a "Stop America"
coalition would be Beijing. On July 16, Russia and China signed their
first mutual-cooperation pact since 1950. The agreement was more
symbolic than substantive, but it was a shot across the bow. "I think
that that pact is to some extent a hint of what some of the consequences
could be of leaving Russia out of the process of NATO enlargement,"
Kupchan says.
None of this is to suggest that possible NATO membership is a bribe to
buy good Russian behavior. Rather, it is a lure to draw Russia toward
the West. For Russia, joining NATO would mean enormous change: further
democratization, economic and legal reforms, and, not least important,
reforms that would professionalize Russia's tattered and unreliable
military and bring it firmly under civilian control. The prospect of
joining NATO has given the former Soviet satellites a powerful incentive
to Westernize and normalize; it may do the same for their former
overlord.
Of course, Russia is incomparably larger and more powerful than Poland
or Hungary. Will Russia change NATO while NATO changes Russia? Yes,
undoubtedly. A NATO that included Russia would be a very different NATO.
"At that point," says Anthony Lake, a former Clinton Administration
national security adviser who now teaches at Georgetown University,
"NATO becomes not a defensive alliance-the greatest in history-but
something like an OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe] with teeth." That is, NATO would become a regional cooperation
pact with military capability. That, however, is what NATO is becoming
anyway. "There is no collective threat to defend against," says Kupchan,
"and if you look at what NATO has been doing, it's much more focused on
peacekeeping and crisis management."
President Clinton took care neither to rule Russia out of NATO nor to
entice it in. "Call us if you get your act together," was the message to
Moscow. When I asked Lake about possible Russian inclusion, he replied,
"We're not at that point, and whether we ever get there depends on
Russia." Bush, so far, has taken the same wait-and-see approach.
Caution is understandable. Russia may collapse or turn belligerent;
Moscow might make untenable demands or insist on bending NATO's rules;
an overeager NATO might make too many concessions, or an overeager
Kremlin might foment nationalist backlash at home. Yet the potential
prize is breathtaking: the erasure, once and for all, of the East-West
divide in Europe, and the abolition of major war in Europe.
"Our goal," President Bush said in June, just before he met with Putin,
"is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for far too long."
The way to achieve that goal, he said, is to "look for the day when
Russia is fully reformed, fully democratic, and closely bound to the
rest of Europe."
Bush is saying, in effect, that Russia should be just another European
country, albeit a big and important one. With his very public
ruminations on joining NATO, Putin is saying, in effect, that Russians
might take the deal-that they may just possibly like the sound of
"European" more than they dislike the sound of "just another." NATO can
help catalyze Russian integration into liberal Europe, rather than
merely waiting for it, by declaring next year that Europe's great
alliance will not be complete until it includes Europe's greatest power.
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What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society
conference of Post & Riposte.
More from National Journal.
More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic
Monthly.
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Jonathan Rauch is an opinion columnist for National Journal. His most
recent book is Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working. This
column appears every other week in National Journal, a weekly magazine
covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.
For information on National Journal Group publications, see
NationalJournal.com.
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Copyright C 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/rauch2001-08-08.htm
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