After a War
Leaders at the end of a war determine the length and nature of the peace that follows.
Many years ago, I wrote a high school paper criticizing Woodrow Wilson. I was never a fan. I was not alone. The leaders of the victorious nations did not do well. The “peace” created after the “Great War” made so many problems and so much hatred that we had an even greater war in twenty-two years.
Harry Truman, the little shopkeeper from Missouri, was thrust into leadership at the end of World War II. He knew he had to let others take credit, but that was OK. He also knew the true nature of Joseph Stalin and what that meant. With measures such as the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift, he kept Europe democratic and out of Stalin’s control. He also recognized MacArthur’s talent in administering Japan and guiding it to democracy.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II for their role in the endgame of the Cold War. But I am sure they will agree that the handling of the early years was critical to the path and eventual outcome.
What happened after the end of the Cold War is a combination of arrogance, hubris, and absolute refusal to consider the concerns of the other side. The price is being paid now. Ironically, the unsophisticated Truman will go down in history as doing a far better job than the Ivy League-trained and well-connected Bushes and Bill Clinton.
By the middle of 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev was clear. He was the leader of Russia. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were gone. NATO had been created to defend the West against two entities that no longer existed. On the other hand, Russia is a country with a history of being attacked and invaded from the West. It ain’t paranoia if you have a legitimate fear.
The United States has the Monroe Doctrine and acted when the Soviets put missiles in Cuba. Russia’s position was simple. NATO is a military alliance. It would not accept countries bordering it as members of an opposing military alliance.
I will now describe two cases in which there is ample evidence of deception by the United States. The links point to articles describing the deceit. Dozens of descriptions and links to additional supporting documents follow a substantial block of text.
James Baker and others in the Bush administration assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” beyond the newly combined German border. Sadly, this became the first of many “pinky swears” the Russians would be given.
In the first year of the Clinton Presidency, ambiguity was used again. Yeltsin led Russia. His drinking is helpful as an excuse, but the documents support the conclusion that the misleading was deliberate.
Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while simultaneously planning for expansion after Yeltsin’s re-election bid in 1996 and telling the Russians repeatedly that the future European security system would include, not exclude, Russia.
George Kennan was renowned as the leading expert on the Russians. His famous “X” paper in Foreign Affairs magazine in the late 1940s helped shape U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In a New York Times Op-ed on February 5, 1997, he wrote, “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
A quote from someone in the Biden administration, many years later, shows the degree of arrogance the Russians are dealing with:
Issues about NATO are non-negotiable. They’re only between NATO countries and NATO candidates. No third party has any stake, interest, or say in this. Russia - it’s completely irrelevant.
Ukraine is another set of lies. Angela Merkel admitted that the two Minsk agreements were solely designed to give the West time to build up anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. The United States was openly involved in deposing a Ukrainian leader who was trying to be neutral. John McCain and other senators traveled to Kyiv during the crisis. USAID money was involved. The Russians had a deal for access to a warm-water port at Sevastopol in Crimea. That agreement died after all the shenanigans. To get access to the port, Putin took Crimea.
When NATO countries sanctioned Russia, they ruined their economies. They were competitive because Russian natural gas was inexpensive. Without it, Germany is deindustrializing. Automobile and chemical plants are closing and moving overseas. France and Britain face similar problems.
Europe froze Russian sovereign assets, and now they are setting things up to steal them. Nations are not going to put funds in European banks or Euros anymore. America has done the same thing, and nations are reducing their exposure to the dollar.
Russia is not trying to conquer all of Ukraine. It only wants to “rule” the parts of Ukraine populated by Russian speakers. That is the Eastern part, known as the Donbas, and the southern stretches extending to the port of Odesa. The remainder of the area is inhabited by people who speak Ukrainian. In that area, Russia’s interest is to make sure it is not part of NATO and no missiles can be placed there and aimed at Russia.
Russia is winning on the ground and winning allies. Europe is going broke and alienating former commercial partners.
Kennan warned against expanding NATO. We should have listened.