Russia looks for NATO’s weaknesses
Brian M Downing
Vladimir Putin wants NATO out of his backyard – or what he thinks of as his backyard. NATO expanded deep into Eastern Europe, despite Bush the Elder’s assurance that it would not. However, most Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO for protection from a resurgent Russia, and the alliance opened its membership – with little concern over what it might bring.
Expansion triggered alarms in Russia – a country whose history has featured several devastating invasions, including one by the Third Reich – and it bears noting, by the Reich’s Eastern European allies. Putin has exploited understandable if exaggerated security concerns to legitimize autocracy and empower him to confront NATO. Fissures in the alliance and recent Russian moves will make this confrontation interesting.
How solid is NATO?
Many NATO partners are looking to trim defense expenditures, despite Russian moves in the Ukraine and the wars in North Africa and the Middle East – only a few hundred miles from Paris and Berlin.
Five years ago, NATO airpower was brought to bear on the relatively small Libyan military, not far from NATO bases in Italy. The US provided reconnaissance and intelligence but pressed NATO partners to assume the bulk of sorties. After only a few weeks of relatively light operations, participating air forces neared exhaustion. This led to then-Secretary of Defense Gates’s public rebuke of NATO partners. If Libya posed a burden, what would a stronger opponent bring?
Air operations against ISIL are mostly done by American airpower. Many NATO partners play roles, but mostly cameos. France, however, has rather quietly used its special forces against Islamist groups in North Africa, especially in Mali and Algeria. Nonetheless, the continent that a century ago was home to the most virulent and destructive form of militarism the world has seen, is reluctant to build substantial militaries, let alone use them for long.
The significance of Eastern Europe
Countries seldom go to war over countries with little significance. The decision is shaped by economic ties, cultural affinities, and geopolitical importance. Since the collapse of communism some twenty-five years ago, Western European states have invested in the east, making it in part a center of manufacturing. (Taiwan has as well. Foxconn operates plants in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.)
Millions of Eastern Europeans have lived in the US for decades. At the outset of the Cold War, Polish and Hungarian Americans were upset over Soviet coups and protracted occupations of their homelands. Cultural ties to the old country diminished substantially over ensuing decades. Ethnic enclaves all but disappeared as children left for middle-class lifestyles and suburbs. Concerns for the homelands of grandparents is weak.
Since joining NATO, Eastern European militaries have not brought added power to the alliance. Their armies are reasonably professional and well-trained, but add little to the alliance. Indeed, their exposure to the expansive Russian border makes them more of a liability.
All told, Eastern Europe’s significance to the West is not profound. Economic ties are new and less than critical. Cultural ties are old and more than dated.
The unattractiveness of eastern partners
From the start of the Cold War, NATO presented itself as an alliance of democratic societies holding the line against the Soviet Union, open societies against oppressive ones. More than one NATO partner has a government that most NATO publics will not be eager to defend.
Turkey has only rarely and imperfectly fit into the NATO model. It has known protracted periods of military rule of much of its time in the alliance. Today many NATO partners look with growing dismay upon their southeastern anchor. It is governed by an Islamist party that opposes secularism and encroaches upon basic freedoms.
Until recently, the Turkish government has looked the other way as ISIL used Turkey as a conduit for arms and recruits and as a marketplace for its oil. Turkish armor stood by along the border with Kobane as Syrian Kurds desperately fought ISIL. Furthermore, the Turks are suppressing their Kurdish population at time when the latter have proven themselves in Syria and Iraq as the fiercest opponents of ISIL. The Kurds have won the admiration of much of the world, including the Western European and American publics.
A few Eastern European members have lurched to the right in recent years. Neo-fascist groups march in the streets alongside remaining veterans of Waffen SS divisions. Though the numbers are not immense, they are sufficient to disgust western publics. Local opposition to EU immigration standards have contributed to the shift and opened a fissure between newly-independent states and a demanding super-government in Brussels.
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NATO expansion has not strengthened the alliance or its values. It has saddled itself with several unsavory allies with little significance. Expansion has also angered Putin and his security bureaus. They are not unmindful of NATO’s frailties.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.