Heinrich August Winkler on Russia, NATO, and Ukraine (2 of 2): From Cheney-Bush foreign policy to today's war in Ukraine

"Relations between Russia and the Western world have deteriorated dramatically in the first two decades of the 21st century," writes Heinrich August Winkler (2022) in an observation few would dispute.

(See references below.)

Those decades brought further NATO enlargement, continuing diplomatic tensions over Kosovo, the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US-NATO intervention large number of smaller US, NATO, and Russian interventions in various parts of the world, notably in Africa. And, of course there was the Russian clash with Georgia over two separatist republics, which Russia occupied and recognized as separate sovereign entities in 2008. And, of course, Russia's annexation of Crimea and establishing puppet "republics" inside Ukraine. And now the full-on Russian invasion of Ukraine, whose actual goal at this point remains uncertain to most of us. (Despite the assurance with which some commentators and foreign policy experts express.)

Winkler (2022) calls attention to 2008 as a turning point in NATO-Russia relations due to the declaration of the declaration of the NATO summit in Bucharest discussed in Part 1. "With the promise to admit Georgia and Ukraine as members, NATO said in principle Yes to the accession of both countries, but with the rejection of the Membership Action Plan in practice [saying] No for the time being."

Winkler stresses that there were good reasons that France and Germany opposed the Cheney-Bush Administration's push for the accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. But he goes on to argue:

Whether the West ever had a chance to avoid a conflict with Russia over Ukraine is doubtful. A few weeks before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on November 15, 1991, the American ambassador to Moscow, Robert Strauss, let his government know: "The most revolutionary event of 1991 for Russia could be not the collapse of communism, but the loss of something perceived by Russia in all its shades as part of its own body politics and as close to the heart of it: of Ukraine."

In an argument that is somewhat confusing on its face, Winkler recognizes that prior to 2008, the West including the US had recognized that Russia saw the expansion of NATO to Ukraine in particular as a threat to its national security:

The fact is that the West, apart from the time of George W. Bush's presidency, has refrained from enforcing the right to freely choose alliances where it had to reckon with massive resistance from Russia. In this respect, as far as former Soviet republics beyond the special case of the Baltic States were concerned, [NATO] did indeed take into account Russia's idiosyncratic interpretation of security interests and thus bowed to a claim that it rejected in principle, at least as far as Europe was concerned. The inconsistency is explained by the conviction that otherwise a major, possibly military confrontation with Russia would threaten. [my emphasis]

Here Winkler is stating plainly that the US and its NATO allies understood that Russia regarded Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO as a threat to their national interests. Which Russia has been saying out loud for years before 2014 or 2022. But Winkler also has a view of international relations that I discuss below. And here what Winkler the historian is explaining as the practical foreign policy perception of NATO and its pragmatic weighing of risk, Winkler the IR theorist regards as an invalid position for NATO to have taken. In a strict liberal internationalist view, sovereign nations have the right to join any military alliance they choose, and the alliance has the right - maybe even the obligation in the way Winkler sees Ukraine - to accept any candidates it chooses.

This seems to be what Winkler means when he writes that NATO "bowed to a claim [Russia's expressed security concerns] that it rejected in principle, at least as far as Europe was concerned." This leaves him in the position of dismissing those expressed concerns while recognizing that NATO countries took the risk of Russian reactions seriously.

He goes on to argue that Russia's own unwillingness to reform itself economically, though he doesn't describe what he thinks those should have been, made it something like an inevitable victim of its own historical compulsion. Which, yes, sounds uncomfortably like an argument about a supposed Russian national character:

What was already apparent in the 1990s was Russia's turning towards the patterns of thought and action that had survived the seven decades of Soviet rule, some of which had continued in a modified way during this time. The feeling of being misunderstood and disregarded by the West, the belief that it was the bearer of a special historical mission, and the claim to be one of the world's leading powers as a bicontinental great state were stronger than the insight that Russia could only stop its decline if it tackled the evil at its root and devoted all its strength to it, to fundamentally modernize its industrial structure, to overcome its democratic, constitutional and civil society deficits and to develop a new political culture.

His argument there has the effect of making the current situation of a "Western" face-off with Russia in a New Cold War situation seem like fate, or historical inevitability. The problem with such a position is that it minimizes the necessity to critically examine how the national actors might have plausibly made use of the agency they exercised in the decades after 1989 to produce a more favorable outcome than what we see today.

Liberal internationalism as wishful thinking

I myself feel much more comfortable with the theoretical framework of the "liberal internationalist" view of international relations than with the "realist" view. But Winkler (2015) also illustrates the severe limitation of the liberal-internationalist doctrine when he says, "Great power interests, thinking in spheres of influence – if that example sets a precedent, then we can indeed bury international law."

But nations do take into account their national interests as understood by their respective governments. Realists in IR theory don't reject the legal frameworks favored by liberal internationalism. Stephen Walt in particular has elaborated this point. So "realists" tend to focus on very real power-political considerations. And "liberal internationalists" are all too often read to hang a legalistic justification on policies motivated by cynical power considerations. All those who provided liberal-internationalist justifications for Cheney-Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq provide examples of that problem.

Winkler cites with approval the arguments for NATO enlargement made by then-Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in Why NATO Should Grow New York Review of Books 08/10/1995 issue. So it's worth recalling what Talbott was saying explicitly about the purpose of the enlargement, which presumably reflected the view of the Clinton Administration of which he was then part. The reasons he gave of course included the upbeat purposes of strengthening democracy and the rule of law in countries to be admitted and facilitating peaceful resolution of disputes within Europe.

But he also summarized the views being expressed by Russians at the time:

One of the most difficult challenges to enlarging NATO is its effect on Russia. Many Russians see NATO as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the West should not do the same. For them, NATO’s plan to take in new members looks like a Western vote of no-confidence in the staying power of Russian reform. It makes them feel as though Russia is still on probation - still subject to a thinly disguised policy of containment. Beware, they say, the mistake that the victors at Versailles made in punishing the Weimar Republic: when Germany recovered in the Thirties, it was bent on military conquest and revenge. [my emphasis]

And he made the following clear:

At the core of this debate are two important factors that should be neither ignored nor glossed over: First, NATO is and will remain for the foreseeable future, including when it takes in new members, a military alliance and a collective defense pact;

Second, among the contingencies for which NATO must be prepared is that Russia will abandon democracy and return to the threatening patterns of international behavior that have sometimes characterized its history, particularly during the Soviet period.

Uncertainty about Russia’s future is inescapably among the factors to be taken into account in shaping decisions about European security. No one has acknowledged that uncertainty more bluntly than many Russians have. Therefore the rationale for NATO’s continued existence must include what Secretary of Defense William Perry has called “a hedge against pessimistic outcomes”:

If Russia hews to a course of internal reform, respect for its neighbors’ independence, and cooperation with the West, NATO will continue to evolve in the direction of maximum inclusiveness. If however, reform in Russia falters, NATO will be there to provide for the allies’ collective defense. [my emphasis]

But inside the administration, the Defense Secretary was not without his reservations, to put it mildly: "Inside the Clinton administration itself, Defense Secretary William Perry nearly resigned when his advice against rapid NATO expansion went unheeded." (Jordan Michael Smith, The NATO Critics Who Predicted Russia’s Belligerence New Republic 03/03/2022)

The way forward

In 2015, Winkler recognized that differences between Russia and the West have to managed along with the unavoidable common interests:

With regard to Putin's Russia, Western democracies must practice both: they must prevent him from continuing his course of aggression, even try to deter him, and they must repeatedly offer him comprehensive cooperation and assistance for modernization in the event that he returns to the soil of international law.

But here again we see a limit of a strictly liberal-internationalist IR viewpoint. Mitigating global climate change is a real interest of not only "the West" and Russia but of the whole world. Reversing nuclear proliferation is in my view an even more urgent interest of the whole world. Neither can take place by NATO pursuing a policy of endless hostility toward Russia until the leaders of Russia just decide to unilaterally give up their nuclear weapons and dissolve their country as it currently exists.

Sources:

Heinrich August Winkler, Die Legende von der versäumten Chance ("The Legend of the Missed Chance") Internationale Politik (2022:4)

Heinrich August Winkler and Jörg Baberowski (interview), "Erbschaft der Sowjetunion. Der Ukraine-Konflikt in historischer Perspektive. Eine Diskussion" Journal of Modern European History 13:3 (2015).

All translations from the German here are mine.