NATO’s Enlargement and Russia. Группа авторов

should be better understood in their historical contexts and should be more effectively communicated by politicians.3

      Third: Persisting historical myths like that of the allegedly given “Western” promise to the USSR not to expand NATO will have to be addressed again and again. The same applies to the non-functional mechanisms in international relations and international organizations, like the OSCE or the United Nations Security Council, that are blocked from acting on urgent matters. Necessary changes should be named and discussed.

      Fourth: The main challenges in security issues should be more clearly addressed. NATO can take on this role in its capacity as not only a defense union, but also a political alliance.

      Fifth: Only a historically informed strategy can effectively meet today’s security policy challenges.

      Sixth: We need to talk more and better listen to each other to get “behind the logic” of the actions of the other side. Only this way, one can better understand the mindset that underlies the actions of the counterpart.

      Seventh: The world is changing. The year 2020 has made that clear. And this is only the beginning of even more profound changes to come. Many international institutions have yet to experience this, and they are likely to be modified or even replaced in the future.

      Constellations of Today and Tomorrow

      The year 2020 has been marked by a pandemic which has put the West under significant pressure. It is also a year that saw the election of a new American President, Joe Biden. His election brings hope for new American strategies for strengthening transatlantic relations, as well as a new approach to Russia. Outgoing President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, on November 22, 2020. On November 25, NATO presented its strategic position paper “NATO 2030.” It lists Russia as the “main military threat to the Alliance” for the next ten years. Whatever the future holds, unresolved problems and the need to deal with Russia will remain.

These problems are often inherited from the 1990s. The end of the Cold War did not solve Europe’s security issues.4 While East-Central Europe, the so-called “Eastern Flank” of NATO, is now protected by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, most of the post-Soviet space has become a victim of the unsolved European security issues.

      Above all, Ukraine remains a “testing ground” for Russia’s intentions within the European territory since 2014. Since August 2020, the emerging Belarusian nation is struggling peacefully against the regime of Lukashenko supported by Putin. The people of Ukraine and Belarus need Western support. Entering a “European way” of its further development seems for Belarus to be only a question of time. Russia will presumably continue to play a malicious role in the Southern Caucasus. The Russian population itself is a major victim of authoritarian Russian regime. It should be supported by the West, too.

      The US and Europe have to address these new political realities with novel, clear and sustainable strategies. As of early 2021, the time of equivocation is over. Europe is searching for its new security policy role within the transatlantic partnership. The United States too is currently redefining its foreign policy. The year 2021 may thus become a turning point for Western strategic development. NATO’s approach towards Russia for the years to come remains so far undefined.

      Information technologies and artificial intelligence are changing the patterns of people’s social and political behavior. Many old systems of decision, checks and balances are no longer functioning. A different world system is emerging where, due to digitalization, individuals get more opportunities for direct political participation and influence reducing or even replacing the predominant actorness of nation-states or unwieldy international organizations. These new constellations must be taken into account by policy makers.

      Past and Present

      What was NATO like in the 1990s, during the expansion to Central and Eastern Europe, and what is it now? According to Ronald Asmus, an intellectual forefather of Eastern enlargement, NATO was a security umbrella under which (Central and Eastern) Europe could develop and flourish. Yet, the Alliance has not fulfilled this function during the last years. The West has, instead, been often caught in a torturous choice between values and interests and, as a result, is no longer able to provide all countries that choose democracy with a security umbrella and often incapable to resist aggression by Russia, which also takes the most extreme, military forms.

      The mission of enlargement was to be no less than a solution to such monumental questions as democratizing Eastern and Central Europe, unifying Europe, and providing security for the entire transatlantic area. This was a colossal mission, a vision, a proclamation, a self-justification … What was right about it? The task, the purpose, the values, and the self-supporting missionary weight. What, however, proved to be wrong with that? The former treaty’s counterpart, Russia, was no longer an enemy, yet did not become either a member or real partner of the Alliance. For the West—and NATO is as a defense alliance for Western values—Russia was and remains its largest unresolved blind spot.

Especially the US-American historical and political researchers dedicate entire journal issues,5 anthologies6 and monographs7 to various facets of NATO’s enlargement process and are re-evaluating it. Historical documents are being published, as soon as the general archival classification period of thirty years is passed in 2020.8 This gives today’s researchers a clearer picture of the 1990s.

      The 1990s were full of hopes, and—viewed retrospectively—also a bit naïve, as Gleb Pavlovsky remarks in this volume. The Paris Charter of 1990, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 (see below), and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 were believed to bring security, stability and prosperity to Europe. “Too visionary” as these basic documents may seem today (John Kornblum), they built an international legal basis that has no alternative.

      After the watershed of 2014, the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the following gradual break of many communication channels between NATO and Russia, the opportunities to productively talk between both sides have shrunk massively. Predictably, this led to new security risks. New talks and additional transparency about military exercises, prenotification and observation are highly needed now.

The most recent strategy Paper NATO 2030 defines Russia as the “most likely … main military threat to the Alliance” for the next ten years.9 “Breaches” of public international law and international treaties, “aggressive actions,” and “assertive activity” dominate the description of Russia. Thus, her role for years ahead seems be already to be predetermined.

The document’s key passage, however, addresses a different issue, namely, that of political solidarity between the Alliance members in response to Russia’s actions.10 This is the crucial question as the Alliance members often have different ideas about how to preserve or increase security. The geopolitical situation of Europe’s East remains fragile because of Russia’s breaching of treaties, engaging in hybrid warfare, supporting populist leaders and movements, undermining faith in democratic institutions and other malevolent actions. When undertaking them, the Kremlin instrumentalizes the eastward enlargement of NATO of the 1990s to legitimize them. It refers to a “promise” of the West about non-expansion of NATO that was allegedly made to Moscow at the end of the Cold War.

The West, however, never gave a (written) guarantee to the Soviet Union that it would not expand NATO to the East of the GDR border after