The NATO contribution to starting the Russo-Ukrainian War

A matter of discussion

Last Sunday, a small group of people gathered in my back garden for an afternoon of bonhomie, meeting new faces and barbecue; I did the barbecue in the oven a few hours beforehand, because a single man cannot do everything and there are some in that company who, I felt, had started to suspect the only reason they’re invited to such things is to tend the barbecue. That is far from the truth, but you do need a dedicated tender for outdoor cooking, especially with a small four-year-old boy in the company.

There’s nothing like a well-informed, enthusiastic, communicative group of people for a discussion, and we certainly had the ingredients for that on Sunday. At one point, however, whilst I was busying myself with some aspect or another in the house, I returned to the table to hear a raised voice. Not in ribaldry but in vivid disagreement. A momentary lapse of reason? I asked myself as I resumed my seat. No, not quite momentary. Two of my guests were having a right barney. The subject was Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. Now, I’ll add, straight up, that the chap who’d momentarily—or so—lost his cool approached me later privately and asked me to excuse his loss of temper to my other guest. I did, at that, suggest that he might like to do that himself, but he preferred to sub-delegate the responsibility, and I’m not sure if the occasion arose at which to convey said regret. I’ll get round to it.

Image: a 1919 commercial postcard setting forth the territorial claims made by Ukraine against Imperial Russia when declaring its independence for a short period after the First World War.¹ The claim extending into Volgograd, Voronezh and the Krasnodar/Adygea oblasts that extend towards Georgia and Dagestan (essentially, the bit between the Black and Caspian Seas) would surely be an extra bargaining chip for Mr Zelenskyy—what would Putin give in return for waiving these claims?

It is with some trepidation, and no little diplomatic tact, that I raise the subject here in these columns. The incident did not upset the entire afternoon, not by a long chalk. Both guests were otherwise civil, polite, amenable in every other respect. But not towards each other with regard to this one point of disagreement. The Russo-Ukrainian War is now well into its fourth year and destined, if the Kremlin is to be taken at its word, to endure for a whole lot longer.

Anyone who’s read my own comments on the matter knows where I personally stand in respect of this human tragedy: I stand on the side of humanity. Hard as it may be for those who support the Ukrainian cause to admit, there is in that conflict another cause, that of the Russian Federation. Russia would like all of Ukraine, which it is unlikely to achieve any time soon. Time, they say, is something they have. Ukraine would like Russia to beetle off back home. That is also something that is unlikely to happen in the imminent future. I think it’s less likely than a month of Sundays.

This is a constellation that invites sentiments of hopelessness in both camps, a sense of stalemate and a conflict of attrition. The last such conflict of attrition, or at least the classic case of such a conflict, was the First World War. At Stalingrad in 1942-43, the Germans were not defeated so much by the Soviets, although the fight put up by the Soviet Union was tremendous. Tremendous enough to know that the squaddies who fought it were under particular pressures to commit their all to the campaign. No, it was the Russian winter in the end that defeated Germany in the Battle of Stalingrad. But the conditions at Stalingrad are not the conditions in the Crimea or in the Donbas. The invader is not far distanced from its supply lines, it is well-equipped, it has reward and not doom-pressure as its incentive and, its army and its people believe, they have right on their side. But the reasons why Germany lost the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, whilst far-removed from the reasons that Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, offer up the same kind of intellectual dissection and analysis as the question: what caused the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

When, some time ago now, I spoke to an acquaintance at Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose portfolio includes Senegal, I asked him about the attempt at confederation that had occurred in 1982-1989 between Senegal and The Gambia. Senegal had sent in troops to assist in putting down a coup d’état in the smaller, river-defined nation and, being invited to stay for a while till things settled down, a combined working arrangement was set up which, for those seven years, was known as Senegambia. My question to this acquaintance had been: why did they abandon these attempts at coming together? While the reasons are in fact many, and have more to do with dealing with the said coup d’état than some future project in the hearts and minds of the Senegalese and Gambian peoples, his reply was instructional: two countries can have two presidents. Thus the diplomatic realist confronts the aspirational humanist.

So, aspirational humanist as I am, why do I baulk at the idea of a joint nation of Russia and Ukraine? Do two countries have two presidents in the former Soviet Union? First and foremost, I baulk at the notion that one of the parties is unwilling. In all the rough and tumble of international law and the rule of law and meetings of minds and being bound by one’s engagements, nothing quite brooks the gap of “no” (unless it be perhaps “the computer says no”). That, ordinarily, really ought to be that; but it isn’t that. Not in Ukraine is it that. Nor in Kurdistan is it that. Nor, sadly, even in Syria, is that that. And if ever a that was not that, it is the that that is Gaza. If one were to cast one’s eye across this rock on which we live, then there are grounds to wager that the instances of interaction in which there is consent are by far outnumbered by those in which it is lacking. So, Russia’s refusal to recognise Ukraine’s demurral in the offer to be part of Russia is not, at least on that score, outside the bounds of normality. For the aspirational humanists among us, it is that normality that requires to be re-established. And, sorry to say, shouting isn’t a valid contribution towards that.

For what it’s worth, the bone of contention on Sunday was NATO’s open-door policy to applications from former East Bloc countries. This, one guest contended, was the, or a, cause of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Anyone who has followed my own musings on the topic will know that I agree with that stance. It sticks in my craw, and I agree with reservations. But, ultimately, I believe that NATO encroachment in the former East Bloc was a contributing factor to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Leaving aside the implicit assurances that had been given to Russia, the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine and Russia’s hesitating acquiescence in the declaration of the Ukrainian republic, and whether Russia was right or not to act the way it did all being left aside, NATO encroachment was a factor.

The official narrative will have it that NATO did not seek this expansion post-Soviet collapse: it was the former Soviet Bloc countries that requested it. Whether that is entirely true or not is open to question: if the US is apt to invade certain countries in the Americas for their failure to toe the White House line, I’m sure it’s not beyond the State Department to send a friendly letter or two suggesting particular foreign governments adopt certain policy initiatives at such a time in their (and its) history. Even in the absence of positive encouragement, it’s open to doubt. But the matter poses an interesting quandary for NATO: should NATO—even if it didn’t actively encourage new members—have declined their applications on the grounds that it would not end well? That’s an interesting question, one that requires 25-odd years of prescience on NATO’s part. And there we must pause for a second. Because 25 years of prescience is a lot of prescience. But it’s the kind of prescience that NATO is supposed to be good at. In short, if NATO’s entire purpose and utility is to guard against its enemies’ expansionist projects, in Ukraine, NATO failed. Whether or not the war was “its fault” makes no difference to that. They failed, if only because it happened. The question in dispute is whether NATO by its own acts impelled its failure.

To know in the wake of Germany’s reunification in 1990 (and the consequent integration of the former East Germany within NATO) that admitting the new members of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), North Macedonia (2020) and, just to top the list off, Sweden (2024) would all turn sour in relation to a non-member of the pact, Ukraine, is not exactly asking for a prediction of Nostradamus’s calibre, but it ought to have been on the radar.

One aspect of modern warfare is an aspect that pervades all conflict-based interaction: stealth. Take the 1960 stage musical Oliver! by Lionel Bart, in which Oliver Twist’s new friend, the Artful Dodger, instructs the newling in how to pick a pocket or two. It requires a light touch, a steady hand, an air of nonchalance and a ready preparedness, should one be discovered in the act, to leg it at a moment’s notice. Stealth does not entail not being discovered. Normally, it is deployed in circumstances that the perpetrator only too well wants to have discovered. Just not whilst they’re still around.

In some ways, therefore, NATO expansion 1999-2020 can be viewed as an attack on Russia by stealth. Maybe not by you or me, but when that is served up as a thought in the mind of the Russian leadership, it offers itself as conceivable. It is how ideas are conceived in Moscow that should preoccupy NATO primarily, is it not? NATO, we have been told, would never instigate an attack on Warsaw Pact, as was, or Russian interests. Insofar as the Warsaw Pact and Russia’s interests are concerned, I think NATO has fulfilled that expectation. But its involvement in other conflict regions has been less demonstrably defensive. NATO took a role, and not one especially crowning it in honour or glory, in the break-up of Yugoslavia. NATO forces have executed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, again, without much in the way of honour or glory. The war on terror is an emotive headline-catcher, intended, like Mr Trump’s invasion of immigrants, to weaponise policy measures against these things. But they’re not real wars or real invasions; they’re marketing tools. So, when NATO invaded Iraq in 2003, they did so, in name, as a counter-measure to the war on terrorism, whilst reframing its troop deployment as a coalition instead of NATO (2,000 of the 160,000 troops were technically Australian). If I say that NATO has thereby, both in theatres in Europe and in the Middle East and Asia, shown itself to be fickle in terms of its “sole vocation as a defence alliance”, I think that that holds water. NATO is not dependent for its actions on its secretary-general. We don’t look to policy manifestos with this organisation. We fundamentally, as member country citizens, expect it to spring to our defence when it is called upon to do so in terms of the words of the treaty. We don’t expect it to attack anyone, even if it does. And we expect it to be there when needed and not, as the USA is currently indicating, just abandoning the long-term strategic alliance it represents in favour of, in one minute, Israel, in the next, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Maybe in favour of both, or neither, or all of us in one big pot. Who knows what the meaning is of a Donald Trump commitment? Or, for that matter, one given by Bill Clinton?

If it could have been predicted, however, that NATO expansion would provoke Russia into doing something, whatever it might have been, how predictable is it that Russia would have reacted with military force? In the end, very.

Whilst it is true to say that authority, wherever it may be, does on the whole, when balanced against the potential firepower at its command, exercise a reasonable degree of restraint before using it, the considerations that condition that restraint are strangely enough unlike any such as might condition expenditure in any other context: i.e. cost is no object. What is an object is the likelihood of securing capitulation. That is a factor that Russia vastly over-estimated in Ukraine. Capitulation by Ukraine is not—yet—on the table. But they’re tired. The resolve is not the resolve of the day after the start of the invasion. It’s more the resolve of the day before the peace. So, Ukraine anticipates peace, but fears it at the same time. Because, if anyone knows the Russians, the Ukrainians do. What the Ukrainians fear is not a peace in the here and now. It is the prospect of having to use it to prepare for the next stage in the conflict. If it took 25 years for NATO’s expansion to provoke a war, how long do you think it’ll take for a peace settlement to provoke the same thing?

Peace is rarely viewed as the cause of war, but it is. Peace always comes before war. And peace also comes where there is no war. The difference between these two kinds of peace is that one is good and the other is bad. They say the Franco-Prussian War caused the First World War because of the nature of the peace settlement after the former. That the peace of Versailles after the First World War led to the Second World War. Now, the aftermath of the Second World War—NATO, since 1949—might arguably have led to the Russo-Ukrainian War. And there are other things afoot that are already resulting, and may yet result, in war: the instability caused by the inroads made by the US on the international order that it itself set up after the Second World War, the paper tiger that the United Nations have become, without influence or power of persuasion, the impunity with which the governments of Thailand, Myanmar, Israel, China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, India, Argentina, Tunisia—for an “off-the-top-of-my-head” listing—oppress, murder, legislate against peoples of their own nations, such that it is to be expected that, as sure as God made little green apples, they will start to engage in such acts against the peoples of other nations, and, yes, Pakistan is in our sights.

Russia showed itself in the early 20th century to be keenly willing to engage in military conflict. In South Ossetia, in Chechnya, in Georgia. Perhaps instructive in this history was the invasion on 8 August 2008 by Russian troops of Georgia, which was modelled as a “peace enforcement mission”, coming as it did in the wake of a car-bomb attack by South Ossetians on Georgian peacekeepers. The Caucasus is a part of the world that has never been easy to comprehend. I think that that should have been reason enough for NATO to constantly question its comprehension of relations between Russia and Ukraine. In the lead-up to the invasion, President Biden of the US was repeatedly warning that the build-up of troops at the Ukrainian borders to both Russia and Belarus meant that an incursion was certain. I’m not entirely sure, apart from sending a helicopter for President Zelenskyy, what else Mr Biden was figuring on doing about it. Drip-feeding armaments with the fickle consent of Congress, is what it turned out to be in the end. The lend-lease aspect of the relationship seems now to have been resolved with a barter arrangement sealed with Biden’s successor. Of course, it is one thing to enter into a contract for the sale of ore that is still safely consigned to Mother Earth. But, to get it out of the earth and into an American ship means, first, that there needs to be no war raging around the excavations and, second, that, if there’s a peace, it’s one under which the seller is in a position to grant access to the ore. Donald Trump has been mad at Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the past because of his refusal, in respect of President Biden’s son, to “dig up the dirt”. I do wonder how Mr Trump plans “coming and getting” his 500 billion dollars-worth of high-value Ukrainian dirt. But it certainly gives added impetus to his endeavours to end the shooting.

The signal overriding element of the altercation on Sunday is not predicated on the grave seriousness of the matter that was under discussion. What I want to make plain with this article is that there are rarely easy explanations for any aspect of geopolitics, and that instant dismissal of the opposition followed by loud invective is hardly an efficient means to resolve differences; in fact it’s often an element in how such things come about in the first place.

It could well be—who knows?—that NATO is in any case soon a thing of the past. The US has its security, in its nuclear warheads, the largest army of the world and its two oceans and two non-belligerent neighbours. Why in heaven’s name would the US want to expend capital in defending Europe, when the tyranny that Europe once feared is in some respects already in power there? The demand issued by the White House that NATO needs to beef up its armaments contribution to a certain percentage of GDP is not based on any consideration of effective defence; it’s based on the fact that most armaments in NATO are manufactured in the US (never forget: Mr Trump is, above all else, a businessman).

NATO still has the US as a member; for how much longer is perhaps a question of conjecture. The other North American, Canada, will come with whatever the European treaty signatories want, if only because the paradigm has now shifted in their minds: from a treaty alliance with their southern neighbour to fearing actual invasion by it. Elsewhere, another NATO member fears the invasion of its sovereign, autonomous territory by the US. In some ways the US is now the enemy within.

NATO, the EU and the United Nations are three international organisations that have always been a part of the backdrop to my life. The United Nations has a future, but not a rosy one: its resolutions in chastisement of third-world countries will continue to be proposed and seconded, and passed. Nothing tabled against a western nation will have a ghost of a chance. Its court will continue to issue judgments against miscreant countries, and they will continue to be ignored, or the members of the court, and of the International Criminal Court whilst they’re at it, will continue to be intimidated.

I must just interject here a word about the United States and its relationship to the International Criminal Court. The US has not ratified its signature of the Rome Statute and has passed domestic legislation to hinder the ICC’s work, whilst actively making recommendations to it (e.g. Libya). Of all the sovereign nations in the world, 41 have not signed up to the Statute; these are the honest ones. The others fear that the ICC might invent crimes, or pursue a policy of racism. Or breach national sovereignty (which is in fact the whole point). Or be directed against internal and not just international crimes (does the victim of genocide care whether they’re being annihilated by their own, or someone else’s government?). Some of the objections recorded on this web page beggar belief, such that the conclusion is quickly reached that an international criminal court is a great idea as long as it doesn’t punish us, and does punish everyone else. But objections based on sovereignty leave the impression that the country in question (China) has failed to grasp the issue: the ICC wants to go where no national court is going. And if a national court doesn’t go where the ICC thinks it should, then the problem is not the ICC, but the country. If the US doesn’t want any part of the ICC, then the US can butt out. Instead, it makes loud, public comments about the ICC’s work. It criticises decisions to issue arrest warrants against certain people and it denounces certain prosecutions against certain people. To be quite honest, by not signing the Rome Statute, the US has ensured that its war criminals will never stand trial before an international body of public accountability. Even King Leopold’s criminals in the Congo did that (albeit five years in prison for the murder of 122 Congolese, in one case—more on Belgium below). The US organised and executed (literally) much of the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. They have a domestic courts system that is, to be fair, the envy of much of the world. It is their mastery of the concepts of law and their application in the field and courtroom that have secured the US’s reputation as a prime upholder of the rule of law. But it has nothing to say on matters within the jurisdiction of the ICC, and the ICC’s absence from the US’s rule of law is a glaring blemish. The acts of torture and poor treatment of the incarcerated in prisons and detention centres around the globe we are invited to deplore. We may believe the laws that allow such acts are unjust and we may campaign against them. But we do not intrude on the internal workings of a criminal justice system, except through discreet, diplomatic channels, or where they are so defective as to warrant the intrusion of the ICC. Yes, China, the entire point is that China cannot be trusted to prosecute China’s crimes. And the same goes for Israel. Those who will not submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC say loud and clear: one rule for us, another for everyone else. Well, people like that need to be kept under an especially watchful eye. There is morally no case for not submitting to the ICC’s jurisdiction, according to an argument we hear from governments the world over: if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. I do sometimes wonder whether national leaders read the United Nations Charter.

The EU was formed before I was born and my birth country joined in 1973. It left in 2022. Whether the EU’s still around in 50 years (https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/a-personal-view-of-germany), I think will depend on how right-wing parties fare in that period in their home constituencies: whether what pervades their societies is a sentiment of togetherness and mutual betterment, or a deep-seated mistrust of all things foreign, even if just over the border.

If the US leaves NATO, or renegotiates its position and contribution, mutual defence will regroup around the EU, with Canada as a satellite partner. They must be prepared, after all, for when the US makes good on its threats to incorporate its 51st state.

One last thing: Belgium. Little Belgium, invaded twice, by the same nation, in a half century (a quotation from Wilde comes to mind²). But Belgium’s second monarch, King Leopold II, must’ve thought that all his Christmases had come at once when Henry Stanley, who had earlier also “discovered” Dr David Livingstone in the ancient Tanganyikan town of Ujiji, agreed to help him establish the Congo Free State, which he had hoodwinked the Berlin Conference, no less, into allowing him to establish out of magnanimous philanthropic and benevolent considerations. Leo was nothing if not a slick talker. The Free State existed from 1885 until 1908 as a private venture of King Leopold, with no constitutional or ministerial links to Brussels. It was not Belgium that ultimately sought out its colonial holding in the Congo, but international pressure after the revelations by Roger Casement, a British diplomat who investigated the atrocities being committed in Leopold’s private demesne, which spawned a Joseph Conrad novel (Heart of Darkness) and widespread condemnation. The exact number of victims of atrocities in the Congo Free State is impossible to establish, owing to the lack of record-keeping. But it was certainly ten million. That’s how outrageous the civilised west can be. The capacity to treat as dirt other peoples of the world is not, sadly, limited to today’s usual suspects. It is that that the ICC was created to combat.

What persuaded Leopold II to relinquish his hold over that gargantuan chunk of central Africa was like as not the fortune he had amassed in the meantime, coupled to the factual accounts concisely laid out by Casement in his command report. Ten years or so later, Casement would be executed for his endeavours to secure Irish freedom. He was praised for his work in freeing the Congo, and hanged for his work in liberating Ireland.

Passion runs high when we broach the subjects that move us. But a well-constructed argument delivered calmly can often convince over and above one that is cleverly shot out at high decibels across a picnic table. For myself, I have one argument against any invasion of anywhere: all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword (Matthew 26, verse 52).

1. By Unknown author - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69776866.

2. To be invaded once by Germany may be regarded as a misfortune. To be invaded twice looks like carelessness. The Importance of Being Earnest, in which Wilde talks of losing parents, not invasions.