Why Russia's interest in Ukraine is about more than NATO

Opinion: it's the vision of an independent, liberal, democratic and prosperous Ukraine rather than NATO enlargement that really bothers Russia

By Eoin Micheál McNamara, University of Tartu

Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Vladimir Putin has claimed that US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) enlargement has threatened Russia. Following a brief pause in tensions and an attempted partnership during the 1990s and early 2000s, acrimony again defines Moscow's relations with the Western alliance over recent years. But does NATO’s decision to allow entry to post-communist states actually have any capacity or intent to threaten Russia’s security?

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From RTÉ News, NATO and Russia meet over Ukraine tensions

Current tension between NATO and Russia goes back to Russian claims of a broken US promise not to move the alliance eastwards as the Cold War was ending in 1990 when the Soviet Union still existed. However, this issue is clouded in historical complexity. Then US Secretary of State James Baker seems to have stated this during conversations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 only as a mere proposal confined to German reunification. This was a time when the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the demise of the Soviet Union by late 1991 were still unforseen. This proposal went no further and was not included in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.

While welcomed in Western capitals, the collapse of communism and Soviet military withdrawal from Central and Eastern Europe reopened issues that had historically troubled security in Europe. This region was again at risk of becoming a geopolitical "crush zone" as its smaller independent states were unable to respond the power vacuum that had long encouraged larger empires – most prominently Germany and Russia – to undertake tense competition for dominance. This geopolitical uncertainty had undermined security and domestic governance in most Central and Eastern European states during the interwar years, and it eventually contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

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From Bloomberg Politics, Putin says further NATO expansion in Eastern Europe is unacceptable

As Bill Clinton's presidency began in 1992, the US was the only power strong enough to positively reshape European security. While the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU) were supporting liberal democratic political, economic and legal reforms, Clinton understood that the incentive of NATO’s steadfast military security guarantees was also essential to fully anchor these states on the Western integration course. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland comprised NATO’s first post-Cold War enlargement in 1999. This was followed by a larger accession round in 2004 under George W. Bush, when NATO accepted seven more states from Central and Eastern Europe.

Contrary to an act of US aggression, NATO’s 'open door' had instead freed many smaller states from a long legacy of imperial strife, but this policy was not implemented before significant comprises with Russia had been agreed. Clinton balanced "democratic enlargement" preferences with a "Russia-first" principle crucially formalised in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act where, to accommodate Moscow’s concerns, NATO stated that it saw no need for "additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces" in "the current and foreseeable security environment".

Despite Russia’s later military aggression in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014, NATO has still maintained this compromise and has safeguarded its eastern members only with small battlegroups for "trip-wire" deterrence. NATO’s multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania currently number only around 1,000 troops in each Baltic state, while NATO has 5,000 soldiers in Poland.

From RTÉ One News, NATO General Secretary calls on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine border

This "trip-wire" posture aims to dissuade Russian aggression against NATO, signalling to Moscow that it will be triggering a serious international conflict involving other major powers – the US, UK, France and Germany – with costly repercussions were it to militarily encroach on Baltic or Polish territory. Rather than posing a threat, not having stronger military deterrence on-site leaves NATO vulnerable because the military balance in NATO-Russia border regions is profoundly asymmetric in Moscow’s favour.

Putin sees NATO’s "open door" accession policy as a threat to Russia. Concerns that NATO will position missiles in its eastern member states or in Ukraine (should it become an alliance member) were prominent in Moscow’s diplomatic demands in crisis meetings with Western leaders last week.

However, this is an entirely fictitious scenario, disconnected from recent history where NATO’s preference has instead been for compromise and restraint. Russia’s threat inflation indicates more complex insecurities as motivating its aggressive aims. Rebuilding a Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet area has long been Putin’s primary strategic objective. This violates the OSCE’s Charter of Paris, a key document agreed at the end of the Cold War which outlines the principles for pan-European confidence-building and enshrines the freedom of all OSCE states "to choose their own security arrangements".

From RTÉ Radio One's This Week in 2014, Diarmaid Fleming hears the views from Ukraine's side of the divide with Russia, and speaks to some people who took part in their country's revolution.

Knowing that a post-Soviet Russian sphere of influence will remain incomplete without Ukraine, Putin has stressed the "spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries" between the two states. However, with tens of thousands of Russian troops already massed adjacent to Ukraine’s eastern border, Moscow’s actions profoundly contradict any intent to preserve these bonds today or into the future.

Meanwhile, Kyiv’s urgency to leave Russia’s orbit has accelerated. Admiring the democratic and economic development strongly supported by the EU and NATO in the neighbouring region, Ukraine now perceives closer ties with both these organisations as indispensible for its social and economic development. Rather than the red-herring of further NATO enlargement, it is the vision of an independent, liberal democratic and prosperous Ukraine at Russia’s western border that Putin’s authoritarian leadership perceives as the most concerning threat of all.

Eoin Micheál McNamara is a PhD candidate in political science at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu and a visiting research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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