By GILBERTO LOPES*
For Bill Clinton and his secretary of state, NATO's eastward expansion did not pose a threat to Russia
“NATO expansion would be a fatal mistake,” stated United States Navy Rear Admiral Eugene James Carroll Jr. in an article published in Los Angeles Times of July 7, 1997.
A supporter of nuclear disarmament after his retirement, the rear admiral intervened in the debate on the expansion of NATO to the east, which then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, from the Clinton administration (1993-2001), defended with enthusiasm. “My vision of a new and better NATO can be summed up in one sentence”, the secretary would say: “we want an Alliance reinforced by new members; capable of defending themselves collectively; committed to confronting a wide range of threats to our shared interests and values.” “I know there are those who suggest that talking about common Euro-Atlantic interests, beyond collective defense, somehow departs from the original intention of the North Atlantic Treaty. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is nonsense!”
Born in Prague, Madeleine Albright died in March 2022, having published several books. In one of them, about fascism – Fascism, a warning –, published in 2018, once again demonstrates his taste for summaries, for his ability to define his objectives in one sentence. “For me,” Madeleine Albright would say in her book, “a fascist is someone who identifies completely with the entire nation or group in whose name they claim to speak. He disregards the rights of others and is capable of using any means necessary, including violence, to achieve his goals.”
Later, in the same book, he refers to the foreign policy objectives, which he headed from 1997 to 2001, during the Bill Clinton administration. “I tell my students that the fundamental objective of foreign policy is very simple: to convince other countries to do what we want them to do. To achieve this, we have several instruments at our disposal, from a polite demand to sending marines.”
Excited about the prospect of incorporating the first three Eastern European countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – into NATO, Madeleine Albright, in a speech in Brussels on December 8, 1998, spoke of the importance of these new members joining the debate then. on “the essential initiatives to prepare the Alliance for the 2004st century”. It was NATO's first eastward expansion after the Cold War. In XNUMX, six more countries would join.
Although estimates vary, the Pentagon then calculated that NATO expansion could cost between 27 and 35 billion dollars over the next ten years, of which Washington would have to assume around 200 million per year. A ridiculous number (even if updated to the current value of the dollar) compared to the more than 175 billion dollars already allocated to Ukraine since 2022. Not to mention similar amounts granted by European countries, which, combined, far exceed the 223,7 .XNUMX billion dollars allocated last year to Official Development Assistance (ODA).
It wasn't a threat
For Bill Clinton and his secretary of state, NATO's eastward expansion did not pose a threat to Russia. It was the eve of the Washington summit, in April 1999, in which the organization would celebrate its 50th anniversary, in the midst of the military operation in Kosovo (a controversial operation carried out without authorization from the UN Security Council), and in which its new strategic concept and the adoption of the accession plan of new partners, former allies of the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact.
In Russia, Boris Yeltsin was ending his period as head of the government (started in 1991), after a chaotic political and economic reform, a privatization of public companies that awakened the appetite of the West, interested in the country's vast resources. On December 31, 1999, he handed over power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who assumed the presidency on an interim basis before being elected to the role three months later. During his decade of rule, Russia's GDP decreased by almost half.
NATO still hoped it could convince Russia “to do what we want them to do”. Madeleine Albright spoke at length about the implications for Russia of NATO enlargement proposals (her speech can be seen here). In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 23, 1997, he reminded senators that he was a diplomat and that “a diplomat's best friend is an effective military force and a credible ability to utilize it.” “Let me explain the fundamental objective of our policy,” she told senators, “is to build, for the first time, a peaceful, democratic and undivided transatlantic community.”
Which, in his opinion, would give them greater security that they would not be called upon to fight on European soil again. At that time, he highlighted the importance of strengthening cooperation with Ukraine, promoting military reform in that country and improving interoperability with NATO.
“NATO is the anchor of our commitment to Europe. “It is by promising to fight, if necessary, that we will make it less necessary to fight.” An argument that does not take into account that, nowadays, this fight would be with nuclear weapons (they thought then that they could win it). As we will see, he did not even take into account the many warnings that the results of this expansion could be contrary to what Madeleine Albright promised.
He insisted that these measures should not be avoided just because of Russian opposition. “The worst elements in Russia could feel empowered, convinced that Europe could be divided into new spheres of influence and that this confrontation with the West would be worth it.” In his opinion, they could not wait for Russia to speak out in favor of democracy and markets to build “a united and free Europe”. Nor did he intend to make Russia accept such an expansion of NATO to the East.
A mistake of historic proportions
Madeleine Albrigth spoke to the Senate on April 23, 1997. Two months later, on June 26, a group of 50 leading American politicians and academics expressed a different opinion in an open letter to President Bill Clinton.
Rear Admiral Carroll Jr. recalled in his article what General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, said shortly after taking office in February 1951: “if all U.S. troops stationed in Europe for purposes of national defense do not return to the United States within ten years, then this entire project will have failed.”
The rear admiral questions what Dwight D. Eisenhower would think about plans to expand NATO and the US's presence in Europe. It cites an initiative by Susan Eisenhower, the general's granddaughter and security expert, who “brought together an impressive group of 50 military, political and academic leaders” (including Paul Nitze, Sam Nunn and Robert McNamara) to sign an open letter to President Clinton, calling the NATO enlargement plan “a political error of historic proportions.” (The letter can be consulted here).
In Russia, the letter says, “expansion will strengthen the non-democratic opposition, reduce the number of those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, and lead Russians to question all post-Cold War agreements.” In Europe, they add, expansion will draw a new line between those “in” and those “out,” foster instability and diminish the sense of security of those not included, and ultimately involve the United States. in the security of countries with serious border problems and national minorities.
The signatories of the letter proposed other things. Among them, cooperation between NATO and Russia, politically, economically and militarily. Naturally, they were not heard. Farah Stockman, member of the Editorial Board of New York Times, published an article on July 7 suggesting some changes to NATO. He referred to a growing unease he felt in Europe, where several countries were becoming uncomfortable with the organization's dependence on Washington's resources and interests. He cited the case of the presidents of Finland and France, who called for a “more European” NATO and wondered why this dependence persisted.
One of the reasons was structural, historical. NATO was created when Europe was emerging from a devastating war, which created enormous hostilities between European countries. “Someone had to round up the cats,” says Farah Stockman. But there are other reasons. Stockman cites the profits of the North American military-industrial complex which, in the period 2022-23, supplied 63% of the military equipment of European Union countries. This dependence is accompanied by an important political dependence, which Washington does not intend to renounce.
A notable diplomat
Rear Admiral Carroll Jr. remembers another notable character in American diplomacy, George Kennan, ambassador to the Soviet Union for a few months in 1952, during Stalin's government, and in Tito's Yugoslavia, during the Kennedy administration, in addition to other positions at the State Department and a distinguished academic career.
For George Kennan, the expansion of NATO would also be “the most disastrous mistake in American policy in the post-Cold War era. It is to be expected that such a decision… will take Russian foreign policy in directions that will definitely not be to our liking.”
A diary of almost 700 pages, published by Frank Costigliola in 2014, recorded, year after year, from 1916 to 2004, the most diverse comments of this extraordinary character – who was born in February 1904 and died at the age of 101, in March 2005 – about American politics, international relations, family relationships and their states of mind.
Key figure in the Soviet Union's containment policy at the beginning of the Cold War, in the conception and implementation of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War, informal advisor to Henry Kissinger when he was appointed secretary of state in Richard's administration Nixon, interlocutor of the most varied international leaders of his time, I consider George Kennan's diary a fascinating read.
This afternoon – I would say, in June 1960 – I sat with Willy Brandt and his Norwegian wife and others in a restaurant in Berlin. We talked at length… The following month, in July, at the invitation of President Tito of Yugoslavia, they spent an hour talking. He was interested in Cuba, says George Kennan. A few years later, President Kennedy offered him the United States embassy in Belgrade, which he would also take over for a short period.
Famous in diplomatic history are the “Long telegram” sent by George Kennan of Moscow to the Secretary of State in February 1946 and the article “The sources of Soviet conduct”, published in Foreign Affairs magazine in July 1947, signed “X”. In them he analyzed Soviet conduct, its roots and its importance on the international scene, and suggested a line of containment that gave rise to the Cold War.
The honeymoon is over
But that wasn't all. Removed from the State Department, his subsequent recommendations, which evolved into positions slightly different from the initial ones, were often ignored, and some of these ideas are collected in his diary. “When I spoke, in 1947, for example, against the pro-Soviet policies of the war years, there was great applause and everything was fine. When I said that we must remain strong in the face of Soviet power, everyone agreed”, says George Kennan.
But suddenly, he adds, the honeymoon was over: “when I dared to suggest that perhaps structuring our force around the hydrogen bomb was not the best idea, there was only bewilderment. When I expressed skepticism about the Russians' intention to attack us and suggested that we think of our military strength not so much as deterring a Russian attack as a central element of our policy but rather as a discrete element of a policy oriented toward a peaceful solution, there was a great and lasting unbelief.”
George Kennan was then 56 years old. It was 1960. The Eisenhower administration had not offered him any diplomatic posts. Kennedy was already campaigning and George Kennan returned from Berlin and Belgrade to prepare an eight-page letter, with his views on American foreign policy, to be sent to him. It talks about relations with the USSR and NATO. “When I suggested,” he says in the diary, “that some of the things the Russians were doing was a reaction to what we were doing, people thought I was crazy. And when I finally suggested that we might be interested in negotiating an agreement between the great powers for a joint withdrawal from both Europe and the Far East, there was widespread outrage.”
George Kennan was no longer optimistic about the direction of American foreign policy. “At no time in the last ten years has U.S. foreign policy resembled what I thought it should be and at no time has it been based on an interpretation of the nature of Soviet power similar to mine,” he says. “Now we are heading down paths that seem wrong to me, that will lead to bad results, and we have gone so far along these paths that I am forced to recognize that my old opinions have completely lost their relevance.”
He considered it too late to talk about removing the Russians from Eastern Europe, a particularly sensitive issue during the Cold War. “They are there to stay, and I see no greater hypocrisy from Western politicians than the pious assertion that they wanted something else.”
He also spoke about disarmament negotiations. “The nuclear arms race, to the promotion of which our policy seems to have been devoted with singular intensity over the last fifteen years, is now advancing with such momentum that there is not the slightest possibility of stopping it; and those who once feared that obstacles of any kind would be placed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of x number of governments can now rest assured. There will be no such obstacles; whoever wants them can get them.”
In 1975, Polish Prime Minister Adam Rapacki had proposed the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in Central Europe, which was in line with George Kennan's joint withdrawal proposal. But, he adds, “the efforts of the Poles to promote a discussion on the prohibition of atomic weapons in Central Europe were successfully rejected.”
Currently, Poland, along with the Baltic countries, is among the nations most committed to supporting Ukraine, having suggested, among other things, the possibility of shooting down Russian missiles on Ukrainian territory.
George Kennan lamented, in his memoirs, that he had insisted, all these years, “that if we act as if we think war is inevitable, we can help make it so. If we treat the Soviet leaders as if they had no intention other than to declare war on us, eventually this could become a reality. If we act as if the military danger is the most important thing, we might end up making that true.”
The U-2 spy plane incident, which the United States had sent to ensure that the USSR was not preparing a surprise attack against them (and which the Soviets shot down over their territory on May 1, 1960), was the result of the vision of Western governments, which prioritized the military point of view in their relations with the Soviet Union. And, naturally, they acted accordingly. A policy that George Kennan considered completely unnecessary and wrong. Ironically, he concluded that it was “easier to identify the Soviet personality with the well-known personality of Hitler, whose intentions were so ambitious and aggressive that we could only hope he would try his worst, than to try to understand what a guy like Kennan has to say about the Russia".
Today, the military bloc's spokeswoman, Farah Dakhlallah, highlights, as a strong point, the fact that NATO has more than 500 soldiers on high alert for what it considers to be the threat of a direct conflict with the Russia. How does NATO understand this “direct conflict” with Russia? Does it make any sense to have a policy aimed not at preventing it, but at waging a war like this?
As Rear Admiral Carroll Jr. has stated, NATO's eastward expansion is an attempt to prolong Cold War divisions and to reinforce the alliance against the expectation that Russia will seek to impose its hegemony in Eastern Europe. Something that, in any case, seems, politically or militarily, out of the question in the current scenario and has been repeatedly rejected by Moscow.
The rear admiral concludes that, at that time (in 1997), it might have seemed safe to treat Russia as an enemy when it could not prevent NATO expansion. But, he warned, there was a long-term danger that “a hard-line anti-Western coalition” would strengthen in Moscow, provoking backlash against NATO in the future. A reality that ended up exploding, interrupting NATO's long march to the east, a movement over which – according to Albright – Russia had no right of veto.
*Gilberto Lopes is a journalist, PhD in Society and Cultural Studies from the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). Author, among other books, of Political crisis of the modern world (uruk).
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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