NATO at Bucharest
Washington convened its junior military partners to prod them into staying the course on Ukraine and escalating against China.
NATO has concluded a two-day ministerial meeting in Bucharest, Romania. The meeting comes at a time when there are early signs of potential fractures over Ukraine. In addition to the Ukraine War, China was also on the agenda. The US clearly sees a connection between two. Washington is urging its European allies to draw the lesson that they were not tough enough on Russia in the run-up to its invasion of Ukraine and apply this lesson to China.
A recent Politico Europe article documented how European leaders are increasingly frustrated with the perception that Europe has born a heavy cost while the US has profited from the war. One (anonymous of course) European official was quoted as saying:
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons"
Other fissures have come over the Zelensky government’s refusal to accept responsibly for a missile that killed two Polish citizens. Poland has also criticized Ukraine’s current government for their glorification of Stepan Bandera and refusal to recognize his slaughter of Poles and Jews as mass murder. In July, Andrij Melnyk, then the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, publicly stated Banerda was not responsible for such crimes. This prompted a public rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister. Melnyk was recently appointed Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, prompting more objections from Poland.
For now, when it comes to Ukraine, NATO still appears mostly united on key points. The US has achieved what was perhaps its main goal in Bucharest. NATO announced it firmly stands behind a 2008 promise to make Ukraine a member. This provocative promise is one that NATO most likely has no intention of ever keeping.
As Kelley Beaucar Vlahos of the Quincy Institute wrote in Responsible Statecraft
Nevertheless, it is widely known that NATO had no intention of approving Ukraine’s membership before Russia’s invasion, but the U.S. never offered that assurance to Russia; nor did it dissuade Kyiv of that notion. NATO continues to dangle the prospect to the Ukrainians, however, who have been devastated not only by the military invasion but also by a staggering economic crisis, massive displacement and emigration, and indefinite dependence on NATO member states to stay afloat.
This renewed pledge to someday include Ukraine took on added symbolism. It was in Bucharest that George W. Bush promised to expand NATO to include Georgia and Ukraine. Bush was not exactly renowned for his strategic military thinking or diplomatic acumen. It is worth recalling that Bush’s proposal had its share of skeptics. See below for contemporary coverage from The Real News Network
At the time, a majority of Ukrainians opposed NATO-membership. Just two years earlier, attempts at NATO war games in Crimea were cancelled due to widespread local opposition. In 2010, Ukraine elected Viktor Yanukovych who opposed joining NATO and pursued a non-aligned policy. Ukraine’s parliament followed suit by passing a bill barring Ukraine from joining military blocs, clearly aimed at ending NATO ambitions. Yanukovych was removed in 2014 as part of the Euromaidan protests. Supporters of Euromaidan tout it as a popular uprising against a corrupt leader who engaged in a brutal crackdown on dissent, whereas critics condemn it as a US-backed coup. Ukrainian public opinion has been divided. Either way, the official foreign policy of Ukrainian government shifted dramatically.
Even at the start of the current war, however, the Ukrainian public remained divided on the issue of NATO.
Of course, the political situation has changed tremendously since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying brutality against Ukrainian civilians. Support for joining NATO is now at record highs in Ukraine. Historically neutral states like Sweden and Finland have sought membership (and unlike Ukraine, are likely to become members).
Back when Bush was expanding NATO, he was correctly viewed as a war monger. Although the European Union viewed the Afghan war as un-winnable, European members of NATO, against the will of their people, continued to commit lives and money to the US-launched war. Given NATO’s recent reversal of fortunes in the realm of public perceptions, any questions about the strategic military thinking or political acumen of Vladimir Putin should be thoroughly answered.
In spite of NATO’s recent public relations boost, the cold truth remains that NATO is less of a defensive alliance than a tool for integrating its member states into a US-led military order. This often comes at the expense of its member states’ own sovereignty and democracy.
Historically, NATO, in a move that was condemned by the European Parliament, collaborated with its members states internal security services in creating “clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization” outside the democratic controls of those nations.
NATO officials publicly chided center-left and social democratic opposition parties in Western Europe for adopting commitments to nuclear disarmament or the comparatively more mild policy of no-first strike usage of nuclear weapons. While refusing to allow your soil to be used as launching pad for a nuclear first strike may be out of line with NATO policy, it seems like a reasonable question for the electorate to weigh-in on.
To this day, NATO commits its members to spending 2% of their GDP on “defense.” Leaked Bush-era State Department cables published by WikiLeaks showed concern that center-left parties and trade unions could force governments to spend money on human needs, as opposed to George W. Bush’s Middle East military misadventures.
This bring us to the second major take away from the NATO meeting. The US used the meeting to encourage allies to take a more aggressive stance against China.
A November 29 article on the meeting in The Financial Times reported,
The US is pushing its European allies to take a harder stance towards Beijing as it tries to leverage its position on Ukraine to gain more support from Nato countries for its efforts to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.
A second Financial Times article on November 30 stated,
The US has in recent weeks stepped up pressure on its Nato allies to align closer to Washington’s more robust approach to China, leveraging its outsized role in supporting Ukraine and increasing its military presence in Europe this year in the face of Russia’s war against the country
Many of the US’s NATO allies have strong economic ties to China, which the US is encouraging them to break from.
The Financial Times has also revealed that earlier this year NATO held its first debate on Taiwan. The Financial Times recounting of the internal NATO discussion is disturbing.
Operating on the assumption that the West was not tough enough in pre-Ukraine invasion warnings to Russia, the US is pushing NATO to make China aware of the ramifications of pursuing military action against Taiwan. Reportedly, senior US military officials have floated timelines for potential military actions hoping to “to increase the sense of urgency to ensure Washington and its allies are prepared.”
While nothing justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US has over the past decade-plus repeatedly chosen escalatory decisions in regards to Russia and Ukraine. Russia is responsible for its own bad acts and it is impossible to prove a counterfactual, but if there was diplomatic road to preventing the war, the US certainly didn’t pursue it. Instead, the US at best recklessly pursued a high stakes game of chicken.
The worst possible lesson NATO could draw from its encounters with Russia is to pursue an aggressive, escalatory approach to China.
It is worth noting that even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon has used the threat of “great power competition” with Russia and China to argue for greater expenditures on militarism. NATO has always been aimed at Russia, now the US is increasingly urging them to take on China, as well.