NATO APPENDIX

EU/NATO BLOC VS RUSSIA IN THE WEST-EAST CROSSROADS OF UKRAINE

 

Ambitious, US-Desired & EU-Driven NATO Expansion Reaches Russia:

The ‘Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis’ of 2022

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

[Originally published between 28 January – 24 February 2022]

 

‘War is…a political instrument, a continuation of policy [politics]…by other means.’

– Karl von Clausewitz

As previously mentioned in blog ‘#36 The Art of Government: Military Servants, Political Masters, ‘The People’ & the Purpose of the Military‘, war is sometimes threatened, and then subsequently waged, in foreign fields, seas and skies beyond the nation’s own sovereign borders, if necessary, in order to defend critical national security interests to the security, safety and well-being of the nation.  Or in other words, to defend the State and its national population from foreign threats stemming or coming from abroad.

The recent long wars prosecuted in Iraq from 2003-2011 and in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, conducted by two, separate, American-led, multinational Coalitions of the Willing, and waged against terrorist-supporting, terrorist-sheltering, and terrorist-protecting government regimes in a conventional war capacity, and then subsequently against various, resistant, and pro-terror native and foreign Islamist terrorist and insurgent groups in a Counter-Insurgency (COIN) capacity, are both good examples of this.  

 

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962

An illustration of the ‘threat of war’ on these same grounds of defending critical national security interests or concerns, which despite the intensity and gravity of the situation did not actually end in open warfare, is the United States of America’s serious concerns, heightened threat-perception, realistic fears, and its subsequent threatening behaviour and naval blockade, regarding the Russian placement of nuclear weapons on the neighbouring Communist ally and independent sovereign State of Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  The crisis occurred during the overall context of the ‘Cold War’ confrontation between the two, ideologically-opposed, nuclear-armed superpowers Democratic America and the Communist Soviet Union.  

One year earlier, on 15-19 April 1961, the U.S.A under the leadership of Democrat President John F. Kennedy had unilaterally invaded the neighbouring island of Cuba, in the hopes of overthrowing its close neighbour’s recently-established Communist government led by the violent Marxist revolutionary Fidel Castro, and replacing it with a democratic government led by Cuban democrats and exiles. Following 48-hours of U.S. aerial bombardment, an American-backed Cuban infantry landing had taken place in the Bay of Pigs and other points along the Cuban coast. However crucial strategic decisions in the carefully-planned CIA War Strategy were altered several times due to President Kennedy’s dishonest wish to ‘hide’ America’s real involvement in and leadership of the invasion, and thereby have ‘plausible deniability’ (a much-beloved Democrat Party maxim and habit that remains unchanged in American politics to this very day).  These image-oriented changes were fatal to the success of the plan, and the American military attempt in Cuba failed spectacularly, with over 1100 of their men taken prisoner by Communist Cuban Forces and held for ransom by the Castro dictatorship (ignominiously returned to America between 1962-65 at the cost of U.S. $53 million in food and medicine delivered to the Cuban government).

In response to this politically assertive and militarily offensive regime-change attempt by the world’s only other Superpower, the Soviet Union placed its own Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba for the purpose of self-defence, in close proximity and a very short missile-flight of 2-3 minutes to America’s homeland (the island being situated only 103 miles or 166 kilometres south of the American state of Florida at its closest point).

The resultant, extremely tense, and ‘knife-edge’ Cuban nuclear missile crisis was the closest the world ever came to the apocalyptic nightmare scenario of nuclear-armed States initiating an all-out nuclear war of ‘instantaneous mass incineration’ of millions of human beings (multiple holocausts), during the period of the ‘Democracy vs Communism’ Cold War confrontation between two opposing Superpowers in a bipolar world between 1945-1991. 

The 7-day, Cuban, American, Soviet, global and human world crisis from 22-28 October 1962 was only resolved when the leader of the Soviet government, Chairman and First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, announced that the Soviet Union would agree (a) to stop all work on the medium and intermediate ballistic missile launching-sites it was developing for the defence of its Communist ally Cuba against American attack/invasion and (b) to remove (publicly) and return all of its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles already deployed on the island of Cuba back to the Soviet Union, in reciprocal exchange for America agreeing in turn (a) to never invade the Communist island of Cuba (thereby removing Cuba’s need for defensive ballistic missiles) and likewise (b) to remove (secretly) its own American nuclear-armed missiles from NATO Ally Turkey, located in similarly “danger-close” proximity to the south/southwest of the U.S.S.R, which America had deployed there in previous years to defend Turkish territory from Soviet attack/invasion.

The deal was accepted by the Kennedy Administration and the agreement was struck. Both Superpower sides acted and delivered on these pledges during the following weeks – overtly and covertly – thereby fulfilling their State promises to prevent nuclear war and preserve global peace, and so the crisis came to a diplomatically-attained and peaceful end one month after it began.

Statement by President John F. Kennedy

28 October 1962

‘I welcome Chairman Khrushchev’s statesman-like decision: to stop building bases in Cuba; dismantling offensive weapons; returning them to the Soviet Union under U.N. verification.’

 

The Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis of 2022

One could argue that it is extremely similar serious concerns, heightened threat-perception, and grave fears now, 60 years later in 2022, regarding the future potential for the nuclear-armed North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to extend membership to its new partner Ukraine, and subsequently one day to place nuclear strike systems and missiles there for the ‘additional defence’ of the very large transatlantic bloc of 30 countries, that has created the current ‘Ukraine NATO Membership and Nuclear Missile Crisis’ today between NATO and the Russian Federation. Indeed, these similar, very realistic and very grave concerns comprise the root causes driving the politico-military behaviour, demands and threats made by Russia during the current, extremely concerning, tense, and hugely consequential Ukrainian Crisis in Eurasia and Europe.

This is because non-nuclear Ukraine is the 30-year-old sovereign State and NATO partner situated immediately next-door to nuclear Russia – in similarly “danger-close” proximity to the Russian homeland (there is a distance of only 280 miles or 450 kilometres between Ukraine’s eastern perimeter border and the Russian Capital of Moscow), and a very short nuclear missile-flight (4-7 minutes) from this external border to Russia’s capital city and seat of government. 

Just as the United States of America would not like or tolerate hostile, anti-American, conventional military forces – let alone hostile, anti-American, nuclear military forces – to be situated in neighbour States Canada, Mexico or Cuba, when aimed at the American heartland, Capital or highly-populated cities of America (the 1962 ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ being a  case in point), and the same could also be argued to be true with regard to Britain if threatened in the same dangerously hostile way by its own neighbours the Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Holland, Norway, or even plausibly one day an independent Scotland, Russia likewise does not at all like the prospect of hostile, anti-Russian, conventional or nuclear military forces being situated extremely close to its own Russian heartland, Capital and highly-populated Russian cities in neighbouring countries Ukraine, Georgia and Finland, and especially will not tolerate such a scenario in Russia-hating neighbour States Ukraine and Georgia.

The truth is like medicine,

sometimes hard to swallow,

but otherwise great for your health

– and essential for your well-being.

Russia is extremely concerned that the EU-driven push for the NATO military bloc to protect its desired and new politico-economic acquisitions, by continuing on to its 6^th round of geographical expansion since the end of the Cold War into the neighbouring region of Eurasia in the east by making Ukraine a member-State (directly west of Russia) or into the Caucasus by making Georgia a member-State (directly south of Russia), will not only permanently and irrevocably endanger the vital national security of the Russian State, government and all its millions of citizens now and long into the future, but also could lead to the global catastrophe of a nuclear World War 3.  

In such a scenario, with two, nuclear-armed, hostile – and even hateful – neighbours sharing borders armed or even bristling with “self-defence” conventional and nuclear strike systems and missiles, any small incident could trigger the activation of the NATO Alliance’s Article 5 ‘All-for-one and One-for-all’ collective defence treaty – with a Nuclear NATO of 30-32+ States at war with Nuclear Russia, Nuclear China, the CSTO (described further below), and its other allies such as Belarus, Syria and Iran. This would inevitably lead to the division of the UN Security Council (with the USA, the UK and France pitched in red-hot battle against Russia and China) and to another, devastating, and inestimably costly “Great War” in Europe and Eurasia in human, blood and treasure terms worse than the Napoleonic or First and Second World Wars – except this time, unlike in either WW1 or WW2 – ALL Great States involved would be armed with nuclear weapons resulting in an unprecedented, massively destructive, and globally human-incinerating “Nuclear WW3”. 

Berlin meets Moscow in Ukraine during WW2:

Map of the frontline between the expanding and attacking Germany-led ‘National Socialist Europe’ and the stationary and defending State of the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R) in Eurasia, following Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa” invasion of June 1941. The operation sought, in three months, to annex not only the Ukrainian SSR but also a massive Western portion of the Federal Russian SSR from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan in order to create more “living room” (“Lebensraum”) for ethnic Germans. Involving 150 German and 30 Finnish/Romanian divisions of infantry (3.8 million personnel), Nazi Germany’s “Third Empire” assembled the largest and most powerful invasion force and enacted the most extensive war offensive on land in human history – yet nevertheless Operation Barbarossa ended in complete strategic failure, two full years later, after the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. [i]

 ‘Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.’

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. Army Military Commander (5-Star General), Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II & former President of the U.S.A.

 

Resolving the Crisis: Russia Makes 2 National Security Demands of the NATO Collective-Security Organisation for North America & Europe

The Russian State and its leaders are hence implementing long-term, 50-100 year, strategic thinking, planning, prevention and deterrence looking not only at the present threat of NATO membership for its hostile (Ukraine and Georgia) and neutral (Finland) neighbours, but even further forward far into the future of potential inter-State and human warfare. In alignment with its principal and critical national security concerns and interests, then, Russia has made two, explicit, and primary demands of NATO: 

(1) first, on the issue of NATO expansion or “over-expansion”, that (a) NATO not expand any further east beyond Poland in Eastern Europe through the admission of new members in other non-European regions (possibly implicitly also including the cessation of NATO’s practice of officially inviting non-NATO ‘Partner’ States in Europe and elsewhere to begin ‘Accession Talks’), and specifically, that it (b) not grant membership to its direct and immediate neighbour Ukraine, in the region of Eurasia, with whom Russia has been strenuously disputing over:

(a) political issues (Kyiv’s nationally-unrepresentative and politically-biased preference for good relations and trade with the EU rather than good relations and trade with Russia, combined with Ukraine’s Nazi-embedded, ideologically-influenced, Russian-hating and predatory “Ukrainian nationalism” movement – see these reports by Tucker Carlson, Sharyl Attkisson and the German DeutscheWelle and Indian ‘Hindustan Times‘ media outlets),

(b) ethnic issues (the protection, rights and freedoms of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine), and

(c) territorial issues (Crimea and the Donbas region of the Kyiv-mistrusting and deeply pro-Russian Don Cossacks) issues for a full 8 years since 2014; 

(2) and second, on the issue of NATO missile strike-system installations, that NATO refrain from deploying strike weapons systems ‘near Russia’s borders’ in either (a) Eastern Europe or (b) Ukraine in Eurasia (especially near or along the Ukrainian-Russian border), the installation of which would instantaneously and permanently threaten Russia.

However, as of early 2022, both of these demands regarding NATO over-expansion and strike-system installations were flatly refused with a ‘No’ answer, by both the NATO organisation and all its 30 Sovereign State members. 

NATO Alliance leaders seemed to sincerely consider these two Russian demands to be, on the one hand, completely un-doable and undeliverable based on the NATO Treaty, especially as regards forbidding new NATO members and the placement of strike weapons systems within the sovereign territory of NATO member-States located in Eastern Europe, and on the other hand, unpalatable and undesirable with regard to halting or changing their own long-declared and touted desire and ambition of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, along with all that entails in terms of NATO base establishment and offensive/defensive strike-system placement along Ukraine’s borders with Russia (and also with Belarus). Why?

 

Explaining NATO’s “No-Can-Do” Response

The reason relates to the inviolate and almost sacred concept and international principle of ‘State Sovereignty’, by which every State on the world stage is politically, economically and militarily sovereign, independent, and free to make its own decisions and choices in international affairs – without any need of reference to, servitude to, or overriding allegiance to, any other State or group of States in the international system.  This principle of State Sovereignty is now, and has been for centuries past, the bedrock foundation of the international system over hundreds of years, ever since the signing of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia peace agreements, which ended both the destructive ‘Eighty Years’ War’ (1568-1648) and ‘Thirty Years’ War’ (1618-1648) that had together killed over 8 million people in Europe.  By this principle or doctrine of State Sovereignty, every State on the world stage is considered to hold sovereign power over their own territories and populations, including national instruments of power such as political institutions and military forces. [For more information about this concept of sovereignty and its positive and negative implications for NATO, refer to blog ‘#33 The Problem of “National Caveats” in NATO Operations around the World, 1996-2016’.]

The Impact of Sovereignty on NATO Expansion & Missile Placement

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, just like the United Nations organisation and all intergovernmental organisations currently in existence (including the European Union), is founded on the central, crucial, pivotal, and powerful underlying premise of ‘State Sovereignty’. This underlying and ‘concrete’ principle of State Sovereignty is enshrined in the Alliance’s founding treaty document of the NATO Charter, most explicitly in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty (viewable here), just as it is similarly enshrined in the United Nation’s founding legal document of the UN Charter (viewable here).

The North Atlantic Treaty

Washington D.C. – 4 April 1949

 

‘The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.

They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.

They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area [of North America and Europe].
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security.

They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty…

 

Article 10

The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State [not Eurasian or other regional State] in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America.’

This means that NATO is a voluntary collective-security organisation, with: sovereign and independent States seeking to join NATO on a free and voluntary basis; NATO inviting non-NATO States on a free and voluntary basis upon ‘unanimous agreement’; existing NATO members granting admission to new applicant members on a free and voluntary basis (and each subsequently conducting their own ratification processes to finalise the new member accession in their own home countries); military contributions to NATO operations or activities likewise made rhetorically and materially on a voluntary and free basis (also leading to the recurring problem of mission under-resourcing and the exasperating and never-ending problem of ‘national caveat’ ROE limitations and bans constraining multiple NATO national contingent deployments); the request or acceptance of weapons system installations also undertaken on a voluntary and free basis; and each NATO member-State seeking to develop peaceful and friendly international relations and to eliminate political, military and economic conflict among themselves (Article 2) on a free and voluntary basis. 

This being the case, NATO leadership simply can not control or limit the freedom of sovereign State members to make their own sovereign and independent choices with regard to the political or security decisions taken by their national governments. According to NATO’s ‘Open Door’ policy of always welcoming new members, ever since the organisation’s genesis a few years after the end of the Second World War in 1949 (as implicitly understood from the wording and spirit of the NATO Charter at the organisation’s founding in the destructive wake of WW2), moreover, the organisation itself currently can not and will not prevent, limit or stop other sovereign, independent, democracies or emerging democracies that qualify for potential membership by being located in the transatlantic region of Europe from seeking to join and become a full member of the collective-security treaty alliance (Article 10).  NATO is ‘joined’, not ‘imposed’.  Likewise, because of the overriding sovereignty, independence, and political and military freedom of its members, the NATO organisation itself – just like the EU – should not and can not prevent any member-State from leaving the Alliance at any point of time (Article 13) – each sovereign and independent member-State has the freedom and right to exit, just as each originally had the freedom to join in previous years.

In the same way, too, the NATO organisation can not stop sovereign State ‘NATO allies’ from deploying their military forces among themselves, on the basis of mutual or collective consent, on member-States’ own sovereign territory. Nor from acquiring, installing or sharing medium-range ballistic missiles, intermediate-range ballistic missiles, or even nuclear missiles among the NATO nuclear States (an even more dangerous and high-stakes issue) on members’ own territory, for defensive use in the event of foreign armed attack or offensive use in the event of an attack against a NATO country that triggers Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.  The original purpose of NATO still remains intact: collective security of North American and European Member-States in times of war.

Only bilateral, State-to-State, government-to-government, and reasoned persuasion, supported by incentive or deterrent measures, can alter each NATO member or partner State’s support for, or alternatively rejection of, NATO, U.S., British or other installations of strike weapons systems on their own home sovereign territory. And the same is true with regard to the Russian Federation, and its own freedom likewise to acquire and install medium-range, intermediate-range and nuclear strike weapons systems on Russian sovereign territory, for defensive warfare purposes in self-defence or offensive warfare purposes in times of grave threat to the safety or survival of the State and its peoples, or its allies’ States or peoples inside or outside of the CSTO, the placement or installation of which similarly threaten neighbouring NATO countries – especially in Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea region, in Eastern Europe, and around the Black Sea.  

As Sovereign States, and without any overarching and ‘self-limiting’ mutual security agreements or treaties, all are free to buy the defensive weapons they deem necessary in the light of their own strategic environment and security threat risk assessment, in order to protect their own borders, their own sovereign territory, their own people, and their representative government that has been tasked with serving their nation of people and saving them from destruction in war.

[Indeed, this same general rule applies internationally for all States and the weapons they choose to acquire or install on their own sovereign territories – with the sole exclusion of nuclear weapons (in order to stop the further spread or distribution of such an apocalyptic weapon of human annihilation and global nuclear war), and especially, the exception of States who grimly threaten the entire world and the international system, constructed upon the bedrock foundation of State Sovereignty since 1648 and around the centrality of the UN Security Council since the end of WW2 (especially Chapter VII against ‘Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace & Acts of Aggression’), because they desire nuclear weapons not for self-defence, but rather for the purposes of offensive war and the unjustified and unjustifiable annihilation of long-hated “Enemy States” – usually their neighbours – along with all their millions of citizen peoples (e.g. the great and alarming concern internationally with regard to a nuclear Iran towards Israel, nuclear North Korea towards South Korea or even Japan, and potentially one day a nuclear Ukraine towards Russia).]  

The States hold the power, and NATO Headquarters only the semblance of it. And it is NATO’s member-States – not its leadership officials in Brussels – that have the power to determine the future actions, shape and purpose of NATO in Europe and in the wider world.

The Power of NATO State-Members in an Alliance of Sovereign State ‘Equals’

Only the NATO member-States themselves, sovereign States numbering a total of 30 at the time of writing in 2022, and all legally equal by virtue of their equal ratification of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, can decide if an eligible, European, applicant State wishing to join the collective-security organisations is granted or refused membership in the Alliance treaty organisation (Canada and the United States in the North American part of the North Atlantic AO have both been NATO members since 1949).

The acceptance of any new European member relies on a ‘unanimous’ vote of NATO’s existing members, since the organisation operates largely according to the principle of collective consensus.  However, this means that current member-States – all sovereign, independent and free States with their own elected governments and internal national security and external foreign relations interests – do each individually have the power under the NATO Charter to “veto” or stop the admission of new members, by declaring and/or refusing to agree to the applicant State’s admission to the Alliance. 

Just one State objecting to any State’s potential or future admission, and the aspirant State in question will neither begin the preparatory membership process (known as MAP or the Membership Action Plan), nor become an official member of NATO.

And just as the NATO organisation’s leaders and staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels and other NATO members can not prevent another sovereign and independent State member from leaving NATO, as described above in a collective-security alliance of equals, in the same way the organisational officials and existing NATO members should not and can not prevent any other member-State from objecting to the admission of a particular membership-seeking State on national or global security grounds (NATO Treaty ‘Aim’ plus Articles 5, 6 and 10).

The Alliance is a collective-security organisation after all, formed for the purposes of mutual and collective security and defence and the preservation of peace in North America and Europe (not Eurasia), not for political or economic purposes or ‘added benefits’, including the worthy but ‘extra and non-mission’ notion of promoting the spread of ‘Majority Rule’ democracy with all its basic political, military, economic, social, religious and legal rights and freedoms into other non-European Eurasian, Balkan or Caucasus regions, nor to promote or assist the ambitions and agendas of other international organisations (like the Germany-led, ex-‘Economic Cooperation between Equal Sovereign States’, now ‘Ever Closer Political, Economic & Military Union’ Suprastate federation of the European Union).

 Article 5

‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.’

 

Article 6 

‘For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:

on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France 2, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;

on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.’

As designed by NATO’s original security architects in 1949, the continuing power of each full NATO member today to block ‘new members’ – the power of objection or refusal – is supposed to function as an in-built brake or protective ‘check’ on reckless or ‘runaway’ NATO expansion, which would not serve the core security interests of the collective-security organisation or its existing members, nor attain NATO’s self-proclaimed ‘fundamental purpose’ of preserving peace in the Euro-Atlantic area or its ‘basic goal’ of enhancing security and stability in North America and Europe.

In accordance with NATO’s ‘Open Door’ membership policy to all of Europe’s emerging democracies, the Eurasian State of Ukraine is a Nation-State which since 2008 has been considered for future admission into the NATO collective-security organisation – upon the unanimous agreement of its current 30 members – if Ukraine should one day tangibly, meet the required and ‘essential’ criteria of membership to the NATO Treaty Alliance:

(1) politically (true electoral democracy, respect for State sovereignty, transparency and reform, shared values, and firm civilian control of military forces);

(2) economically (free market economy);

(3) militarily (capability and NATO interoperability);

(4) socially (fair treatment of all ethnic and religious minority populations); and

(5) financially (spending the required 2% of GDP on defence annually).

As always, in addition to meeting all of these vital criteria and requirements, membership to NATO hinges on the one critical concern: this is, as best articulated by the U.S. Department of State, whether or not the membership-seeking State will strengthen or weaken the Alliance, in terms of the State’s added value in either increasing or decreasing  ‘security and stability across Europe’ in pursuit of NATO’s  overarching expressed goal or objective of promoting stability and peace in the North Atlantic Treaty area of North America and Europe [not Eurasia or the Balkans].[ii] 

Quite obviously, expansion of the North American and European NATO Alliance out of Europe and into Eurasia and the Caucasus regions to the utter east beyond Europe would jeopardize this fundamental, primary, essential, and existential mission of the NATO Alliance since the end of World War Two.

Consequently, as one may see from this discussion, it is in fact the fundamental international principle of ‘State Sovereignty’, and the powerful influence and fixed constraints of this sovereignty giving each State political, economic and military independence and freedom, that is underlying the current Ukraine Crisis.  

Indeed, it is for the reason of State Sovereignty and on this basis, that Russia’s two main demands or concerns are described, from the viewpoint of some NATO member governments, as being tantamount to unfathomable and unreasonable “ultimatums” (i.e. denial of either or both together automatically triggering all-out conventional war on part(s), half, or all of Ukraine). 

When it comes to the great threat and alarm perceived in Russia with regard to medium-range or intermediate-range ballistic missiles being installed on the neighbouring sovereign territory of the State of Ukraine, or much worse, maybe one day the placement there of nuclear missiles, there is actually precedent even for this present ‘worst case scenario’ for Russia.  So far in world history, there has emerged several pairs of ‘armed-to-the-teeth’ and even nuclear-armed neighbouring nations, who exist side-by-side in a relative state of stability and peace – whether uncomfortably or acceptably. Consider for example the following pairs of India/Pakistan, India/China, China/North Korea, North Korea/South Korea, and even China/Russia, and further still among NATO member-States, the neighbour nuclear-armed pairs of Britain/France, France/Italy, France/Germany, Germany/Italy (near neighbours), Germany/Netherlands, and Germany/Belgium.

In brief: even in Russia’s worst case scenario, stability and peace can succeed, and even last over many decades, if both neighbours are more reasonable than hateful, and very careful. A peace without the threat or misery of war – a great, regional, European-Eurasian war akin to the horrors, destruction and bloodshed of World War One.

However, while it could be argued that a ‘careful peace’ could perhaps be maintained between neighbours Finland and Russia, even if Finland were to join NATO or even become a nuclear-armed State one day, the same could not be said at all with regard to Russia and its neighbour Ukraine, or even Georgia.

In fact, it is undeniably true that the historical record between Poland (for centuries the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) on the periphery of Eastern Europe, the Russian Empire then Soviet State further east in Eurasia, and the diverse peoples living in the land between them known as Ukraine, is one that is highly-charged with centuries of distrust, hate, war, ethnic subjugation, oppression and bloodshed on all sides at various times in history (the Russians against the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians and the Cossacks, the Poles and Lithuanians against the Russians, the Ruthenian ‘Red Rus’, the Ukrainians, and the Cossacks, and even the various Ukrainian Cossack communities against the Poles, the Russians, the Turks, the Jews especially, and other minority populations living in the Polish-controlled territory and Russian-controlled territory west and east of the Dnieper River respectively).

This long and bitter history of ‘bad blood’ between the various peoples living in these lands has resulted in extremely hostile interactions between all three States, ever since Poland, Ukraine and Russia emerged as independent and neighbouring States following the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the forcibly-unified Communist U.S.S.R in 1991.  The past is prologue to the present.

 

Two Views: NATO’s ‘Runaway Expansion’ out of Europe & into the Eurasian & Balkan regions

However, in truth, the current crisis is not just about Ukraine in the short-term, but about the broader strategic view in the long-term, especially as it regards NATO’s expansion through the addition of new members out of its original and traditional region of Europe further east into the neighbouring regions of Eurasia to the utter east beyond Poland, the Caucasus to the east of the Black Sea beyond Ukraine, and the Balkans to the east of Italy and the south-east of Austria and Hungary.

Eyes Wide-Open: Russia’s Long-Term Strategic Outlook

Russia seems to want to “update” the structural security architecture of collective security and stability in Europe and Eurasia – to reassess and potentially redraft existing security treaties in the light of existing realities in the current and modern security landscape of 2022. 

Further NATO expansion to the ‘utter East’ of the European region, and in fact crossing into the neighbouring region of Eurasia, by the admission of new sovereign State members into NATO – however willingly done by all the parties involved – will pull the organisation further and further away from its original ‘North Atlantic’ Ocean to increasingly creep east towards the eastern coast of the Black Sea and further south down the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

Russia is obviously worried about the impact of such ongoing and free geographic expansion of NATO.  

First of all, on its own national security as its State and borders increasingly become surrounded or encircled by an ever-increasing number of conventionally-armed and nuclear-armed, hostile States – currently numbering a bloc of 30 with the potential to increase even more to between 32-34 member-States in future years.  

The European side of NATO’s ‘North Atlantic, with Europe to the left (stretching from Ireland and Portugal in far-western Europe to the semi-circle or chain of Baltic States Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Greece in far-eastern Europe) and Eurasia to the right (beginning at its western edge in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Turkey and stretching through Russia and the Caucasus/West Asia including Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to end in Central Asia)’.[iii]

Secondly, in the spheres of regional security and global security, on the entire security architecture of the European Continent – especially as it relates to the resultant future balance, stability and peace of the European, Eurasian, Balkan and Caucasus regions should NATO expansion continue at its current rapid pace over the next decades. It is no exaggeration to say that the positioning of two, massive, nuclear-armed ‘super-blocs’ side-by-side, the American-led and EU-driven NATO bloc and the Russian-led CSTO+China+Allies bloc, in a manner in which they share borders – with no neutral buffer State or territory between them to keep the powerful nuclear blocs apart – has real potential of sparking a nuclear global holocaust with any border incident having the potential to escalate globally into the night-terror scenario of a nuclear-waged World War 3 to destroy the earth.

Thirdly, unchecked NATO expansion could ‘add fuel to the fire’ by massively increasing tensions in Europe and Eurasia, especially between Russia and the plethora of ever-increasing NATO member-States slowly creeping out of their traditional Area of Operations towards and around the Russian homeland on both sides of the Black Sea in Eurasia (Ukraine) and the Caucasus (Georgia).  Over-expansion could also trigger an arms race in the Americas, Europe, Eurasia, the Balkans and the Caucasus, between NATO members in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, and a few Eurasian and Balkan States on the one hand, and Russia, its allies Syria and Iran, and other ex-U.S.S.R ‘Soviet Socialist Republic’ members of Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Eurasia, the Caucasus/West Asia and Central Asia north of Afghanistan on the other hand, with potential impact to be seen and felt even in Asia itself with regard to China and North Korea. The Russian-led group of ex-U.S.S.R States named above are in fact all sovereign member-States of the ‘NATO counter-balancing’ Eurasian treaty organisation called the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), created 30 years ago in 1992 to replace the defunct and failed Warsaw Pact, and is based around a Collective Security Treaty akin to the North Atlantic Treaty that forms the foundation of NATO (view here).[iv]

Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) Charter
‘Chapter II Goals and Principles’

 

Article 3

The goals of the Organization shall be strengthening of peace, international and regional security and stability, protection of independence on a collective basis, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Member States, in achievement of which the Member States prefer political means.

 

Article 4

The Organization shall co-operate in its activity with the states which are not the members of the Organization, keep in touch with the international intergovernmental organizations operating in the sphere of security. The Organization shall promote formation of the fair, democratic world order based on conventional principles of international law.

 

Article 5

The Organization shall operate on the basis of strict respect of independence, voluntariness of participation, equal rights and duties of the Member States, non-interference into the affairs falling within the national jurisdiction of the Member States.

The Eurasian Treaty Organisation – the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).[xiii]

Lastly, on top of all this, it does not help that NATO itself is Russia’s old Cold War archenemy and rival in Europe. Just as America was once the principal, largest and most dominant Democratic State in the world, and the so-called “Leader of the Free World” of other democracy- and freedom-loving States ever since the end of the Second World War, Russia was likewise formerly the principal, largest and most dominant Communist State in Europe and Eurasia since the Lenin-led Communist Revolution of 1917 (a strategy successfully enacted by German cooperation with Bolshevik leader Lenin to overthrow the Russian monarchy and State, and thereby knock Imperial Russia under the Czar out of the war and the fight as an Allied Power during WW1 from 1914-1918), and thereafter the leader of both Communism as an Atheist, authoritarian and economic ideology and controller/puppet-master of all Communist satellite States in Eastern Europe (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary) and far-Eastern Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria) as well as a key influencer and enabler of all other Communist States worldwide too.  NATO is a relic or ‘survivor’ organisation of this Cold War confrontation between the united states of the Russian-led U.S.S.R, and its Communist collective-security organisation ‘The Warsaw Pact’, and the united states of the American-led U.S.A., and its Democratic collective-security organisation ‘The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’.  

However, after four decades of Communist rule in Europe, Eurasia and the Balkans between 1945-1985, Communism as an ideology and system of government (founded on the Marxist writings of a revolutionary young German in Berlin, Karl Marx, in the world-changing year of 1848) was proven to be a ‘mirage’ ideology and a flawed solution, that offered false hope for fixing the problem of poverty and suffering among the common people.  Instead of empowering and elevating the poor to join the large middle and small upper socio-economic classes in society, via providing more opportunities for education and work, better housing, and cheaper food (in theory) for the poorest in society, it instead stripped, imprisoned or bloodily executed the knowledgeable, experienced, wealth-generating and economy-building class of tax-paying business-owners and property-owners in the upper, middle and even lower echelons of society who together formed the backbone of the State (as “evil Capital-ists!” in a counterproductive policy of “Kill the Skilled!”), and all their educated or informed supporters (“the disgusting, middle-class bourgeois!”), with harsh prison or death penalties exacted against anyone attempting to escape the system (“defectors and traitors!”), thereby dragging European, Eurasian and Balkan States and their internal nations of people one-by-one into a severely-controlled, but poverty-stricken, fear-filled and death-filled abyss – of terror and extreme human and national suffering.

Over a period of 40 years Communism in Europe was seen to produce massively impoverished, underdeveloped, strict, brutally harsh, oppressive and miserable countries, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and State failure – including, worst and most dramatically of all, the ‘champion’, ‘leader’ and ‘chief exporter’ of international Communism worldwide itself, the colossally large Super-State of the Soviet Union itself.  Ever since the overthrow and execution of the Russian monarch, Czar Nicholas II, this Super-State Federation of 16 Soviet Socialist Republics (including the belated addition of the Abkhazian SSR in 1991, prior to the collapse of the U.S.S.R and its subsequent transition or “rebirth” into the modern State of the Russian Federation it is today) had been ruled by successive  ‘political kings-for-life’ or ‘Communist Czars’ in Moscow, referred to internationally as one-man-government ‘autocrats’ or ‘dictators’.

By 1989 the Communist States of Eastern Europe, most of whom had been forcibly or deceptively turned into Communist countries by the Soviets while occupied by Soviet Forces at the end of WW2, seized the golden opportunity and fateful moment in history, and broke away for freedom to transition into ‘freedom-loving’ democracies. With these new freedoms, the wealth-generating people of the land were no-longer considered to be a ‘noxious disease’ to be eradicated, but a much-needed ‘money-making, job-creating, project-investing and critical group’ of people for the strength, health and prosperity of the State as a whole and its nation of citizens the State existed to protect and serve. Capitalism was likewise no-longer seen as an evil word, but came to be understood as it really was and with its correct meaning: the right and freedom for anyone to work and earn as much money or ‘Capital’ as anyone wants and can, in order to improve their own life and well-being, and that of their families, friends and communities.  “The rising tide [of wealth among the people] lifts all [or most] boats”.

They were followed finally and reluctantly in this transition by the U.S.S.R itself in 1991, after it was confronted with its own State failure, bankruptcy, collapse and disintegration. Its various administrative divisions, organised principally around national resource centres rather than demographic distribution and known as ‘Soviet Socialist Republics’ or ‘SSRs’, left the union and declared their own independence as problem-plagued ‘Nation-States’.

The colossal ‘economic experiment’ dreamt up by the German radical Karl Marx in 1848, which had caused so much social upheaval, suffering and death for hundreds of millions of people, had failed – utterly and completely. Russia itself was reborn as the post-Communist Russian Federation. The “Cold War” came to a sudden and dramatic end. The world had learnt a great lesson, but it had come at a terrible, bloody and inestimable human price for innumerable millions of souls across Europe, Eurasia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the whole world.

The Cold War being over, the ‘Warsaw Pact’ collective-security organisation, like the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), was dissolved and made defunct. But NATO – its rival – was not, a fact which remains ‘salt in the wound’ and a bone of grievance and contention in Russia to this very day.

Therefore, for all these reasons and several others besides, Russia wants a serious, frank, and realist conversation, discussion, and political negotiations on these issues – now.  Namely, on exactly how future European and Eurasian security can be guaranteed, so that further ‘free’ NATO expansion out of its traditional region of Europe will not hurt the national security, regional security, and self-defence concerns of other non-NATO countries in the Eurasian region, especially Russia, or in the Balkans or the Caucasus/West Asia.[v] 

However, this is a discussion or negotiation that NATO’s leaders and its member-States were and are, perhaps, not prepared for – or even open to.

Eyes Wide-Shut: NATO Member-States’ Long-Term Strategic Outlook

NATO, to the contrary, seems to want to continue, unimpeded and without such discussion and strategic reassessment, its own self-expansion to include other old or emerging sovereign democracies in Europe, and even beyond Europe in Eurasia, the Balkans and the Caucasus/West Asia, if such expansion is carried out in a non-violent, peaceful manner and on a free and voluntary basis on the parts of both NATO and new member parties.

Indeed, Montenegro in the Balkans was accepted by its 28 members into the Alliance in June 2017 and the Balkan Republic of North Macedonia became a member-State of NATO in March 2020, furthering NATO’s expansion along the Adriatic Coast. At the present time, not only Ukraine, but also the States of Georgia on the Black Sea, and Bosnia-Herzegovina also on the Adriatic Sea, stand as MAP Partner States to NATO (unofficially with regard to Georgia and Ukraine since the 2008 ‘Bucharest Declaration’ that they were ‘destined for future membership in NATO’[vi] and officially with regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina) with the real prospect of potentially joining NATO in future years, with other States in Europe, Eurasia, the Balkans and the Caucasus presumably also being invited as ‘Invitees’, and/or engaging in, the preliminary stage of NATO Accession Talks.

In truth, the very fact that both Georgia and Ukraine applied to NATO for MAP status in 2008, but were denied official MAP status at the Bucharest Summit due to lack of NATO unanimity on their admission, especially the serious concerns and misgivings raised by both France and Germany against American support (President Bush’s advancement of his own “Freedom Agenda” policies) as to the wisdom of such a move with regard to provoking Russia by endangering Russian national security, hints at the scale of the ‘Titanic-sinking iceberg’ problem underlying NATO expansion next-door to the Russian State.  

Because the two countries’ admission was considered so high-risk, a move that could even result in open total war between Russia and the entire NATO bloc in a Third World War with nukes, they were instead given ‘unofficial status’, as though the two States were somehow extraordinarily both exempt from the entire MAP admission process, with the strong but completely unclear statement made only that both States ‘will join one day’.  In doing so, the leaders of NATO’s member-States thought they were being clever – in the words of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown “We didn’t give them MAPs, but we may have just made them members!”[vii] – but in fact the move was sowing seeds for future armed conflict.

The extremely important issues that should then have been thoroughly-considered at the NATO Bucharest Summit of 2008 with regard to (1) further NATO expansion out of its traditional American and European Area of Operations and Collective Defence, (2) the likely and projected impact of this on Eurasian ex-Superpower but still Great Power Russia (one of the ‘Permanent Five’ Great Power States in the UN Security Council*, along with America, Britain, France and China), and (3) on the future regional security of Europe, Eurasia, the Balkans and the Caucasus if such expansion continued unchecked, with subsequent informed, realistic and firm decisions taken, was postponed to a vague future date…

*[And – if this most important Security Council of the pre-eminent peace and security international organisation, relating to security and stability decisions and judgments made by the world’s ‘Greatest Powers’ on the basis and authority of their  ‘combined weight of State Sovereignty’ as Great Powers, was updated by 2025 to reflect modern geopolitical realities in the world today 80 years after the end of WW2 – additionally the politically stable, economically strengthening, and militarily influential, rising Asian ‘Middle Power’ of India and perhaps one day Japan.]

This ‘runaway expansion’ of NATO into Eurasia and the Balkans comes also in spite of the self-evident fact that NATO’s large and ever-larger size in terms of membership numbers is in practice and reality creating numerous internal problems within NATO politically and on the ground in NATO missions.  These problems include – but are not limited to:

• stark political and military divisions between members;
• diversity and outright difference in members’ political will;
• under-resourcing in terms of both manpower and equipment to NATO missions;
• disparities in capacity and capability;
• varying levels of interoperability;
• uncertain willingness to actually ‘wage war’ and fight or ‘do combat’;
• nightmarish and reoccurring government-imposed ROE ‘red-tape’ (national caveats) which continue to plague NATO’s member contingents, national commanders, missions and operations whenever and wherever they operate in the world – despite the warnings and entreaties of successive NATO Secretary-Generals;
• resulting inequitable burden-sharing in terms of the execution of combat operations;
• failure by many NATO member-States to ‘pay their dues’ by spending the required and ‘benchmark’ membership fee of 2% of GDP of their annual budget on defence domestically;
• political disagreement as to the current purpose of ‘Cold War security’ NATO in the 21^st century world;
• uncertain progress with regards to NATO’s ‘Transformation’ as a Multinational Operations operator;
• and equally uncertain ability, among its various member-States and as the entity of NATO as a whole, to conduct effective Counter-Insurgency (COIN) campaigns against Islamist insurgencies (as seen by NATO’s colossal failure in Afghanistan) – or even conduct effective Counter-Terrorism (CT) operations (as seen in its mediocre performance in the skies over Libya, in the sea around Somalia, and in the land of Afghanistan prior to NATO’s withdrawal from the country, which led to a Taliban-Al-Qaeda victory and the reestablishment of a terrorist-hosting ‘Terror State’ in the country that caused the 9/11 terrorist attack) – in this Islamist “Long War” or “Global Jihad/Global Insurgency” also known as the “Global War on Terror”. 

In sum, has NATO already become too big to be truly effective in its global security missions? And will the addition of new members actually only increase and add to these numerous NATO divisions and problems?

Has the NATO collective-security organisation actually over-extended itself far beyond its original architects’ wildest intent or vision? And has NATO in fact been naively “sleepwalking” into a geo-political and strategic catastrophe, internally and externally, through its unending expansions beyond Europe into the Balkans, Eurasia and then the Caucasus/West Asia? (As the saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss”.)

The reality is that NATO is already fragmented into a multi-tiered collective-security organisation. Indeed, NATO’s Afghanistan and Libyan missions have both exposed and demonstrated that there are actually now 4 “tiers”, “classes” or “groupings” of member-States existing within the NATO Alliance:

(1) combat-capable and willing-to-fight, fighting members;

(2) combat-capable and unwilling-to-fight, non-fighting members;

(3) willing-to-fight but lacking combat capacity in terms of equipment and training members; and

(4) unwilling-to-fight and lacking combat capacity in both equipment and training members. 

These realities raise the very important and meritable question of whether NATO should set a geographical limit to its own free expansion? Should NATO – by unanimous agreement – have and maintain a political, physical, strategic, and organisational, “perimeter border” in the Far-East of Eastern Europe, perhaps along the already existing semi-circle or chain of NATO States stretching from the Baltic States through Poland, Hungary, and Romania to Bulgaria and Greece? It is called the ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’, after all.

 

Shaky Promises at the End of the Cold War

It is interesting to note here that at the end of the Cold War, as the Communist Satellite-States of Eastern Europe imploded and broke away from their controlling mothership of the Soviet Union, and as each began their own ‘transition’ journeys to the more free, sustainable, and prosperous, Democratic model of government, NATO made promises to calm and allay the Soviets most perturbing fears regarding the victor Democracies taking the spoils of the former Soviet-controlled States (according to the old adage, “To the victor goes the spoils”).  

On at least three different occasions, the U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, then NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (reportedly also at different times U.S. President George H. Bush, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, French President François Mitterand, and even the U.S. CIA Director Robert Gates in private diplomatic discussions with the Soviets), made pledges or assurances to the Russian leaders (unknowingly soon to be presiding themselves over the political, economic, military, and social carnage, and brutal sky-high inflation, following Communist Russia’s own implosion and collapse), that NATO ‘would not expand further east’ beyond East Germany, which following the collapse of the Communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) was to be reunited with Democratic West Germany (verbatim in Baker’s words: ‘NATO will not move one inch further east’).[viii] 

From NATO leaders’ point of view, in the context of ex-Communist States in Eastern European breaking away from Moscow control to embrace freedom and democratic, nationalistic self-government, they were giving assurances to the still-Communist State of the U.S.S.R, which was losing its adherents. The sole focus at the point of time that the promises were made, and the overriding context of the comments made in speeches and private discussions, was achieving the reunification of Germany between its former West and East halves, and thereby adding the newly-freed East German peoples and all their national armed forces and defence assets into the NATO Alliance to also enjoy its collective-security protections.

In fact, such politically- and legally-shaky assurances were beyond the bounds and actually contrary to both the letter and the spirit of NATO’s foundational and ‘pro-Democracy in Europe’ North Atlantic Treaty. 

But the Russian leaders took the NATO member-State leaders at their word – only to find in later years that these once reassuring verbal promises were not to be kept, after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R (see quotes below), but rather repeatedly broken over the following decades as NATO completed successive waves of expansion into Eastern Europe in 1999 (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland), 2004 (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), and 2009 (Albania and Croatia) [for more discussion on this breach, refer to the VOA news article here]. 

From the Russian point of view, their country may have changed, and its political system of governance, but not their nationality or ethnicity as Russian leaders, nor the geographical location of the Russian State and nation.  Did the promise only have value or merit if they were Communists? Or only while the U.S.S.R Communist State existed? Was NATO’s promise given to the Soviet State or to its Russian leaders? The ‘breach of promise’ by NATO (as Russians consider it), manifested in this expansionary chain of events that subsequently occurred in Eastern Europe, explains the strong and determined desire of Russia today to have any new agreement between NATO and Russia following negotiations recorded in writing, and in a mutually, legally-binding format, of new security treaties.  From the Russian perspective, one born out of unhappy experience following the end of the Cold War, NATO can not be trusted, and NATO leaders verbal assurances and promises mean nothing.

Maps showing four of five waves of NATO’s geographical expansion into Eastern Europe, Far-Eastern Europe (the Baltic States) and the Balkans since 1990, with its new prospective members in Eurasia and the Caucasus/West Asia highlighted in pink. The five waves so far completing a total of seven phases of NATO’s free increase in membership to Democratic States in Europe, over a period of over 70 years since its founding in 1949.[ix]

Did NATO ‘betray’ Russia by expanding to the East?

30 January 2022

 

‘To understand Russia’s claims of betrayal, it is necessary to review the reassurances then US secretary of state James A. Baker made to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting on February 9, 1990. In a discussion on the status of a reunited Germany, the two men agreed that NATO would not extend past the territory of East Germany, a promise repeated by NATO’s secretary general in a speech on May 17 that same year in Brussels.

 

Russia and the West finally struck an agreement in September that would allow NATO to station its troops beyond the Iron Curtain. However, the deal only concerned a reunified Germany, with further eastward expansion being inconceivable at the time.

 

“The Soviet Union still existed and the countries of Eastern Europe were still part of the Soviet structures – like the Warsaw Pact – which was not officially dissolved until July 1991,”  said Amélie Zima, doctor of political science at the Thucydide Centre (Panthéon-Assas) in Paris. “We cannot speak of betrayal, because a chain of events that would rearrange the security configuration in Europe was about to take place.” 

   

In short, at a time when Westerners were offering the “guarantees” spoken of by Vladimir Putin, no one could have predicted the collapse of the USSR and the historic upheavals that followed.

 

“In addition, these promises were made orally and were never recorded in a treaty,” recalled Olivier Kempf, associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research. “The turning point of NATO enlargement came much later, in 1995, at the request of the Eastern European countries.” 

 

That year, NATO published a study on its enlargement before starting membership talks two years later with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, all of which would become members in 1999. The addition of these new members has long sparked debate within NATO, thus undermining the Russian myth of a betrayal orchestrated by the West. “Even within the American administration, some thought that NATO should not expand because it would make it less effective, dilute its skills and become a financial burden,” explained Zima.[x]

NATO: 1995 Study on Enlargement

 

‘In 1995, the Alliance published the results of a Study on NATO Enlargement that considered the merits of admitting new members and how they should be brought in. It concluded that the end of the Cold War provided a unique opportunity to build improved security in the entire Euro-Atlantic area and that NATO enlargement would contribute to enhanced stability and security for all. It would do so, the Study further concluded, by encouraging and supporting democratic reforms, including the establishment of civilian and democratic control over military forces; fostering patterns and habits of cooperation, consultation and consensus-building characteristic of relations among members of the Alliance; and promoting good-neighbourly relations.

 

It would increase transparency in defence planning and military budgets, thereby reinforcing confidence among states, and would reinforce the overall tendency toward closer integration and cooperation in Europe. The Study also concluded that enlargement would strengthen the Alliance’s ability to contribute to European and international security and strengthen and broaden the transatlantic partnership.

 

According to the Study, countries seeking NATO membership would have to be able to demonstrate that they have fulfilled certain requirements. These include:

 

• a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy;
• the fair treatment of minority populations;
• a commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflicts;
• the ability and willingness to make a military contribution to NATO operations; and
• a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and institutional structures.

 

Once admitted, new members would enjoy all the rights and assume all the obligations of membership. This would include acceptance at the time that they join of all the principles, policies and procedures previously adopted by Alliance members.’ [xi]

 

Understanding Russia’s Military Actions in Georgia & Ukraine since 2008

In 2008, then again in 2014, and lastly in 2021, the Russian Federation has engaged in some worrying, and destabilising actions, wars and military exercises. First of all in Georgia, it acted to encourage the autonomy-seeking region of South Ossetia to break free of Georgian government rule from the Capital Tbilisi, and then reacted militarily and fiercely to a Georgian military attack on this breakaway region Russia was supporting, resulting infamously in 5 days of war. Then subsequently, six years later in 2014, following the US-instigated and US-funded ousting of the legitimately elected and “neutral” Ukrainian president via the violent “Euromaidan Revolution”, Moscow acted again in both the Crimean and the Donbas regions of Ukraine to support reactive “Independence or Secession” bids by these two, heavily ethnic-Russian or strongly pro-Russian regions from Kyiv rule, first by invading and annexing Crimea, and then by supporting and assisting pro-independence militias located in the Donbas border region with Russia to wage a ‘War of Independence’ or ‘separation from Kyiv government rule’ during the years 2014-2022.  During the 8 years in which the Donbas conflict raged without resolution in the eastern border regions of Ukraine (involving a contest of wills between the pro-American and pro-EU Kyiv Government and the historically Russia-supporting population of the Don Cossacks), and especially between 2021-22, Russia also engaged in activities outside Ukraine, by blocking some Ukrainian military and commercial shipping in and around the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

During this period, the Russian Federation has on multiple occasions, moreover, set off British security alarms via its submarine presence and manoeuvres in the United Kingdom’s backyard of the English Channel, and during 2021 conducted ‘warning’ naval military exercises again in Britain’s own neighbourhood, off the coast of Ireland just outside the EEZ waters of the United Kingdom.  Russia has over the same time period also become notorious for its persistent ‘buzzing’ of NATO nation jets and ships – especially those of the United States and the United Kingdom, and particularly those vessels engaging in operations near Russian sovereign airspace, land (including annexed/seceded Crimea), or waters in the Black Sea.

Rival Explanations of Russian Actions: The First Explanation – “Aggression” (Make Russia Great Again)

Ever-expanding and ever-encroaching NATO, together with many onlookers around the world, seem to view these actions as attempts by Russia to reassert itself as a Great Power in the world following the collapse of the U.S.S.R.  Many NATO nation governments believe that Moscow is determinedly trying to ‘Make Russia Great Again’ through aggressive geographical expansion by military force and the enlargement of Russia’s border to reflect more of its former shape, prior to the 1917 Communist Revolution, as an Imperial Russian Empire under the Czars. Consequently, Russia’s military actions are grimly seen as serious and illegal ‘Acts of Aggression’ that threaten world peace, stability and security (refer to the text relating to ‘Acts of Aggression’ in Chapter VII, Articles 39-43 of the UN Charter), and must therefore be reacted to and against strongly by the law-abiding and peace-loving States of the world, especially by the world’s leading Democracies, to uphold the international system of Sovereign States, to reinforce respect for the territorial borders of these Sovereign States, and to punish aggression against both.

This is one explanation of Russia’s behaviour – and seemingly the most dominant in the so-called ‘Western world’ of global Democratic States that have derived their democratic system of government from that of Great Britain, the world’s truest and oldest democracy. 

[Democracy: See this excellent documentary for a sweeping and broad overview through history of the way in which the parliamentary system of democracy – ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – was developed by past generations of patriotic and people-loving leaders since the early 1200s, among them politicians, political thinkers, God-fearing theologians, military commanders, philosophers, and World Statesmen of different ethnicities and nations in Europe and America. As the documentary will show, this development and refinement of parliamentary democracy as a legitimate, viable, stable, peaceful and enduring ‘system of government’ for the governance of large nations and federations of human beings, took place over many centuries of human history in Britain from the 15^th century, and as a result of multiple crises as well as bloody and costly conflicts in human, national domestic, inter-national ethnic, and inter-State political and military affairs.

“REX LEX”? No, “LEX REX” & “EXIT TYRANNUS”!

The 17^th Century Concept of “LEX REX” & “EXIT TYRANNUS” advocated by Samuel Rutherford & John Knox, prior to the “Parliament-versus-King” British/English Civil Wars of 1642-51, which led to a victory of parliamentary forces over royal forces, and eventually the undesired but necessary execution of the despicably cruel, arrogant and unreasonable British king (“I answer to no-one and the laws of the land that apply to other people do not apply to me!”), Charles I.

 

The King alone and his solo will, inclinations, desires and judgments as Head of State (“Rex Lex/The King is Law” and the “Divine Right of Kings” to unilaterally, arbitrarily, and even tyrannically rule the people), is no longer the Law of the Land & the People, but rather, the Law of God (The Holy Bible) & Man (the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D. and the National Constitution) is the Law of the Land & the People as the Higher Head of State, under the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent authority of the LORD God Almighty as the Ultimate Judge and Highest Head of State in the land (“Lex Rex/The Law is King” and the “Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates” to lawfully resist God-defying, Constitution-violating, unjust and treasonous tyranny, even with violent force of arms if necessary, and as far as the legal, justified, and court-prosecuted execution of a tyrant by representative agents of the people, to secure the future good, safety, peace, well-being and prosperity of the people).

Since its development, parliamentary democracy as a self-rule, population-representative, ‘majority-rule’ and repeatedly elective system of government has long been considered by the vast majority of peoples, nations and States around the world to be the best government system ever devised by humankind.  This is because – despite its inherent legal and political confines or limits, its ‘checks and balances’ (meaning ‘institutional preventative measures and brakes’ & ‘shared power in the structural equilibrium of government branches’) to prevent abuses of power, and the necessary challenge and difficulty of elected leaders and representatives needing to (a) make rational arguments for laws and policies in parliament debates and (b) forge majority consensus decisions in council – democracy has repeatedly been proven over many centuries to be the safest, most stable, and most peaceful means to govern and safeguard the freedoms, rights and protections of a ‘Free People’ under God (acknowledging and protecting the divine gift of ‘free will’ – and test of each human heart – given to each man and woman born on earth to choose his or her own beliefs, path and fate in life) and before the Law of the nation, as well as to smoothly and bloodlessly transition political power from one group of human beings to another, in a regular way that ensures that accurate and up-to-date representation and leadership is provided for the needs, interests and desires of the majority population of the State at any one moment in time.

For this reason, the governance system of ‘Self-rule’ and ‘Majority-rule’ parliamentary democracy has spread from nation to nation, and State to State over time, from Great Britain where it was born in the 1400s, to America where it was further refined in the 1700s, and ultimately all around the globe to nations and States of every ‘nation, tribe and tongue’ from the 1700s-2020s in Europe, the Americas, South Asia, East Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and beyond, to become a dominant form of governance in the world.  

By contrast, one-man or one-woman political dictatorships as systems of government are strongly disliked and seen as repugnant systems by truly democratic States and governments – especially if they have been violently established in blood, are maintained by the oppressive and unjust mass imprisonment, torture and murder of political intellectuals and patriotic opponents among the people, or are of long-term, unchanging and unending duration lasting multiple decades. This is because the placing of all State power in the hands of just one person – with all his or her individual personality character traits, quirks, flaws, blind-spots and passions but with unlimited ability and authority (like the proverbial ‘too many eggs in one basket’) – seems unwise, unsafe, unfair and unjust for the nation or nations of people being governed in the State.  In addition, power-loving dictators have usually seized political power by acts of force and violence, and therefore do not truly care about, represent, serve, or answer accountably as leaders for their decisions and actions to the people so wholly reliant on them for their safety, well-being and prosperity, since they have not been individually, legitimately, regularly and freely chosen or selected to become ‘national shepherds of the people and representative leaders in the world’ by the majority population of their own national people in voluntary, safe, free, fair and truly competitive national elections. Moreover, for Free Democracies, the fact of an electoral presidential or regional candidate (a political competitor or opponent for government) being popular, well-liked or widely supported for his or her political arguments or policies, by and among the people of the land, is absolutely no legitimate moral, political, legal, or security grounds whatsoever to disqualify that person from (1) participating in a regional or national election, (2) enjoying all the usual political, legal, and security freedoms, rights, privileges and protections due to him or her as a citizen of the State, or (3) taking office if selected by the majority population of the voting legal citizens during regional or national elections.

However, democracy is not the only form of government in the world – for better or worse, there are several other systems of governance in existence around the world today.  Moreover, in keeping with the spirit of freedom, choice and self-rule inherent in democracy, democratic systems of government ought always to be first desired and then voluntarily chosen and implemented by the people or leading government of a Nation-State, in the interest of advancing and ensuring the safety, freedom, good and well-being of their own people and a stable representative State over long periods of time, and not imposed externally ‘from outside’ by the compulsion, coercion or force of other governments or States, especially if promoted or done by others principally to better secure their own State interests in that Nation-State and not out of genuine concern and care for the well-being of the people living in that land in the years and decades to come.

Democracy is not a dirty word (though a corrupt democracy is).]

It is interesting to note, by way of comparison, that President Donald J. Trump (a president domestically much like his predecessor President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt Jr. from 1901-1909) later in time made America ‘Great Again’, through more peaceful means, during 4 extremely fruitful and effective years of his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) agenda from 2016-2020 (and now again potentially from 2024-2028), in terms of:

• multi-ethnic domestic policies (secure borders, eliminated gang, criminal and terrorist migration, better policing, increased military strength, lowered taxes, less government regulations, and support for banks and businesses as well as food-producing agricultural and horticultural farmers);
• foreign policies (democracy, personal diplomacy with government leaders, and conflict resolution);
• security policies (destroying the ISIS Caliphate, supporting allies and friends through a Neo-Reaganite “Peace Through Strength” self-defence and deterrence agenda etc., with the sole exception of Afghanistan in the unforgettable “A Deal Too Far” scandal – that is, mistakenly negotiating for the first time ever in American history an official ‘civilised peace deal’ with Taliban, democracy-hating terrorists, in a strong and unbreakable political, military, financial and marital alliance with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network which had catastrophically attacked the U.S. homeland in two cities including the American Capital on 9/11, a deal made in order to protect Americans only but not allied and democracy-loving Afghans nor to ensure security, stability or peace in the crucial, global, multi-terrorist sanctuary of Afghanistan which had spawned the attacks that began the Global War on Terror);
• and other economic policies including not only reciprocal, mutual-benefit, ‘Fair Free Trade’ trade policies, but also self-sufficient, independent-and-exporting energy policies (to boost the national economy, to support the private industries, businesses, livelihoods, transport and therefore ‘living standard’ of the people, and thereby secure the internal well-being of the American nation as a whole in the 21st century).

Trump’s extremely efficient and productive presidency and the Nationalist-Christian-Conservative “Our Own People First”/“America First” Trump Administration restored faith in the core and central American beliefs and values, all of which together form the very foundations of the American State. Namely beliefs in: (1) the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of Almighty God; (2) the fact that all men have been created equal by their Creator; (3) the reality and necessity of basic human freedoms; (4) the rigorous application of legal equality for all male and female legal citizens of America under the Law, regardless of ethnicity, colour or religion; and (5) the Founding Father’s equally-balanced design of American Government for the U.S. Federation (with equilibrium created between the three Executive White House, Legislative Parliaments and Judicial Supreme Court branches of government, as well as between the Federal Government and the State Governments, so that all work both separately and together to counter and correct any abuses or excesses in power made by individuals in high positions of office against the fundamental American Constitution and the American Bill of Rights that protect all legal American citizens).

[The Media: However, this whole government system design must importantly also be underpinned, buttressed and supported by an accurate, balanced, reasoned, and ‘majority objective’ Left/Centre-Left/Centre/Centre-Right/Right Free Press with full freedom of thought and speech, including to evaluate and criticise – for both the good of the people as a nation and the good of a well-functioning and healthy State – any existing and detrimental government policy or any misconduct by Government or its elected or appointed officials as ‘Servants of the State on behalf of the People‘ (with this Free Press including only a minority of politically-declared opinion hosts and writers, and with all foreign-sponsored media information outlets operating in the State clearly tagged for the knowledge and benefit of the people of the nation).  In fact, except in wartime (e.g. Britain under PM Churchill during WW2 against the Europe-conquering, National Socialist or “Nazi”, German “Third Empire”), Government censorship or “cancelling” of a balanced, reasoning, Free Media in the nation implies that the Government and/or its officials are either: (a) foolish and incompetent (and therefore do not want their inexperience, incompetence or inefficiency as leaders, governors, law-makers, and administrators held up to scrutiny and assessment by the People that elected them and that they are supposed to be competently serving); or (b) corrupt and guilty of crimes in serving themselves and not the People of the nation (and therefore want to keep hidden their own selfish commission of crimes against the State and its people that the State and their government offices exist to serve and protect); or alternatively, (c) it implies a controlling unwillingness by power-holding elites to “let the people think”, reason and evaluate for themselves, and also contribute ideas as not only human beings of equal value to their elected leaders, but also country-loving patriots, when given accurate information in a Free Media about the affairs of the citizen nation and the State, or its situational position, role and challenges in the wider world.]

By restoring faith in America’s core beliefs and values, the Trump Administration simultaneously also restored the country’s character, patriotism, strength, and international credibility as a moral and trustworthy Great Power, Leader and Ally for the “Free World of Democracies”, a credibility that had been badly damaged after 8 long years of nationally and globally shocking and depressing international policies by the ‘Globalist-Radical Liberal-Marxist’ Obama Administration (e.g. the U.S.-led withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 leading to the voracious expansion of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, the fatal ‘Lies about Libya’ fiasco in Benghazi on the 9/11 anniversary in September 2012, the badly negotiated 2015 Iran Deal, and President Obama’s so-called “Apology Tour”, for American and Allied assertive self-defence and championing of democracy, to multiple Muslim countries in the midst of the War on Terror). 

This raises the very important question, what truly is “national greatness”? Does greatness just refer to the more obvious and basic criteria of land, size or population?  Or does true “greatness” as a Nation-State on the world stage really relate to other more meaningful criteria, for example, each State’s: (a) national people, political system, values, beliefs, morality, and cultural standards of acceptable behaviour; (b) its honesty and record in keeping and acting upon its leaders’ words and political commitments or pledges towards its own people-nation as well as toward other Nation-States; (c) its record in abiding by the laws, principles and rules of the international order based on (1) the Self-Determination of People-Nations, (2) the Sovereignty of the political State entities formed by these self-determining People-Nations in order to protect, govern and provide for themselves, and (3) respect for Sovereign Nation-State borders; as well as to (d) the State’s leadership on the world stage of Nation-States; (e) its behaviour globally in interacting well with other Nation-States, and settling any disagreements or disputes that may arise between States logically, reasonably and peaceably, with due respect for the different cultures, experiences, viewpoints and needs of other people-nations and for the representative government leaders of these Nation-States, and in the spirit of good-will towards all men; and (f) its ability and performance, via its government leaders on behalf of the nation, to ‘do its best’ with its own natural resources and assets, within its own sovereign Nation-State borders, in order to meet and safe-guard the needs, interests, well-being and prosperity of its own nation of people – that the State exists to protect – now at the present time and far into the future?  Does in fact “true greatness” arise from within? Or is “national greatness” said to exist only when it is merely imposed – as in countless centuries of human history before us – by one Nation-State upon another, selfishly, cunningly, cold-bloodedly, cruelly, and heartlessly by the sheer force of one State’s power-projection, violence, conquest and oppression onto other People-Nations?

‘Either make the tree sound (healthy and good), and its fruit sound (healthy and good), or make the tree rotten (diseased and bad), and its fruit rotten (diseased and bad); for the tree is known and recognized and judged by its fruit.

 

You offspring of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks.

 

The good man from his inner good treasure flings forth good things, and the evil man out of his inner evil storehouse flings forth evil things.’

 

 – Jesus Christ of Nazareth, True Head of the Christian Church of Christ-following people in every nation worldwide (Ephesians 1:15-23), The Holy Bible (Amplified), Matthew 12:33-35

Rival Explanations of Russian Actions: The Second Explanation – “Self-Defence & Self-Determination” (Make Russia Secure Again)

However there is another explanation for Russia’s geostrategic manoeuvres, relating to NATO becoming “too close for comfort” – and also “too close for safety” and national security. 

Aside from the underlying ‘free-market competitive’ and realpolitik “oil/gas logic” of a leading, heavyweight, globally-exporting, heavily export-dependent, and only Petro-State for Europe in neighbouring Eurasia (also true and a motivating factor to a certain extent for America in the Americas and similarly for oil-rich and oil-enriched Norway in Europe, including in their recent, self-advantageous and rather brazen joint-sabotage of the Russian NordStream 1 and 2 export pipelines to Europe), in addition to general desire for natural resources, one critical motivating factor behind these four military actions – namely, Russia’s two territorial military actions in the historically antagonistic, rivalling and anti-Georgian Abkhazian and Ossetian regions of Georgia in August 2008, and then again in the ethnically-Russian, linguistically-Russian and pro-Russian Crimean and Donbas regions of Ukraine in February-March 2014 –  may be clearly seen in ‘NATO Enlargement Point 6’. 

This is a clause in NATO’s own enlargement documentation that prohibits aspiring States wishing to join NATO from admission if they have unresolved ‘ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes’ (see below).

In this sense, the primary motivating factor behind Russia’s warring actions, to prevent its neighbouring Caucasus and Eurasian States of Georgia and Ukraine respectively from joining NATO, and thereby by NATO membership permanently threatening Russia’s own borders, cities, nation and survival (‘NATIONAL SECURITY’ writ large) – especially as regards the placement in future years of NATO nuclear weapons to be used against Russia in any regional or global war, was not so much to ‘Make Russia Great Again’ in any nostalgic, imperialistic, ‘Restore the Empire’ Czar-worshipping sense, but rather, to ‘Make Russia Secure Again’ (and all Russians secure again) when faced with NATO’s own over-ambitious and dangerous expansion into Eurasia and/or the Caucasus/West Asia, either of which would immediately and permanently jeopardize and endanger Russian national security for decades to come.

1995 NATO Study on Enlargement – Chapter 1: Purposes and Principles of Enlargement

 

‘1. With the end of the Cold War, there is a unique opportunity to build an improved security architecture in the whole of the Euro-Atlantic area. The aim of an improved security architecture is to provide increased stability and security for all in the Euro-Atlantic area, without recreating [Cold War] dividing lines.NATO views security as a broad concept embracing political and economic, as well as defence, components. Such a broad concept of security should be the basis for the new security architecture which must be built through a gradual process of integration and cooperation brought about by an interplay of existing multilateral institutions in Europe, such as the EU, WEU and OSCE, each of which would have a role to play in accordance with its respective responsibilities and purposes in implementing this broad security concept. In this process, which is already well under way, the Alliance has played and will play a strong, active and essential role as one of the cornerstones of stability and security in Europe. NATO remains a purely defensive Alliance whose fundamental purpose is to preserve peace in the Euro-Atlantic area and to provide security for its members…

 

4.Enlargement of the Alliance will be through accession of new member states to the Washington Treaty. Enlargement should: Be part of a broad European security architecture based on true cooperation throughout the whole of Europe. It would threaten no-one; and enhance stability and security for all of Europe.

 

5.New members, at the time that they join, must commit themselves, as all current Allies do on the basis of the Washington Treaty, to: unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security; settle any international disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

 

6.States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance [the granting of MAP status].

 

7.Decisions on enlargement will be for NATO itself. Enlargement will occur through a gradual, deliberate, and transparent process, encompassing dialogue with all interested parties… Ultimately, Allies will decide by consensus whether to invite each new member to join according to their judgment of whether doing so will contribute to security and stability in the North Atlantic area at the time such a decision is to be made.

 

8.NATO’s collective defence arrangements, as described in paragraphs 47 and 48, are a concrete expression of Allies’ commitment to maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack. Against the background of existing arrangements for contributing to collective defence, Allies will want to know how possible new members intend to contribute to NATO’s collective defence and will explore all aspects of this question in detail through bilateral dialogue prior to accession negotiations (emphasis added).’[xii]

Of extreme importance to note here, these four Russian military actions all took place following U.S. President George W. Bush’s idealistically dreamy and singularly unwise expression of ‘strong support’ to Russia’s direct bordering neighbours Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO on April Fool’s Day on 1 April 2008 (as referred to above), a statement that went directly against the oppositional and realistically grounded (pragmatic realpolitik) strategic wisdom, advice and ‘Red Light – Arrêt/Halt’ positions on this issue by NATO Allies France and Germany – and even against European and world history.

The four military actions also took place following the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit in Romania on 2-4 April 2008, following which, despite their previously strong, well-founded, reasoned and realist objections, these strongly divided Euro-Atlantic NATO Allies nevertheless bowed to American ‘Cold War mentality’ pressure and declared Ukraine and Georgia ‘will become members of NATO’ one day in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration.

The catalyst for both wars waged by Russia in both Georgia and Ukraine is contained in these very words pronounced from the lips of 21^st century NATO leaders.

Hard-Power + Soft-Power = Smart Power

Confusing things further, each of these four territorial actions conducted by Russia in Georgia and Ukraine can in fact be interpreted or described locally as either militarily ‘offensive’ against the territory and citizens of the overarching Sovereign State or militarily ‘defensive’ of autonomy-seeking (local and limited self-governance within the external borders of the State, and no control over or direct income from the State’s natural resources), independence-seeking (a nation seeking equal status and Statehood, with external diplomatic, military and trade rights), or secession-seeking (a nation or territory seeking transfer from one State to another State) ethnic peoples or ‘nations’ on these territories.  

The stance taken by anyone, or indeed the government of any State in the world, on these Russian military actions then – as to whether the actions amounts to (a) Russian “Empire-building” via territorial ‘Acts of Aggression’ (UN Charter, Chapter VII), (b) ‘Self-Defence’ military manoeuvres to protect its own State and Russian people from Nuclear-NATO’s own “Empire-building” – namely its long-desired overexpansion out of the Americas and Europe into Eurasian Ukraine and Caucasian Georgia from 2008-2022, in order to surround the Russian State and involving a dangerous encroachment along the full length of Russia’s western and south-western borders, as well as from a kinetic Georgian military attack in 2008 (UN Charter, Article 51), or (c) support for the ‘Self-Determination’ of certain, real, independence-seeking ethnic peoples in territories within Georgia in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and within Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbas region (UN Charter, Article 1) – depends on one’s own point of view.

That is to say, it all depends on one’s own perspective, principles, bias or ‘chosen side’ (e.g. compare the contrasting majority and minority global opinions on the independent self-rule of Abkhazia from Georgia vis-à-vis Taiwan from China), and also – perhaps above all – on one’s own personal belief in and position on the importance, merit and value of:

(1) ‘history as prologue’ (the history and context of events is important);

(2) self-determination (UN Charter, Articles 1 and 55); 

(3) the democratic concept of ‘Majority Rule’ in any population (true democracy); and finally,

(4) self-defence – including pre-emptively or reactively, and also against the overexpansion of a colossal and über-powerful security entity, such as NATO or more accurately now the EU-NATO bloc with 21 dual member-States [an obese but binding security entity, in fact, that is actually member-trapping (via Article V combined with its huge 30+ size) and member-limiting (any unilateral war decision by any member-State in any region that resulted in an armed attack against the State’s own warring military forces would automatically trigger NATO’s Article V, thereby forcing the official involvement of the other 29+ States)], right next to one’s own State borders and the nation of people that that State exists to protect and defend against current and future Threats of Aggression or Acts of Aggression.

United Nations Charter

Chapter I: Purposes and Principles

 

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

 

1.TO MAINTAIN INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

 

2.TO DEVELOP FRIENDLY RELATIONS AMONG NATIONS based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

 

3.TO ACHIEVE INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION IN SOLVING INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

 

4.TO BE A CENTRE FOR HARMONIZING THE ACTIONS OF NATIONS in the attainment of these common ends.

Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression

 

Article 39

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

 

Article 40

In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

 

Article 41

The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

 

Article 42

Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

 

Article 43

1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
2. Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.

 

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

 

 * For more analysis on the issue of “national caveats” and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational military operations conducted in the interest of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, see Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”. 

Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984

 

Endnotes

 [i] Modified image taken from ‘Operation Barbarossa’, on the ‘Military Tactics’ board of M. Downie, Pinterest [online map], https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/546131892296587953/, (accessed 19 March 2022).

[ii] ‘Minimum Requirements for NATO Membership’, U.S. Department of State, 30 June 1997, https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_members.html, (accessed 28 January 2022); ‘NATO Englargement & Open Door’, NATO, July 2016, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2016_07/20160627_1607-factsheet-enlargement-eng.pdf, (accessed 28 January 2022).

[iii] Modified image of the European side of the ‘North Atlantic’, taken from Apple Web Maps, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=black+sea&atb=v1-1&ia=web&iaxm=maps&bbox=68.18025918276874%2C4.5371044562498355%2C30.309230321867197%2C89.43944820624984&strict_bbox=0, (accessed 1 February 2022).

[iv] ‘Kazakhstan called for assistance. Why did Russia dispatch troops so quickly? Preserving autocracies is a primary goal for regional organizations like the CSTO’, The Washington Post, 9 January 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/09/kazakhstan-called-assistance-why-did-russia-dispatch-troops-so-quickly/, (accessed 31 January 2022).

[v] ‘Ukraine crisis: Vladimir Putin warns Emmanuel Macron the West has ‘ignored’ Russia’s security concerns’, The Telegraph, 28 January 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/28/ukraine-crisis-russia-invasion-war-nato-nord-stream-2/, (accessed 28 January 2022).

[vi] G. Bush, Decision Points, New York, Crown Publishers, 2010, pp. 430-431. 

[vii] ibid., p. 431.

[viii] ‘Did NATO ‘betray’ Russia by expanding to the East?’, France 24, 30 January 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/russia/20220130-did-nato-betray-russia-by-expanding-to-the-east, (accessed 1 February 2022); Russia’s Putin Says Western Leaders Broke Promises, But Did They?, VOA News, 11 January 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-putin-western-leaders-nato-expansion/6392427.html, (accessed 1 February 2022).

[ix] Modified image of a map entitled ‘Enlargement of NATO’ [online map] Wikipedia – the Free Encyclopaedia, 20 April 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO, (accessed 10 May 2013); image taken from G. Hahn,  ‘NATO expansion’s open door policy and war or peace in the Donbass’, The Transnational [blog], 1 February 2022,https://transnational.live/2019/07/25/nato-expansions-open-door-policy-and-war-or-peace-in-the-donbass/, (accessed 1 February 2022).

[x] ‘Did NATO ‘betray’ Russia by expanding to the East?’, op. cit.

[xi] ‘Enlargement’, NATO, 5 May 2020, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49212.htm,(accessed 1 February 2022).

[xii] ‘Study on NATO Enlargement, 3 September 1995’, North Atlantic Treaty Organization [Official Texts],  5 November 2008, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_24733.htm, (accessed 15 March 2022).

[xiii] ‘The Collective Security Treaty Organisation’, GlobalSecurity.Org, 2022, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/csto.htm, (accessed 2 February 2022).