It's at least partly NATO's fault that Russia invaded Ukraine.
The end of the Cold War signalled a turn in world history.
The west had triumphed over the Soviet Union, all without ever firing a single shot.
But as the new millennium approached, it was important to set the stage for lasting peace-
the last thing NATO wanted was yet another Cold War.
After the Berlin Wall fell it became clear that the old Soviet order was on its last
legs.
In a bid to lower the risk of catastrophic war, NATO and the Soviet Union cooperated
on a series of efforts to reduce both nuclear and conventional military power in Europe.
Some of these efforts had been in place for years, but the effort culminated in the Treaty
on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
This sought to set a hard limit for certain amounts of military hardware so as to achieve
a level of parity between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
This would put a cap on the runaway arms race between the two powers, but unbeknowst to
the Soviet Union, greatly favored the more technologically advanced western militaries-
as the world would find out at the conclusion of Desert Storm.
One of the fading Soviet Union's greatest concerns as revolution swept across its western
flank was that NATO would capitalize on the opportunity and expand closer to the Soviet
Union's borders, something that the Soviets saw as completely unacceptable.
The Soviet Union had good reason for wanting NATO to stay at arm's length- twice in two
World Wars and many times in the centuries prior, the Soviet Union's territory was invaded
by western armies.
Situated at the far end of the European plain, the approaches directly into the heart of
Soviet territory were largely indefensible.
The Warsaw pact nations afforded the Soviets a shield against yet another western invasion.
On February 6th, 1990, West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, stated that
“NATO does not intend to expand its territory to the East.”
This infamous statement would be considered a broken promise in years to come by the new
Russian nation, yet as many western leaders have pointed out, it did not represent actual
NATO policy.
For a time, things started looking up for relations in Europe, as in July of 1990 the
NATO secretary General visited Moscow in a historic first to discuss cooperation between
the Soviet Union and NATO.
However, the Soviet Union disintegrated soon after, and the nation of Russia was formally
born from its ashes.
The situation remained optimistic at first, with Russia signing official cooperation pacts
with NATO.
In 1994 Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, signalling a warming between
east and west relations.
That same year though, Russia created the Collective Security Treaty Organization- a
mirror to NATO and featuring such military and economic heavyweights as Belarus, Armenia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Russia was once more seeking a buffer between itself and NATO, but also to help consolidate
some of the political power it lost when these former Soviet republics broke away.
Despite this though, relations between Russia and NATO continued to warm- despite protests
over expanding NATO membership to countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, whom
Russia still considered within its own sphere of influence.
However, these countries represented little threat to Russian defense, and relations became
so cordial that we almost stepped into an alternate timeline altogether.
The idea of Russia joining NATO itself is not as crazy as it seems.
Indeed as far back as 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev proposed to US Secretary of State James Baker
that the Soviet Union should join NATO.
However, the situation was politically impossible, as well as logistically.
NATO had a strict set of requirements for a nation to join which included a great deal
of basic human rights, as well as a democratically elected government.
These conditions didn’t exist in the Soviet Union.
But with the fall of communism, Russia adopted democracy- ostensibly.
This opened up the door to NATO membership, and during a visit to Moscow in 2000 by President
Bill Clinton, Russian President Vladimir Putin, freshly put in power to save Yeltsin from
going to prison for a long time, floated to Clinton the possibility of joining NATO.
Before blowing up a bunch of civilians to secure his bid for the Russian presidency,
Vladimir Putin spoke to reporter David Frost during a BBC interview, in which he said,
“Russia is a part of European culture.
And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized
world.”
Relations were at an all-time high in 2001 when President Putin called US President George
Bush to offer personal condolences for the attack on the world trade centers.
The two were well on their way to being BFFs, with President Bush even gazing lovingly into
Putin's eyes on at least one occasion.
The next year, Russia gave critical intelligence to US forces as the American military entered
the city of Kabul.
Putin was the west's new darling, and after an exhausting five decades of cold war, the
west was more than ready to entertain the fantasy of Russia joining NATO.
But many in the west saw Putin for the young, un-botox'ed and non-steroid using mass murderer
that he really was.
They pointed to Russian atrocities in Chechnya, where entire cities had been reduced to rubble
by Russian forces.
Civilians were purposefully targeted by Russian weapons in a bid to wage a war of terror and
demoralize Chechnyans into submission.
Human rights atrocities occurred daily with the express consent, and even instruction,
of the Russian government.
This was not a nation that could realistically be allowed to join NATO.
Things would soon take a turn.
Former Soviet Republics like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania began to join NATO in the mid
2000s, drawing immediate protests from Russian hardliners.
They saw this as an act of provocation, and even claimed that NATO had violated promises
made at the end of the Cold War to not expand east.
However, NATO was quick to rebuff these accusations.
The situation began to heat up, and hopes for Russia joining NATO were evaporating.
The death of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and human rights activists who
had covered Russian war crimes in the second Chechen War drew immediate ire from the west.
Politkovskaya had received numerous death threats and intimidation attempts while she
reported on the war, even being arrested by the Russian military and subjected to a mock
execution.
In 2004 she was poisoned while flying out of Moscow, though prompt medical attention
saved her life.
On October 7th, a day which totally by coincidence is Putin's birthday, she was found murdered
in her elevator.
Who had ordered the contract killing remains a mystery to this day- no grand prize for
guessing that it was probably Putin himself.
The incident opened the floodgates for revelations about the inner workings of Russia, where
violence and intimidation against journalists, political dissidents, and those who challenged
Putin’s power were as common as they had been during the Soviet Union's days.
Some wrote this off as Russophobia, though the truth would continue to leak out of the
country due to even more high profile assassinations and mysterious disappearances.
Russia simply did not have the right values for NATO.
In March 2009 the Polish foreign minister tried to revive the dream of real peace in
Europe, suggesting that Russia join NATO.
The Russian NATO envoy responded that Russia had not ruled it out as a future possibility,
but right now preferred to merely cooperate.
Russia had dreams of being a major influential power on the world stage, and it was unbecoming
of Russia to thus join a coalition of powers it deemed to be equivalent or lesser to itself-
but certainly not greater.
By the mid 2010s, the dream had disappeared entirely.
Putin had turned his back on the west and denounced western liberal values.
Instead, he focused on Asia, and thus the great competition between NATO and Russia
was reborn.
For its part, NATO had expanded right to Russia's northern doorstep, and many former Soviet
client states were now part of the western alliance.
Russia warned repeatedly that NATO better not dare expand any closer, with Ukraine specifically
in Russia's crosshairs.
Russia worked hard to promote a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, but by 2016 Ukrainians-
tired of being manipulated by Russia- rose up and overthrew their pro-Russian president
when he rejected a proposal that would bring Ukraine into the EU fold.
Instead he had agreed to a different treaty which would bring Ukraine far more in line
with Russia.
The Ukrainian people exploded into a frenzy of revolutionary spirit, and within days Ukraine's
government was brought to its knees.
Ukraine enshrined into its constitution measures that guaranteed the nation would be put on
a path towards membership in both the European Union and NATO, and pro-western leaders began
the necessary measures to reform the country to qualify for NATO membership.
But the nation was also at war, with Russia having invaded and seized Crimea and now fuelling
a war in breakaway eastern regions.
This did not deter Ukraine from wishing to join NATO, and Russia warned that if the nation
joined it would mean war.
Despite this, NATO refused to throw out the possibility of Ukraine joining, and even directly
sent personnel to train Ukrainian troops while providing low levels of military aid.
In a very real way, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is at least partly NATO's fault.
It was the inevitable conclusion to Ukraine's increasing desire for membership in western
institutions, while it create distance between itself and Russia.
This was a hard red line for Russia that every NATO member was aware of, and yet the organization
did nothing to preclude Ukraine joining and thus lower tensions.
Putin would go on to use this as a justification to blame the west for his invasion.
However, NATO is an alliance of the willing which champions the values of liberal democracies-
therefore while NATO could have assured Russia that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO, that wound
run in direct contrast to its values of self-determination for each nation.
At the end of the day, Putin and only Putin is truly to blame for his catastrophic invasion.
Now go check out What If Ukraine Loses The War To Russia, or click this other video instead.
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