NATO Should Have Been Dissolved When the Warsaw Pact Was Dissolved After the End of the Cold War in 1991
by John Lawrence
NATO was formed in 1949 after the end of World War II as a counter to the ideological rivalry between communism as espoused by the Soviet Union and capitalism as espoused by the US and Europe. That ideological rivalry ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were dismantled. The Warsaw Pact was a security pact between the Soviet Union and eastern European nations in direct response to NATO. Russia became essentially a capitalist nation in 1991. Ergo: no further ideological rivalry. At the same time China was also becoming a capitalist nation despite the name of its ruling party. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, was given assurances that NATO would not advance one inch eastward, an assurance that was abrogated by US administrations shortly thereafter. The security structure of Europe should have been reworked after the fall of the Soviet Union, and NATO should have been eliminated at the same time the Warsaw Pact was eliminated. If that had happened Europe, not the US, would have been responsible for its own security.
So today Vladimir Putin is putting pressure on the western world to do something about the neglected assurances given to Gorbachev that NATO wouldn't move one inch eastward. Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union after the Second World War and achieved its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. Crimea had also been part of the Soviet Union and Russia prior to that. In 1954 Nikita Khrushchev, along with the other leadership of the Soviet Union, transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Federative Social Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Western leaders say that Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet Union or at least maintain control of nations that were previously part of the Soviet Union. Putin has said he wants to establish a new security structure for Europe. That is quite a different prospect from reestablishing the Soviet Union especially in light of the assurances given to Gorbachev about NATO's not moving an inch eastward.
The question must be asked: what is the purpose of NATO, which was established to counteract communist expansionism, when communism no longer exists at least as manifested by Russia. Gorbachev's advisor, Arbitov, had said, "We are going to deprive you of an enemy":
"In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a senior adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, had warned: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
"As the Soviet Union passed out of existence, Americans were left not just without that enemy, but without even a framework for understanding the world and their place in it. However imperfectly, the cold war had, for several decades, offered a semblance of order and coherence. The collapse of communism shattered that framework. Where there had been purposefulness and predictability, now there was neither."
Guess again, Mr. Gorbachev. The US military-industrial complex was not to be deprived of an enemy under any circumstances. The subsequent neocons saw to that. What Putin is asking for now is a new framework, a framework that should have been established by the west in diplomatic consultation with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the termination of the Warsaw Pact, NATO's mirror. However, the US and perhaps the other actors as well cannot conceive of a world without war or the threat of war. They cannot conceive of a diplomatic treaty or framework which would leave the world at peace. Peace is an unknown entity and is for all intents and purposes inconceivable. Therefore, Russia is poised to take by force that which might not have been necessary in Putin's eyes if a framework had been established in which NATO hadn't started moving eastward or even conceivably in which European security arrangements could have been established which would have protected all European nations including Russia sans NATO.