The Pope Suggests NATO Partially to Blame for Russian Invasion
by John Lawrence
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, Pope Francis said that “NATO barking at Russia” caused the Kremlin “to react badly and unleash the conflict” with Ukraine. The Pope has requested a meeting with Russian President Putin but so far to no avail. What is clear is that the West did not take Russia's objections to NATO expansion seriously and acted unilaterally to march NATO up to Russia's door. Besides that the US abrogated or just dismissed arms control treaties with Russia without further consultation. President George W Bush and Putin both came to power in the year 2000. Bush announced America’s intent to withdraw from the 1974 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that had been central to the U.S.-USSR strategic relationship. Abrogating the treaty did not go down well in Moscow, especially given the the huge military technological lead the Kremlin believed Washington had after the 1991 Gulf War. Then in 2019 during the Trump administration the US abruptly abrogated the INF treaty which was the centerpiece of the post Cold War negotiations between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. There was no attempt by the US or NATO to renegotiate these treaties which was a slap in the face to Russia.
The Hill reported:
When America intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001, Putin was irritated because the Bush team rejected Russian advice based on its decade-long failure in that country. In 2003, Putin strongly counseled Bush against invading Iraq, as the Russian leader feared the region would be thrown into turmoil. And the continuing expansion of NATO was neuralgic for Russia. A series of U.S. administrations downplayed or ignored how serious this issue was for Russia.
At the Munich Security Conference, Putin unleashed an angry broadside against the U.S. as a “uni-power” and against NATO expansion. Participants were shocked by the intensity of Putin’s attacks but otherwise largely dismissed them. That was a mistake. It was clear that Putin believed he was being disrespected and marginalized by the U.S. and NATO, adding to his growing resentment about the patronizing treatment he believed Russia was receiving.
NATO expanded during the 1990s largely due to the imprecations of President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even though President Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" as part of a deal to reunify Germany after the Cold War.
Politifact reported:
After explaining why the U.S. wanted the reunited Germany to stay within the framework of NATO, Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."
"I put the following question to (Gorbachev)," Baker recounted in a letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "‘Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift 1 inch eastward from its present position?’"
Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.
But Baker and other officials involved in the events have denied that the conversation ever turned on expanding NATO to other countries.
So basically Gorbachev was sold a bill of goods that, if he consented to the reunification of Germany and with Germany as a NATO member, that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, "given assurances" is not the same as "legal and binding". Therefore, in July 1997, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (where Albright was born) were formally invited to join NATO.
The Conversation reported
"In hindsight, Albright’s curt dismissal of Russia’s security concerns might seem to have been ill-judged. This is especially true in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which some analysts blame in part upon the speed and perceived recklessness of NATO expansion during the 1990s."
One of Albright’s most consequential acts – both as Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997 and as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton – was to support NATO expansion.
NATO had been a cornerstone of the Cold War security order in Europe, binding the United States to the defense of Western Europe. Albright’s approach was to cast NATO not just as a military alliance but as a pillar of international stability and an engine of democratic progress. She saw the alliance as a conduit through which the United States could impart peace, order and good governance upon a fragile European continent.
At the time, critics cautioned that NATO enlargement would antagonize a post-Soviet Russia and could end up worsening the European security order.
Albright’s answer was uncompromising.
“We do not need Russia to agree to enlargement,” she assured senators in 1997, stressing the word “need.”
The strategic and moral case for enlargement was overwhelming, explained Albright. If the newly democratized states of Central and Eastern Europe craved the protection of the United States, she concluded, then no other nation should be allowed to stand in the way.
In short there might have been no NATO expansion or at least Russia's security concerns might have bee addressed if it were not for Madeleine Albright and later for Bush era neocons who pressed for NATO admittance for Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia much to Russia's chagrin. All along the road of NATO expansion Russia's security concerns were ignored or belittled or disrespected. Russia was dismissed as a weak and powerless nation with no skin in the game, powerless to do anything or have any say as NATO was quick to identify Russia as a potential enemy which justified the arms buildup by the US. Notably the European nations did not commit anywhere as much of their financial resources to an arms buildup, a fact lamented by President Donald Trump who suggested that the European nations were letting the US carry the load.
During the Cold War, US forces had been deployed around the world for the explicit purpose of deterring Soviet aggression. When the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so did the primary justification for America’s enormous troop presence abroad and globe-spanning web of military alliances. However, defense spending was given a new justification by Madeleina Albright in order to increase the US militarized global role in the post-Cold War era. She supplied a new rationale for spending on the military industrial complex and the development of ever more destructive weapons systems. NATO expansion and the abrogation of important nuclear arms treaties with Russia were a thumb in the eye of the Russian bear.
