An author makes the case for NATO but neglects his own words in arguing for a NATO that should have remained narrowly focused on defending its old Cold War core. But his argument gets ... complicated.
NATO was a success in maintaining great power peace in Europe:
In a very fundamental sense, the Alliance’s greatest achievement is simply in having prevented war with the Soviets. Today we take this for granted; it seems it couldn’t really have been otherwise.
Exactly. Let's keep doing that, eh? Because
right now the Russians under Putin are doing their best imitation of the USSR that they can manage with their shrunken resources.
But the author seems to fall for that mistake of taking victory for granted in regretting its expansion by admitting eager former Soviet vassals into NATO:
NATO has lived with the Red Army stationed across no-man’s-land from it before, on the inner German border, and successfully deterred any attacks.
And what a wonderful way we lived! With Russian forces backed by massive numbers of nuclear missiles massed just 100 miles from the
Rhine River during those apparently care-free days. Poised there, the Red Army had a shot at breaking NATO. Remember that earlier caution by the author that it only seemed like victory in the Cold War without actual World War III couldn't
really have been otherwise?
Today, a Russian advance of 100 miles is bad but not a war winning move for Russia. While the author regrets the entry of former Soviet or communist countries into NATO since 1991, without their entry the Russians would have a much better shot at isolating targets and advancing west to re-occupy those old Soviet bases. Especially if NATO just focused on its own territorial defense and ignored Russian threats even one foot away from its borders.
I mean, does anybody really think that NATO states wouldn't have
dramatically shrunken their force levels from those needed to hold the
inner German border during the Cold War if NATO hadn't let countries
freed from Soviet tyranny into NATO? What would have deterred the Russians from pushing into the vacuum we left?
What are the odds that those old Soviet vassal states would be the free democracies they are today determined to resist Russian attempts to reimpose slavery? Under Russian pressure and outside of NATO's borders, many of those states would have slid back into Russian-friendly postures. FFS, we have that problem with Hungary now when it is in NATO. Isn't the author again doing what he warned against by taking what happened for granted in arguing for an alternate world where the results of NATO expansion happened even without NATO expansion?
And have no doubt that once yoked to Russian imperial ambitions, those former Soviet lands would have their industry, resources, and people mobilized to support the Russians just as the Red Army had lots of divisions raised from the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. NATO countries would need to do even more than they are planning to do today.
The author argued letting the Baltic states enter NATO "only created a defence conundrum – epitomised by the Suwalki Gap – that NATO did not have before."
Um, West Berlin?
And today NATO is better able to overcome the problem of the Suwalki Gap than it was able to cope with a doomed West Berlin. And Ukraine is buying it time to do better.
More than twenty years ago, I argued in Military Review (starting on pg. 15) that we should keep an Army corps in Europe in part to guard against a revival of the Russian threat. As I noted, the fact that we had World War II after we abandoned Europe following our fight against the Kaiser in World War I argues for defending the peace and victory we won in the Cold War.
But we did not do that. And today we have returned a corps headquarters to Poland and America is moving troops back to Europe because the Russian threat did revive.I say helping Ukraine defend itself helps NATO prepare for the revived Russian threat and isn't actually going to initiate war with Russia no matter what BS Russia throws out about NATO essentially being at war with Russia now:
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov claimed that NATO and Russia are in “direct confrontation,” likely as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to intensify existing information operations meant to force the West into self-deterrence.
Weirdly, the author has a surprise twist at the end where he urges NATO to arm Ukraine to fight Russia. After everything he argued that could be used by any Westerner who wants to abandon NATO and Ukraine if his article had been ended right before that paragraph, he rightly points out that keeping Ukraine alive is possible without NATO actively fighting Russia. And that keeping Ukraine fighting is the best way to prevent NATO from going to war with Russia over Ukraine.
I have to agree with that conclusion even if I wince at the path he took to get there. I mean, I've long wanted to keep Russia as far east as possible. They have no logical stopping point.
Although to be fair to the author, perhaps his target audience is those in America who want to abandon Ukraine and abandon NATO, too. And while those people would simply use a Ukrainian victory as proof that abandoning NATO is even more justified, maybe the author figures he has to fight one problem at a time. And Ukraine's victory over Russia is just the entry ticket to that next problem.
Anyway, that author and I at least fully agree that at this moment arming Ukraine is the right way to protect NATO. I'll take my allies as they are rather than demand purity.
UPDATE: I meant to delete the last two sentences in the final paragraph about possible author motivations before publishing this post, which upon reflection I had decided was unjustified. So they are now gone. Sorry about leaving them in for this long before noticing.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
