Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Didn’t Have to Happen

By JASON SIBERT

The world has changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The world order as we knew it, and the order in Europe, has exploded due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of a sovereign state. The images coming out of the country are shocking. There’s no excusing Putin’s behavior or the nature of his rule in Russia.

However, our country, and Europe, might have followed a different path in the last days of Soviet Russia. In 1990, one year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not expand east to Russia if Russia accepted a unified Germany, according to Putin. This story has been backed up by more than one source. Gorbachev described this in his memoirs. In 1991, United Kingdom Prime Minister John Major was asked by the Soviet Defense Minister, Marshal Dmitry Yazov, about eastern Europe’s interest in joining NATO. Major, according to the diaries of the British ambassador to Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite, assured him “nothing of that sort will ever happen.”

These assurances were never written down in a treaty. The final agreement signed by Russia and the West in September 1990 applied only to Germany. It allowed foreign-stationed NATO troops to cross the old cold war line marked by East Germany at the discretion of the German government. The agreement was contained in a signed addendum. NATO’s commitment to protect, enshrined in Article 5, had for the first time moved east into former Russian-held territory.

In 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, angling for Russia to join NATO, wrote to President Bill Clinton to argue any further expansion of NATO eastwards breached the spirit of the 1990 treaty. Yeltsin was working to put Russia in NATO. However, the NATO enlargement did occur in Clinton’s administration, and Yeltsin agreed that Poland had the right to join NATO in 1993. However, his colleagues were upset at the decision.

These decisions led to confrontation with Moscow and created an environment where Putin could seize power. What if our country and our European allies had followed a more cautious approach? What if rejection of automatic NATO expansion would have been placed in a formal treaty? What if we had allowed Russia to join NATO in time? Perhaps Eastern European countries could have joined after Russia? Maybe a democratic Russia, which was trying to stay alive in Yeltsin’s time, would have grown. Maybe we would be in a different situation if we would have followed a more legal approach. Perhaps Europe would be under the blanket of a collective security organ like NATO. The object of collective security? To allow each country in the organization to spend less on defense, as the defense of the body is pooled amongst members.

Hopefully, the Ukraine crises can be resolved through creative diplomacy and sanctions and with no commitment in the way of combat troops. If we can return to square one, then maybe we won’t make the same mistake twice.

Jason Sibert of St. Louis is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2022

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