Poking the Russian Bear With the NATO Umbrella
Our Western European partners thought it was a bad idea then, and do now. Why aren't we listening?
Some terrible foreign policy ideas seem to have eternal life. One example is the proposal to expand NATO yet again by offering membership to Georgia and Ukraine. That campaign has gone on for more than a decade and is a significant factor in the West’s deteriorating relations with Russia.
George W. Bush’s administration apparently decided that the United States and its European allies had not provoked Russia sufficiently with the first two rounds of NATO expansion. U.S. leaders adopted that attitude even though the second round in 2004 added the three Baltic republics, which had been part of the defunct Soviet Union itself. The administration now pushed hard to make certain that Ukraine and Georgia received membership invitations.
Washington’s key European allies began to balk, however. France, Germany, and most of Washington’s other long-standing Alliance partners were unwilling to take that step when Bush formally proposed the first stage in the admission process, a Membership Action Plan (MAP), for both countries, at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was especially negative. Merkel “did not trust the Georgians, whom she still saw as corrupt.” The German leader also observed that Ukraine’s governing coalition “was a mess.” Although the primary reason for Western European reluctance was the unsatisfactory domestic political and economic situations in both countries, there also was uneasiness that another stage of NATO expansion would damage already delicate relations with Russia.
Despite the intra-Alliance resistance to the Bush administration’s campaign to offer MAPs to Kiev and Tbilisi, though, the outcome of the Bucharest summit was not a total defeat for U.S. ambitions. The summit’s final declaration stated that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” There was no timetable but the ultimate outcome seemed clear.
The Kremlin’s anger threatened to boil over at this point, and Moscow’s push back began. Even before the issuance of final declaration, Vladimir Putin bluntly warned summit attendees that “The emergence of a powerful military bloc at our borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russian security.” The country’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, stated that NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine would be “a huge strategic mistake” causing the “most serious consequences” for European peace and security.
Germany, France, and other key European allies became even warier of provoking the Kremlin when war broke out between Georgia and Russia in August 2008. Initial condemnations of “Russian aggression” faded as evidence emerged that Tbilisi had initiated the military phase of the crisis. The reluctance of “Old Europe,” (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissive label) to offer NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine has diminished little since that time. That is especially true since the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/poking-the-russian-bear-with-the-nato-umbrella/