There has been a lot of revisionist history about NATO expansion lately and I am glad to see President Clinton set the record straight in this powerful Atlantic essay.
The main takeaways are that NATO was expanded to incorporate newly freed former Soviet territories and former Soviet satellites into the liberal democratic order. Binding them together in the alliance and the EU gave them an incentive to become rules based market economies and liberal democracies while ensuring their security against a potential revaunchist Russia and one another. Clinton makes a strong case that these actions were consistently taken in consultation with Russia at every step of the way, with the possibility always open that Russia itself could seek NATO membership. Russia under Yeltsin had no problem conducting joint exercises and joint peacekeeping missions with NATO troops nor did it have any issues with enjoying a non-voting observer status at NATO meetings.
As President Clinton notes:
Enlarging NATO required unanimous consent of the alliance’s then-16 members; two-thirds consent of a sometimes skeptical U.S. Senate; close consultation with prospective members to ensure that their military, economic, and political reforms met NATO’s high standards; and near-constant reassurance to Russia.
While far left voices like the Nation’s Stephen Cohen, realists like my former professor John Mearsheimer and the late George Kennan, and voices on the right from Andrew Sullivan to the far right like Tucker Carlson have all blamed NATO expansion in one form or another for this war, it is important to remember that the real cause of this war was not an arrogant America kicking down a weakened Russia, but an autocracy using force to break the will of a democracy. Slava Ukraine!
At the time I thought expanding NATO was redundant. I would have expanded the EU and given them a military mandate, then entered into an alliance with them.
I think it’s good they are separate. Ike is about economic and political integration for Europe while NATO is a military alliance. I do want Part of my hope is that a deal Putin could accept is Ukraine into E.U. and not into NATO. Which ironically, is the very issue that they initially protested for on the Orange Revolution.
I know that they currently have separate spheres, but I have been rooting for a fully integrated and sovereign United States of Europe for quite some time now.