Alecsis Rosca
Alecsis Rosca is a third year BSc Politics and International Relations student, with a passion for economics, foreign affairs, and public policy. He has experience ranging from internships with PR firms to shadowing European Parliament teams.
The nature of the unfolding endeavours in Ukraine requires an introspective dive in the complex web of international relations at the end of the 20th century. The culmination of the Cold War, and the subsequent reactions of the actors affected by its consequences lie at the current conflict’s foundation. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical order was bound to change, as the United States consolidated their hegemonic position over a defeated ideological opponent (Krauthammer, 1991). Within this new reality, a window of opportunity was opened for NATO to consolidate its continental standing. The ‘open door’ policy was consequently reiterated to former communist states.
Although colloquially vehiculated, the phrase ‘NATO expansionism’ is inherently oxymoronic, as it perpetuates an anachronistic understanding of the alliance’s structure and system. It is based on the presumption that NATO’s leaders sought an active policy of expanding NATO’s geographic reach, to include presumably unwilling nations against their own political interests. Fundamentally, however, NATO has always operates under the guise of consensus – between current members for internal affairs, as well as with international partners, for the foreign complementary.
The negotiations that led to the first wave of growth for NATO were undertook within this framework. Having to maintain a delicate equilibrium with the now democratic Russia, the Clinton administration chose to strategically announce the accession desires of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary after the electoral victory of Borin Yeltsin, but in time to surge the public opinion in favour of the incumbent Bill Clinton (Abenheim, 2003). Once the precedent of NATO including former Warsaw Pact states was established, the aspirations of more nations began to be coagulated into policy (Schimmelfennig, 2000).
At the beginning of the 21st century, the alliance witnessed its largest increase to date, as 7 new member states joined in 2004, namely the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. On the background of a seemingly stable state of affair, in the 2008 Bucharest Summit, then US president George W. Bush openly declared that both Georgia and Ukraine were welcomed into NATO, paving the way for yet another new alliance format (O’Hanlon, 2017). In spite of this official, though informal, invitation, a clear timeline for said accessions was not provided, leaving the current dynamics shrouded in diplomatic ambiguity.
NATO’s gambit: a fortunate turn of events, or a risky gamble?
When considering the implications of NATO’s eastern growth, a pivotal role is played by the internal factors that fuelled former Warsaw Pact nations’ desire to join the alliance (Eichler, 2021). The now autonomous foreign affairs departments allowed states like Poland, Czechia or Hungary to seek a more stable, and politically favourable reality, to better tailor their states’ defence. Countries from the now defunct Warsaw Pact faced a new security dilemma, and NATO was in a favourable position to fill the void created by the collapse of the communist bloc.
Since NATO’s very existence following the Cold War was facing an existential prerequisite of reinvention, otherwise risking coming under scrutiny of irrelevancy (Michta, 2009), a pro-active stance was adopted, to encourage the previous soviet satellites to join NATO. Although some argued against an expansionist tendency, with George F. Kennan becoming a major diplomat that voiced warnings against encroachment on Russia’s border, as invalidation of its sphere of influence could lead to conflict (Talbott, 2013), the desire of former Warsaw states to enjoy the protective umbrella of Article 5 provided the justification sought to frame this strategy as pragmatically sound (Epstein, 2005).
An alternative, perhaps more sensible, approach involved outright denying some states’ ambitions to become NATO members. Had Ukraine and Georgia been deemed incompatible with NATO, it would have led to debates challenging the double standards upheld by the alliance (Pouliot, 2010). Simultaneously, however, it could have prevented the escalations witnessed in these states.
By extending invitations to Georgia and Ukraine, the key element of sovereignty was re-emphasised, reiterating how nations were free to decide their own foreign policy, consequently whether to join NATO or not. The incentives behind choosing to become part of this defensive alliance were grounded in previous communist countries’ historical experience with different iterations of the Russian state. Diplomatically, however, this attribute represented a carte blanche for NATO to employ, in order to uphold its open door policy.
Russia’s alleged security threat – between national defence and a sphere of influence
Despite the fact that Russia lost the Cold War, it continued to act as a major player both in Europe and on the global scale (Buckley, 1998). Thus, the prerequisite of a great power, namely the necessity of a sphere of influence, to act as a buffer zone against its primary rivals, continued to be exhibited (Mearsheimer, 2001). Since the collapse of the Soviet system, the geographic borders deemed secure for Moscow decreased from 1600 kilometres to a mere 500.
In this new dynamic, the dichotomy of national defence and the inherent need for a sphere of influence were imbedded by Vladimir Putin in his foreign policy. Seeking to consolidate a robust buffer zone between Russia and NATO, Putin intended to keep Belarus and Ukraine under Moscow’s influence, initially by employing soft power influence (S Frederick Starr, Cornell and Institute For Security And Development Policy, 2014). In parallel, preserving a strong indirect presence, by positively influencing the political stances of former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia was paramount in preventing the void of the USSR’s dissolution to be filled by other blocs, be it western states or China (Suslov, 2018).
Inviting Ukraine and Georgia in NATO in 2008 broke both of these political taboos, and represented the crossing of a redline Putin could not afford to allow to go unpunished. Whilst Georgia was shortly thereafter invaded, premise on which Medvedev’s presidency was consolidated upon, the approach for Ukraine required a longer term strategy. Although NATO accession was not popular in Ukraine in 2008, support was growing to increase collaboration with the European Union, even at the financial detriment of Russia (Moore, Coletta and R Nicholas Burns, 2017). The potential political defeat looming over Russia was the gradual, yet decisive, loss of influence over Ukraine.
The tipping point came in 2013, when a new treaty with the EU was close to being ratified. This development had major implication in the balance of Eastern Europe, as it would put Ukraine on a potentially irreversible trajectory towards integration in the western framework. However, president Victor Yanukovych unexpectedly revoked the EU association agreement, instead opting to renew the financial collaboration treaty with Russia (Kozmenko, 2016). Coupled with a homologous decision to house Russian military personnel in the Sevastopol naval base until 2042 (Maxim Trudolyubov et al., 2015), Ukraine was rendered incompatible with both the EU and NATO structures for the next few decades.
As the civil society did not tolerate this perceived breaking of electoral promises, the protests now known as the Euromaidan Revolution erupted in November, and culminated in the beginning of 2014 with the ousting of Yanukovych (Diuk, 2014).
As Putin could not afford the loss of indirect control over the political regime in Ukraine, an intervention under the guise of plausible deniability was approved. First seizing the Crimean Peninsula with a surgical operation, enabled by the employment of ‘little green men’, the bloodless annexation was intended to attain international validity via the referendum held shortly after, according to which Crimea voted to become part of the Russian Federation (Wentzell, 2021). Soon after, unrest spread across the Russian-dominated parts of Ukraine, with a full blown civil war erupting in its eastern region of Donbas, namely in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
Although a fragile status quo was re-established after the Minsk II agreements in 2015, a full scale invasion would be launched in February 2022, that would shock the international system once again.
A new equilibrium: setting the stage after the invasion of Ukraine
The on-going conflict in Ukraine may culminate, and how the ramifications of said conclusion will affect further international relations between the states involved. In light of the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive of early to mid 2023, one of the more tangible resolutions to this war is a major Ukrainian defeat. With the irrecoverable loss of 4 Oblasts, namely Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine faces the reality of being left as a rump state, now missing over a quarter of its internationally recognized territory, large segments of its population, as well as being deprived of considerable industries and natural resources.
A culmination that wouldn’t be as drastic as an outright defeat, though similarly crippling in the long term, would be a frozen conflict, akin to pre-2022 or modern day Korea, where the frontline is static along its current forms. In this scenario, Russia could reignite the conflict at any point on its own accord. However, this scenario is quite unlikely, as Russia currently has no reason to pause, given its ramped up war economy industry fueling its military effort.
The third and final hypothetical scenario would entail a Ukrainian victory, in some limited form. Despite the global community approaching consensus that retaking its internationally recognized territory is not an achievable feat, Ukraine may still aim to recover its occupied territories. However, a more important aspect in Ukraine’s survival as a functioning state would be ensuring its security following this conflict. Whilst EU admission is echoed as an eventual goal, it is also unlikely to reach the required performances to be eligible within the next decade. Bilateral agreements are already being signed with western nations, to ensure military backing. Still, these very elements of foreign policy are what determined Russia to invade Ukraine in a full scale attack, as Ukraine was slowly slipping away from the direct influence of Russia, gravitating towards the EU. The most tangible form of victory, thus, would be the coagulation of the aforementioned aspects in the post-war reality, and the gradual integration of Ukraine within the western international system.
Between inevitable clashes and avoidable tragedies: what went wrong
In retrospective, it becomes apparent that Ukraine’s and Georgia’s potential accessions to NATO fundamentally destabilised the already fragile balance between the Western bloc and Russia. It can be argued that, while pragmatic in nature, the foreign policy pursued by NATO leaders following the collapse of the Soviet Union displayed an outright disregard of Russia’s interests.
No perceived threat to the security of the European nations presumed the redundancy of mutual protection that NATO represented. Thus, it can be asserted that Russia’s subsequently aggressive dynamic towards former Soviet states, personifying an expansionist posturing, restored public opinion’s belief in the necessity of the NATO construct, bolstering the alliance’s international framework as never before (Bilinsky, 1999).
The dilemma at hand was not that western policymakers were not concerned by the grievances exhibited by the Kremlin. Rather, it was characterised by how nations aspiring to join the alliance, and NATO itself, coagulated their strategies within this delicate framework under the presumption that Russia would not react with an aggressive rhetoric. Kennan’s warnings, who adamantly considered NATO’s open door policy a ‘strategic blunder of epic proportions’(Talbott, 2013), are now echoed as prophetic, considering the definitive crumbling of the pre-2022 status quo.
If a cynical filter was to be applied on the current endeavours, Ukraine represents a pilot test for NATO operationality. By providing Ukraine with aid, NATO states have a unique opportunity to explore the shortcomings in their current strategies, tactics, logistics, communications, and decision-making processes. Furthermore, the unity within the alliance is also put under a stress test in this political battleground, as the policy of supporting Ukraine represents a contentious subject, with figures like Orban or Fico arguing that a continuation of aid would represent a sunken cost fallacy.
Managing the crisis in Ukraine is paramount for NATO and its role in the international framework, due to the implications that the growth of the alliance played in the current developments. Given its early on, explicitly stated support for the Ukrainian cause, NATO has unequivocally positioned itself at the forefront of this conflict, bearing a significant part of the responsibility of how this conflict reaches its conclusion. Whether the subsequent result would be a positive or negative one for the alliance, it will nonetheless provide vital knowledge on how the policymaking process of the last three decades irreversibly shaped the eastern part of the European continent. Unfortunately, regardless on what those lessons end up being, they are being thought through the spilled blood of an invaded nation.
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