Nick,
Does it really matter if we think NATO is a threat to Russia? It would seem like what would matter in the current situation is if Russia sees it that way. We may comfortably say that NATO is a defensive organization, and it was established to protect against Soviet aggression, or more specifically as a counterweight to the Warsaw Pact countries which banded together to protect against western aggression. The Warsaw Pact is gone, so Russia wonders why NATO, which was formed against them, is still around. Russian suspicions that NATO is not a neutral player were confirmed when NATO rebuffed their overtures for membership decades ago. If NATO just exists as a neutral security force, one for all, and all for one, in a spirit of mutual cooperation, then why can’t we join? Russia understands why, and they understand that NATO isn’t neutral. The Soviet Union is gone, but the entity birthed to fight it militarily is still around.
NATO says it is a “defensive” organization, but it’s both defensive and offensive. Which countries has NATO attacked ? Or, more to the point, which countries who have not attacked a NATO country, been pre emptively attacked by NATO forces? Attacked without any real fear of any real repercussions, after the world became a unipolar world, revolving around one superpower, not two. Russia understands the hubris that comes from knowing there is no one left in the world who can “beat you up.”
The March 2011 US-NATO attack on Libya. . In the opening hours of the attack, American and British war ships and submarines fired scores of cruise missiles which, by 21 March 2011, had wiped out Gaddafi’s entire strategic air defence system along the Libyan coastline. US B-2 spirit bombers destroyed Libya’s largest airport, in the capital Tripoli, while Tornado aircraft launched Storm Shadow missiles at numerous strategic targets. Libya was thrown into civil war as a consequence from which it has never really recovered. Gadaffi may have been a nut, but he posed no real threat to anyone except those who had to sit through his hour long comedy routines at the U.N. every year. The point being, that Libya had not attacked a NATO nation, nor did it seem on the verge of doing so. It was just an attack on a nation that the U.S. thought was dangerous, even though Libya had given up its nuclear weapons program out of fear of such an attack. NATO bombed Gadaffi’s house in a targeted assassination, which is supposedly illegal under international law, and missed.
In 1999, Serbia, which was then part of Yugoslavia was attacked by NATO, again, as a U.S. led operation under Bill Clinton, and again pre-emptively, just because it could, not because Yugoslavia had attacked a NATO country, which it hadn’t.
So no, NATO has proven itself, since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact to not be a defensive organization, but an organization of militaries which will do whatever it justifies itself as doing to whomever it thinks it is justified in attacking, for whatever reason if it thinks it can get away with it. People are free to look up the backstories on those two wars, and decide whether they were moral, or not, but there is a lot of feeling in some quarters that both of those attacks were both unjustified and “illegal”. My point is, regardless of the backstories and ostensible reasons for the attacks, they were not remotely defensive in nature, and NATO can no longer in good faith claim to be a purely defensive organization. Again, Russia is acutely aware of this, even if most Americans are not.
“Putin famously stated that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the biggest tragedy of the 20th century.” Yes, he did state that, and it is now “famously” because it has been burned into the Western consciousness ever since. What is less famous, because his remarks were removed from their context, is what he said following that, which was that “but no one wants to go back to the Soviet Union.” Why don’t Americans know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” Perhaps, because it conflicts with the narrative. People can look it up; you can find it if you look hard enough.
Putin does want to “restore former glory” you are quite right, but it’s pre-Revolutionary Russia he wants to restore, the Russia of Tolstoy and Pushkin, not the Soviet Union. If he wanted to restore the Soviet Union he wouldn’t be rebuilding and reopening the churches that the Bolsheviks shuttered.
Look, I’ve already been accused of being a shill for Putin, and what I just said won’t quiet that down among those who are so convinced they understand Russia completely, and I’m merely stupid, or a “useful idiot.” I get that.
Well meaning people are always saying that we must look at the world through the eyes of “the other” in order to make a better world, but westerners generally, in my lifetime, have always refused to do that when it comes to Russians, no matter which governing ideology was ruling the Russian people. Like the McCartheyites, we are still finding Russkie stooges under every bed. There are two sides to this. (There are not two sides to whether war is bad, but there are two sides to understanding how the world got here. IMO) And to me, it’s obvious that we got here simply because one side refused to listen to concerns that the other side legitimately had. If people won’t let themselves even contemplate that possibility, well, okay.
