Created during the Cold War, long opposed to its communist adversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) suddenly found itself without an enemy in 1991, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved.
The Atlantic Alliance survived the first few years that followed painfully and has long sought a goal. Enlargement to include Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the threat of international terrorism against Western countries after 11 September 2001, made it possible to justify part of its perpetuation. But President Donald Trump’s isolationism of the United States in 2017, which his successor Joe Biden did not completely question, and their concern over China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific have weakened the alliance’s rationale in recent years. weakened. gave credence to the idea of a European defense.
Declared “brain dead” by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019, NATO has found itself united again after the February 24 invasion of Russian forces in Ukraine. To justify tensions and then the attack of his neighbor, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not stop accusing this military alliance of “betrayal” because it spread to Eastern Europe between 1997 and 2004, after the fall of the Soviet empire. .
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1991-1993: Eastern European countries knock on NATO’s door, which refuses
After the political dissolution of the USSR in 1991, several former Warsaw Pact countries turned to NATO to ensure their military security, especially vis-à-vis Moscow.
Nearly fifty years of Soviet rule made the people of Eastern Europe deeply suspicious of the intentions of Russian power, although the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, completed in Moscow what remained of communism. Because the new power is not without ambition on the future of “its” old satellites and former Soviet republics.
Reminder: in 1955, NATO faces the Warsaw Pact
NATO
Warsaw
Pact USSR
In 1991, the Russian President created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an intergovernmental organization offering economic, political and military integration to the newly independent states of the USSR. Ten of them became members, under pressure from Moscow, while Turkmenistan and Ukraine declined the invitation. But this integration will slowly fail because of Moscow’s overwhelming political clout, which prevents these weaker countries from having any room for manoeuvre. So much so that some form alliances with each other, such as the Organization for Democracy and Development (GUAM), created in 1997 with Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova (and formerly Uzbekistan).
It was in this context that, as early as 1991, many of Moscow’s former European satellites knocked on NATO’s door, which they saw as an assurance of escaping Russian tutelage. Especially since Moscow does not hesitate, in the name of defending russian speakers, to intervene militarily, as illustrated by the conflict in Transnistria, a secessionist region of Moldova, in 1992.
Russia sees this emancipation with a negative eye and makes it known to the West, who from the beginning curbs the desire for membership expressed by these countries. At the end of December 1991, NATO created the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, a forum for dialogue that offered no guarantee of security, much to the chagrin of the countries concerned.
Did the West promise Russia that NATO would not expand eastward?
This is one of the central issues in the gradual deterioration of relations between Russian and Western leaders. Since the 1990s, the former have regularly accused the latter of having betrayed their original promise. “They lied to us several times, they made decisions behind our backs, they presented us with a fait accompli. This happened with NATO’s eastward expansion, as well as with the deployment of military infrastructure on our borders,” Putin charged on March 18, 2014, after illegally retaking Crimea from its Ukrainian neighbor.
The Russian president relies on the many promises made by american, British, French and German leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the year of intense diplomatic negotiations aimed at setting the conditions for German reunification. “Nothing had been put on paper. This was a mistake by Gorbachev. In politics, everything must be written, even if a guarantee on paper is also often violated, said Vladimir Putin, interviewed in 2015 by the American director Oliver Stone. Gorbachev only discussed with them and considered that this word was sufficient. »
Between February and May 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev had indeed received assurances that “NATO will not extend an inch to the East,” especially from James Baker, the US Secretary of State. Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and George Bush Sr. also tried to reassure him that the Atlantic Alliance would not extend beyond the reunified Germany. These exchanges are detailed by George Washington University’s National Security Archive project, which relies on numerous declassified documents.
Vladimir Putin’s version has been repeatedly criticized by NATO members, who explain that the context of 1990 was not that of 1991. In 1990, Western assurances were given while the USSR and its satellites were still bound by the Warsaw Pact military alliance, which made an extension of NATO unimaginable. The events of 1991 changed the situation: the fall of the Soviet Union provoked the emergence of fifteen new sovereign countries in nine months. The Soviet borders, which the West did not want to threaten a year earlier, are no longer the same: under international law, they no longer correspond to the USSR, but to those of the Russian Federation alone. No promises were made about countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. A conclusion supported by several historians and specialists on the subject.
Mikhail Gorbachev himself reinforced this reading of events. Asked by Russia Beyond in 2014, a state media funded by the Russian government, what prompted him not to ask the Americans to translate their promise into a binding treaty, the last leader of the USSR replied:
“NATO enlargement was not a topic of discussion at all, and did not emerge during this period. Another challenge we put on the table was to ensure that NATO’s military infrastructure would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of what was then the GDR. Baker’s claim was made in this context… Everything that could be done and everything that had to be done to make this political obligation a reality was done. And respected. »
One episode, however, sheds some light on why Boris Yeltsin’s government may have felt deceived. On 22 October 1993, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher comes to meet for forty-five minutes with Boris Yeltsin to submit to him the idea of the Partnership for Peace put forward by US President Bill Clinton. This partnership is presented to him as a way to include Russia in the process. “There would be no effort to ignore or exclude Russia from its full participation in Europe’s future security,” Christopher said.
Boris Yeltsin, who has been pushing for two years for the West to recognize his country as a great power, is seduced by the principle, but interrupts it to check that he has understood and that there will be a partnership and no membership, referring to NATO. The Secretary of State replied: “Yes, it is, there will not even be a secondary status.” “It’s a brilliant idea, a stroke of genius!” exclaims Boris Yeltsin, who is relieved in front of his interlocutor, explicitly mentioning the tensions around NATO. The Russian president, who is actively fighting conservatives on the domestic political scene, needs to show results with American “partners” to stay in power.
From Partnership for Peace to NATO enlargement
In January 1994, during an official visit to Russia, Bill Clinton told Boris Yeltsin that NATO was “clearly considering expansion”, but tried to spare him by adding that the Partnership for Peace was his administration’s priority. An assurance that he repeated to her on the occasion of a private lunch on September 27, 1994.
The Partnership for Peace was established in 1994. Joined that year by 34 European and Asian countries, including Russia, it provides for bilateral military cooperation between these signatory countries and NATO. But it does not meet the expectations of Moscow’s former satellites, such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which, meeting in February 1991 in the Visegrad Group, insist on being integrated into NATO. Russian military interventionism in Chechnya (1994-1996) only motivates them more. Initially reluctant, the Clinton administration will gradually change its mind.
As the speeches of NATO officials became more and more explicit, Boris Yeltsin accused his American counterpart, in a resounding speech at the Budapest Summit on 6 December 1994, of wanting to partition Europe. “Why are you planting the seeds of mistrust?” he asks the sixteen NATO members.
These Russian warnings worried part of the US administration, but at the end of 1994, the idea of NATO enlargement almost imposed itself on President Clinton’s circle.
1994-2004: With the support of Clinton and Kohl, NATO expands eastward
The first change of tone came in January 1994, at the Brussels Summit, where the Alliance said it was explicitly open to new accessions. In the aftermath, President Clinton, visiting Prague, declared alongside the Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers that it was no longer a question of whether NATO would expand, but “when and how”. In September 1995, NATO published prerequisites to serve as a basis for negotiations. The text specifies that the Alliance will not install nuclear weapons on the territory of the new members, a declaration of intent supposed to address Russian fears.
This was followed by two years of intense discussions with five countries, before the first green light came in. In the spring of 1997, Bill Clinton, who has supported Boris Yeltsin since his election, is confident: he has just signed with his Russian counterpart the “founding act”, the first agreement between NATO and Russia intended to revive cooperation between the two parties. The US president then announced the future integration of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, officially invited to join the Atlantic Alliance at the Madrid summit a month later. The moment passes “in history as marking the end of the Yalta Order,” according to Polish Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus called the invitation “the culmination of the post-November 1989 transformation process.” In Hungary, 85.3% of NATO membership was approved in a referendum in the autumn of 1997.
1999: NATO’s first eastward enlargement
Three former communist regimes join the Atlantic Alliance.
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members New members
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The Russian government, on the other hand, is not so enthusiastic. Just after the announcement, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov condemned a “major mistake, perhaps the biggest since the end of the Second World War”.
This first enlargement has a taste of failure for the Russians. Boris Yeltsin’s many attempts to dissuade Bill Clinton did not work. But the Russian president himself knew the inevitable process, at least for some countries like Poland, which had shown a constant determination to anchor itself to the West. Thus, in 1993, the Polish Prime Minister managed to wrest a joint communiqué from Boris Yeltsin, which signalled that Poland’s entry into NATO “would not be contrary to the interests of other states, including Russia”.
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The Russian protests, however, are not without concern to Western diplomats, who are divided on the opportunity to further expand NATO to the East, despite repeated and insistent requests from ten countries, which in the spring of 2000 formed the Vilnius Group, including:
- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, long-standing candidates;
- Slovakia, which was dismissed in 1997 because it did not meet certain criteria;
- Romania and Slovenia, dismissed in 1997 so as not to offend the Russians;
- Bulgaria;
- Croatia;
- Albania;
- Macedonia, whose candidacy is blocked by Greece due to a dispute over the name of the country.
Discussions with these ten countries are beginning, but the Alliance is trying to prioritize applications in order to slow down the process as much as possible, as it did in 1997, when it refused nine of the twelve applications it received. Negotiations culminated in 2002 at the invitation of seven new states (the three Baltic countries, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria), whose integration took effect in 2004.
2004: NATO’s second eastward enlargement
Six former satellites and members of the USSR join the Atlantic Alliance alongside Slovenia.
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enlargement New members
This second enlargement provoked new protests from some Russian politicians. The chairman of the defense committee in the Duma Viktor Zavarzin calls on the government to review the country’s military defense arrangements, fearing that the West will mass troops near the Russian border. Which they will not do (with the exception of the arrival in 2004 of four Belgian F-16 aircraft). For its part, the Kremlin, which has never shown firm opposition to further enlargement, downplays the Baltic countries’ accession to NATO. Two years earlier, Vladimir Putin had already declared that the Baltic states’ accession to NATO would not be a “tragedy”.
Enlargement will then continue only in the Balkans. Croatia and Albania joined in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020, after settling its dispute with Greece.
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Ukraine: an accession that has long remained uncertain
The case of Ukraine is different. The candidacy of Russia’s “brother” country, independent since 1991, has been repeatedly declined by some NATO member countries, which feared to definitively anger the Russians. In 2008, at the Bucharest Summit, US President George W. Bush proposed to the rest of the Alliance to officially invite Ukraine and Georgia, a decision that France and Germany vetoed.
However, the Alliance indicated at the end of the summit that these two countries are set to become members of NATO in the future and that intensive discussions must prepare for their integration. Although the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits the stationing of foreign troops on national soil, the news brings Vladimir Putin off his hinges. “But what is Ukraine? Not even a state! he exclaimed at the Russia-NATO Council meeting. Part of its territory is Central Europe, the other part, the most important, it is we who gave it to it! »
The Russian head of state warns his European and American partners that if the country joined NATO, it would cease to exist in its current form, referring to Crimea, a peninsula in the south of the country offered to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. Populated by a large majority of Russian speakers hostile to a rapprochement with the West, the peninsula offers above all strategic access to the Black Sea for the Russians via the military port of Sevastopol. An attachment that the Ukrainians should have resumed by 2017 at the latest, according to the agreement reached with Kiev.
The Russian military intervention in Georgia in 2008, which marked Vladimir Putin’s first show of force, will significantly cool Western desires to continue talks with the Ukrainians. The illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014 and Russian support for the Donbass separatists then buried Ukrainian hopes of joining the Atlantic Alliance.
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