NINE
You Break It, You Run
With at least nine thousand people killed and more than 2 million displaced, and with relations between Russia and the West set back by three decades, did we really, as many analysts suggest, sleepwalk into a new cold war? Or is the conflict just a seismic outburst, after which the relationship will go back to its chilly normal? With Europe in a state of disarray not seen since early in the postwar era, interpretations are difficult, and there is no agreement on the nature of the historical period we live in.
David Brooks of the New York Times finds the scope of the problems Americans face “way below historic averages. …Our global enemies are not exactly impressive. We have the Islamic State, a bunch of barbarians riding around in pickup trucks, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime.” Pope Francis has repeatedly voiced an opposing assessment, calling our times a third world war “fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction.”[1]
Pacta Sunt Servanda
As an international law specialist, Yuval Shany, noted, the “combined effect of the international response to Crimea and Kosovo throws international law on self-determination into a state of uncertainty, threatening the stability of the existing state system.”[2] The Crimean takeover has rendered five international accords meaningless, thereby deflating an important underlying principle of international cohabitation, pacta sunt servanda—that treaties should be honored.
The annulled agreements include the Belovezh Accords of December 8, 1991, which declared all fifteen republics of the former USSR sovereign and independent successor states; the Alma Ata Protocols of December 21, 1991, establishing the post-Soviet community of equals, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and mutually recognizing the member states’ borders; the Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet of May 28, 1997, leasing Crimean military bases to Russia; and the Russian-Ukrainian “Naval Base for Gas” Accord, extending the Russian navy’s lease in Sevastopol until 2042.
The final international agreement that was cast aside, and the one with the most lasting consequences, is the Budapest Memorandum of December 5, 1994, providing national security assurance to Ukraine after it surrendered its portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Signed by the heads of state of Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, it called upon each of the latter three to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine” or from “economic coercion.”[3] Obviously, during the Crimea and Donbass crises, the United States and Britain failed to guarantee Ukraine’s “existing borders.” As a result, any other nuclear state in the world, if offered a similar arrangement, need not think twice before rejecting such a guarantee as worthless.
But what else could the United States and Britain do after Russia annexed Crimea, without risking direct military confrontation with Moscow? No one expected the guarantors of 1994 to do for Ukraine what Britain and France did for Poland in 1939 after Hitler invaded, and declare war on the aggressor. But the ambiguity of the security commitment to Ukraine raises serious questions about a bigger issue: Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which in the popular understanding requires all members to come to the aid of any member subject to military attack. If Russia invades, for example, Estonia, in order to “rescue” its disgruntled Russian minority, many of whom hold Russian citizenship, what would NATO do?
If the Ukrainian crisis is any indication, the great powers of the West may be inclined to exercise caution. The underappreciated thing is that Article 5 actually lets them limit their response to the minimum they choose. Its spirit is “one for all, and all for one,” but its letter is not. Formulated with enviable foresight, this is what it says:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.[4]
The reference to the U.N. Security Council is not very practical, as Russia and its diplomatic partner China have veto powers there. What is practical, however, is the exact wording of the “one for all” principle: each NATO country will “assist” the party under attack by taking “such action as it deems necessary.” Despite the expectations of Eastern European nations on Russia’s border, soft economic sanctions against the aggressor would legally suffice. If you read the fine print of Article 5 closely, it’s hard not to see that in promoting NATO expansion in the 1990s, and waking up Russia’s aggressiveness in the process, Washington did not guarantee new NATO members’ security even on paper.
One may question whether the eastward expansion has made the NATO alliance stronger. In a fleet on a combat mission, the slowest ship determines the speed of the entire force. Recent NATO members such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have nothing to contribute to the alliance militarily: they only add vulnerability. If there is a place where diversity does not belong, that would be a military alliance.
When the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949, the founders included Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States—a not entirely solid, but still acceptably united political core. Greece and Turkey, added in 1952, put the alliance on the USSR’s southwestern flank, although these two did not really fit in with the group the way the other NATO countries did. The fact that the two went to war against each other over Cyprus in 1974 is sufficient proof of this. In the past decade, ideas for further NATO expansion have become grotesque: in 2007, Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential candidate, proposed adding Australia, India, Israel, Japan, and Singapore to the alliance.[5]
Every step forward in NATO expansion is paid for largely by the American taxpayer. Every member is supposed to devote 2 percent of its GDP to military spending, but as this is a recommendation, not a requirement, the vast majority of members find it easy to ignore. Only the United States, Britain, France, Greece, and Turkey meet the target, and the latter two are spending the money mainly to deter each other. If it is understandable that economically depressed Spain spends just 0.9 percent of its GDP on defense, Germany’s 1.4 percent comes with no such excuse. President Barack Obama made his frustration clear at the September 2014 NATO summit in Wales; the meeting’s final statement asked everyone to “move towards the 2% guideline”—but within a decade.[6]
1
David Brooks, “Snap Out of It,”
2
Yuval Shany, “Does International Law Grant the People of Crimea and Donetsk a Right to Secede? Revisiting Self-Determination in Light of the 2014 Events in Ukraine,”
3
Steven Pifer, “Ukraine Crisis’ Impact on Nuclear Weapons,” CNN, March 4, 2014, www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/opinion/pifer-ukraine-budapest-memorandum (retrieved March 8, 2015).
4
The North Atlantic Treaty (April 4, 1949, Washington, D.C.), NATO, www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm (retrieved February 13, 2015).
5
Adrian Croft, “Giuliani Says NATO Should Admit Israel, Japan,” Reuters, September 19, 2007, www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/19/us-iran-giuliani-idUSL1992785020070919 (retrieved February 13, 2015).
6
“Wales Summit Declaration: Issued by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Wales,” NATO, September 5, 2014, www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm?mode=pressrelease (retrieved December 19, 2014).