Russia and NATO since 1991

From Cold War Through Cold Peace to Partnership?

Martin Smith

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781134229567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the development of relations between Russia and NATO since 1991.

Since the re-emergence of Russia as an independent state in December 1991, debates and controversies surrounding its evolving relations with NATO have been a prominent feature of the European security scene. This is the first detailed and comprehensive book-length analysis of Russia-NATO relations, covering the years 1991-2005. This new volume investigates the nature and substance of the 'partnership' relations that have developed between Russia and NATO since the end of the Cold War. It looks at the impact that the Kosovo crisis, September 11th, the Iraq War and the creation of the NATO-Russia Council have on this complex relationship. The author concludes that Russia and NATO have, so far, developed a pragmatic partnership, but one that may potentially develop into a more significant strategic partnership.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, European politics and European security.

1 The Soviet Union, Russia and the ‘Common European Home’

A foundation on which to build?

Introduction

In the years 1985–91, there was substantial debate and discussion in the Soviet Union, Western Europe and the United States on the prospects for the construction of a ‘Common European Home’. This concept had been advanced as a key stated foreign policy goal by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader. Following the ending of the Cold War, more immediate and parochial security concerns moved centre-stage for much of the 1990s. They arose principally as a result of the conflicts attending the disintegration of the Yugoslav State and from the consequences of the break-up of the Soviet Union itself. The Common Home concept fell out of fashion, and during this decade, it was discussed relatively infrequently, if at all.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of the discussions in this volume, the Common Home concept forms a useful starting-point. The present author is interested in the nature of the post-Cold War security order in Europe and, in particular, the ways and the extent to which Russia–as the Soviet Union’s principal successor–has been developing ‘partnership’ relations with one of the two core international institutions that constitute the contemporary ‘West’.¹ In Cold War times, ‘the West’ was, of course, the main identified ideological and potential military adversary of the Soviet Union and its then allies in what was generally referred to as ‘Eastern Europe’.²

In order to help us understand the origins and background to the ideas about partnership that have been generated since Russia reemerged on the international stage in December 1991, this first chapter will begin by assessing the nature of the Common Home concept. It will then examine the reasons that prevented Gorbachev’s vision from being realised in the late 1980s and conclude by asking what, if any, ‘residue’ was left behind, to potentially be picked up by Russian and western policy makers in the 1990s and beyond.

Gorbachev’s concept

When assessing the Common European Home idea as advanced and developed by Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s, three issues and questions are of particular importance in helping us to get to grips with it. They are, first, the anticipated place and role of the United States in the Common Home. Second, there was the projected role and place of the Soviet Union itself. Finally, what about the institutional ‘architecture’ of the prospective Common Home? The discussions that follow will examine these three core issues in turn.

The United States’ place in the home

In his memoirs, first published in 1995, Gorbachev asserted that ‘the idea of Europe as our Common Home had been a spontaneous thought’ which first occurred to him on a visit to France (his first foreign trip as Soviet leader) in October 1985. ³ In reality, by that time, the term already had something of a pedigree in Cold War Soviet politics. It was at least implicit in the Soviet diplomatic manoeuvrings of 1953–4, which produced a proposal for what would, eventually, become the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), founded in Helsinki in 1975. ⁴ At the time that it was first made, this Soviet proposal had generated no interest amongst NATO states, mainly for the reason that it seemed to them that it was motivated primarily by a divisive agenda. That is to say, western leaders felt that the Soviets were attempting to drive a wedge between the United States and its NATO allies in Europe by creating a security system which either excluded the former altogether, or else confined it to the status of an invited guest and mere observer.⁵ The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was portrayed in the proposal as being an integral part of ‘Europe’, and, hence, entitled to full participation rights in any pan-European arrangements, on account of its geography, culture and history.⁶ The NATO response to these Soviet ideas established a precedent for early western suspicion of proposals for pan-European security arrangements. The suspicion was founded on the belief that the Soviet Union remained consistently wedded to its divisive agenda. It was, as noted, to be over twenty years before the CSCE was eventually established. It was finally brought into being at the height of the Cold War détente era, by which time western governments had come round to the view that engaging with the Soviets in a pan-European process might offer useful advantages. This was felt to be the case in two main areas. First, developing a military confidence-building regime could contribute to the stabilisation of the East–West stand-off and reduce the threat of large-scale aggression. Second, as part of the overall package, a human rights dimension was included at the insistence of both western governments and those of most of the so-called neutral and non-aligned states in Europe. This entailed the Soviet government, in common with virtually all other CSCE participants,⁷ signing up to a set of norms prescribing ‘civilised behaviour’, with regard to respecting and protecting the human rights of its citizens. For their part, the Soviets had, in the meantime, helped to facilitate the creation of the pan-European forum by conceding the principle that the Americans would be full participants in it.

The then Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, first explicitly used the phrase ‘Europe is our Common Home’ in a speech in November 1981. He did so against the backdrop of rising Cold War tensions. These were as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, unrest in Poland and, especially, the recent decision by NATO member states to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe from autumn 1983. Given this backdrop, Brezhnev’s appeal to a shared European destiny was not likely to sway many minds amongst western governments. Scepticism was reinforced by the fact that it seemed apparent from a reading of Brezhnev’s remarks that he was pursuing a divisive approach, albeit a subtly couched one. The tenor of his speech was to portray the US and Europe in an ‘us-and-them’ context. He argued that the US was a foreign power, dedicated to increasing the risks of war in Europe by effectively forcing its new nuclear missiles on European countries. He contrasted his vision of a Common European Home with the American view, which, he alleged, saw Europe merely as a ‘theater of military operations’.⁸ Thus, although the US had formally been accepted as a full participant in the CSCE in the 1970s, it seemed apparent that the Soviet government remained committed to trying to exploit any differences and to driving wedges between the US and its allies in Europe.

In the months immediately following his accession to power in 1985, Gorbachev’s speeches and other Soviet pronouncements pursued similar, traditional, themes. They were, thus, hardly likely to induce western states to significantly reassess Common Home ideas. A leading Sovietologist, Neil Malcolm, detected little difference between Gorbachev’s early foreign policy statements and those of his predecessors on this issue. Nevertheless, Malcolm argued that debates were going on behind the scenes that promised some sort of revision of the long-standing Soviet divisive approach.⁹ In his major public speech during the October 1985 visit to France, referred to earlier, Gorbachev had, at first sight, merely reiterated the traditional us-and-them view of the relationship between ‘Europe’ (including, in his reckoning, the Soviet Union) and the United States. Yet, on closer inspection, his remarks signalled a potentially significant concession in official Soviet thinking. He explicitly denied any divisive objectives and declared that ‘we are realists, and we understand how strong the ties–historical, political, economic–are that link Western Europe with the US’.¹⁰ This could be read as de facto acceptance on Gorbachev’s part that, like it or not, any new or revamped Common Home would need to be based on a definitive Soviet acceptance of full and permanent American participation.

Yet, at no time during the rest of his tenure did Gorbachev fully and finally resolve the question of the place and role of the US in his envisaged Common Home. His subsequent public statements varied and he seemed in two minds on the subject, doubtless reflecting tensions and divisions of opinion within the wider Soviet establishment. In a keynote speech in Prague in April 1987, the Soviet leader contended that ‘our concept of the “all-European home” by no means implies an intention to slam the doors shut on anyone’.¹¹ He repeated this formulation in his public apologia, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, which was published in Europe and the US in the summer of 1987. Here, however, Gorbachev muddied the waters significantly by reasserting elements of the traditional us-and-them worldview. He argued that the US was not only a non-European power, but that it was also one whose culture posed a ‘serious threat’ to that of Europe and Europeans. Indeed, Gorbachev’s comments in this book suggested that, although economic necessity and high politics undoubtedly required a substantial US–Soviet rapprochement by the late 1980s, on a personal level he regarded American culture and values as being both alien and threatening. He wrote, for example, that ‘one can only wonder that a deep, profoundly intelligent and inherently humane European culture is retreating to the background before the primitive revelry of violence and pornography and the flood of cheap feelings and low thoughts’ [from across the Atlantic]. ¹² Gorbachev’s view of the United States, in Perestroika, as being an essentially alien and worrisome power and presence in Europe, was also reflected in his statement that ‘we would not like to see anyone kick in the doors of the European home and take the head of the table at somebody else’s apartment. But then, that is the concern of the owner of the apartment’ [emphasis added].¹³ These comments, made at the time of ‘high perestroika’, when significant East–West arms control and disarmament agreements were at last being negotiated, reflected a remarkable apparent reversion to ‘old thinking’. The view that the US was alien, hostile and did not really deserve more than observer status in the European home would not have seemed out of place in a statement by any of his Cold War Soviet predecessors.

Gorbachev did, subsequently, shift ground once more on this question. In July 1989, he told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that ‘the USSR and the United States constitute a natural part of the European international-political structure. And their participation in its evolution is not only justified, but is also historically determined. No other approach is acceptable, nor could another approach bring forth results.’¹⁴ It was fairly obvious what Gorbachev’s intention was here–to try to head off those who suggested that the Soviet Union was at least as alien a presence in Europe as the United States. In this revised formulation, Gorbachev was clearly linking the place of the United States to that of the Soviet Union and arguing that ‘Europe’ should not be conceived of in excessively narrow geographical, historical or cultural terms.

By the summer of 1989 it was becoming increasingly apparent to many informed observers that the established Soviet-imposed order in Eastern Europe was likely to face growing and significant challenges. Indeed, Gorbachev’s Council of Europe address is best remembered for his acceptance of the view that it was no longer permissible for states to impose their own social, economic or political systems on others by coercive means. Probably, therefore, the Soviet leader realised that he would increasingly have to rely on persuasive argument if he wished to ensure that his state did not become progressively more isolated or marginalised from the European mainstream.

In summary: by the late 1980s, the Soviet agenda was decreasingly concerned with trying to exclude the United States or downgrade its role in Europe. Increasingly, the focus was on seeking to ensure the continued inclusion and involvement of the Soviet Union itself.

Thus, it can be doubted whether Mikhail Gorbachev sincerely believed that the US was ‘a natural part’ of Europe. Rather, this was most likely mainly a tactical formulation designed to head-off those who would challenge the Soviet Union’s own place in a Common European Home. By 1989, the parlous state of the Soviet economy, and the failure of the perestroika reform programmes to arrest its decline, made the Soviet leader increasingly keen–some might say desperate–to win sympathy and financial support amongst western governments. Overall, Gorbachev never formed a settled view of the role of the US in the Common European Home, and also never demonstrated that he had finally abandoned all vestiges of traditional Soviet divisive thinking on this issue.

The Soviet Union’s place in the home

In contrast to this, the stance taken by Gorbachev and his supporters on the place of the Soviet Union was unvarying and consistent. It was that history, culture and geography all demonstrated–indeed dictated –that the Soviet Union was fully a part of Europe and, hence, of a Common European Home. Gorbachev’s public speeches were replete with rhetoric along these lines. In Prague in 1987, for example, he asserted that ‘we attach paramount importance to the European direction of our foreign policy. Why is this? Above all, our peoples live on this continent; together with others, they are the legitimate heirs to the civilisation that arose here, and they are making an inalienable contribution to its development.’¹⁵ This was a theme that he repeated consistently through his years in power.

Gorbachev’s pitch for his state to be considered as an integral part of European civilisation and culture was closely bound up with his drive to de-ideologise Soviet foreign policy. In his memoirs he wrote that:

Reflecting on the goals to set for our new foreign policy, I found it increasingly difficult to see the multicoloured patchwork of Europe’s political map as I used to see it before. I was thinking about the common roots of this multiform and yet fundamentally indivisible European civilization, and perceived with growing awareness the artificiality of the political blocs and the archaic nature of the ‘iron curtain’.¹⁶

Gorbachev was asserting that the ideological divide, which had formed the heart of the Cold War order in Europe, was, ultimately, less important than the underlying cultural and civilisation commonalties which formed the foundations for the construction of the Common European Home. The logical correlation of this, if he meant it, was that at some point the Soviet Union would have to decisively break with its past Cold War behaviour. In its various guises this behaviour had been premised on the view that ideological distinctions were paramount and, further, that any defections of states from the Soviet to the western camp could not be permitted. This logic had informed the Soviet decisions to violently suppress dissident and alleged secessionist groups and movements in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1953, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Gorbachev’s new logic arguably played the key role in precipitating the process that led to the collapse of communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe in the second half of 1989. During his Council of Europe speech, in what was seen as a clear signal that the Soviet Union would not intervene to maintain the Cold War status quo by force, Gorbachev had declared that:

The fact that European states belong to different social systems is a reality. The recognition of this historical fact and respect for the sovereign right of every nation to freely choose a social system constitute the major prerequisites for a normal European process... The social and political orders in particular countries have changed in the past and may change in the future. But this change is the exclusive affair of the people of that country and their choice. Any interference in domestic affairs and any attempts to restrict the sovereignty of states–friends, allies or any others–are inadmissible.¹⁷

This clear signal from the Soviet leader to the effect that the communist governments in Eastern Europe were on their own helped galvanise the reformers in those states that were already implementing change (that is, Hungary and Poland). It also gave a fillip to dissidents and protest movements in those that were not (the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania).

By thus de-ideologising Soviet policy and showing a willingness to ‘let Eastern Europe go’, Gorbachev was seeking to create conditions for further reductions in Soviet military spending and increased economic and technological assistance from western governments. Yet, although this was the most pressing immediate need, the impulse for the Gorbachev changes went deeper. Alan Collins has argued ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Soviet Union, Russia and the ‘Common European Home’
• 2 Dramatis Personae
• 3 Unfulfilled partnerships
• 4 The Kosovo Crisis
• 5 The New Millennium
• 6 Russia–NATO Relations
• Notes