Constantine Pleshakov - The Crimean Nexus

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] “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).

The summit condemned Russia’s “illegitimate occupation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine” and ordered the creation of a “spearhead” force of several thousand troops prepared to deploy within a few days to respond to similar crises. Ten days later, 1,300 NATO troops from fifteen countries, including 200 Americans, began a military exercise called Rapid Trident around the Ukrainian city of Lviv. The Russian Foreign Ministry called that a continuation of NATO’s eastward expansion and promised an “adequate” Russian response. [7] Ibid.; “US and NATO Troops Begin Ukraine Military Exercise,” BBC, September 15, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29204505 (retrieved September 15, 2014); Russian Foreign Ministry press secretary Aleksandr Lukashevich’s statement, Novobsor.ru, September 11, 2014, http://novoboz.ru/2014/09/11/152500 (retrieved August 21, 2015).

On a broader scale, NATO’s collective role remains problematic. The strategic response to the Crimean annexation has come mainly from the United States, whose Sixth Fleet, headquartered in Naples and traditionally focused on Libya, Egypt, and the Levant, has taken a renewed interest in the Black Sea. Typically nowadays, one U.S. warship is always on patrol in those waters. The NATO reconnaissance planes monitoring the area, shadowed and occasionally dangerously intercepted by Russian jets, are American too. [8] “Raketnyi esminets USS Cole i shtabnoi korabl 6-go flota SshA USS Mount Whitney vkhodyat v Chernoye more,” Black Sea News , October 10, 2014, www.blackseanews.net/read/88801 (retrieved 11 October 2014).

NATO membership for Ukraine remains on the table. President Petro Poroshenko repeatedly voices his belief that “there is no other system in the world but NATO” that could ensure Ukraine’s security. Although the prospect seems to arouse zero enthusiasm at NATO headquarters, it remains a faint possibility. The same applied to NATO membership for the Republic of Georgia, which by no stretch of imagination could be called a North Atlantic country. [9] Thomas Barrabi, “Ukraine’s NATO Entrance Amid Russian Aggression ‘At Least 6–7 Years’ Away, Poroshenko Says,” International Business Times , June 30, 2015, www.ibtimes.com/ukraines-nato-entrance-amid-russian-aggression-least-6-7-years-away-poroshenko-says-1989763 , June 30, 2015 (retrieved August 22, 2015).

Rather dramatically, in December 2015, NATO invited another Eastern European nation to join the alliance: Montenegro. That was NATO’s first expansion since 2009, and Russia angrily promised “retaliatory actions.” Geopolitically, Montenegro is a burden. The country of 650,000 people has a military force of just 2,000, and its territory is hard to defend: the Adriatic Sea in the west provides an invader with several convenient gateways, and in the east Russia’s friend Serbia waits. [10] “Nato Invitation to Montenegro Prompts Russia Warning,” BBC, December 2, 2015, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34981973 (retrieved December 2, 2015).

Despite the vast military power of the United States, there are many spaces on the globe where its presence simply cannot be introduced, even with casualties. The question is whether NATO has expanded to the edge of such a space, or past the edge.

The Crimea crisis has activated debates among competing schools in American foreign policy—neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, realists, isolationists, and paleoconservatives, to name just a few.

The harshest critique of America’s handling of the crisis came from isolationists. Ron Paul called President Obama’s sanctions against Russia “criminal” and declared that Crimea had a right to self-determination. Paul Craig Roberts angrily commented that on the hundredth anniversary of World War I, the Western powers were “again sleepwalking into destructive conflict,” because “Washington interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine” had led to developments beyond American control, raising the possibility of a “great power confrontation, which could be the end of all of us.” Oliver Stone announced that he would be making a documentary on the events in Kiev, dubbing what had happened “America’s soft power technique called ‘Regime Change 101.’ …The West has maintained the dominant narrative of ‘Russia in Crimea’ whereas the true narrative is ‘USA in Ukraine.’” [11] Paul Craig Roberts, “Sleepwalking Again,” Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, February 22, 2014, www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/22/sleepwalking (retrieved July 4, 2014); Damien Sharkov, “Oliver Stone Meets Toppled Ukrainian President Yanukovych, Accuses CIA of Sparking Coup,” Newsweek , December 31, 2014, www.newsweek.com/oliver-stone-meets-toppled-ukrainian-president-accuses-cia-sparking-coup-295814 (retrieved January 6, 2015).

Interventionists were largely pleased with the regime change in Kiev. The British historian Andrew Wilson called it an uprising “on behalf of everybody in the former Soviet Union,” a delayed “anti-Soviet revolution” that, he hoped, might inspire copycat rebellions in other post-Soviet nations, Russia included. But for that to happen, interventionist intellectuals not unreasonably concluded, the White House had to intervene more aggressively. Michael McFaul, a “specialist in revolution” and the U.S. ambassador to Moscow for two years during the Obama administration, warned from his premature retirement that Putin’s regime “must be isolated. The strategy of seeking to change Kremlin behavior through engagement, integration and rhetoric is over for now. …There must be sanctions, including against those people and entities—propagandists, state-owned enterprises, Kremlin-tied bankers—that act as instruments of Mr. Putin’s coercive power. Conversely, individuals and companies not connected to the government must be supported, including those seeking to take assets out of Russia or emigrate.” [12] Andrew Wilson, Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), ix; Michael A. McFaul, “Confronting Putin’s Russia,” New York Times , March 24, 2014.

The leading neoconservative Robert Kagan saw the crisis as a test of America’s ability to lead the world: “Many Americans and their political leaders in both parties, including President Obama, have either forgotten or rejected the assumptions that undergirded American foreign policy for the past seven decades. In particular, American foreign policy may be moving away from the sense of global responsibility that equated American interests with the interests of many others around the world and back toward the defense of narrower, more parochial national interests.” [13] Kagan, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire.”