Why? Because, as Ms. Crawford concludes, "The Bosnian war provided NATO with the renewed legitimacy that it needed to expand eastward. It left no doubt in the minds of both European and American leaders, that other institutions in which Russia participated would be too conflict-ridden and too weak to provide a common security umbrella for Europe. NATO enlargement was thus an unambiguous strategy to keep Russia out of the security institution in Europe that really counted." (pp. 16-17)
Russia joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program on June 22, 1994. But, President Boris Yeltsin justified the move this way: "NATO's plans to expand eastward"became a threat to Russia's security"The task was to minimize the negative consequences of the North Atlantic alliance's expansion and prevent a new split in Europe." [Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life, p. 667] Unfortunately, NATO's decision to bomb the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 quickly demonstrated to Russia that it had little power to control NATO from within.
Russia's relationship with NATO took its most serious nosedive in 1999, when NATO began bombing Serbia to make Serbian forces stop their unconscionable and criminal ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Serbian forces were in the process of killing some 10,000 Kosovar Albanians, raping and gang-raping countless women to produce Serbian offspring, and forcibly displacing some 1.5 million people from their homes.
In her examination of Russia's relations with NATO during the late 1990s, Sharyl Cross noted: in 1999, "Russian officials responded to the first full-scale intervention in the 50 year history of the Alliance by suspending relations with NATO. NATO's representative was asked to leave Moscow immediately and Russia's military liaison representatives were removed from Brussels. Objection to NATO airstrikes in former Yugoslavia generated adamant and even emotional outrage throughout the Russian political-military elite and society. The revision of NATO's Strategic Concept to enable NATO to intervene in situations beyond the borders of member nations led Russians to conclude that the Alliance had become an offensive, rather than solely defensive, military organization that could one day threaten the Russian Federation." ["Russia and NATO Toward the 21st Century," p. 2]
In 2003, using the false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda to manipulate an American public still angry about and fearful from al-Qaeda's attacks on 11 September 2001, the administration of George W. Bush ordered the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq -- perhaps the worst war crime since those committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The invasion precipitated an incipient civil war between the Sunnis and Shias, give rise to an anti-American insurgency, caused a massive destruction of property, cost Iraq the lives of least 100,000 innocent men, women and children and forced the displacement of at least 4 million people from their homes. (Thus far, Putin's intrusion into the Crimea has caused nothing like that.)
France, Germany and Russia ended up on the right side of history when they opposed America's invasion. But, none of them threatened economic sanctions against the U.S. for its brazen violation of international law. Their feckless behavior brings to mind the observation made by an Athenian in Thucydides' "Melian dialogue:" "You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." (But, Russia can play that game, too.)
In 2008, Russia finally began to defend its national interests against the West's never-ending attempts to encircle it with states incorporated into the European Union and NATO. President Putin did so in Georgia by seizing upon Georgia's reckless shelling of Russian peacekeepers in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, to invade Georgia. As the New York Times reported on November 6, 2008, "The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired. Georgia's army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its brigades, seized and looted their bases, captured equipment and roamed the country's roads at will." Ultimately Russia supported the right of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to secede from Georgia.
Georgia's bigger mistake, however, was it publicly expressed desire to join NATO. Professor Stephen F. Cohen -- who, in my 47 years of studying Russia, has probably been the most astute expert about that country, with the exception, perhaps, of George Kennan -- probably got it right when he observed: --the fundamental issue here is that, three or four years ago, Putin made absolutely clear he had two red lines. You remember Obama's red lines in Syria? But Putin was serious. One was the former Soviet republic of Georgia. NATO and NATO influence couldn't come there. The other was Ukraine. We crossed both. You got a war in Georgia in 2008, and you have got today in Ukraine because we, the United States and Europe, crossed Putin's red line. Now, you can debate whether he has a right to that red line, but let's at least discuss it."
I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin. I made my first public protest against him in 1999, when he permitted my friend, Igor Sutyagin, to be arrested on the trumped-up charge of espionage. Moreover, I've temporarily ceased visiting Russia -- even the St. Petersburg that I love -- due to my outrage about political repression in Russia and its slide from incipient democracy toward autocracy.
But, I reject the views of Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Hillary Clinton who recklessly compared Putin to Hitler. I also reject the facile allegations made by Rachel Maddow and Martha Raddatz (a so-called "journalist" whose mind has been completely captured by sympathy for the U.S. military) who assert that Putin is "mad." After all, as Henry Kissinger has observed: "The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one."
Moreover, I resent the hypocrisy of President Obama's Secretary of State, John Kerry. On March 2, 2014, Kerry commented on Russia's intervention in Ukraine by making the following observation: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext." (Germany's Angela Merkel said something similarly hypocritical.) Yet, Mr. Kerry voted to support America's illegal 21st century invasion of Iraq and Ms. Merkel did nothing to stop it.
Why my rejection and resentment? Because, I completely understand how President Putin could believe that Russia's national interests have been under an unrelenting assault by an expansionistic NATO and European Union. There's solid evidence to support that point of view. And it goes back to President Clinton's decision to renege on the promise that James Baker made to Mikhail Gorbachev.
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