Whose “Near Abroad”?
By Linc Bloomfield Moscow’s announcement on July 14 that it is suspending its participation on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty was bad news for efforts to stabilize and pacify a continent which for a half-century was split asunder and frequently threatened by catastrophic warfare. But this unwelcome Russian move should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. The underlying reasons have been obvious since the 1990’s.
In the Clinton administration a decision was made to extend NATO to the borders of the old Soviet Union, bringing Western military might to parts of the former Soviet Union Moscow terms its “near abroad” The spirit was evidently “Hey, we won the Cold War, there’s nothing the defeated Russians can do about it, we have as much right as they do there”. Most neuralgically for Russians, the push included the Baltic States the Russians abused at the same time it defined as a red line in the Russian security perimeter. In our day, the Bush administration decided to emplace missile defense launchers in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic, arguing that it would be a limited deployment aimed exclusively at Iranian missiles that might be headed for the West. Why does this matter, given Russian military weakness? Among other commonsense reasons, it matters because Russia is the only country that can destroy the United States with its nuclear arsenal.
Washington’s logic is reminiscent of WMD claims before the Iraq war. If Iraq had WMD, and if the WMD was deliverable, and if it was likely to be somehow targeted on the United States, and if the WMD included Condoleezza Rice’s famous “mushroom cloud”, the 2003 invasion would have been fully justified. In the new case, if Iran were likely to develop deliverable ballistic missiles, and if it intends to fire these against Europe or America, and if Poland and the Czech Republic are the only places where this can be effectively defended against, then the plan would be justified. But neither of the two sets of “ifs” are credible..
What seems to be missing are some realities under the heading of psychology 101 and American history 202. I defer to the great experts on Russia. But eight visits during the declining years of the Soviet Union persuades me that persisting in the new Russia are classic underlying feelings combining pride, humiliation, and dreams of revenge, all of which are now surfacing as oil riches give Moscow the confidence it lacked when we started to push into their “near abroad” and lost empire..
The astonishing thing is that no one in Washington seems to recognize the similarity in our own Monroe Doctrine, for two centuries a core policy that established the Western Hemisphere a “keep out” zone for foreign strategic penetration. The Monroe Doctrine was based on precisely the kind of attachment to a security zone surrounding the homeland as the comparable attachment that Russians seem to feel. Indeed, in 1823 the United States, like Russia today, was a weak power in a world of assertive great powers, but one that felt able to announce a policy that defined our own “near abroad” And surely no one will forget the enormous alarm in 1962 from the appearance of Soviet missiles 90 miles from the American shore.
When Moscow brushed off President Bush’s explanation that the proposed deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic was aimed exclusively at Iran and posed no threat to Russia, it was reminiscent of the Soviet reaction in the early 1980’s to President Reagan’s dream of a “Star Wars” anti-missile shield Americans may have thought the idea a fantasy. But filtered through their own mindset, Soviet strategists saw it as potentially nullifying their entire offensive systems. Are we that certain of the way they interpret the proposed new deployments?
Russian objections seem to baffle Mr. Bush and his advisers, including his resident Soviet expert Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice As national security adviser Stephen Hadley was quoted as saying “I cannot tell you, for the life of me, why they say no”. For my part, I cannot tell you, for the life of me, why otherwise bright people fail to understand the concerns of others with sensitive borderlands One can only assume that they used the tried and true analytic method of looking into a mirror and saying “Ah yes,. that’s how those foreigners will react”. In time, the bipartisan triumphalist push into the Russian “near abroad” may turn out to be the most colossal strategic blunder in modern US history
July 18th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Thank you Linc. I am delighted to be back on your list. Fascinating analysis.
George
July 18th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Linc,
I think this will resolve itself. Iraq never had WMD and the administation knew it. Russia has plenty of WMD, everyone knows it.
We were able to do something stupid in Iraq because we were deluded into thinking we could, and there was the perception that success inevitable.
The irony is that because we know Russia is no WMD fraud, they are the real article, we will be protected from our own hubris.
It’s a variation on the idea that people are more polite to you if they think you are armed. We do, after all, treat countries we know are able to destroy our cities with much more respect than we do the ones we know cannot.
Rod
July 19th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I am surprised that no thought of history is present in our current administararion. What goes around comes around.