Why Eastern Countries knock on NATO
After Finland, Sweden has also formalized the request to join NATO. There are many Eastern European countries that, since 1997, have knocked on the doors of the Atlantic alliance. Stefano Magni's article for Atlantico Quotidiano
Sweden, after Finland, has also formalized the request to join NATO. The path, for both, promises to be difficult, especially due to the veto threatened by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on behalf of Turkey. And it may not be the only one, given that the Croatia of Zoran Milanovic (socialist) had aired the "veto" option even before the two requests were formalized. It is clear that, expanding, NATO ends up including countries with very divergent interests and programs, even in a moment of unity in the face of danger. In addition to internal discontent, Putin's Russia alternates threats, sanctions and reassuring tones, not necessarily in that order.
But in the overturned reality of the Italian cultural panorama, the request of the two Nordic countries to join a defensive alliance becomes a "threat", while that of Russia is seen as an understandable "reaction". The tweet of professor Donatella Di Cesare (professor of theoretical philosophy at the La Sapienza University of Rome) is significant:
"The untimely annexation of Sweden and Finland to NATO would be a further escalation, a challenge to the Russian Federation, an act of war while pretending to talk about peace".
The request for membership becomes an "annexation" and the challenge is posed by those who defend themselves, not by those who threaten. A masterpiece of the two-minded. And a similar mentality allows us to understand how distorted the Italian debate, now over ten years old, is on what is called the "expansion" of NATO to the East, considered as the first cause of the war in Ukraine.
The so-called "expansion" is actually a flight to the West of countries that had just emerged from half a century of Soviet domination and feared to end up under post-Soviet Russia again. You will always find, on television or in geopolitical magazines, who will tell you that Moscow has become aggressive only due to the enlargement of NATO to the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and the former USSR. But this reasoning still overturns cause and effect. In the 1990s, the countries of the former USSR (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and the former Warsaw Pact (especially Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania) already had every reason to fear a new period of Russian expansionism. Let's see some of them.
On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union broke up, after a coup organized by the KGB and the army, aimed at preserving the Union even by force, had failed in August. When the USSR dissolved, both the army and the KGB never admitted defeat. Although in crisis, demoralized and under-equipped, the Russian army immediately began a series of armed interventions, sold abroad as peacekeeping missions and under the aegis of the new Commonwealth of Independent States (which included almost all the former Soviet republics ). The Russians intervened in Moldova, where they carved out a new pro-Russian state in Transnistria, still independent in fact, but not by law. They did the same in Georgia, ensuring the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And in Azerbaijan, where they protected (and still protect) the Armenian separatist republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russian, Russian-speaking and Russophile minorities, as well as traditional Armenian allies, allowed the post-Soviet army to continue its work of controlling the former Soviet republics. Other Russian minorities are present in Estonia and Latvia and in almost all the nations of Central Europe, however there are ethnic problems which, if wisely exploited by the Kremlin, can lead to conflicts. The interventionism of the Russian army was the first source of concern for all the countries that had just freed themselves from Moscow. In the following years, the brutal way in which the Army repressed Chechnya's separatism by invading the region was another sign that Russia would still be a very dangerous neighbor.
A second reason is there for all to see, just look at the map of Central Europe: Kaliningrad. A Russian exclave on the Baltic, nestled between Poland and Lithuania, could be an opportunity if it became a commercial hub, a special development zone, a tax-free port. But Russia had very different projects for that territory right from the start, militarizing it to the maximum. Kaliningrad became an impenetrable, military and economically depressed area. Despite many improvements in the 2000s, it still remains one of the most militarized areas in Europe and is also home to dozens of nuclear warheads. The Baltics and Poland experience that disturbing Russian presence like a blade aimed at their throats. And they are not all wrong.
President Boris Yeltsin (in office from 1991 to 2000) had plans for liberal modernization and for Russia's rapprochement with the West. This friendly presence in the Kremlin has allowed Russia and Europe not to immediately get to the fight since the 1990s. But Yeltsin's power has always been very fragile and contested. In October 1993, following an institutional clash between the Presidency and Parliament, the nationalists, allied with the Communists, tried to take power. They did not succeed, but in the former Soviet republics and in those of the former Warsaw Pact, there remained the fear of a red-brown coup d'état that would put Russia back on the rails of expansionism. The coup failed then, but it also left its mark in the Kremlin: Yeltsin, on that occasion, realized that the army was divided and ideologically inclined to support the red-browns. The risk of civil war was real. From late 1993 onwards, Yeltsin had to grant much more freedom of action to generals who were explicitly nostalgic for the USSR and cohabit with post-Soviet and anti-Western governments (such as Primakov's).
Are these reasons enough to be afraid? Yes, for those who have lived under Moscow's heel for half a century. And this is the reason that prompted the Baltic countries and those of the former Warsaw Pact to knock furiously on NATO's door, until we opened it. The same door has not been opened to Georgia and Ukraine. The first was invaded by the Russians in 2008, the second from 2014. Then we wonder why Finland and Sweden want to enter?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/est-europa-nato/ on Sun, 22 May 2022 06:01:58 +0000.