The Economist January 8th 2022 17
BriefingPutin talks to NATOA
s the coldwar reached its denoue
ment three decades ago, the West was
careful to temper its elation with magna
nimity. “I have not jumped up and down on
the Berlin Wall,” President George H.W.
Bush pointed out to Mikhail Gorbachev,
the last Soviet leader, at a summit in Malta
in 1989. Months later James Baker, Ameri
ca’s secretary of state, delivered an assur
ance to Mr Gorbachev in Moscow: “If we
maintain a presence in a Germany that is a
part of nato...there would be no extension
of nato’s jurisdiction...one inch to the
east.” Even as the Soviet Union crumbled in
1991, John Major, Britain’s prime minister,
repeated the pledge. “We are not talking
about strengthening of nato,” he said.
Yet strengthened natowas. In 30 years
the alliance has expanded more than
1,000km to the east of the former front line
dividing Germany. A bloc that once shared
only a slender border with Russia, in Nor
way’s northern fringes, now encompasses
the Baltic states, former Soviet territories
within 200km of St Petersburg and 600km
of Moscow. Seven of the eight former
members of the Warsaw Pact—the Soviet
Union’s answer to nato—have become
part of nato(see map). At a summit in Bu
charest in 2008, America persuaded the
rest of nato to declare that Ukraine and
Georgia “will become” members—a pro
mise reiterated last month.
For Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president,
this was both an indignity and an en
croachment. “What the usis doing in Uk
raine is at our doorstep,” he thundered at a
meeting with military officers on Decem
ber 21st. “They should understand that we
have nowhere further to retreat. Do they
think we’ll just watch idly?”
The question was rhetorical. Mr Putin
has spent much of the past year mobilising
a vast army near the border with Ukraine.
The force of perhaps 100,000 troops may
be the largest military buildup in Europe
since the cold war (see Europe section).
With that stick in hand, he issued demands
on December 17th for “legal guarantees” of
Russia’s security, in the form of draft trea
ties with America and nato. In practice, Mr
Putin was calling both for a massive retreaton nato’s part and the creation of a semi
formal Russian sphere of influence in east
ern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Consider a few of the treaties’ provi
sions. The pact with natowould require
the alliance not only to rule out further ex
pansion, but also to forgo military cooper
ation of any kind with Ukraine and other
nonmembers in the former Soviet realm.
Russia would not be bound by any recipro
cal measures. Nor would natobe allowed
to place troops or weapons on the soil of its
own members in eastern Europe, a condi
tion that would involve dismantling the
small natoforces deployed in Poland and
the Baltic states after Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The agreement with America would entail
the withdrawal of American nuclear weap
ons from Europe, without any constraint
on Russia’s considerable arsenal of compa
rable tactical nuclear weapons.
Even many Russian observers were
stunned by the audacity of these demands.
“Dear Father Christmas,” quipped Elena
Chernenko, a journalist at Kommersant, a
leading Russian newspaper, “Please give
me a live unicorn for the new year.” That
the proposals were published openly, rath
er than presented with the discretion typi
cal of sensitive negotiations, suggested
that Russia knew they were unlikely to fly,
notes Dmitri Trenin, a former army officer
who is director of the Carnegie Moscow
Centre, a thinktank. Veteran Russia
watchers are struck by the unexplainedRussia’s menacing of Ukraine is unlikely to induce natoto retreat.
It may have the opposite effectPutin’s brinkmanship