No More NATO

In a couple of weeks' time, I will have tutees who were born in 1991, the year in which NATO ceased to serve any good purpose, although it has since served, and it still does serve, several extremely bad ones. So that was an entire generation ago.

As Mark Hackard writes:

The hysteria from U.S. “conservatives” over the White House’s decision not to base missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland has been as shrill as it was predictable. The editors of National Review, the flagship publication of the right-liberal half of the establishment, rose to the bait:

"The president has sent a chilling message about American resolve in the face of Russian saber-rattling. Georgia, Ukraine, and the rest of the world have learned a disturbing lesson."

Any step away from the stupidity of needless confrontation with Russia chills the blood of neoconservative policy wonks. Their ability to transport us back to 1938 Munich is unfailing. What will become of plucky, freedom-loving Georgia and Ukraine’s long-sought accession to NATO, complete with a war guarantee from Washington? U.S. credibility to nations of marginal interest will surely disintegrate if we choose to abstain from provoking Moscow!

While the administration’s announcement may have cast a sinister shadow on the catered luncheons of think-tanks in our nation’s capital, the disturbance will pass. Obama’s team has said nothing of respecting legitimate Russian concerns in its sphere of interests. Secretary of Defense Gates spoke mainly of repositioning and optimizing anti-missile architecture. This new initiative would likely include sites offshore and in southeastern Europe, with the possibility of system deployment somewhere in the Caucasus. Global democracy enthusiasts should take heart; they can still look forward to a potential standoff with Russian forces in the Black Sea basin.

Prior to Obama’s change in direction, U.S. officials were engaged in a full-court press for a powerful radar facility in the Czech Republic and interceptor batteries in Poland. One wonders how our diplomats kept a straight face as they claimed that the system concerned solely Iran and had nothing at all to do with Russia. Yet magical thinking now becomes reality, as the White House’s new concession to Moscow has little to do with Russia and much to do with Iran.

The U.S. is looking to isolate Teheran with an effective sanctions regime, but in order to do so it needs the Kremlin’s cooperation. Russia could easily circumvent measures aimed at blocking Iranian gasoline imports. Since the U.S. and Israel are contemplating air strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, the Russians could supply sophisticated antiaircraft systems like the S-300 to complicate any such operation. The White House is hoping for something like Russian acquiescence to a resolution at the UN Security Council, but Moscow is still waiting for the rest of the deal—namely, an explicit U.S. recognition of Russia as a major regional power.

Under the pressure of independent Israeli action, the Obama administration is moving to deal with Iran in the near term. Striking bargains with the Kremlin now would bring the U.S. closer to a showdown with the ayatollahs, a goal long advocated by the neoconservatives. With the White House leaning in the same direction, the editors of National Review and the entire AEI-Commentary complex should be overjoyed that their desires are closer to fulfillment.

The Russians will demand more than the cancellation of U.S. missile defense plans for Eastern Europe in return for any agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow has regularly opposed solutions to the issue based on force or coercion, though not out of any special love for Teheran. Russian strategy is informed by the knowledge that Washington can meddle less in inner Eurasia if it is engaged in the Middle East. If U.S. policymakers are on course for yet another intervention in the Islamic world, the men in the Kremlin won’t stop them, but they will find a way to extract geopolitical advantage from the next proposed war.

If the United States or Israel launches an air campaign against Iran (and effective gasoline sanctions would heighten the possibility of conflict), a third active front would be opened in the interminable and ill-conceived “Long War”. U.S. troops in Iraq would likely face renewed mass strife and an Iranian-sponsored insurgency. Energy prices would rise considerably and expose the structural deficiencies of the supposed economic recovery at home. Iran’s intelligence service and its militant proxy Hezbollah maintain a formidable network capable of carrying out large-scale terrorist attacks in the West.

Attacking Iran is a recipe for disaster that will produce consequences foreseen and unforeseen for the United States. Despite the obvious dangers involved, the White House is setting itself squarely on the road to conflict. Russia, meanwhile, has opposed action against Teheran, but will gain freedom to maneuver as Washington becomes entangled in a struggle with Persian power. Perhaps, when this next imperial adventure has produced its share of death, ruin, and unsustainable debt, the neoconservative commentariat will ascribe the entire debacle to a plot engineered by the Kremlin. How else could such pure and noble souls be led astray?

National Review columnist David Satter fears that scaling back U.S. antagonism toward Moscow will result in “serious negative implications for the cohesion of the West.” Concerning hostility to Russia, there will be plenty in the future—Washington is still bent on dominating Eurasia and its energy networks. As for the West, Satter’s lament over its loss of political cohesion is in vain. The postmodern empire “conservatives” champion has always been a dissolute and spiritually bankrupt enterprise.

Indeed it has. And, as Pat Buchanan writes:

In August, the Georgian navy seized a Turkish tanker carrying fuel to Abkhazia, Georgia’s former province whose declaration of independence a year ago is recognized by Russia but not the West.

The Turkish captain was sentenced to 24 years. When Ankara protested, he was released. Abkhazia has now threatened to sink any Georgian ship interfering in its “territorial waters,” but it has no navy.

Russia, however, has a Black Sea Fleet and a treaty of friendship with Abkhazia, and has notified Tbilisi that the Russian coast guard will assure, peacefully, the sea commerce of Abkhazia.

Not backing down, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili—who launched and lost a war for South Ossetia in 48 hours in August 2008—has declared the blockade of Abkhazia, which he claims as Georgian national territory, will remain in force. And he has just appointed as defense minister a 29-year-old ex-penitentiary boss with a questionable record on human rights who wants to tighten ties to NATO.

We have here the makings of a naval clash that Georgia, given Russian air, naval and land forces in the eastern Black Sea, will lose.

What is Saakashvili up to? He seems intent on provoking a new crisis to force NATO to stand with him and bring the United States in on his side—against Russia. Ultimate goal: Return the issue of his lost provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back onto the world’s front burner.

While such a crisis may be in the interests of Saakashvili and his Russophobic U.S neoconservative retainers, it is the furthest thing from U.S. national interests. President Obama should have Joe Biden, Saakashvili’s pal, phone him up and instruct him thus:

“Mikheil, if you interfere with the sea commerce of Abkhazia, and provoke Russia into a Black Sea war, you fight it yourself. The Sixth Fleet is not going to steam into the Black Sea and pull your chestnuts out of the fire, old buddy. It will be your war, not ours.”

Nor is the Abkhazian crisis the only one brewing in the Black Sea.

Last month, Russian naval troops blocked Ukrainian bailiffs from seizing navigational equipment from a lighthouse outside Sevastopol, the Crimean base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet for two centuries.

The Sevastopol lease, however, runs out in 2017. And Kiev has informed Moscow there will be no renewal. Russia’s fleet will have to vacate Sevastopol and the Crimea, which belonged to Russia before Nikita Khrushchev ceded the entire peninsula to Ukraine in 1954 in a “brotherly gesture” while Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.

Russia also bears a deep animus toward Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, for trying to bring his country into NATO. Yushchenko, whose approval rating is in single digits, has been seen, ever since the U.S.-backed Orange Revolution of 2004 that brought him to power, as America’s man in Kiev.

Moreover, as religious, cultural, ethnic, and historic ties between Kiev and Moscow go back centuries, Russians remain unreconciled to the loss of what they regard as the cradle of their country.

What is America’s vital interest in all these quarrels? Zero.

The idea, mentioned in hawkish quarters, of having the Sixth Fleet take over the vacated naval base at Sevastopol would be as rash and provocative an act as having Chinese warships move into Guantanamo, were Havana to expel the United States.

But that is unlikely to happen. For Obama appears to be rolling back the George W. Bush policy of expanding NATO into former republics of the Soviet Union.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are already members, and Bush and John McCain were anxious to bring in Ukraine and Georgia. But, as Bush’s inaction during the Russia-Georgia war revealed, America is not going to fight Russia over who controls Abkhazia, North or South Ossetia, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya or Georgia. All are beyond any vital interest or legitimate sphere of influence of the United States.

With his cancellation of the U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic—a shield designed to defend against a nonexistent Iranian ICBM—Obama sent two message to Moscow.

First, Obama believes entente with Russia is a surer guarantee of the peace and security of Eastern Europe than any U.S. weapons system. Second, Obama puts Washington-Moscow ties before any U.S. military ties to NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

Which means NATO is approaching an existential crisis.

Almost all NATO troops, except U.S., are gone from Iraq, and the alliance’s minimal commitment to Afghanistan is ending with no victory in sight. NATO’s expansion eastward has come to a halt. Ukraine and Georgia are not coming in. And the United States is not going to place troops, warships or missiles any closer than they are now to Russia’s frontiers.

“NATO must go out of area, or go out of business,” said Sen. Richard Lugar at the Cold War’s end. NATO went out of area, and is coming back with its tail between its legs. The alternative arises.

Indeed it does.