If the US were to deny these nations the opportunity to defend themselves by joining NATO, it would have amounted to the US also withdrawing its recognition of their sovereignty, and this would have been unacceptable to anyone who had any hope of a better world.
First of all, we are now
in no way “denying” Ukraine “
the opportunity to defend itself,” let alone “
withdrawing recognition of its sovereignty,” and I remind you it is
not now in NATO!
Indeed, we very mistakenly announced as early as 2008 under George Bush that Ukraine & Georgia “will join NATO” — at a time when even the majority of people in those countries did
not favor NATO membership. This was provocative madness, as many reasonable statesmen pointed out at the time.
Though it is not in NATO we are now financing most of Ukraine’s government and military with billions of dollars. NATO countries are sheltering its women and children refugees. We are providing modern training, modern weapons and super-valuable intelligence and communications equipment. It seems you are as hung up on “NATO membership” as is Russia.
The original verbal promises to Gorbachev and others that the U.S. would
not expand NATO eastward worked well in mollifying Russia and encouraging it to withdraw its own troops from Eastern Europe, allowed the unification of Germany, and ultimately won independence for Ukraine. It encouraged the initial break-up of the Soviet Union and at least opened up the possibility of dramatic democratic change within Russia. Breaking those oral promises and expanding NATO to the East had precisely the opposite effect.
Russian borders have moved far to the West as a result of WWII, as have Polish borders. Russia has no further claim on Polish lands. So what is it with Polish authoritarianism and paranoia toward Russia today?
I do not defend Russian imperial instincts, pan-Slavism, Putin’s interfering in Ukraine, or his invasion. The huge Czarist and then Soviet Empires, like the giant existing Russian Federation, for historical reasons developed under conditions extremely hostile to democracy, and Russian political culture is today still profoundly reactionary, statist and hostile to “rule of law.” The “oil curse” is another factor at work there.
Russia should have been handled more carefully by the West. Perhaps it would have made no difference. All we can say is Russian state paranoia runs deep and our policies did not help. Having NATO membership and its “guarantee of protection” in case of war may ironically be giving countries like Poland a dangerous sense of invulnerability and encouraging their own desire to “rectify historical injustices” against Russia. Russian aggression in Eastern Europe — with or without Ukraine (or hypothetically Poland) being in NATO and on the front line — would bring a mobilization of NATO countries and force them to be more responsible for their own self defense. They are already realizing they have been too complacent.
The idea of a “neutral” Austria and Finland worked even when paranoid Stalin was alive. It is hardly inconceivable that a neutral Ukraine would have been a better goal for U.S. foreign policy, and even for Ukraine itself.
But we are where we are. The past cannot be changed. We must defend Ukraine against this Russian attempt to destroy it. Crimea is slightly different. There remains — we have all but ignored this except in the case of Kosovo — still an internationally recognized “right of self determination” — which means that there are real possibilities for a diplomatic settlement over Crimea which is not aimed at satisfying either all Ukrainian or all Russian claims.
