If nato hadn’t expanded
 

IF NATO HADN’T EXPANDED
By: Cheryl Rofer Lawyers, Guns & Money News - 08-04-21
Re: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com...hadnt-expanded

Tags: HISTORY - MILITARY DOCTRINE - RUSSIA

Last weekend, Dan Nexon published a piece I wrote at the Duck of Minerva.

There’s an ongoing argument about NATO expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union, among scholars of the period and more casual commentators. There have been a number of sub-arguments, including whether Russia was promised that NATO would not expand. That has more or less been settled: Although some statements were made to that effect, they were not official commitments.

More broadly, arguments about NATO expansion tend to assume that if NATO hadn’t expanded, Europe would look about the same as it does now, but Russia would be less aggressive, and more accommodations would be possible.

Having co-chaired a NATO Advanced Research Workshop in Estonia and spent some time working with Estonians on a major environmental cleanup, I’ve recognized many paths that could have been taken by the actors involved, which could lead to quite different outcomes.

Would the newly independent countries trust Mother Russia? Could Mother Russia keep her hands off them? It would not be a single big decision, but a series of small ones.

The Duck of Minerva piece is a counterfactual in which NATO doesn’t expand. I’ve based it on events that have actually happened, although in different historical order. The outcome is different than has been assumed. It was fun to write and I think will be enjoyable to read.

The Letter (see below):

Through the nineties, Russian military planes increasingly violated their neighbors’ airspace or came close, daring the neighbors’ air forces to scramble. Finland ordered additional fighter-bombers from Sweden. Ukraine and the Baltic States increase their home guard, with training from elders with experience in partisan warfare.

Economic recovery was slow, and unemployment in the new nations was severe. By the late 1990s, a major Russian money laundering scandal broke across the Baltics, damaging the Swedish, Norwegian, and German banks located there. Communist parties in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria gained in elections. In Bulgaria, an opposing candidate was poisoned with polonium.

The Soviet Union had placed factories for military hardware across the republics and the satellites. With the end of the Soviet Union, Russia brought that manufacturing home. Sweden repurposed those factories into production to support their automotive and military industry. Thus, a factory in Võru, Estonia, that had made oxygen sensors for submarines began to make instruments for Gripen aircraft.

Note(s): & some replies from folks reading this post:

a. Sweden and somewhat less so Finland swooping in to fill the vacuum and create a central European alliance is all counterfactual and sort of assumes you know that Sweden and Finland aren't NATO members.

a1 I don't know much about that, though. I mean, those nations *still* haven't kicked the bear. That's literally all that I know. (by Steve)

b. Because that totally happened in the 1920s-30s!! Which was the last time there was a power vacuum in Central Europe. Except it didn't, and they were all picked off by either resurgent German or Russian power.

Reply: Color me skeptical it would've been any different in the 1990s. If Germany wasn't going to fill that vacuum in the form of the EU and NATO, Russia would've eventually recovered enough strength to do so. Maybe not in the 90s, but certainly by the late 2000s (witness their various near-abroad adventures since 2008). (by: Ben)

c. Russia holds back invasion of the Baltics because of NATO (by: Jmauro)

d. NATO expansion was undeniably triumphalist, bellicose, and provocative. The message had to be sent, never try socialism again. (by: staterofoviouis)

(more on site if you want to more explicate post (I didn't want to post them their verbiage was a little tasteless.
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