The Truth behind the Myth of Russia ‘Threatened’ by NATO

Has NATO ever posed a real threat to Russia?

The US and their allies established the alliance at the dawn of the Cold War between the totalitarian communist camp and the free democratic West. The main goal of this political-military alliance was defence and deterrence via-a-vis the Soviet Union and its communist satellite states, which made no secret of their desire to the destruction of the ‘capitalist’ free world.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO adopted a broader approach in which its primary objectives of defence and deterrence were complemented by those of cooperation and security, including preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

NATO has also tried to build a partnership with Russia; it established the NATO-Russia Council, which provided a mechanism for consultation and cooperation on a broad spectrum of security issues in the Euro-Atlantic region.

Thus, the official strategies and policies of NATO have been focused purely on defence and deterrence and on establishing practical mechanisms of security and cooperation.

One can object that the official position of the organisation and its real aims and actions can differ. To counter this argument, it would be enough to point out that between 1945 and the late 1950s the US and its allies had an absolute nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, and could have annihilated it had it wanted to.

Russia’s claims about the ‘promises’ made to its leaders by the West in the early 1990s concerning limits on NATO’s eastwards ‘expansion’ do not hold water either. There is no document or agreement that would provide such an assurance.

Furthermore, the notion of an ‘expansion’ towards the east completely misrepresents what NATO actually is. It is a constellation of sovereign nations, rather than an empire with an expansionist drive.

The organisation is based on open-door policies towards European nations wishing to join the club, which is not only a military alliance. It is also a political organisation based on the values of liberty, democracy and human rights as the conditions set for membership.

The democratisation of Russia’s former subjects indeed represents a threat, but not to the Russian people. It is a threat to the Russia’s kleptocratic authoritarian regime. Free and democratic nations ‘give a bad example’ to the Russian people.

All decisions in NATO are taken by consensus, which effectively prevented Ukraine and Georgia from joining in 2008, when some member countries, fearing Russia’s reaction, voted against. Many agree now that it was a mistake that cost Ukraine thousands of lives and the destruction of its economy and infrastructure.

US troops, hardware cut since ‘91

The second perspective in debunking Russia’s narrative about NATO’s threat to its security is the reduction of Alliance forces in Europe since 1991.

For example, in 1989, over 315,000 US troops, which formed the main NATO military force, were permanently stationed in Europe. By 2014, when Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea, their numbers had dwindled fivefold, to some 61,000.

Within the same period, the number of US military aircraft in Europe fell from 800 to 170, while all of its 5,000 tanks were returned to the US.

Overall, the US military presence in Europe by 2014 was only 15 per cent of its size in 1989.

European NATO member states also reduced their military forces after the end of the Cold War; by 2014, the average military budget was some 1.6 per cent of GDP. In the meantime, Russia was intensively modernising its weapons and reforming its military forces with military expenditure of between 3.2 and 5.4 per cent of GDP.

It is also important to recall that Russia is a nuclear power with the second-largest arsenal in the world. Notably, after defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the West did not require Russia to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. Instead, it pushed Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan toward complete nuclear disarmament. Why would the West do this if it was going to attack or invade Russia?

Russia’s claims that it annexed Crimea to thwart the creation of NATO military bases on its territory with missiles aimed at Russia do not stand up to scrutiny.

Were NATO to base missiles in Ukraine’s Sumy region, for example, they would be some 520 kilometres from Moscow; Crimea, on the other hand, is 1,500 km from the Russian capital.

Moreover, NATO members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are a matter of hundreds of kilometres from Moscow; Saint Petersburg is even closer.

But while these Baltic states have been NATO members since 2004, no significant NATO forces or nuclear weapons have been placed in these countries. Even before its invasion of Ukraine, it has always been Russia that has constantly threatened its neighbours over the last few centuries.

Russian Iskander missiles stationed in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave are only 300 km from Warsaw and 580 km from Berlin. Russia’s 76th Guards Air Assault Division alone, based in Pskov, within 30 km of the Estonian border, is probably a more potent military than anything Estonia can muster.

Russia also possesses the second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, including numerous submarines armed with missiles carrying atomic warheads that can strike any Western country within a relatively short distance.

Hence the holes in Russia’s claims about the threat posed to its national security from NATO ‘expansion’ to the east.

Pattern of invasion and atrocities

So what’s the real reason for Russia’s aggressive anti-Western politics?

It sits in plain view, if one takes the time to read the speeches, interviews or articles of Putin and other public figures in Russia.

Russia’s revanchist rhetoric takes in not just the former Soviet Union’s subjects but those of the Tsarist Russian empire too; It seeks to drag into Russia’s sphere of dominance Central and Eastern Europe and Finland too, while weakening or breaking up the EU and NATO.

In this context, one must not forget the centuries of Russian expansion, starting when the tiny Duchy of Moskovy devoured lands around it to become an enormous empire that at its height occupied a fifth part of the planet’s dry land.

It is also worth remembering that the Kremlin’s actions speak louder than its words.

Ukraine is not the first of Russia’s neighbours to be invaded. The Kremlin has repeatedly demonstrated its neo-imperialists intentions since the early 1990s, whether directly, as it in the cases of Transnistria in the 1990s, Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, or indirectly such as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s and Ukraine’s Donbas since 2014.

In Ukraine, Russia is committing atrocities similar to those it perpetrated in the 1990s in Chechnya – wide-scale, indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in Ukraine’s predominantly Russian-speaking cities of Mariupol, Kharkiv and others and the torture, rape, and mass murder of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians again reveal the true nature of the contemporary Russian regime and society.

This alone and without doubt debunks all of Russia’s false allegations regarding NATO’s alleged threat to its security. Russia itself remains an ‘evil empire’. Constantly threatening to use weapons of mass destruction, it remains a deadly threat to its neighbours, to freedom, and to the whole of humanity.

Oleg Chupryna is a Ukrainian PhD candidate with the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, Department of Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. He also teaches Politics and International Relations as a casual lecturer in the History Department of the same university.