The pressure even led some leaders to accept suffering personal discomfort (if not humiliation) in dealings with Putin – various public testimonies confirm this being experienced by UK and French leaders, for example. The urge to do everything possible to make Russia ‘one of us’ meant that relations were viewed through rose-tinted glasses, colouring (or ignoring) security threat analysis and encouraging time- and energy-consuming efforts to negotiate special institutional arrangements with Russia (first the Permanent Joint Council and then the NATO–Russia Council). It slowed down the enlargement process and – in the case of Georgia and Ukraine – actually put it on hold.
It became a classic ‘win-win’ mantra, treated as an unchallenged paradigm in many Allied capitals and NATO structures.
But avoiding any decision or policy that could undermine the prospects of better relations with Russia was a constant consideration for many Allies. One could argue that this objective has impacted every aspect of NATO’s policy and posture since 1990.Ĭutting the number of military commands, withdrawing the bulk of US troops from Europe, reducing the nuclear arsenal and substantially drawing down defence budgets were of course driven by the newfound spirit of optimism and by understandable financial considerations. Preventing such a conflict is one of the key priorities that Allies have focused on since the end of the Cold War. And this most certainly applies to NATO – the only transatlantic Western institution that has both the mandate and the capabilities to prevent, and if that were not possible, to prevail in, a confrontation with Russia. But repeating it today as a policy prescription would not be a laughing matter.
‘ Don't mention the war’ – so went the line used in the Fawlty Towers sitcom that has since made it into the pantheon of humour. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not only conducting a brutal war of destruction against Ukraine, but is treating it as part of a duel with the West. When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov compares the EU and NATO to Nazi Germany and claims that both organisations are preparing a war against Russia, shrugging one’s shoulders at such an unhinged accusation is not the right response.
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