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Following a summit in Stockholm that was marked by rioting in the streets and fairly deep suspicions of Bush on the part of European leaders, President Bush’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia went extremely well.
At least the atmospherics crafted for public consumption – which are not a trivial part of such meetings — were positive both in their official and background forms. Inevitably, news media coverage focused on how well the two leaders got along, with particular spin by the Russians about how Putin conversed with Bush in English. The two presidents agreed on further meetings this year after the next G-8 economic summit in July.
Of course, no substantial issue between the United States and Russia was settled. The Russians continued to oppose Bush’s plan to proceed with national missile defenses. And when a reporter asked Putin about his next stop — Belgrade — the Russian president turned the discussion to Latvia and the Baltics, making two points: First, that in spite of the fact that Russians are discriminated against in Latvia, Putin has not labeled the Latvian government as an outlaw, terrorist state, (drawing a distinction with U.S. behavior in the Balkans). Second, in drawing attention to the Baltics while preparing his visit to Belgrade, Putin drove home the unresolved issue of Russian insistence of a neutral buffer zone between Russia and the West.
At this point, Putin made a disclosure more remarkable for having been disclosed than for what it contained. He handed reporters a declassified Russian message to NATO in 1954 in which the Soviet Union proposed that it become a member of the NATO alliance. Putin claimed NATO rejected the offer. Assuming that the message is undoubtedly authentic — Putin wouldn’t have pulled it out if it weren’t — what is interesting is not the 47-year-old message but rather Putin’s decision to declassify it at his press conference in Slovenia.
Putin, in effect, proposed that Russia might consider joining NATO. While many might consider that a fine idea in terms of cooperation and good fellowship, the concept at heart poses a deep challenge to the very existence of NATO. Even a decade after the end of the Cold War, NATO is at heart a military alliance. During the Cold War, it functioned as an instrument to contain the Soviet Union. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has been used to institutionally incorporate parts of the former Soviet empire into the Western alliance. It has also been used to wage war in the Balkans against a regime it regarded as behaving unacceptably.
NATO, therefore, remains an instrument of policy execution. In this it differs fundamentally from the other major international body, the United Nations. The U.N. is primarily a forum for discourse that can execute policies only if there is sufficient consensus that no Security Council Member chooses to veto and only if constituent member states commit resources for that action. While NATO also as a practical matter operates by consensus, it also operates with pre-committed resources and controls real troops.
Putin’s proposal on NATO is, in effect, to turn it into a smaller version of the United Nations. A Russian presence within the planning process would force NATO to reconsider precisely what it is and would effectively paralyze NATO. Putin’s move is therefore pretty sharp.
Putin obviously does not expect admission. NATO has carefully vetted new members based on political compatibility and economic viability, particularly since it was always assumed that NATO membership opened the door to European Union membership. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted in this way — even when the strictly military reality did not support membership, as in the case of Hungary. Countries that were strategically significant to NATO, such as Slovakia or Slovenia, were not admitted because of political or economic defects. Therefore, it follows that Russia is not a candidate for membership on the commonplace basis it would normally be considered. And from the broader perspective, Russian membership would effectively negate NATO as an operational entity.
But Putin’s offer to join NATO does open a second strategy for Russia. Putin would very much like that President Bush — and not NATO or any other NATO leader — be the one who turns him down. He would then be able to look to the Europeans, and particularly to the Germans, and say in effect, “We’ve tried everything, including asking for NATO membership. The Americans are simply impossible and are trying to revive the Cold War. And, if you Germans haven’t noticed, you would be the most exposed and uncomfortable in a new Cold War. Go reason with the Americans and, if you can’t succeed with Washington, think about working with us without the Americans.” In effect, Putin is reviving a classic Soviet strategy of splitting the Europeans in general and the Germans in particular from the United States.
Thus veiled beneath the surface theatrics of Slovenia were substantial issues of geopolitics.
Putin told Bush in every way possible that Russia cannot tolerate NATO’s encroachment into the former Soviet empire. In offering to join NATO, Putin gave Bush one — deliberately unacceptable — alternative. Left unstated was the third alternative: for Bush to sit down with Putin and hammer out a geopolitical settlement that could satisfy Russian needs. The summit talk of nuclear warhead levels and even national missile defense was secondary to the main issue for Putin: that the Carpathians, the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia will be recognized as parts of the Russian sphere of influence.
But the important news from the summit was this: Putin is not committed to creating an alliance with China (against U.S. interests in Eurasia), although it remains an option if talks with the U.S. fail to satisfy Russian interests. What is important is not the technical details of a missile defense agreement, but rather geography.
Putin means to stabilize his country’s power. The Russian president has shown he wants to do business with the United States and is giving this every chance to work — knowing that if it doesn’t succeed, he will always be welcome in Beijing. Thus, despite his country’s ongoing economic woes and American hegemony, Putin left Slovenia having defined the terms of bargaining between the world’s solitary superpower and the great power in Russia that the United States cannot afford to ignore.
