On the “Defensiveness” of NATO
Or how reality is never entirely simple
By MARTIN REZNY
I think this comment from Jack Albrecht is worth replying to properly:
“Much as I agree that Russia’s invasion was bad (even if it turns out to be technically legal under UN Article 51), this statement of yours is just completely at odds with history.
NATO attacked Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria to name just 3 countries that did NOT attack NATO countries. Yes, all three countries were/are lead by brutal dictators. They just happened to be brutal dictators that were (or stopped being) friendly with the US. This is exactly the situation that Putin, another brutal dictator, finds himself.
I may not like Putin, but my opinion here doesn’t matter. Putin can look at what has happened with other NATO countries, and NATO aggression, and his gas-dependent country, and rationally conclude that losing Ukraine to NATO would eventually lead to war with NATO, and that Russia would be severely weakened by Ukraine in NATO prior to that war.”
This was specifically a response to me saying that NATO doesn’t exist to attack Russia and that NATO is a defensive alliance. Regarding the first part of what I said, countries like the successor states of former Yugoslavia, Libya, or Syria are entirely different from Russia in that they don’t have nuclear weapons. Just look at how NATO still doesn’t want to even try to establish a no-flight zone over Ukraine, as Russians are invading a NATO neighbor state.
In this sense, attacking Russia truly never was a realistic consideration for anybody who prefers humanity staying alive. At one point, Russia being potentially a member of NATO was discussed, however half-heartedly. Also, Putin seems to understand that he’s ruling a nuclear superpower, given that he recently reminded everyone that Russia will use nukes to defend itself.
The second part of my statement requires a much more substantial debate to be had. Of the three examples offered, I think the genuinely interesting one is that of the NATO intervention in the Balkan wars. The other examples are more about some countries that happen to be in NATO wanting to fight some wars, as opposed to NATO as an alliance deciding to go to war.
In the Balkan wars, however, the intervention was arguably what NATO more or less as a whole decided to undertake. Technically, Jack Albrecht is correct in saying that the Balkan countries didn’t attack NATO countries first. NATO therefore may not be defensive in the strictest pure-self-defense-only sense.
When I, and presumably some local politicians and officals in NATO, say “defensive”, the concept of defense may not be entirely simple. A defensive alliance may decide, at one point or another, that in order to ensure its own security, it needs to defend some people somewhere else, or more broadly, to defend democracy as a concept, or various humanitarian principles.
Now, when I say that, I’m not automatically fully condoning this rationale. When our first democratic president, Havel, was in power during the Balkan Wars, he caught a lot of flack from certain parts of the political spectrum for framing the NATO intervention as “humanitarian bombardment”. You could argue that Havel was lucky, since he was the right kind of rebel for the U.S.
If Havel opposed the American interests instead of those of the USSR, the Americans could have conceivably concocted a scenario to justify taking him out and installing some authoritarian puppet instead of him. Americans have most definitely waged wars to cause regime change, in ways that benefited the U.S. much more than the local populace. But NATO isn’t the U.S.
If any of the countries in NATO are opposed to any particular conflict that a member state starts, they don’t participate in it. For example, NATO as a whole was opposed to the Iraq war. Which again makes the example of the Balkan wars much more interesting, and the closest analog, since that’s a war on Europe’s home turf, between slavic nations that aren’t NATO members.
What I think the distinction is there between what NATO tends to do and what Russia tends to do is that NATO’s objective really was peace above all. NATO would fight, or support states in fighting, so that fighting stops sooner, rather than later. This may involve a regime change, but not of a puppet kind.
Both Americans and Russians would have the regime change as the primary objective when they start or join a war, to ensure their peace and democracy-unrelated goals. Also, NATO as a whole would only join a war, not start it. In the Balkans, you now have a bunch of sovereign democracies at peace.
I think the key aspect of the comparison to focus on is that a military intervention to stop a genocide is very much not equivalent to one done to start a genocide. When you don’t intervene in a genocide (enough), then you definitely get more of it, like in Rwanda, which can make intervention justifiable. This kind of intervention can be argued to be defensive.
Again, I’m not saying that I have an absolute certainty or truth here, but following this logic, starting an offensive war isn’t anywhere near the same type of “self-defense”, which is why I don’t think Russia’s “operation” qualifies for Article 51, not even technically. Paranoia isn’t a justification. In the real-world justice system, Putin would have to plead insanity as a defense.
In a real-world self-defense scenario, you would have to actually already be under attack, or you would have to see a person who’s currently under attack. In some countries, you would also have to try to escape first, or attempt a non-violent way to resolve the situation. A person who strikes first at someone they suspect might eventually attack them is a wholly different situation.
In this sense, I would define offensive alliance as one that starts fights, and a defensive alliance as one that ends fights, with some wiggle room intentially left open, given that we live in a gray, fuzzy world. Within this framework, it’s not so much about deposing brutal dictators, but about preventing brutal dictators from waging wars of aggression. That’s a significant distinction.
With all that said, I’m not saying NATO can never in effect become offensive. Nothing stays forever the same in politics. The core of what I was trying to say, as a citizen of a NATO country living in the region, was that the local countries didn’t join NATO to wage wars. We did it so that we won’t have to.
