In its first National Security Strategy of the Biden Administration, published in October 2022, one of the major objectives of the US's global priorities is 'Out-Competing China and Constraining Russia'.
Ever since Joe Biden assumed office, Russia and China have been painted as the main competitors due to the belief that they, individually and collectively, are attempting to challenge the US's primacy.
It has been an argument of the US for quite some that under Vladimir Putin, Russia has been 'enhancing its global influence and playing a disruptive role on the world stage.' The ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis is a proxy war between the US and Russia, in which the US wants Russia defeated while Russia seeks to keep its hold intact.
NATO’s Eastward Expansion
Russia inherits its security strategy from the former Soviet Union. Stalin feared that the Capitalist bloc’s presence closer to the Soviet Union in the early post-World War period was an existential threat and prevented the Soviet bloc countries from joining America's European recovery program of the Marshall Plan.
The US and its World War II partners on both sides of the north Atlantic created the military organisation North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 to counter the communist threat to western Europe. In return, Stalin formed its own alliance the 'Warsaw Pact' of East European countries which were under Soviet influence after the war in 1955.
In reality, the Warsaw Pact countries worked as a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the West. During the cold war between the West and the East, predominantly in Europe, the Soviet Union attained a strategic backyard in Eastern Europe that helped Moscow stand up against the mighty West in global politics.
In the post-disintegration of the Soviet Union, however, many Warsaw Pact countries joined NATO, but Russia had a close watch on former Soviet republics joining the organisation. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 to prevent Georgia from moving closer to NATO membership. With Ukraine deciding to join NATO, Russia fears the threat is reaching its border and invaded Ukraine a year ago.
In a meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the US State Secretary James Baker in February 1990 in unified Germany, Baker told Gorbachev that "there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east".
However, a formal agreement on NATO’s eastward expansion was eluded due to the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union in the next year while the US could not continue its promise as George H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid less than a year later. After that, two new leaders, US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, were involved in protracted negotiations, with their own political and strategic priorities, leading to no concrete steps for an amicable NATO-Russia relationship.
When Clinton met with Yeltsin in 1994 in Moscow, he indicated that NATO 'plainly contemplated an expansion’ eastward. The only agreement between NATO and Russia signed is NATO-Russian Founding Act in 1997 for constructive cooperation between the two.
Security situations in Eastern Europe in the 1990s brought NATO forces eastward to stabilise the region. The Balkan crisis was the worst genocide in post-war Europe, where former Yugoslavian republics fought ethnically, killing thousands of people, leading to US-led NATO’s intervention under Operation Deliberate Force in 1995. This heralded NATO’s eastward expansion, while few Warsaw Pact countries were looking to join NATO to modernise their forces from the Soviet-style functioning. Subsequently, for the first time, former Eastern bloc countries of Czechia, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999.
When Vladimir Putin assumed Presidency in 2000, he felt that the 1990s was a lost decade for Russia, it had to watch from the sidelines various security issues concerning Europe, where the US and its allies took unilateral actions without the UN mandate.
He continued his suspicion of the US intention to deprive Russia’s rightful place in the European security architecture.
When Putin realised that Russia would no longer be able to sustain its Sevastopol naval base in Crimea in the Black Sea under the pro-western governments in Ukraine, the only warm water naval base in Russia, he annexed Crimea in 2014.
The West’s position is that there was no formal discussion either with the former Soviet Union or with Russia on the enlargement of NATO, the only agreement signed was on the future of unified Germany and nuclear weapons. On the other hand, Russians believe that the US's promise of upholding Russian sovereignty is tantamount to the non-reaching of NATO to the Russian border and accepting Russia’s legitimate security concerns.
Also, they believe former US State Secretary James Baker’s statement of 'not an inch to the east' in 1990 is sacrosanct. Russia continues the Soviet concept of homeland security, which includes its land border and its strategic backyard, a la eastern Europe. NATO enlarged its membership eastward without Russian concurrence, on the basis of the demand of former Soviet bloc countries, for a 'stable' Europe.
Joining Ukraine in NATO is a severe blow to Russian security interests. NATO will deploy not only its advanced weaponry on the Russian border but also radar and other communication systems to gather military information from Russia. American electronic intelligence (ELINT) warfare aircraft such as EA-18G 'Growlers can fly in Ukraine freely close to the border of Russia, leading to exposing Russian military installations to America, including its nuclear silos.
Ukraine has been able to resist the Russian military’s advancement to Kyiv with western weapons such as anti-tank guided missile Javelin and also Russia’s operational deficiencies in Ukraine.
With one year over, Russia has likely lost more than 2,000 tanks and human casualties—killed and injured—at between 100,000 and 150,000 so far. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies report in February 2023, "about half of Moscow’s prewar fleet of modern tanks, including the T-72B3 and T-72B3M models, has been lost". Ukraine President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy has been seeking modern fighter aircraft and a Patriot missile defence system from the West to thwart Russia from capturing more territories. After weeks of geopolitical squabbling, Ukraine gets 31 US-made M1 Abram tanks and 14 Leopard tanks from Germany, and many more German-made tanks from Poland too.
Future scenario
West’s limited arms supply suggests that the American strategy is to prolong the Russia-Ukraine war, which will cripple the Russian economy, deplete its weaponry, and eventually an unceremonious exit from Ukraine. A defeated Russia will never be a threat to the West, not even a power in Europe. Also, America and its allies will ensure that Russia will never become a ‘rejuvenated Germany' of the pre-World War II era, in future. Once Europe is secured, then the US can marshal all its energy to counter China in the Indo-Pacific and become a true global hegemon without an iota of resistance in any part of the world.
On the other hand, withdrawing Russia from Ukraine voluntarily without any strategic gain is suicidal for Putin. In such a scenario, he might take drastic steps to preserve Russia’s dignity, which includes a brutal conventional military attack on Ukraine or executing a mini-nuclear strike. The real effect of a defeated Russia and an accused state of being used nuclear weapons first ever in post-World War history would not have many differences for Moscow. In this situation, the best attempt must be how to avoid the catastrophe of Ukraine and endure European peace.
A reasonable solution to end the Ukraine crisis is a tripartite agreement between NATO, Ukraine, and Russia that Russia withdraws from Ukraine, Ukraine join NATO but not NATO’s deployment of forces in eastern Ukraine, and establish a no-flying zone of all types of military aircraft in eastern Ukraine. West shall lift sanctions on Russia and impose a cess on Russia’s oil income for rebuilding Ukraine.
(The author is a research fellow at the Centre for Airpower Studies in New Delhi)
