August 1990 Atlantic article by John Mearsheimer. “Why we Will Soon Miss the Cold War”
Cleaning my closet, I found an old Atlantic Magazine saved because of the provocative title.
The author is a "realist" and reviews possible problems that would stem from changes in international relations following the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. His focus is specifically on Europe.
One of the few things candidate Trump presented when running for President in 2016 —that I though suggested some depth— was questioning the point of NATO. I thought then, that it was a good issue for debate and one that was lost on Hilliary Clinton. This subject did not get any serious attention during that election.
In part, my thinking was influenced from this article from 1990. The author has written much since this and is a critic of NATO’s strategy moving forward from the fall of the Soviet Union. He is not fan of Putin, but he anticipated what a Putin would do given NATO’s strategy and his thoughts have proven prescient.
His thesis in 1990, was that the Cold War in Europe made the lesser historical powers behave in the face of the threat of an overwhelming conventional war or worse yet, nuclear war. He asks the question: if the Russians withdraw, what will happen in Europe?
Many of his European concerns clearly have come to pass in the larger world. Think of India, China, North Korea, Myanmar, and so on.
From the article:
1) Facing an overwhelming power makes for strange bedfellows: England and France had fought for centuries but united against Germany. The US allied with the Soviet Union to beat Germany. And now the US, Germany, France, and England are all united against Russia. Countering an overwhelming threat in an alliance requires compromise with respect to your particular nation’s options and freedom to act.
2) If you have had a very powerful ally, you might become “lazy” and not pay attention to what would be obvious if you were on your own. Your willingness to spend on military hardware and improvements changes once your powerful ally leaves. This was an expressed point by candidate Trump. The threat once realized in the Ukraine has found many NATO nations suddenly finding the will to spend on their respective militaries, especially given the obvious superiority of their weapons systems against their traditionally feared enemy. An interesting question: did their leadership within NATO starting in 1990 set them up for this extended need in 2022? Could it have been avoided if Warsaw pact nations had not been brought into NATO? Would the Russians have, with time, exerted their power regardless?
3) A counter to facing off against a conventionally superior power is nuclear weapons. England and France have them. Russia has them. No one else in Europe does. He predicts a race for smaller countries to develop nuclear weapons as a counter to possible conventional invasion. The North Koreans have taken this path as have the Indians and Pakistanis. From my point of view, it is an effective strategy. He worried that without a NATO headed by the US, there would be competition in Europe for countries to have this weapon and he argued that the powerful European nations should do what they could to prevent that. He suggests it might be inevitable that Germany would acquire these weapons.....
4) He questions why the US would continue the expense of NATO once the Soviet Union withdrew from Eastern Europe, especially given the economic and social conditions that led to this action. His concerns are that this would invite instability ie competing nation states in Europe with all the tensions that were seen for centuries prior to the end of World War II. He did not believe the voting public in the US would agree with the presence and expense in this setting with no clear cut enemy to be feared. He was wrong.
5) He addresses an idea that seems strange today; in 1990 there were serious people that thought a big war in Europe was unthinkable—that the experience of the twentieth century made this impossible for citizens or governments to support. He thought this naive and points to some hot spots citing Eastern European history and lack of democratic norms as a destabilizing influence. He predicted a war between Hungary and Rumania for example. With time (after this article was written), he predicted war in the Ukraine with Russia.
5) He worried about resurgent nationalism. This was a huge problem in the twentieth century and largely suppressed by the aftermath of World War II by the presence of the two superpowers managing their respective alliances. Nationalist impulses would be unleashed by the loss of these superpowers. There is evidence that that has happened —in Yugoslavia and Hungary most clearly-and more recently, the resurgence of “right wing” nationalist parties in the Western Democracies. He pointedly worried about this in Russia: "Gorbachev’s team warned, 'You have the same explosive mixture you had in Germany in the 1930’s. The humiliation of a great power. Economic troubles. The rise of nationalism. You should not underestimate the danger.'”
6) He addressed whether modern liberal economic models of mutual cooperation—economic liberalism —and whether it is key to keeping the peace. He said no. He is a self-described realist and asserts that the prime motive of states is not getting richer but security. He predicted the EU would start as a cooperative and evolve into a super state—-something Britains saw and reacted to when voting on Brexit. Interdependence economically can be a vulnerability and a crisis can add to nationalistic thinking. Seizing another country’s assets can become an option. He noted that during the 1973 oil embargo there was nationalist talk in the USA about seizing the oil fields….and Trump echoed this thinking as well when discussing the Middle East.
He summarizes noting that as bad as the Cold War had been, its replacement could be something worse. Thirty two years later, we are getting a taste of that.
When looking into the author, John Merscheimer’s career, I note that he criticized NATO’s aggressive stance incorporating Warsaw Pact nations despite handshake reassurances at the conclusion of talks when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was not supposed to happen. Putin has consistently argued the need for a counter to this NATO "expansion" and relied on Russian nationalism to support his point of view. His strategy may seem to be self defeating but that is beside the point: Nationalist authoritarians are single minded and not especially rational to the world as others see it. If they were, Japan and Germany would have surrendered in 1944 instead of 1945 and avoided untold death and destruction to their own peoples, not to mention those who fought against them and who would in turn become their allies in the future….…Who knows what Putin’s stance would have been in a Ukraine not allowed into NATO but developing closer economic ties and even membership in the EU. The stress of this war will hopefully find both the US and European countries sorting better what their self interest is both now, in the face of Russian aggression, and later when the monday morning quarterbacking is done.
We, (The US) still have 800 military bases across the world and have been fighting war after war without a clear or coherent strategy. European allies have been reluctant to support us in Viet Nam as well as Iraq. European governments have not only had difficulty agreeing with our foreign policy, but agreeing with each other's. The Europeans may very well suffer materially, socially, and economically as this new year arrives. I would not blame them for arriving at different conclusions than those we have been selling in the coming future—and with it some of the other problems brought out in this article.
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