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The broad thrust of this article is arguing against a strawman. Nobody really disagrees that Russians might have said NATO was a threat. Anyone in the West can point that out freely and openly without fear of reproach. The issue is that NATO wasn't actually a threat in any plausible scenario in the way that Russians were describing it. Russians (or Putin specifically) typically alluded to NATO aggression either from a ground invasion or a nuclear first-strike, both of which were never in the cards given it would start World War 3 and mean a huge portion of the Earth's population from both sides being wiped out in an instant. Some Russians may have drank the propaganda koolaid and genuinely believed the West was willing to eliminate Russia in a geopolitical equivalent of a murder-suicide, but they were mostly relegated to the fringes.

What Russians/Putin were actually worried about was one of three things:

  • Western cultural and economic hegemony. NATO expansion doesn't really directly impact this, but NATO expansion serves as a barometer that the West is still triumphing over the former Soviet Union.

  • The West fomenting pro-democracy movements in Russia, similar to the Color Revolutions. Much of Russian society and Putin in particular have a deep antipathy for democracy, seeing it as not only a personal threat but as an invasive, enemy ideology and incorrectly blaming it for the turmoil of the Yeltsin years. Again, this doesn't really have anything directly to do with NATO expansion, but the fact that NATO is expanding at all means the West is robust enough to possibly try something like a pro-democracy coup in the future.

  • Loss of their sphere of influence. Many Russians still see their country as a Great Power, and the fact that NATO even has the possibility of being extended to Ukraine is deeply insulting.

So yes, many Russians say "NATO is a threat". But no, no reasonable Russian thinks NATO is a threat in a conventional sense since Russia still has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Instead, saying "NATO is a threat" is used as a dogwhistle to stoke generalized anti-Western sentiment or to appeal to delusions of grandeur, i.e. that Russia should reassemble the borders of the Soviet Union.

The thesis of the article is not that Russians merely said that, but that they believed it (whether this belief was actually true is, for the purposes of the article, neither here nor there), and that McFaul is misrepresenting the context of Putin's statements to make him look disingenuous in this regard. What is taboo in the West is to point out that, when they did say these things, Russian elites were not merely pretending to be worried about NATO as a front for their dastardly neo-imperialist designs.

What is taboo in the West is to point out that, when they did say these things, Russian elites were not merely pretending to be worried about NATO as a front for their dastardly neo-imperialist designs.

I think it's taboo to point it out without caveating (as the article does) that this worry was "to a large extent irrational" (his words).

I think that many people also broadly object to using it to explain Russian behavior at all, or to suggesting that it wasn’t entirely irrational. But fair point.

The Russian elites were worried about NATO exactly because their dastardly neo-imperialist designs. If you want to conquer your neighboring states, or at least subjugate them into a bunch of subservient satellite states, sort of like they did with Belarus, and thus restore the Mighty Russian Empire, of course you'd be worried that a Western mutual defense union right in the middle of where you plan to do that would interfere with your plans. If you plan to rob a place and they are installing a new security system and got a guard dog, of course you are feeling your plans are genuinely threatened by it! There's no need to pretend. It's the honest truth - yes, all that would make the planned robbery much harder to do.

I think the problem is here that the word "threat" is used in two senses interchangeably, and it confuses the matter. The Western "threat" is when you live peacefully, and somebody may attack you, so you feel threatened. The Russian "threat" is when you want to meddle with your neighbors to subjugate them and include them into your future Empire, but somebody might make that harder, and so you feel "threatened". These are different things, but it looks like when discussing whether Russians were "threatened" by NATO they are used as if it's the same thing.

This is just assuming the conclusion at issue, namely that Russian elite opposition to NATO enlargement is motivated in petto by neo-imperialism and, what’s more, has been so for (the great majority of) the whole duration that they’ve strenuously objected thereto (going on 40 years now). This is a strong claim that requires strong evidence, which does not seem to be forthcoming.

I am not assuming it, I know it, as I know any observable reality. It's not some mental construct, it can be plainly seen. The neo-imperialism bent of the Russian elites is completely obvious to anybody who watched them for the last 3-5 years. All the state propaganda machine has been pushing these ideas for a while now. If you understand Russian, all the evidence you need is plainly there, whereever you go - from the government-controlled TV channels to the lowliest telegram or VK troll groups. Everybody wants to repeat the Great Patriotic War victories and raise the glorious Mother Russia from her knees. Well, maybe not literally everybody (there are always traitors) but among the "true patriots" that has been the dominant tone for a while. And if you observe the actions for the last couple of decades - Transnistria, Georgia, de-facto anschluss of Belarus, then the Ukraine invasion - it is clear that Russia treats the ex-Soviet states as their legitimate playing ground and ultimately the target for "re-unification" if possible. In Ukraine, it was openly stated when it looked like it was possible. When turned out it was a pipe dream, the "re-unification" target contracted to the areas occupied by Russian forces, but the idea stayed the same - everything that has been USSR is legit Russia.

Now, how NATO plays into this is of course a logical conclusion, but I think it is a very natural one. If you consider Ukraine legit your territory, temporarily misled by "nationalist government" into being a "fake state" (this is all quotes from actual Russian propaganda) - then of course this government joining NATO and gaining Article 5 coverage is a major problem. Of course they don't like it - it kinda puts the end to the project - now what they have, a piece of Georgia, a tiny piece of Moldova, Belorussia and that's the whole Empire? Pathetic. Of course they went all in to try and not let that happen.

Observing the last 3-5 years does nothing to explain the 3+ decades prior to that in which Russians were also vehemently opposed to NATO expansion, which is in large part what the article is discussing.

I didn't observe it for the last 3-5 years, I observed it for much longer, it is the last 3-5 years when the neo-imperialism has become so dominant, so prominent and obvious that any diligent observer, without special knowledge or deep analysis, would be able to instantly pick it up. Before that, during the previous 3 decades, it wasn't the single direction at all. During the 90s, where Russian democracy was still alive, even though flawed (aren't all real democracies?) - the eternal Russian struggle between slavophiles and westerners has been also alive. Some people wanted more European direction, some wanted to go "our own way" - but the imperialist ideas weren't the only game in town at all. It all happened much later, building on the cult of the Great Victory in part, and on dismantling the democracy under the premise that it was the reason why 90s felt so miserable and chaotic for many. During much of this time, most of the fractions didn't really care about "NATO expansion" - because they weren't hostile to the West and the Western culture, and they did not nurture the dream of rebuilding the Empire. Surely, some fractions did - but they became the only game in town much later. Even the Chechen wars were presented as much more about security and terrorism (and TBH, not without a cause - Chechens weren't exactly innocent there) than about preserving the Empire. It was a long process, and I am not sure Putin himself thought in 1999 that he is going to become what he is now.

Thus, I do not think 3+ decades prior to that in which Russians were also vehemently opposed to NATO expansion is a proper description of what happened. If we limit ourselves only to Putin, which is more like 2 decades, he was never a particular fan of NATO (which is no wonder for a KGB officer), but he wasn't "vehemently opposed" to it until his imperialist doctrine coalesced, and as for other Russians, it was not true for even longer. Putin did blame NATO for the failure of his soft-takeover plan of Ukraine, which involved installing a puppet ruler (in which he eventually succeeded) and roping Ukraine into being a permanently subservient satellite state, just like Belarus (at which he failed). But that hostility began somewhere around 2004, before that the relationships were definitely not friendly, but also not openly hostile. And even then the idea was still more of "we want to control neighboring states" rather than "we want to assimilate them and restore the Russian Empire" for a while.

Yeltsin repeatedly reiterated his opposition to NATO expansion as early as 1993. And while he may have waffled a bit in ‘93 (as the Tribune article notes), probably because he’d been told some misleading things on the subject by US diplomats, he infamously blew up at Bill Clinton over the matter in late ‘94. I cannot find any comparable waffling from him after that point. There may have been internal divisions over this, but I think that the public Russian position was pretty clear even in the early 90s.

I don't think Yeltsin ever had designs on conquering Ukraine or anything close to that. He was upset that the USA does not treat Russia as an equal partner (this inferiority complex goes back centuries deep), and felt Russia is being humiliated by the West taking unilateral steps without Russia getting some respect in return. Also, he was very upset that NATO actions may jeopardize his chances on the coming elections - due to the pressure from the anti-Western fractions that perceived him to be too pro-Western. It is both about respect and about internal politics, but not really about any imperialist designs. TBH, his complaints about lack of respect were not entirely baseless - Russia lost the Cold War (or USSR did, and Russia took over the business after that), and while they still wanted the same stance as USSR used to have, they really didn't have that kind of pull anymore. So the nature of the disagreements was substantially different back then.

1994 also was exactly when the infamous Budapest Memorandum was signed. When Russia and USA (and UK) agreed to be partners in security the existing borders of Ukraine, in exchange for which Ukrainians gave up their Soviet nukes. We all know how well that worked out.

Did we read the same article? Does it have even one quote from a Russian leader stating unequivocally that they oppose NATO expansion? I can believe they did oppose it but the article says nothing of the sort

It repeatedly says that Russian leaders “spent years denouncing [NATO expansion] in sometimes hysterical rhetoric” and he directly quotes Putin as saying that he didn’t think NATO expansion “[made] any sense” in 2001. Also, there’s no end of other public statements to similar effect since the 90’s that you can find with a very basic internet search.

The thesis of the article is not that Russians merely said that, but that they believed it

That's a conclusion this article tries to offhandedly make, but most of the evidence presented is unrelated to that point. If the article wanted to conclude that Russians genuinely believed NATO was a threat specifically from the point of a ground invasion or a nuclear first strike, it needed to do a lot more work justifying why Russians thought NATO was willing to commit collective suicide by ignoring MAD when there were decades of Cold War precedent saying this wouldn't happen. Instead, the article tries to sneak that conclusion through the back door by handwaving away any irrationality with a whataboutism that the US was irrational for invading Iraq.

If you’re just going to dogmatically insist on the hermeneutics of suspicion then there’s really nothing more to be said. And why think that the only thing Russian elites could possibly fear from NATO is a ground invasion or a nuclear strike? (A claim which Lemoine notably doesn’t make. Although the US did unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia under Bush, which surely couldn’t have soothed anyone antsy about nukes.) You simply assume this without argument. Why shouldn’t they also be concerned with, say, a Color Revolution or losing their sphere? (Or even just an increase in the risk of accidental conflict/mistaken escalation?) Do you think it’s irrational for the US to claim a sphere of influence via the Monroe Doctrine? Or is your objection solely to the rationality of Russian desire for a sphere of influence?

It’s not a “whataboutism,” it’s an example to show that national elites can be sincerely committed to obviously-mistaken propositions about their own security interests. “There is historical precedent for X, so you shouldn’t be so skeptical that X could happen,” is not whataboutism at all, it’s a perfectly legitimate argument. Or what hermeneutically differentiates American elite fear of Iraq from Russian elite fear of NATO for you, and if nothing, then do you think the former were just lying too?

And why think that the only thing Russian elites could possibly fear from NATO is a ground invasion or a nuclear strike?

I'm not saying this, as per my first post. I'm saying the arguments of "NATO is a threat" coming from Russia boil down to two flawed lines of thinking:

  • That NATO is a threat from a conventional sense, in the form of a ground invasion or a nuclear attack. The problem with this line of thinking is Mutually Assured Destruction is still as relevant now as it was in the Cold War. Some pro-Russian sources/posters say the threat from NATO is indeed conventional, but they never have a good answer for the fact that MAD makes it irrelevant.

  • That the West is a threat in unconventional ways, in form of fomenting pro-Democracy movements or general economic + cultural hegemony. The problem with this line of thinking is that NATO expansion is a non-sequitur. The fact that Finland and Sweden are joining NATO doesn't particularly make Russia more vulnerable to unconventional threats like these, other than serving as a vague barometer that the West is doing well.

Even allowing for a sizeable degree of irrationality (since rival elites indeed probably have an inflated sense of how dangerous their outgroup is), it's still very difficult to see how NATO gets through MAD or how it's directly relevant to unconventional threats.

First of all, even if NATO weren’t directly attacking Russia, having members of a huge alliance on your border increases the risk of accidental conflict or mistaken escalation, as I said. And to make matters worse, it also dramatically raises the stakes of such erroneous clashes, because now instead of a minor skirmish with one bordering state, Article 5 can transform things into a world war. Moreover, this also puts neighboring states under the nuclear umbrella of another power, which in turn increases the risk of nuclear war too. And even if all of these risk-increases are small in absolute terms, the consequences if they eventuate are so utterly catastrophic that they’re still massively negative in expectation. I don’t see anything irrational in being very worried about this even if you aren’t particularly worried about a direct invasion or a nuclear first-strike out of the blue.

Also, it seems strange to say that MAD obviates any fear of conventional threats. If that’s the case then why don’t nuclear states massively cut their conventional military budgets relative to non-nuclear ones? They can just nuke the home countries of any invaders, after all. Instead what we’ve seen are very high conventional military budgets throughout the Cold War, right alongside huge nuclear stockpiling.

Other than the "strong NATO increases Russian paranoia of unrelated unconventional attack" bullet point that I mentioned above, I don't see how it appreciably increases the risk of an accidental conflict. NATO and the Warsaw pact were crammed right up next to each other for decades without major incidents along the European border. Russia specifically has bordered 5 NATO States for over a decade now, and it's even turned Kaliningrad into one of the most heavily weaponized regions in the world, like a dagger ready to stab at Warsaw which is <200 miles away or seal off the Baltics via the Suwalki Gap, but again there's been no major incidents.

Conventional militaries are still needed for offensive actions against non-nuclear powers that the US and Soviets both engaged in during the Cold War.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact did have notable incidents along their borders. US-Soviet tank squads almost fought over Soviet prerogatives in East Berlin in ‘61. Able Archer almost triggered WWII in ‘83, it was a massive NATO military exercise in, inter alia, Western Germany (right on the border with the Warsaw Pact). US deployment of Pershing 108s to Western Germany (again, on the border) in the early 80s made the Soviets think NATO was preparing a first strike because the Pershings could hit Belarus and Ukraine in <10 minutes from there. That caused the Petrov incident, where everyone almost got nuked. The Cuban Missile Crisis itself was precipitated by the US putting new ballistic missiles in eastern Turkey, once more, right by the Soviet border. As a matter of history, the idea that there were no notable incidents (many of them based on accidents or misunderstandings) centered on the NATO-Warsaw border is just silly.

Yes, Russia has bordered those states for a while now, and they vigorously protested their entry into NATO too! And just during this war, Lithuanian attempts to cut off some Russian transit into Kaliningrad itself caused an international incident, as did mistaken (one might even say “accidental”) reports that a Russian missile had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Neither of those incidents would have been nearly as tense and serious but for the fact that Article 5 is lurking in the background in both. Bordering NATO states leading to escalated tension over minor clashes and misunderstandings isn’t a merely theoretical possibility, it’s already happened multiple times just this year.

The US and the Soviets were not building their conventional militaries so big to fight Vietnam and Afghanistan, they wanted to be ready to fight each other in the Fulda Gap if need be. This was the object of lots of NATO and Warsaw military planning that’s now public record. MAD did not remotely obviate the desire for conventional superiority over one’s nuclear-armed opponents. If MAD were all you needed, this would be blatantly irrational.

The article does not present a single piece of evidence demonstrating Russians believed NATO expansion was a security threat. The one money quote from Putin this guy hammers on like it is some proof of McFaul’s dishonesty is Putin saying it didn’t “make any sense”. That’s literally it.