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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.

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.