Gusztáv Molnár
The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement
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In his study, Three Historical Regions of Europe, Jenõ Szûcs mentions truncated Eastern Europe as the East-European counterpart of the first great Western expansion between 1000 and 1300. Europa Occidens expanded from its previous boundary line along the Elbe-Saale-Leitha to the Vistula-Eastern Carpathian line (this essentially meant that in the lowlands between the Oder and the Morava, but still outside the eastward expanding Holy Roman Empire, two new autonomous western states, Poland and Hungary, were established and growing in strength); Europe in the east, in the Middle Ages, remained incomplete. Eastern Europe as a cultural, indeed, structural identity could only come into being in the northern forests and marshlands of the vast region comprising the European part of Russia. (Figures 1 and 2) The southern steppe zone was not yet Russian land, nor Europe, but the western extension of the Eurasian, nomadic world wedged into geographical Europe. (Szûcs, pp. 292-93)
Unfortunately, we cannot know how the structural (cultural, social, and political) identity of Eastern Europe, represented by Kievan Russia and developing within the sphere of influence of Scandinavia and Byzantium, would have turned out had it survived into the modern age. The reason is that after the relatively peaceful Khazar Empire was crushed, the Slav population, under continuous attack by the Pechenegs and Cumans, began to gradually leave the more developed territories around Kiev in the second half of the 11th century. Character-ized by an increasingly simplified social structure and culture and by political disintegration, while retreating into the north-north-eastern woodlands and river valleys sparsely populated by nomadic Finno-Ugrians, Russia represented the East-European counterpart to western expansion. In addition to its incomplete character determined by climatic conditions and corresponding terrain, it was an Eastern Europe on the defensive, without the appropriate political institutions for the formation of strong central authority. The Tartar invasion of 1228 did the rest. The Tartars burned down the new towns founded by those who had left Kiev and massacred the population. "The Tartar conquest completed the displacement of Russian history begun by the Polovtsy [Cumans]. The New Great Russia of the Middle Volga was crushed almost at its birth. (...) A growing culture and civilization was practically extinguished except for one saving force, the national church. With a devastated country and crushing yearly tribute, there could be little thought for anything beyond the daily bread." (Pares, 60) Thus, when Ivan (The Great) III freed Moscow from Tartar rule, there took place the expansion of a new East-European state, which had virtually no links with the West.
Integration, or more exactly, the incorporation of territories inhabited by Orthodox Russians with close ties with the West was the first stage of the expansion. This was the time when second hand absolutism turned into a genuinely Russian despotism. The Novgorod Republic, which preserved its autonomy over a long period, and did not pay the Tartars tribute, many consider today as the precursor of a possible positive Russian nationalism (Billington). This is a rather artificial and forced parallel, even if we assume that there is such a nationalism. The fact is that Novgorod, as an economic, social, and political model, was destroyed by Muscovy. In 1476,
Ivan III's troops built a wooden wall around Novgorod in the Tartar manner, sealing the town's fate. First the grumbling nobility, then the tradesmen were resettled, and finally more than ten thousand families were indiscriminately displaced to the central Volga region, and the same
number of families from around Moscow were sent to Novgorod in order to forestall rebellion. Ivan III had the German merchants arrested, their goods and their church confiscated, thereby removing the town, a member of the Hanseatic League, once and for all from European commerce. One hundred years later, Ivan the Terrible again invaded and took permanent possession of the town, suspect for its Polish connections, and massacred a large part of its inhabitants. He crowned this act with the edifying words: "Men of Novgorod who are left alive, pray God for our religious sovereign power, for victory over all visible and invisible foes." (Pares, 118)
Incorporation of most of the West-Russian territories became possible only
a good three hundred years after the unification of Greater Russian (or East-Russian) territories, during the so-called imperial age. Mihail Heller wrote
that for long centuries the Little Russians (Ukrainians) and the White Russians were the victims of history. Greater Russians, unified under the rule of the principality of Moscow, on the other hand, were the formative force of history. (Heller, 120)
Orthodox principalities and towns under Lithuanian and Polish jurisdiction do in fact seem to have been the victims of history. Although they preserved their religion and social structure, they proved incapable of transforming an East-Europeanism founded on the Byzantine heritage into a political structure closely related to and intercommunicating with the expansive western model. It is easy to see why Greater Russians were the ones to create the homogeneous compound of Eastern Europe par excellence. (Jenõ Szûcs) However, the absence of political sovereignty, the three-hundred-year "respite" did not necessarily place western Russians in a more disadvantageous position than their absorption into Muscovy.
Political Ukraina was a politically undefined territory, a frontier zone that for several centuries remained at the intersection of the continually shifting borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Tatar Khanate, and Muscovy. (Motyl, 24) The situation which sealed the Ukraine's political fate in what is called post-Westphalian Europe, a Europe divided into nation-states, ultimately enabled it to preserve its cultural and social identity. When authoritarian Muscovy defeated chaotically democratic Poland, the Ukraine's window to the West was closed, Alexander Motyl writes (26). The crux of the matter is that when this window was opened again, the Ukraine immediately broke away from Russia, thereby recreating the fault line, described by Milyukov in his 1904 study--within Eastern Europe--between Russian South- West and Russian North-East. (Milyukov, 86-90)
The fact is that it was Greater Russia-centred on Moscow-the Russian North-East growing from top to bottom which created that "true" but still not "complete" Eastern Europe from the heterogenous material lying between the White Sea and the Black Sea and Poland and the Urals. Siberia was then also added, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, to this new and expansive Eastern Europe.
This par excellence Eastern Europe, augmented with Siberia (established between the liberation from Mongol rule and the founding of St Petersburg in 1703), whose western frontier extended to the Dnieper-Narva line, enabled Russia to extend its empire to the whole of geographical Eastern Europe, all the way to the Elbe by the mid-20th century.
The British geographer Harold Mackinder, the most influential figure in geopolitics to date, defined Eastern Europe in terms of geography and geostrategy. At the height of British naval supremacy (when, after the Boer War, the Indian Ocean became virtually a British lake), Mackinder's attention turned to the vast territory of key strategic importance (pivot area; Heartland) which was inaccessible by sea and, therefore, could become a natural base for a continental empire and a threat to the interests of the British Empire (Figure 3).
Eastern Europe means an inland Europe, inaccessible from the ocean and turning its back on it. That is to say, it is the totality of the catchment areas of the Caspian, Black, and Baltic seas (except the Bavarian reach of the Danube). Mackinder was perfectly correct to describe the Black and the Baltic seas as inland. (It was recently established that the former was in fact an inland sea until 5500 B.C.) He was right not only because the continental power may, in the strategic sense, close down both (as happened in the Great War), but, above all, because 16th-century East-European refeudalization, which was a direct consequence of the turning of West European interest toward the Atlantic Ocean, continues to exert its influence to date.
Mackinder's great achievement was the recognition that the Heartland and the whole of Eastern Europe were geographically and geostrategically related and, therefore, Western and Eastern Europe were fundamentally opposed to each other. (Figure 4 ) He emphasized that Western Europe, based on the strategic alliance of Great Britain and France, "must necessarily be opposed to whatever Power attempts to organize the resources of East Europe and the Heartland." (Mackinder 1919, 139). This is what the policy of containment means.
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According to Mackinder, Western Europe, as geopolitically understood, means the unity of the insular bridgehead of the naval power and Europe open to the ocean as a continental bridgehead.
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The two European spheres of influence (Western and Russian) that NATO enlargement seems to give rise to reflect a relatively accurate but essentially misleading picture of the temporary situation.
The questions of which former communist or neutral countries, interested in joining NATO, when and in what order will eventually attain full membership are not as important as believed by those supporting accession and by those afraid to be left out.
In Europe, the most important security policy question for the next decade concerns the establishment of "strategic homes" or strategic areas supervized and coordinated by NATO, of which formal NATO enlargement is only one element. Three such strategic areas are necessary if NATO wants to do something about the vacuum created in the wake of the collapse of the Cold War with Eastern Europe. (Figure 5) In the last phase of World War I, Germany, and, after the post-war treaties, France and Great Britain, tried to fill the suddenly abandoned region between Germany and Russia with their own client states, which led to eventual catastrophe. The reason for the failure is obvious: the major European powers involved were mortal enemies, and, the U.S.A., sensing what it was getting into, beat a dignified retreat from Europe.
Ronald D. Asmus and F. Stephen Larrabee of the Rand Corporation, who are working on the strategic plans for NATO enlargement, examine the question of strategic areas from the aspect of the extremely important and sensitive relationship between the states that will join NATO in the first round and potential members that will not. According to them, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and two potential member states, Slovenia and Slovakia, constitute the East-Central-European thrust of the enlargement. The Baltic States, Finland, and Sweden constitute the North-East European direction, should they decide to join NATO. The South-East European direction poses the greatest problem, with only Romania and perhaps Bulgaria as possible candidates, since their underdeveloped economy and the aversion of NATO member states to Balkan conflicts reduce their chances to a minimum. The key to the whole concept is the linkage of potential member states to a regional NATO command.
Establishing these strategic areas is indeed a strategic question, not a tactical ruse directed at the sensitivities of states left out of the first round of the enlargement. Larrabee and Asmus report that in the North-East strategic home Denmark and Germany have already begun--with American aid--to establish various forms of regional military cooperation with Poland, which is likely to join NATO, and with these Baltic States aspiring for membership but with uncertain outcome, as well as with formerly neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden. (Asmus and Larrabee, 18-19)
Applying this proposed Rand model to the entire region shows that the truly most important central strategic area must in some way extend to Ukraine, the key state in East-Central Europe. In addition to NATO member states, this
regional defense cooperation should include Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Hungary with the best chances for accession to NATO in the first round, as well as Romania, Slovakia, and Moldavia. In this strategic area, the relationship between the Polish-Hungarian-Romanian trio and Ukraine, which seeks a strategic partnership with NATO, acquires special emphasis. Romania has just signed a basic treaty with Ukraine, identical with the one it signed with Hungary. The Hungarian and Romanian governments realized that statements about historical reconciliation, but without any legal force whatsoever, cannot substitute land for ethnic rights type of treaties, in which the defeated country renounces its claim to former territories annexed to the victorious country, and the latter in turn guarantees minority rights on its territory (Haraszti).
Establishing the South-East European strategic area is a most complicated task, but not an impossible one. The South-Eastern Cooperation Initiative
(SECI), put forth by the American State Department and perhaps presented in a much too laconic manner, may also be interpreted as a preparatory plan for the South-East European strategic area. If we don't want this extremely important initiative to be lost amid a general lack of interest, we must urgently make known its inherent strategic dimension.
In the North-Eastern centre of gravity of this area, Italian, Slovenian, and Hungarian strategic cooperation has already got under way and Austria may join in at any moment. The recent agreement on a very promising partnership between Hungary and Romania may play an important role in developing the South-East European strategic area and in its subsequent smooth operation. It is not common knowledge that these two countries, falsely proclaimed ancient enemies in the second half of the 19th century, have effectively cooperated economically and in fighting for the common goal of repelling Russian influence. (Sturdza, 3-5) This tradition may prove particularly advantageous today in making long-range plans for their relations with their neighbours (Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Moldavia) which are also, to varying degrees, subject to Russian influence.
There are thus three countries in the entire region covered by the cooperation policy outlined above, which play, or may play, an essential role in two strategic directions. They are Poland, Hungary, and Romania. NATO may and must extend towards the east its present strategic perimeter towards the east primarily through these countries.
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In the next ten to twenty years, Russia is expected to split into large regionstates, a fate that, judging by the increasing problems of the Peking center, post Deng Xiaoping China will not be able to avoid either. In a New York lecture in January 1997, Lebed spoke about the disintegration of Russia as a real possibility, and, presumably, he did not merely intend to scare his audience. In his view, the various regions of the disintegrating country would follow their own separate foreign policies. It would appear that the same compulsion that for centuries made continuous expansion a condition for the survival of this vast country, is now turning the country in the direction of a similarly inevitable implosion. With the withdrawal of authoritarianism, that is, the disappearance of visible control, the market and the norms adopted by the individuals should assume the role of an integrating force. There are signs that show that this new type of organic integration cannot evolve at all in Russia and China, or, at best, only in some regions. The Russians and the Chinese have made serious efforts in this direction in the past few years, and it is not their fault that they thus created the basis for their own disintegration.
Displacing imperial centralization with a federalism allowing rational decentralization is not possible in Eurasia, because-unlike in Europe,-the weakening, then disintegration of the imperial framework leads to the collapse of the state framework itself and so to total disintegration. For 70 per cent of the last 2000 years (since the Quin dynasty), the territory of China has formed a unified state, for 30 per cent of that period different states (Yan Zhu). It is an either/or situation. It may be assumed that China will perhaps remain intact, but not that it can make a direct transition into a functioning federation while maintaining the continuity of its statehood. This holds for Russia too.
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Gusztáv Molnár,
philosopher, heads the Geopolitical Research Group of the Teleki László Foundation-Institute for Central European Studies, Budapest
