Annotations for Speakers: James Goldgeier

Hello.

Wow. That is amazing.

That's the best thing ever written on NATO.

Well, I think we start with Zachary's poem and bringing the giant out of the lair. This was the...I think it's really important to remember that this alliance formed in 1949 among the United States, Canada, and 10 European countries that then added four more European countries during the Cold War and then expanded with 14 more after the end of the Cold War. It was a big deal to form this alliance in 1949 because it really went against the ideas of the founding of this country, George Washington's admonition against permanent alliances, Thomas Jefferson's argument against entangling alliances.

We got involved in the alliance, the Grand Alliance, in World War II because the world was at stake, but the idea was that when that was over, that would be that. Who thought we would be forming some kind of permanent alliance with Canada and our European allies? There we were in 1949 forming NATO and, of course, other alliances as well during the Cold War. The Soviet threat was deemed to be so sufficiently dangerous to the United States and its partners that the United States did go about forming these alliances only a few years after it had been allied with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom in the Grand Alliance of World War II. So, it really is hugely important that it was established and that here we are in 2021 and Zachary's poem has pointed out that there are some cracks in the thing, but it's still standing all these years later.

Well, yeah, a little bit of both. I mean, the United States clearly has been the dominant actor within NATO, but it is an organization that does operate by consensus. You know, nobody has a veto within NATO, and it's interesting. I have a former PhD student from American University, Balazs Martonffy, who wrote a great dissertation on NATO decision-making in the middle of the Cold War period, and he used archival materials from NATO and showed that actually there were lots of times, lots of conversations within NATO when smaller countries were able to push back successfully against the U.S. position.

So especially at the end of the Cold War and soon after, we tend to think of the United States as this truly dominant power within NATO, and it provided so much of the wherewithal for NATO to be able to deter the Soviet Union that it definitely had a pretty overwhelming voice. But it does have to consult, and it does have to work with its allies within the institution.

I think that's really more of a post-Cold War phenomenon. When we look at the establishment of NATO, I mean, we think about it as this alliance of democracies, but there were countries during the Cold War, Portugal initially, Greece, Turkey. Greece and Turkey come into the alliance in 1952, and both in the 1960s go through challenging periods. It is the case that Spain doesn't come in until 1982, post-Franco, but I mean, the emphasis during the Cold War really was strategic, but it's in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War and the effort to think about NATO as a more political institution and trying to figure out what to do about Central and Eastern Europe and how one could help encourage democracy and respect for human rights and rule of law.

It's really in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War that NATO becomes more geared toward trying to help develop democracy in these potential new members, whereas I think during the Cold War, it was really much more focused on its strategic purpose.

Yeah, I mean, it's not comparable to the Warsaw Pact. I mean, the Warsaw Pact, I mean, the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe. I mean, those countries are really, you know, properly known as client states. And you know, the Soviet Union in most cases installed the leadership of those countries and controlled those leaders, although there were some exceptions and especially as time went on.

I mean, the United States, you know, did have to work with its allies. And it had some, it had some difficult allies. Tim Sale's written a great history of NATO called Enduring Alliance. And, you know, I was fascinated when I read the sections on, you know, French President Charles de Gaulle. I mean, his, I mean, was just exasperating for American presidents. I mean, a lot of the sort of the ways in which de Gaulle was threatening to walk out, you know, sort of echoed the way Donald Trump would argue about threatening to walk out.

But of course, it's a big deal for the United States to walk away from NATO. France walked away from the Integrated Military Command and, you know, it's France, not the United States. So it wasn't the end of the alliance. And, you know, of course, it's since come back in recent years. But you know, there certainly, you know, there were some interesting personalities and there were some some issues that had to be managed during the course of the of NATO's existence. And, you know, the old joke is sort of that NATO's always in crisis. Every time we talk about NATO in crisis, it's like, yeah, you know, we've seen this movie before because there's always some issue that's dividing the allies.

Well, I think there were both policy and political reasons for him. And I think it's just really important to remember that both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were very concerned about isolationist sentiment in the United States, very concerned that the American public would not support international engagement. With respect to Europe in particular, the lesson of the 20th century was that they had internalized was when the United States leaves, as it did after 1919, bad things result. You know, staying after 1945 was good for Western Europe.

The fact that war had broken out in Yugoslavia in 1991 led people to believe that that kind of ethnic conflict could break out all over Eastern Europe. People talked about ancient hatreds. People didn't know that much about Eastern Europe and there was fear that there would just be conflict breaking out all over. So there was a there was a policy reason for trying to figure out how to ensure security and stability.

But then there was also political calculation was very important in the 1992 campaign for Tony Lake, who was advising Bill Clinton on foreign policy, that Democrats try to woo back the neoconservative elites who had left for the Republican Party in 1980 and supported Ronald Reagan and also voters of Central and Eastern European descent, sort of Reagan Democrats, particularly Polish-Americans, you know, sort of the idea that the Democrats had lost these voters in the 1980s in the two Reagan election victories and then the Bush 88 victory. And George H.W. Bush was seen as slow to recognize the change that was taking place across the communist world. And and Tony Lake thought that using sort of democracy promotion was a way to woo these neoconservatives and also voters of Central and Eastern European descent back to the Democratic Party.

And Clinton, the Clinton team felt they did that successfully in 92 and they were going to keep those supporters in 1996. And it's no accident then when Bill Clinton makes his big announcement about NATO enlargement in October 1996, it's no accident that he goes to Hamtramck, Michigan, to speak before a largely Polish-American audience. You know, this this this this this constituency in the Midwest and Northeast was very important to the Clinton Democrats.

Yeah, and I just think in this case, you just had, you know, again, especially for somebody like Tony Lake, the sort of the political needs and the policy desires just meshed together so well. You know, in political science, we would talk about over to overdetermination of the outcome. I mean, I think, you know, there were just a lot of factors that went into this. And and it also was a reason why you could get both Democratic and Republican support. You had people who wanted NATO enlargement because it would help promote democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. And you had others, particularly Republicans, who looked at NATO enlargement as a way to to ensure that Central and Eastern Europe was protected against Russia in the future. And and so you had lots of people supporting this for for a number of different reasons.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's a it's a really fascinating thing. I've been fascinated and did a piece in the Journal of Cold War Studies in 2020 because I was just interested in this idea that, I mean, Bill Clinton was so eager to develop a partnership with Russia, was so eager to develop a partnership with Boris Yeltsin, saw Russia as a partner, as being really important for his own for his own agenda, that, you know, he he believed that if if Russia was no longer an enemy, that that would free up defense dollars to be used for his domestic his domestic agenda.

And so, you know, the obvious question is, well, how is it the person who's so responsible for pushing NATO enlargement is also a person who wanted a great relationship with Boris Yeltsin and wanted the US to have a new relationship with Russia? And I you know, my conclusion was he convinced himself he could do both and that I think that he convinced himself it was largely a political issue, that if he could just keep the process going, but not in a concrete way until after Yeltsin was reelected in in July of 1996, but then make it more concrete before his own reelection in November of 1996, that that that would really solve a lot of the problems.

I also think from a US standpoint, you know, I mean, Josh mentions the specifics about what was said in 1990, and he's done more than anybody else to illuminate sort of those conversations and what they mean. There's a broader assurance that the United States is giving to the Soviet Union and then the Russians, which is basically we won't take advantage of your retreat from Europe to undermine your security. And the US officials throughout this period, they believe they stuck to that. Their argument would be NATO became more of a political institution. They reduced weapons in Europe through the CFE Treaty. The US pulled troops out of Germany. And that they were doing all these things and then invited Russia to sign the NATO-Russia Founding Act to try to create a NATO-Russia relationship. So, you know, from a US standpoint, the view is, look, you know, we said we wouldn't undermine your security and nothing we did has undermined your security.

Meanwhile, the Russians are looking at NATO moving closer and closer, taking up all these Warsaw Pact states in 2004. They take the three Baltic countries in 2008, say that Ukraine and Georgia are going to become members of NATO. You know, from a Russian standpoint, it looks very different than it does from Washington. And I just think those perspectives really can't be bridged.

Well, I think it's part of the story, but, you know, there's no excuse for the fact that, you know, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, annexed part of its territories, fostering civil war in the Donbass and, you know, has refused to really pursue a negotiated solution to that conflict. And, you know, you can understand Russian fears about Western intrusions, but I don't think that, you know, excuses invading another country. But there's no question. I mean, I think this is one of the interesting features of this.

Bill Burns, who's now the CIA director, was ambassador in Moscow in 2007, 2008. His book, The Back Channel, is an amazing book. He has posted on the Carnegie Endowment website, the Back Channel book website, declassified documents, documents he got declassified, including cables that he sent home, you know, in the run-up to the 2008 Bucharest summit, and he, NATO summit, and he writes that, you know, Ukraine and Georgian membership in NATO, this was a red line for people in Moscow. And he says, this isn't just hardliners or Putin, this is people across the political spectrum just feel that this would be very damaging to Russian interests. And, you know, the Russians see themselves as having a privileged sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. They think they should be able to control the affairs there. They don't want to see these countries, these other countries in Western institutions. They don't really want to even see them as successful democracies.

You know, the United States views these countries as independent countries that, you know, if they want to pursue democracy, if they want to pursue Western orientation, if they want to draw closer to Western institutions, that's their prerogative and they should be able to do it.

So, again, you know, you have fundamentally different perspectives. And, of course, Russia is closer and Russia's interests are, you know, much deeper. And, you know, they've been able to carve out this part of Ukraine to control. But at the same time, they've also antagonized the population of Ukraine, which is now more supportive of NATO and large, of being part of NATO than they've ever been.

Well, I think first we should just note the, you know, remarkable nature of the mission in Afghanistan. You know, after September 11th and the attacks from Al-Qaeda that were formulated from the territory of Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, you know, the United States made the decision that if the Taliban wouldn't offer up Al-Qaeda to the United States, that we would go to war. And the decision was made not to include, not to do this as a NATO mission, as had been done in 1999 in Kosovo. And in fact, in part, because there was a belief that the Kosovo mission showed, you know, the United States had to go through all its partners for, you know, getting targets approved and so on. And the Bush administration didn't want to be hamstrung by that.

And then the Bush administration, you know, even though the allies had invoked article five and stood with the United States in the aftermath of September 11th, but then the Bush administration goes and invades Iraq in 2003 and gets bogged down in Iraq. And then, oh my gosh, it needs Europe. And it's asks NATO in fact, to come and set up an international security assistance force and do reconstruction and stabilization in Kabul. And so you then have this NATO mission and NATO countries and non-NATO countries, lots of partners. And, you know, it's a pretty extraordinary effort by NATO and non-NATO partners to try to, you know, establish some good governance and security in Afghanistan. And so the NATO allies become quite invested in it.

You know, a lot of times they were made fun of for the caveats that they had on the kind of military operations they would engage in, but they were quite committed to it. And, you know, by this past spring, I mean, they had more troops in Afghanistan than the United States did. And so they were really, they knew that Joe Biden was committed. I mean, Donald Trump had signed a peace deal with the Taliban. They knew Biden was committed to getting out. Biden had wanted the United States to leave in 2009 when he was vice president and he lost that argument. So it was pretty clear he was going to do this. But the way it was done, you know, it was just so troubling. And, you know, allies felt that they weren't consulted and there'd been a lot of pushback on that. People have said, oh, no, they were. And Secretary General was, you know, was consulted and brought allies together for this. But, you know, I think this was done in a way that that the allies really did resent. There wasn't much that they could do about it. I don't know if it'll have any long lasting effects.

I mean, partly it depends on how the Biden administration looks at its European allies and how it thinks about them. And I think the big question there is, does it think about them as allies to work together to solve problems of a general nature, including specific problems related to that region? Or does it view every ally in terms of what it can do for the United States and its strategic competition with China?

And I think that's the danger for the alliance, is that the United States is so focused on the Indo-Pacific and China, the people, you know, that are really dominant in the administration are those who are driving the policy toward the Indo-Pacific. And the allies have sort of become an afterthought. And I think that could really come back to haunt the United States. And I think that could really come back to haunt the United States.

Well, it's interesting, you know, when Josh mentions sort of, if you had told US officials in 1949, here's what 2021 would look like, you know, how happy they would have been to hear it. And I think they also would have asked the follow up, which was, so that means the United States didn't have to stay in Europe anymore, right?

I mean, they would have expected that we would have left.

So, you know, but there we are. And I think that it's just, what's so fascinating, we started with the focal point of Europe and the Soviet Union, how NATO was formed, what the thinking was at the end of the Cold War. In that period, as Josh said, Europe and Russia were the focal point of US foreign policy. That's what we thought about the most. And that's no longer true.

We're thinking about Europe and Russia today, just as part of our policy toward China. We want Russia, Biden wants stable and predictable with Russia, so that he can focus on China. He's looking at Europe, what can you do for me on China? And I just, you know, NATO is now talking more about China, but it's not really a great fit for the alliance. And I think that, you know, the more that China becomes the focus, the more clear it's going to be that that's not really the, you know, a purpose for NATO. And, you know, we'll certainly see interactions with allies.

We saw the US and UK working with Australia on the submarine deal, of course, to the detriment of France's own pursuit of a deal with Australia. So I think we may well see more of those types of things going forward. But, you know, there's still a big institution there and there are a lot of people with a lot at stake in NATO. So like Josh, I think it'll be around for a while.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Zachary. That was amazing.