Putin? Join the Club!
Let Russia join NATO or another European security organization.
MOSCOW - During a special meeting with the press, Russian President Putin
announced that his country wants to be part of a European security organization as
an equal partner. It was Putins first major press conference since taking office.
Previously, he limited media contacts to carefully orchestrated smaller gatherings.
Now about 500 journalists from home and abroad had come to the Kremlin to ask
the president the question. ‘We don’t see NATO as an enemy. We don’t see its
existence as a tragedy, but we don’t see the meaning of it either’ said the president,
who has previously argued for the dissolution of NATO. Nevertheless, Russia wants
to become a member of the treaty organization. If that is not possible, NATO must be
dissolved and make way for a European security organization of which Russia is a
member. Source: Trouw 19 July 2001, 00:00
Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join NATO in 2001, but did not want his country to go through the usual application process and stand in line ‘with many countries that don’t matter’, according to a former secretary general of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
George Robertson, former Labor defense secretary who led NATO between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear during their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of Western Europe. ‘They wanted to be part of that safe, stable, prosperous west that Russia was not part of at the time’ he said. The former Labor politician remembered well the earlier meeting with Putin, who became president of Russia in 2000. Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join NATO?’ And Robertson said, ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join NATO, they apply to join NATO themselves’. He said: ‘Well, we are not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter, are we?’
The story echoes what Putin said to the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out NATO membership ‘if and when Russia's positions are taken into account as those of an equal partner’.
He told Frost that it was difficult for him to picture NATO as an enemy. ‘Russia is part of European culture. And I cannot separate my own country from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.’ All these comments by (now) Lord Robertson on the One Decision podcast, presented by Michelle Kosinski, a former CNN journalist, and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of M16, underscore how Putin’s worldview has evolved during his more than 21 years of uninterrupted rule over Russia.
A little further back in history, when the Iron Curtain between East and West was raised. In 1986 the new head of government of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had already started reforms (perestroika) and more freedom of the press (glasnost) to help the economy in the Eastern Bloc get going. However, it was difficult. The Soviet army, always ready to intervene in the event of an uprising, he withdrew from, among others, East Germany. The border guards, who first shot every refugee, did nothing at all. In 1989, after almost 30 years, the Wall in Germany no longer formed a division. The Wall was largely demolished. A year later, the two Germanys, which had been divided for 45 years, became one nation state again: present-day Germany came into being, with Berlin as its capital.
The Cold War seemed over for good.
‘You have to understand that we are all Europeans’ - Gorbachev told Interfax, which interviewed him on n.b. February 21, 2021, due to his ninetieth birthday. ‘That means we have to negotiate’. This conception of Europe back then is still at its core today. Can anything be learned from this in the current situation?
When Russia was invited to join the Group of Seven in 1997, it was intended as a major step towards Russia’s membership in NATO. The Group of Seven (G7) was an intergovernmental Forum composed of: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States. How does Dima Vorobiev, former Propaganda Executive in Russia, view this? ‘As a propaganda veteran, I don’t believe that everything people tell each other isn ever unbiased. Everything is propaganda - you just have to accept that, just like ‘death and taxes’ said Dima. ‘History shows that it was the wrong decision for both sides. The Western powers saw it as a rapprochement with Russia and President Yeltsin, to honor his inclination towards a more open, accountable, rules-based way of government. The Russian side, on the other hand, saw it as closing the chapter on Russia’s defeat in the Cold War. Western attempts to subject Russia to their rules were regarded as ‘arrogance’. and ‘dictation’. As Putin later said, (- famous quote!): ‘…that Russia had been relegated to a folding chair at the global power table.’ So much for Dima Vorobiev.
Earlier, in 1993, Yeltsin’s Russia was clearly no longer a liberal-democratic state, as President Yeltsin used tanks to dissolve the Russian parliament. The rigged presidential elections in 1996 and the colonial war in Chechnya in 1994-1995 reinforced this trend. The Western powers, however, did not consider all this to be a neck-and-neck affair. People were seeing blind. It was this gigantic miscalculation that caused them to lose the morale they enjoyed in the early 1990s, thanks in part to their collaboration with the lenient Gorbachev. The fall of communism placed the levers of power in the
hands of the middle class of the old communist and state bureaucracy: the apparatchiks. The oligarchic rule that gradually took root in the 1990s under Yeltsin’s presidency really did not fit the Western principles of liberal democracy very well. Oligarchs do not need changes of power, free press, responsibility of rulers or protection of minorities. Many of them maintained Soviet hostility to NATO and the US and saw the rise of the liberal world order as a threat to Russian national interests. They have easily translated the chaos and discontent of the population during the 1990s into outright resentment towards the West. This crystallized further after the NATO attacks on Serbia in 1999: Russian public opinion took a fundamentally nationalist, anti-Western turn. Yeltsin spent much of his second term as president in the hospital, acting more or less like a puppet figure, who no longer had any real influence. In a period of less than a year and a half, from April 1998 to August 1999, he appointed five prime ministers, the last being Vladimir Putin. On September 30, 1999, he sent the Russian Army to Chechnya for the second time to take the area. This Second Chechen War was more successful than the first. In this war, Putin basically led the Russian efforts in the war. Yeltsin invariably struggled with health problems. Putin could thus be prepared to replace Yeltsin. On December 31, 1999, the time had come. The rise of further authoritarianism, now under Putin’s leadership, was a logical step in this development. After Putin took office in 2000, he nevertheless made a last-ditch effort to improve Russia’s position in the G8. He helped President Bush in his war on terror, implemented a number of market-friendly economic reforms, and pitched the idea
of joining NATO. None of this was considered sufficient in the West to even approximate Russia as a more liberal democracy, while US attention increasingly turned to Afghanistan and Iraq. The further course of events did not convince Putinmin the least and he chose to take a more confrontational course with the West in order to guarantee his power. It eventually led Putin to the current head-on clash with the West, while in his early 2000s he still ‘went with us’; and even seemed to love the West a little bit.
In retrospect, Russia had already been thrown out of the track before, in the mid- 1990s, with regard to a possible participation in NATO. It was, in other words, even earlier - as far as I am concerned, unfortunately, a lost cause long before Putin himself came to power.
Those were the days..that ‘old’ Putin wasn’t that crazy after all. Don’t get me wrong: I
am absolutely not a fan of the man. We have to hand it to him: at the time he tried
to placate the west against the cliffs to:
- or to consider Russian membership of NATO,
- or create an entirely new alliance.
A clearly missed opportunity for the West, which preferred to only separate the
vassal states of the former Warsaw Pact from Russia to take them over. And not only
that, those countries became, once members of NATO, also immediately loaded with
weapon systems and even missile bases, right up to the installation of the missile
defense shield in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
In August 2008, after years of negotiations, Poland and the United States signed a
treaty regulating the placement of ten launchers on the territory of Poland. This
agreement allowed the US to install ten long-range missile interceptors. A radar
system in the Czech Republic was supposed to provide the data for the launch of the
missiles. In return, the US Patriot anti-aircraft missiles were supplied to Poland.
The installation of this missile shield can be regarded as the prelude to a second Cold
War.
After the massive street protests of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, Putin
grew increasingly suspicious of the West, which he blamed for funding pro-
democracy NGOs. He was further outraged by NATO’s continued expansion into
Central and Eastern Europe: Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia
and Lithuania chose to join the alliance in 2004; Croatia and Albania followed in
- Georgia and Ukraine were promised NATO membership in 2008, but for the
time being they have not been able to do so.
There is one more thing that pisses off Putin - and not only him, but all Russians. That
is the western perception of the victory over Hitler in WWII. It has to be said hard,
that war would never have been won without the Russians. The number of killed
Russian soldiers amounts to 10,700,000, for the USA it was 407,300, for the United
Kingdom 382,600, France 212,000. Well. The Russians rightly argue that their heroic
role in the fight against the Nazis in the west is completely underexposed. It was they
who, fighting like lions, advancing from street to street, from house to house, across
tattered Berlin, managed to smoke out the terrible dictator’s rat’s nest.
They certainly have a point with this.
In response to the question of how to de-escalate the current, life-threatening
situation in Ukraine, I hereby make a very unusual suggestion to get out of this
hopeless situation.
And yes, you read this correctly: I am in favor of peace negotiations with Russia
(Putin, sic!), on the basis of: join the club!
Make not only Ukraine a member of NATO, but also Russia.
Or, if necessary, set up a new alliance.
If you have to choose between what, in your view, is a potentially utopian, downright
pacifist proposal or a possible further escalation between two nuclear-armed
powers, with all the associated risks, in that case the utopian variant seems to me to
be the only real option we have left to protect ourselves and the other. Even if it
would lead to nothing at first, it can be the trigger for serious negotiations, based on
still fragile trust. A completely insane war apocalypse must be prevented in any case.
A vulnerable attitude can sometimes lead to a breakthrough.
To do this, you need to develop an understanding of the Other's points of view with
the help of emotional intelligence. We already do more than enough of enemy
thinking.
For further explanation the following.
In the current situation it seems sensible to me, in such a possible peace negotiation,
first of all with regard to the heroic role of Russia, to shake up and adjust the distorted Western image with regard to WWII. Humble. The role of Russia, as argued earlier, has been decisive, at the expense of an immeasurable number of victims.
In my view, such an arrangement from a new western point of view can immediately
force a serious opening on the other side. After all, the Russian side finally feels
decisively understood in this matter.
Making an in-depth analysis with regard to the judoka Putin is a completely different
story. The military Putin does not give in until he feels (military) resistance.
His whole idea of buffer states has long since become obsolete. That the majority of
the people of Ukraine themselves want to join NATO and Europe?
It will rust his ass. Entire populations previously had nothing to contribute, just like
ordinary Russians who are currently being silenced at the first breath of opposition.
Let alone that Western states or politicians, let alone individuals, could effectively
indict Putin by law. After all, what would be the way to break open Putin?
Again, in my opinion: show humility, humbly account for mistakes made on the
Western side, express a heartfelt apology for how things unfortunately went wrong
in the past with Russia’s intended accession to NATO, thanks to the outright
blindness of the West to seize this opportunity to contractually achieve a consistent
and long-lasting situation of peace and security in our old Europe.
Think outside the box!
On the express condition that Putin immediately ceases the occupation of Ukraine, I
believe that NATO would do well to offer the prospect of joining the alliance in
addition to Ukraine, surprisingly also Russia. (If desired, it is even negotiable to
create an entirely new alliance).
We are addressing the ‘old’ Putin with this: in the time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin
there was already a brief mention of membership.
’After all, Russia is also part of Europe as usual’ = text by Putin himself!
With this proposal we bring something back from our past where Putin ever focused on.
And we take the sting out of the conflict in one (1) time. After all, Putin finds it very difficult to say no to this proposal: the possible NATO membership of the Ukraine was the argument for Putin to start this war with the neighboring country. Of course we are talking about an admission process that takes years. Every new partner comes first in the waiting room, but in the end gets a decent treatment, just like all other member states. The intention is to
arrive at a rock-solid peace settlement. For example, Belarus can also be involved in
this. Of course, the West will also demand that democratic changes are necessary.
On the other hand, how open are we in the west to some exemplary cultural
impressions from Russia?
Here we have to use our own imagination. Why wouldn’t a negotiator even quote a
Pushkin’s poem, like any schoolchild can in Mother Russia? What do we actually
know about the Russian intelligentsia, their artists, their great scientists, their
profundity?
In the longer term, affiliation with the EU may also be on the horizon. There had long
been strong economic ties between the EU and Russia, especially from Germany, but
certainly also from the Netherlands and England.
The money laundering centers in the Amsterdam Zuidas and in London are now
being smoked out, most oligarchic billions cleverly escape the strict sanctions policy.
Here, too, mutual European cooperation can only lead to more normalization.
Our and their raw capitalist societies will then hopefully come to an end so fervently
desired by countless many.
What a wonderful vision is unfolding for this renewed Europe!
Is there still room for a war criminal like Putin in NATO? Don’t we forget what the
USA has done in Iraq, or even NL with its bombing of Hawija in Iraq? None of the
member states is squeaky clean. Love your enemies: after all, other autarks or villains
like Erdogan and Orban are also tolerated within NATO? Are Erdogan’s torture
chambers different from the Russian..? Finally, in this way the West can best keep
the highly excited rebuke of Wladimir Putin in check, by hugging him just not yet to
death.
Anyway, Putin doesn’t have eternal life either and the Russian Greek Orthodox
churches are mainly populated by old ladies.
I believe that the Western perception of present-day Russia is often far too one-
sided. As in Turkey and Belarus (!) new generations have emerged, even in Russia,
who have developed their own biotopes, especially through social media, despite the
enormous repression of their various patriarchs.This struggle is even splitting entire families.
Old cocks must go!
The Koran schools established by Erdogan are poorly attended and do not catch on.
Istanbul has gradually become a kind of free state, a ‘western’ enclave.
The role of social media has become increasingly important: think of the large mass
demonstrations that have taken place, or the protests of Navalny, or how Zelensky
now even wages war through the media on a daily basis!
At the time, after the Maidan revolution, Ukraine was given hope by the prospect of
a possible EU or NATO membership. The prospect of joining in the long run with
NATO could, in my opinion, also act as an enormous catalyst in countries such as
Belarus and Russia itself for the democratic revolutions we envisage in those
countries. That is how I came up with the idea of offering NATO membership to
Russia in addition to Ukraine. What changed in Ukraine, could in short just happen in
Russia: a new spring, a new sound..
And that, mind you: without further bloodshed. Thats what matters to me.
And all those enormous expenditure on defense are suddenly no longer necessary.
And we also play Putin and Xi apart..
Rutger W. Weemhoff publicist/pacifist Amsterdam
Philosopher and author
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