Last week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization held a conference in Wales to discuss Russia’s armed invasion of Ukraine. The conference was highly anticipated in the wake of months of conflict in the region and numerous close calls with mysterious envoys. The consensus was a request for increased military spending from its member nations and the building of a new 4,000 person “spearhead force.” Members of NATO are now obliged to aim towards spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense spending. The two countries which are ramping up most are Lithuania and Poland.
Some argue that if NATO increases its military capacity, Russia will be threatened and will mirror this strategy, leading to an even more destructive conflict than the one currently taking place in Ukraine. In fact, the reason for Russia’s aggressive intervention in the first place is post-1991 NATO expansion. In Ukraine, Western states supported the ousting of the democratically elected Viktor Yanukovytch in the Orange Revolution of 2004. In 2008, NATO also considered adding Ukraine and Georgia. Just by looking at a map of these countries, one can understand the NATO-induced claustrophobia Russia must have felt. The normative conclusion to this argument would be that in order to return to a calmer political state, the West should refrain from enlarging NATO any more.
This argument relies on a misleading narrative that speaks of the Eastern European countries as victims of Western desires and machinations. In reality, these countries voluntarily joined NATO for economic, political, and military benefits, not because Western states manipulated them into the agreements for the ultimate purpose of surrounding Russia. These Eastern European nations were rightly given acceptance into NATO, regardless of how uneasy it made Russia. Any response against this statement would imply that Ukraine should be held to different NATO-joining standards than other countries because of its shared border with Russia.
This misunderstanding is dangerous. Russia is unmistakably a threat to its neighbors: the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, the war in Georgia in 2008, the rehearsal of an invasion and occupation of the Baltic States in 2009, a substantial increase in Russian defense spending, the most recent Russian intervention in Ukraine, and its violation of sovereignty in annexing Crimea all warrant this claim. Some would contest that the West’s encroaching on this territory is the motivation for Russia’s actions. If believed, it leads to the conclusion that if the West stops its encroachment, Russia will calm down. Beyond the fact that “Western encroachment” isn’t an accurate term for what actually occurred, Russia desires to control its neighbouring countries regardless. It does not want sovereign states, it wants pro-Russian states. Russia does not want a neutral Ukraine, it wants a pro-Russia Ukraine.
The new arsenals in these NATO states will cause Russia to be less aggressive and send two important messages. First, that if Russia invades the newly armed countries, it can be sure to find itself in a much-too-costly war. Secondly, it makes it clear that these nations want to be both politically independent and members of NATO. In both the Georgian and Ukrainian crises, Russia claimed to be “protecting the local Russian population” in order to legitimize its intervention. This move to increase military spending by Poland and Lithuania make it even clearer that this excuse would be unacceptable if Russia aggresses either nation.
Putin has played his hand—Russia has no qualms with violating territorial sovereignty and asserting its power through the likes of physical aggression, subversion, bribery, cyber-warfare, diplomatic stunts, and energy sanctions. Appeasement only gives Russia room to exercise these capacities. Steps should be taken to increase Eastern European states’ capacities to resist Russian aggression.
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