Dan Snow's History Hit - Crisis in Ukraine: Putin & NATO

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Ukraine has been invaded by Russia. But why? What is NATO’s purpose, and why does it bother Vladimir Putin so much? In this episode of Warfare, we’re joined by Jamie Shea, the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary-General at NATO, who’s sat across the table from the Russian President himself. Jamie and James explore the birth of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the questions surrounding its membership, and how it impacts the current situation in Ukraine. Jamie has decades of experience working for NATO since the Cold War era, and shares incredible insights into the ups and downs of its relationship with Russia over the years.To hear more from Jamie, check out his weekly look at emerging geopolitical crises as well as threats in security and defence here.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi, Ivan. I'm Dan Snow. I'm currently in the Antarctic. So we've chosen today to play an episode of one of our sibling podcasts. It's Warfare for People That Love Military History, presented by James Rogers. He's got a great episode for you. Enjoy. On the morning of Thursday, February 24th, President Vladimir Putin declared the start of military operations in Ukraine. I decided to conduct a special military operation. It aims to protect people who've been bullied and subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years. For that, we will strive for demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and will bring to justice those who committed multiple bloody crimes against civilians, including Russian citizens.

We urge you to lay down your arms immediately and go home. I will explain. All servicemen of the Ukrainian army who comply with this requirement can freely leave the area of military actions and return to their families. can freely leave the area of military actions and return to their families. Whoever would try to stop us and further create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and lead you to such consequences that you have never faced in your history. We are ready for any outcome.

With Danaway on endurance, we wanted to give you some context into the developing situation in Ukraine. So to listen to the full episode, head over to the Warfare podcast. Hi, Jamie. Thanks for taking the time to chat today. How are you doing? Very well, James, and thanks for inviting me on today. Not a problem at all. I'm sure you're a very busy man at the moment, especially with the tensions going on with NATO and Russia. And so it's really great to have you here to give us a little bit of, well, history into NATO and a little context in terms of what's going on with NATO, Russia and Ukraine. But before we get into all of that, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your own history and your own roles in NATO. Well, again, thank you for the invitation tonight, James. I was a member of the

NATO international staff for 38 years. So it was basically my life and my career. I started in 1980, nine years before the Berlin Wall came down. The Cold War was in fact far from over because in my early years at NATO, we had a major crisis with the Soviet Union over the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe and massive peace demonstrations against NATO's nuclear weapons on the streets of Western Europe. So I had a fairly exciting start getting into that. Anyway, as I mentioned, I stayed for 38 years. So I saw the Cold War through, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern

Europe, and then NATO finding new missions to keep itself occupied, enlarging, and I know that's the theme this evening, the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, doubling its membership in the space of 30 years from 15 to 30-odd states, and also taking on so-called stabilization and intervention missions in the Balkans, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, of course, where NATO stayed 20 years until recently, and air campaigns against the Qaddafi regime in Libya. So there was never a dull moment. There was always a sense that as soon as one chapter finished in NATO, another chapter opened. And I left in October 2018, at the age of 65, just at the time when the wheel was coming full circle, if you like, because NATO was swinging back towards a more familiar paradigm of competition,

maybe even confrontation with Russia, the balance of power and the contest for influence over Central and Eastern Europe. So we're at a point now where you say that NATO has come full circle in many ways, but a lot of people are still surprised at this animosity between Russia and NATO. Is it the case that NATO was pretty much established as a means to try and counter or balance the power in Europe between the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and of course, NATO powers, Western powers? Was that not the whole purpose in the first place? Was that not why NATO was established?

Well, there was a famous quip by Lord Hastings Ismay, who was Churchill's aide-de-camp during World War II. And Churchill rewarded him by sending him off to become NATO's first secretary general once the alliance was established in 1949. And he was always asked the question, well, why NATO? And he used to say, well, it's very easy. It's to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. And although it was a quip, there was a lot of truth in it, because NATO was the first alliance where the United States permanently engaged itself

to upholding security in Europe. You remember after the First World War, Europeans were hoping that the United States would do that via membership of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which was largely an American creation. But then the Senate in Washington turned its back on that particular dream of President Woodrow Wilson. And we all know that the United States lapsed into isolationism before the Second World War, and the Europeans were left to fend for security by themselves. So what was

really unique after the Second World War was that the United States reversed a historical tradition of not being involved in European security affairs. That was George Washington's advice to the American people in his farewell address, stay clear of entangling alliances. So fortunately, the Truman administration didn't heed that advice and did commit itself, the United States, to an open-ended military defense of Europe. This was called for by the Europeans, who in fact absolutely did become worried about the growth of Soviet power after World War II. The fact that the cooperation during World War II, the so-called United Nations to defeat Hitler,

quickly turned to animosity once the Third Reich had fallen, the way in which, of course, Stalin helped himself to large chunks of territory in Eastern Europe, but then also imposed communist regimes on most of the eastern part of the continent where the Soviet army was in occupation, right up to the border between, of course, East Germany and West Germany, as we know. And that was a violation of the Yalta Agreements at the end of the Second World War to hold free and fair elections. So it wasn't so much that the United States sort of came imposing NATO on the Europeans,

which is often the view that many people have. It was quite the opposite. It was really the French and the British at the time who were worried about their relative weakness, military weakness, vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and who really wanted the United States to act as a balancing force. And frankly, the willingness of Washington, as I say, to go along with that. But when Hastings Ismay spoke about keeping the Germans down, that wasn't just a joke, because there was not only the worry about the Soviet Union, but particularly the French worry about a revival of Germany, defeated twice by France, and once again, trying to reassert itself in Central and Eastern Europe. But unlike the trying to contain Germany, which is what the French had tried to do before the First World War and after the First World War, this time around, NATO allowed the French

to have a much better policy, which was to integrate Germany into an integrated military command structure, where all of the German forces were not under German command, but under NATO command, but under NATO command, with everybody keeping an eye on them. And for many years, by the way, subject to limitations too. Those limitations were not really lifted until after German unification in 1990. So there was a sense that at the time when NATO was founded, it sort of dealt with the three classic European security problems, fear of a major Germany, fear of Russian interference in European affairs, and finally, the inability of

the Europeans to find an effective balancing alliance system whereby they could do that job by themselves. So that was really the genesis of it all back in the late 1940s. Just a coda or conclusion. The Americans actually didn't anticipate that NATO would be a long lasting affair. They originally wanted a treaty lasting only 10 years. Finally, the Europeans convinced them to go for a treaty lasting 20 years, which would have expired in 1969. But then they agreed that NATO, after all, was a good thing. I mean, the Cold War was still going on in 1969. And NATO had sort of proved a very cheap insurance policy for the European powers. It had made defence into a collective responsibility. And everybody agreed that that was a much better approach than the sort of individual efforts to guarantee

security through, you know, different entangling alliances before the Second World War. So after 1969, there was a general agreement to make the treaty a kind of open-ended affair. And therefore, it means that NATO has now gone past the 70th birthday mark, which makes it the longest military alliance in recorded history. It's now even outstripped the Athenian alliance against Sparta in the centuries before Christ. I mean, that's quite the achievement. So tell us, Jamie, what do you mean by collective security? What does it mean to be a member of NATO?

What obligations and commitments do you make? The idea behind collective security is, of course, people share the roles and the risks and the responsibilities of defence. So the basic deal is that you agree to defend an ally, and in return, the ally agrees to defend you. It's a kind of two-way affair. And it also means that each individual ally, because it has the defense guaranteed by NATO, can specialize in certain roles and missions. It doesn't necessarily have to have a big army, a big navy, a big air force. For example, a small country in Eastern Europe can quite clearly see that it can't afford an air force, so it should allow the Americans or

the British or the French or the Germans to do that. But it can specialize in medical units or chemical biological warfare units or military engineering units or whatever. Iceland is in NATO and doesn't even have armed forces of its own, but it's contributed by sending doctors to Afghanistan or by running Kabul airport. Yeah, air traffic controllers. Yes, absolutely. So it's pretty much a mixed bag. And I think the flexibility of the system is one reason why it has survived, because it basically allows countries to have better security at a furious pace, while clearly seeing in view of

the deteriorating international situation, you know, the rise of Hitler, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of the Soviet Union, of Imperial Japan, that they were getting less security and having more risks all the time. So it's rather like an insurance policy, James. The idea is that you pay a premium, which is affordable, and in return, you get excellent coverage. But of course, the alliance rests largely on the willingness of the United States to provide the basic security guarantees, because there's no doubt that the United States is by far the largest spender in NATO.

It spends twice the average of GDP on defense than the Europeans do, and that's historically been the case. It provides well over 60% of all of the vital capabilities on which NATO depends, including the important nuclear deterrence. And we all know that when it comes to reassuring countries like Poland and the Baltic states don't sort of really phone up European NATO members for help. They first of all say to Washington, send us the 82nd Airborne Division, please send us your F-35s or your F-117s or your Apache helicopters, as we are seeing vis-a-vis Russia at the present time, because they know that that's the thing that really does deter Russia and really gives them

that kind of reassurance. So yes, it's a collective organisation in which everybody contributes. But if it isn't really underwritten by the United States, as it has been historically, then its deterrence value would slide quite quickly. So you mentioned already a little bit about this expansion during the 1990s. Tell us, how much did NATO grow? What were the rationales behind this? And what are the implications of this rapid growth? Yeah, that's an excellent question. You know, what happened is that in the beginning of the 1990s, NATO really didn't have enlargement on its agenda. Not because, as the Russians pretend, NATO had given Moscow a guarantee that it would not enlarge. That's

not true. That guarantee was never given. But it was because at the time in the 1990s, NATO was thinking that the future would lie in partnerships, informal security partnerships, military training, military assistance to the new member states of Central and Eastern Europe. By the way, many of those states also initially were attracted by the idea of going back to neutrality, for instance, like Sweden or Finland, or joining the European Union to have economic prosperity while not taking on the burdens or the risks even of a military alliance like NATO. But in the middle of the 90s, the mood changed because the countries of Central and Eastern Europe elected leaders like Harvard in Czechoslovakia

or Lech Walesa in Poland, who really sort of felt that NATO had given the Western Europeans good protection. They historically had been exposed to Russia, to Germany, to other great powers, and that they wanted the same level of protection, to join the Western club and have the same benefits that the Western countries had had. So it wasn't that NATO, like a recruiting agent, went around Central and Eastern Europe saying who would like to join. No, it wasn't that at all. It was the countries of Central and Eastern Europe saying, this partnership idea is all

very well, but it's second class as far as we're concerned. It's not giving us that seat at the table, that ability to have a voice, that ability to participate in decision making, that ability to be protected in a way that you guys in Western Europe have enjoyed. And so they started banging on the door, asking for membership. I think also you had at the time the administration in the United States of Bill Clinton, with people like Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State. She had come from Czechoslovakia as a war refugee. And that generation had a sort of strong sense, not of guilt, but of obligation. They felt bad about Yalta. They felt bad about the division of Europe and the inability of the United States to prevent that at the time. And they felt that it was a kind of historical debt to repair Yalta and the division of Europe by bringing these countries into NATO. The Russians clearly were in a weak position in terms of being able to prevent that. that, you know, over time, it wouldn't really matter so much because, you know, with maybe a few more zigzags along the way, given its historical legacy of not being a democracy,

Russia would nonetheless also evolve in a democratic direction. You know, NATO opened its door to Russia in the belief, you know, maybe like you with your girlfriends in the past, where you say, the more you get to know me, the more you're going to find me lovable, and the more you're going to like me kind of thing. The Russian fears of NATO were based on ignorance or a lack of knowledge what NATO was all about. And if we set up, for example, institutions with Russia, like we did in the late 90s with the Permanent Joint Council and then the NATO-Russia Council, Russia would attend meetings at NATO. It would sit around the table and it would say, what have we got to worry about? These guys are nice and they're not threatening us at all. And they're even looking to cooperate with us. So, you know, the British have an expression, James, you know it well, called cakeism,

that you could have your cake and eat it too. And I think there was for a while in NATO a sense that we could enlarge the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, we could bring them into the family. Russia was not a threat, so it wouldn't really entail big increases in defence spending, big military deployments in Eastern Europe. Russia was not a threat, so it wouldn't increase the risks for existing NATO members to have to extend security guarantees to the new members. And a row Russia would, yes, would moan a bit and hue and ha along the way. Eventually, as I said, NATO-Russia cooperation on a parallel track would gradually reconcile the Russians to living with an enlarged NATO. And indeed, you know, NATO always said that, you know, Russia could be a candidate in the future. No guarantee, but that it could have

the same perspective if it evolved in a democratic direction as well. So there were actual talks and possibilities of Russia potentially joining NATO one day? Well, they never sort of got down to any kind of negotiation. And Russia never formally submitted a request to join NATO or to start the process by applying for NATO's MAP, sorry, NATO jargon, Membership Action Plan, which is sort of slightly equivalent to the way in which you negotiate different chapters of EU accession in different areas before you can join. But I was physically present at a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow around the turn of the century. But that was the younger Putin who was sort of less bitter and resentful about NATO and European security than he is obviously today.

And Putin was in a cooperative mood in those days. He was the first person to phone George W. Bush after the 9-11 attacks and pledge cooperation. We had Russian troops with us in the Balkans and in Kosovo. I even went to inspect Russian forces who were participating in the NATO peacekeeping missions, real peacekeeping missions, not the Putin type of peacekeeping. And we had a NATO information center in Moscow, a NATO liaison office. We were doing cooperation with the Russians in Afghanistan. They didn't like terrorists any more than we did. We were cooperating with Russia on piracy issues, you know, across the board. And so that was a hopeful time. And Putin, at the meeting that I attended, you know, said to the NATO

Secretary General, you know, tell me, what does it take to be a member of NATO? Maybe we're interested. And so I'm not saying that Russia came close, but it was not as unthinkable then as it obviously would appear to us today. To listen to the full episode and to understand the developing situation in Ukraine, head over to the Warfare podcast now. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished.

Well, that, folks, was an episode of Warfare with Dr. James Rogers. We've extended the remit of Warfare to First and Second World War, but also the great wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. So I hope there'll be something in the Warfare feed for you all to enjoy. If you want to subscribe to warfare,

just head over to wherever you get your podcasts, search warfare, and feel free to give it a rating and a review as well. Thank you.