History, Grand Strategy and NATO Enlargement 145
History, Grand Strategy and
NATO Enlargement
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John Lewis Gaddis
Some principles of strategy are so basic that when stated they sound like
platitudes: treat former enemies magnanimously; do not take on unnecessary
new ones; keep the big picture in view; balance ends and means; avoid emotion
and isolation in making decisions; be willing to acknowledge error. All fairly
straightforward, one might think. Who could object to them?
And yet – consider the Clinton administration’s single most important
foreign-policy initiative: the decision to expand NATO to include Poland,
Hungary and the Czech Republic. NATO enlargement, I believe, manages to
violate every one of the strategic principles just mentioned.
Perhaps that is why historians – normally so contentious – are in
uncharacteristic agreement: with remarkably few exceptions, they see NATO
enlargement as ill-conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of
the post-Cold War world. Indeed I can recall no other moment in my own
experience as a practising historian at which there was less support, within the
community of historians, for an announced policy position.
A significant gap has thus opened between those who make grand strategy
and those who reflect upon it: on this issue at least, official and accumulated
wisdom are pointing in very different directions. This article focuses on how this
has happened, which leads us back to a list of basic principles for grand
strategy.
First, consider the magnanimous treatment of defeated adversaries. There are three
great points of reference here – 1815–18, 1918–19 and 1945–48 – and historians
are in general accord as to the lessons to be drawn from each. They applaud the
settlements of the Napoleonic Wars and of the Second World War because the
victorious allies moved as quickly as possible to bring their vanquished
adversaries – France in the first case, Germany and Japan in the second – back
into the international system as full participants in post-war security structures.
Historians tend to criticise (if not condemn) the First World War settlement
precisely because it failed to do that for two of the most powerful states in
Europe – Germany and Soviet Russia. The resulting instability, they argue,
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John Lewis Gaddis is Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University, New
Haven, CT.
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146 John Lewis Gaddis
paved the way for yet another conflagration. It was not for nothing that Winston
Churchill, having personally witnessed two of these instances and having
studied the third, chose as one of the ‘morals’ of his great history of the Second
World War: ‘In Victory: Magnanimity’.
That approach would seem all the more relevant to the fourth great case that
now confronts us – the post-Cold War settlement. The Soviet Union was never
an actual military opponent. Its defeat finally came not on the battlefield but as
the result of a change of heart, and then of character, and then ultimately of
system. The use of force, very fortunately for everyone, was not even necessary.
The process of rehabilitating our adversary – of transforming it from a
revisionist or even revolutionary state to one prepared to accept the existing
international order – began, therefore, even before the Cold War ended. It was as
if the Germans and the Japanese, say at some point in 1943 or 1944, had
suddenly laid down their arms, announced that they had seen the light, and
begun for themselves the processes of disarmament, democratisation and
economic reorganisation for which their enemies had been fighting.
It is all the stranger, therefore, that the Clinton administration has chosen to
respond to this most fortunate outcome of the Cold War, not by following the
successful examples of 1815–18 or 1945–48, but by appearing, at least, to emulate
the unfortunate precedent of 1918–19: one that preserves, and even expands, a
security structure left over from a conflict that has now ended, while excluding
the former adversary from it. If the US could afford to be inclusive in dealing with
its actual enemies Germany and Japan after 1945 – just as Napoleon’s conquerors
were in dealing with France after 1815 – then why is it now excluding a country
that, throughout the Cold War, remained only a potential adversary?
The answer most often given is that the Russians have no choice but to
accept what NATO has decided to do – that having swallowed the loss of their
sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany and the
eventual break-up of the former Soviet Union itself, their only alternative with
respect to enlarging the alliance is to gulp and swallow yet again. We, the
victors, are free to impose upon them whatever settlement we choose.
Not only is that view arrogant; it is also short-sighted, for it assumes that
defeated adversaries have no choices. And yet, even the Germans in 1945, as
thoroughly vanquished an enemy as there has ever been, had alternatives: they
could favour either their Eastern or their Western occupiers. The fact that they
chose the West had much to do with American and British efforts to make their
occupation policies as conciliatory as possible. The Soviet Union’s failure to
understand that need – its inability to see that wholesale reparations removals
and mass rapes were not likely to win it friends among the Germans – did a
good deal to determine the robustness of one post-war Germany, and the
brittleness of the other. The Germans had a choice, and they made it decisively.
If the US could be that accommodating then to the wishes of a country that
had produced one of the most loathsome regimes in history but had lost its
capacity to inflict injury, it is difficult to understand why Washington now has
elected not to accommodate a country that has chosen to democratise itself, but
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History, Grand Strategy and NATO Enlargement 147
still retains a considerable capacity to do harm. By insisting on NATO enlarge-
ment, it seems, we are violating a second great principle of strategy, which is that
one should never take on more enemies than necessary at any given moment.
For Russia does indeed have a choice: it is in the interesting position of being
able to lean one way or another in a strategic triangle that is likely to define the
geopolitics of the early twenty-first century. It can continue to align itself, as it
has patiently done so far, with the United States and Western Europe. Or it can
do what the US itself did a quarter century ago under the guidance of Richard
Nixon and Henry Kissinger: it can tilt towards China.
Given the complementarity that exists between Russia’s capacity to export
military technology and China’s ability to produce marketable consumer goods,
there is nothing inherently implausible in this scenario.1 It would not be the first
time Russia and China had linked up out of concern, even if misguided, over
American aggressiveness: we know from Soviet and Chinese documents that
this was precisely the reason behind the 1950 Sino-Soviet alliance.2 And of
course classical balance-of-power theory tells us that this is what we should
expect: if country A feels itself threatened by country B, it is apt to align itself
with country C. Country C in this case is one less likely even than Russia to see
its interests as compatible with our own.
That brings us to a third strategic principle that is being violated here, which
is the need to take a global and not just a regional perspective. US General George C.
Marshall coined the term ‘theateritis’, during the Second World War, to refer to
the tendency among some of his military commanders to see only the
requirements of their own campaigns, not those of the war as a whole. I am
hardly alone in the view that the Clinton administration has succumbed to a
kind of geopolitical theateritis: as Richard Haass has pointed out, ‘in his second
term, the first post-Cold War president has focused most of his foreign policy
efforts on NATO, a child of the Cold War’.3
The temptation to do is certainly understandable. NATO was the West’s most
impressive institutional success during that conflict, and it is only natural to
want to find some purpose for it in the post-Cold War era. But does it fit current
needs? Will we really be able to say in years to come – can we say now – that
military insecurity in the middle of Europe, the problem NATO was created to
solve, was (is) the greatest one that now confronts us?
The sources of insecurity in Europe these days lie more in the economic than
the military realm: disparities in living standards divide the continent, not
armies or ideologies. But the European Union (EU), the obvious instrument for
dealing with these difficulties, has come down with its own form of theateritis,
the single-minded push to achieve a single currency among its existing members
by the end of this decade. So it has been left to NATO to try to reintegrate and
stabilise Europe as a whole, which is roughly comparable to using a monkey
wrench to repair a computer. The results will no doubt be striking, but perhaps
not in the ways intended.
Containing Russia, of course, has never been NATO’s only role. Its members
quickly found it a useful instrument, as well, for restraining the growth of
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148 John Lewis Gaddis
German power (by including the Germans, note, not excluding them); and for
ensuring that the Americans themselves remained in Europe and did not revert
to their old habits of isolationism. ‘Mission creep’ was not invented in
Mogadishu.
But the likelihood of German aggression today seems about as remote as a US
withdrawal from the continent: neither of these old fears from the late 1940s and
early 1950s is even remotely credible now. If in the effort to ward off these
phantoms we should revive another spectre from those years that is a real
possibility – a Sino-Russian alignment – then future generations would have a
good case for alleging ‘theateritis’ on the part of our own.
Even if we grant, though, for the sake of argument, that NATO enlargement
is, or should be, an urgent priority, there is yet another strategic principle that
has been by-passed here, which has to do with providing the means to accomplish
selected ends. The dangers of letting interests outstrip capabilities are well
known. One would surely expect, therefore, that on as important a matter as this
– the designation of three additional countries in the centre of Europe as vital to
the defence of the US – those charged with organising those defences would
have been consulted, and carefully listened to.
Yet it is hard to find evidence that the Department of Defense, or the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, played any significant role in making this decision. The fact that
US interests have been expanded but their budget has not suggests that quite
clearly.4 It is true that the military were much involved in the now-eclipsed
Partnership for Peace. But that initiative was to have included the Russians in a
relationship with NATO as originally constituted. It did not involve enlarging
the Alliance in such a way as to advertise the Russians’ exclusion.5
One might conclude, from the administration’s failure to match military
means with political ends, one of two things. Either the countries the US is
proposing to bring into NATO are not in danger, in which case one wonders
why it is then necessary to include them. Or they are in danger, in which case
we have yet to prepare adequately to protect them. Either way, ends and means
are misaligned.
So where did the decision to enlarge NATO come from? The most authori-
tative study so far, that of Professor James Goldgeier of George Washington
University, singles out three individuals as having played key roles: President
Clinton himself, who became interested in the issue through an impromptu
conversation with Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa at the April 1993 dedication of
the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC; former National Security Advisor
Anthony Lake, who kept the idea alive within the administration through the
next year and a half; and Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for
European Affairs, who insisted at several critical moments in autumn 1994 that
NATO enlargement was official policy – thereby, or so it appears, making it so.6
With almost no public or Congressional debate – and with remarkably little
inter-agency consultation – momentum built up behind something that seemed a
good idea at the time to a few critically-placed individuals. Why, though, did it
seem a good idea? This is where things get murky, for although we can trace the
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History, Grand Strategy and NATO Enlargement 149
process by which the decision was made, the reasoning of the principal
decision-makers – since they chose not to articulate it – remains obscure.
To be sure, the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians badly wanted their role within
the ‘new’ Europe recognised, both symbolically and institutionally. How did it
happen, though, that the Americans responded so much more favourably and
rapidly than EU members did? The most frequent explanation I have heard is
that the Clinton administration, recalling the West’s abandonment of these
countries, first to German and then Soviet domination during the 1930s and
1940s, felt an emotional obligation to them.7
If so, the history behind that sentiment is pretty shaky. The US, after all, had
no hand at all in the 1938 Munich agreement, and it could have challenged
Soviet control of Eastern Europe after the Second World War only at the risk of
starting a Third World War, which would hardly have liberated anybody.8 Nor
is it clear that the Czechs, the Poles and the Hungarians suffered more during
the past half-century than the people we propose to leave out – the Slovaks,
Rumanians, Bulgarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians and even
the Russians themselves – all of whom were, in one way or another, victims of
German and/or Soviet oppression.
What we are seeing, then, is a kind of selective sentimentalism. The historic
plight of some peoples moves us more than does that of others, despite the fact
that they all have compelling claims as victims. Emotionalism, but of a
surprisingly élitist character, appears to be at work here.
One of the clearest lessons that has emerged from the new Soviet docu-
mentation on Cold War history has to do with the dangers of making emotionally
based decisions in isolation. Stalin’s authorisation to Kim Il-Sung to invade South
Korea, Khrushchev’s placement of missiles in Cuba, and Brezhnev’s decision to
invade Afghanistan all took place because leaders at the top responded to events
emotionally, and then acted without consulting their own subordinate experts.9
Those who raised doubts were simply told that the decision had been made, and
that it was too late to reconsider.
I do not want to be misunderstood here. I am not claiming that decision-
making in the Clinton administration replicates that within the former Soviet
Union. I am suggesting, though, that on NATO enlargement emotions at the top
do appear to have combined with a disregard for advice coming up from below –
and that given what happened in the Soviet Union when decisions were made in
this way, that pattern ought to set off alarm bells in our minds.
Well, people will say, maybe NATO enlargement was not the best model of
thoughtful, strategically informed decision-making. But the decision has been
made, for better or for worse, and going back on it now – especially having the
Senate refuse to approve it – would be a disaster far greater in its scope and
consequences than any NATO enlargement itself will bring.
This sounds to me rather like the refusal of the Titanic’s captain to cut his
ship’s speed when he was informed there were icebergs ahead. And that brings
up a final principle of strategy, which is that consistency is a fine idea most of the
time, but there are moments when it is just plain irresponsible.
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150 John Lewis Gaddis
Only historians will be able to say with any assurance whether this is such a
moment. Their current mood, though, ought not to give the administration much
comfort. So is there anything that might yet be done to avoid the damage so
many of us see lying ahead if we hold to our present course?
It is not unknown for great nations – even the US – to acknowledge mistakes
publicly and change their policies. Ronald Reagan did it in Lebanon: in 1983
that country’s security was a vital US interest; in 1984 (after over 200 Marines
had been killed there) it was no longer so. Surely the Nixon–Kissinger opening to
China was an acknowledgement that the long-time policy of isolating that
country had been misguided. The US certainly reversed course in Vietnam,
although only after years of resisting that possibility. John Foster Dulles once
threatened an ‘agonizing reappraisal’ of Washington’s whole policy toward
Europe if the French did not approve the European Defence Community. Paris
did not approve, Dulles did not reappraise, and the skies did not fall. And, lest
we forget, Washington’s entire containment strategy after the Second World War
constituted an implicit acknowledgement of error in having believed, as it had
during the war, that the Soviet Union under Stalin could be a lasting peacetime
ally. Mistakes happen all the time, and governments usually find ways to
survive them.
In the case of NATO enlargement, though, an acknowledgement of error – a
reversal of course – is not really necessary: the US could resolve most of the
problems its policy of selective enlargement has caused by acting upon the
implied premises of its own argument, and enlarging the enlargement process. We
could say that NATO enlargement is such a good idea that we think it unfair
just to apply the benefits to the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians – that we will
open the alliance to the other East Europeans, and ultimately to the Russians
themselves.
But that would totally change NATO’s character, its defenders will protest.
Precisely so – NATO ought to change to meet the conditions of the new world in
which it exists. But there is no precedent for such a dramatic move, NATO’s
advocates will insist. Precisely not – including Russia now could hardly be as
dramatic a step as it was to bring France back into the Concert of Europe as early
as 1818, or to include Germany as a recipient of Marshall Plan aid as early as
1947. But Russia is not yet a predictable, democratic state, NATO’s supporters
will complain. Precisely beside the point – for neither were Greece and Turkey
when they were admitted as NATO members, quite uncontroversially, way back
in 1952.
There is here illustrated one more lesson from the past, which is that what
people think of as radical innovations often actually exist as historical prece-
dents. People tend to be shocked in rough proportion to the amount of history
they have managed to forget.
George F. Kennan, a man who remembers a great deal of history, was one of
the earliest and most vocal opponents of NATO enlargement, just as he was of
the Vietnam War. Commenting on the Johnson administration’s claim that any
reversal of course in South-east Asia would fatally compromise American
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History, Grand Strategy and NATO Enlargement 151
credibility, Kennan reminded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1966
that ‘there is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute
and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn
pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives’.10
Perhaps, as Kennan’s biographer, I am slightly biased. But he was obviously
right then. I think he is right now.
Acknowledgement
6
This article was originally prepared for James M. Goldgeier, ‘NATO Expansion:
the National Defense University sympo- The Anatomy of a Decision’, Washington
sium, ‘Strategy and the Formulation of Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, Winter 1998, pp.
National Security Policy’, Washington 85–102.
7
DC, 7 October 1997. See, for example, Sherle R.
Schwenninger, ‘The Case Against NATO
Notes Enlargement: Clinton’s Fateful Gamble’,
1
My colleagues Bruce Russett and Allan The Nation, no. 265, 20 October 1997,
Stam have developed this possibility in p. 26.
8
an unpublished paper, ‘Expanding Michael Mandelbaum, The Dawn of
NATO Expansion: From a Dangerous Peace in Europe (New York: Twentieth
Idea to a Safer World’. Century Fund Press, 1996), pp. 55–56.
9
2
See John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 290–91; on
Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Afghanistan, see Odd Arne Westad, ‘The
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 68–70. Road to Kabul: Soviet Policy on
3
Richard N. Haass, ‘Fatal Distraction: Bill Afghanistan, 1978–1979’, in Westad (ed.),
Clinton’s Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy, The Fall of Détente: Soviet–American
no. 108, Autumn 1997, p. 119. Relations during the Carter Years (Oslo:
4
See Paul Kennedy, ‘Let’s See the Scandinavian University Press, 1997), pp.
Pentagon’s Plan for Defending Poland’, 132–33.
10
Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1997. Senate Committee on Foreign
5
Vojtech Mastny, Reassuring NATO: Relations, Hearings. Supplemental Foreign
Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Western Assistance Fiscal Year 1966 – Vietnam
Alliance (Oslo: Institutt for Forsvars- (Washington DC: Government Printing
studier, 1997), p. 61. Office, 1966), pp. 335–36.
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