AD1184
Celestial
There's quite a good academic paper here from the late 1990s on the western folly of NATO expansion, called Creating a Disaster: NATO's Open Door Policy by Robert J. Art:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2658073?seq=1
You can read the whole thing by creating a free account at JSTOR.
I don't agree with everything in it, but it is an interesting look into contemporary opinion at the time of the first post-Cold War NATO expansion.
A few choice quotes from beyond the first page visible without logging in:
The Founding Act mentioned is the NATO-Russia Founding Act which, as I am sure you can imagine, is now effectively abrogated by the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO in recent years. Russia finally forced the closure of the NATO office in Moscow last year, bringing an end to NATO-Russia cooperation, although this was dead in the water ever since 2014. It's also worth noting that many of the countries that Art mentions as consisting the 'contested zone' have been inducted into NATO since his writing. The Baltic Republics, Romania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia (now North Macedonia) are now all NATO members. It was announced emphatically that Ukraine and Georgia would become NATO members at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest.
NATO expansion (excluding Russia) is only one factor in creating the conditions for this current conflict. A significant one, for sure, but there is at least one other factor in European Union expansion (excluding Russia), in terms of actions that the west has been taking, but if you point these things out now, you are accused of being a mouthpiece for the miserable Kremlin regime.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2658073?seq=1
You can read the whole thing by creating a free account at JSTOR.
I don't agree with everything in it, but it is an interesting look into contemporary opinion at the time of the first post-Cold War NATO expansion.
A few choice quotes from beyond the first page visible without logging in:
"Defense of member territory is no longer the sole directive for NATO; now it must address instability within and among the newly-created states of Europe. This requires crisis prevention, peacekeeping, and peacemaking--missions that NATO has already begun to undertake.
[...]
"The West has done itself no good by going through with a decision that is unpopular across the entire political spectrum of Russian political opinion and that has complicated the life of pro-Western reformers who want to tie Russia closer to the West. Except for those on the extreme right, Russians do not believe that the present enlargement threatens their territory. What they fear from enlargement is exclusion from the West, not attack by NATO. The European Union and NATO are two of the West's most important institutions, and membership in them rightly signifies full participation in Western affairs. Russians can therefore view their inability to join either as meaning that they are not considered worthy of full participation in the Western world. This sense of exclusion is a serious issue.
[...]
[By footnote:] "In the Washington Treaty that created NATO, the signators did not formally qualify the enemy against whom the alliance was directed, although all knew it was the Soviet Union. The treaty did, however, retain for the member states the right of national control over the use of force, thereby rendering military assistance not automatic, but contingent upon national decision. This was the price to be paid in order to get the Washington Treaty through the United States Senate. The text of the treaty makes the point clear. By Article 5, 'the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.' By Article 11, however, the members provided a safety catch: 'This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.'
[...]
[By footnote:] "Adding Russia to NATO is not popular with European members of NATO. David Yost, a close observer of European security affairs, cites German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe's views, made clear in September 1994, as representative of European views on adding Russia: 'Russia cannot be integrated, neither into the European Union nor into NATO ... If Russia were to become a member of NATO it would blow NATO apart ... it would be like the United Nations of Europe--it wouldn't work.'
[...]
"NATO's expansion must be limited and, preferably, stopped, if Russia's co-operation is to be secured. No European-wide structure will succeed if in the process of creating it, Russia is estranged or, worse yet, made an implacable enemy. Yet, that is exactly what the United States and its allies risk if they next induct the Baltic states or Ukraine into NATO. [...] Boris Yeltsin is on record as stating that if NATO takes in any of the former Soviet republics, that will be cause for abrogating the Founding Act and will lead to a complete breakdown of Russia's relations with the West. The same result is nearly as likely if many more states are inducted but Russia continues to be excluded. The Larger NATO grows without Russia, the more apparent it becomes that Russia is being discriminated against. Thus, if the Founding Act is to be used as the institutional hook to draw Russia into a cooperative security arrangement with the Wet, then it is the height of stupidity to take steps that would cause Russia to abrogate it.
"If further expansion of NATO without Russia risks alienating it, then the West faces two choices. Either it closes the barn door for a long time after taking in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, or it makes a second round of expansion, if political expediency requires another one sometime soon, as innocuous as possible by taking in only a few states and only those that are non-controversial, such as Slovenia, Austria, and Sweden. The states of Europe that lie in the contested zone--such as Finland, the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia, Macedonia--must understand that they have no God-given right to NATO membership. Furthermore, the must be made to understand that NATO expansion beyond a certain size risks bringing on two scenarios: the one they fear most--a Russia hostile to them; and the one they about least but which is equally bad for them--an ineffective NATO. If these nonmember states cannot, for understandable reasons, comprehend these two dangers, then the United States together with its Western allies must make the facts of Realpolitik life clear to them, instead of catering to their historic nightmares and pandering to America's manifold European ethnic groups, as has been the case to date. These states must be made to understand that their security is better off with a viable NATO that they cannot join than with one that is not viable but to which they belong. The latter will do them no good whatsoever, but there is always the chance that the former can do them some good."
[...]
"The West has done itself no good by going through with a decision that is unpopular across the entire political spectrum of Russian political opinion and that has complicated the life of pro-Western reformers who want to tie Russia closer to the West. Except for those on the extreme right, Russians do not believe that the present enlargement threatens their territory. What they fear from enlargement is exclusion from the West, not attack by NATO. The European Union and NATO are two of the West's most important institutions, and membership in them rightly signifies full participation in Western affairs. Russians can therefore view their inability to join either as meaning that they are not considered worthy of full participation in the Western world. This sense of exclusion is a serious issue.
[...]
[By footnote:] "In the Washington Treaty that created NATO, the signators did not formally qualify the enemy against whom the alliance was directed, although all knew it was the Soviet Union. The treaty did, however, retain for the member states the right of national control over the use of force, thereby rendering military assistance not automatic, but contingent upon national decision. This was the price to be paid in order to get the Washington Treaty through the United States Senate. The text of the treaty makes the point clear. By Article 5, 'the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.' By Article 11, however, the members provided a safety catch: 'This Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.'
[...]
[By footnote:] "Adding Russia to NATO is not popular with European members of NATO. David Yost, a close observer of European security affairs, cites German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe's views, made clear in September 1994, as representative of European views on adding Russia: 'Russia cannot be integrated, neither into the European Union nor into NATO ... If Russia were to become a member of NATO it would blow NATO apart ... it would be like the United Nations of Europe--it wouldn't work.'
[...]
"NATO's expansion must be limited and, preferably, stopped, if Russia's co-operation is to be secured. No European-wide structure will succeed if in the process of creating it, Russia is estranged or, worse yet, made an implacable enemy. Yet, that is exactly what the United States and its allies risk if they next induct the Baltic states or Ukraine into NATO. [...] Boris Yeltsin is on record as stating that if NATO takes in any of the former Soviet republics, that will be cause for abrogating the Founding Act and will lead to a complete breakdown of Russia's relations with the West. The same result is nearly as likely if many more states are inducted but Russia continues to be excluded. The Larger NATO grows without Russia, the more apparent it becomes that Russia is being discriminated against. Thus, if the Founding Act is to be used as the institutional hook to draw Russia into a cooperative security arrangement with the Wet, then it is the height of stupidity to take steps that would cause Russia to abrogate it.
"If further expansion of NATO without Russia risks alienating it, then the West faces two choices. Either it closes the barn door for a long time after taking in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, or it makes a second round of expansion, if political expediency requires another one sometime soon, as innocuous as possible by taking in only a few states and only those that are non-controversial, such as Slovenia, Austria, and Sweden. The states of Europe that lie in the contested zone--such as Finland, the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia, Macedonia--must understand that they have no God-given right to NATO membership. Furthermore, the must be made to understand that NATO expansion beyond a certain size risks bringing on two scenarios: the one they fear most--a Russia hostile to them; and the one they about least but which is equally bad for them--an ineffective NATO. If these nonmember states cannot, for understandable reasons, comprehend these two dangers, then the United States together with its Western allies must make the facts of Realpolitik life clear to them, instead of catering to their historic nightmares and pandering to America's manifold European ethnic groups, as has been the case to date. These states must be made to understand that their security is better off with a viable NATO that they cannot join than with one that is not viable but to which they belong. The latter will do them no good whatsoever, but there is always the chance that the former can do them some good."
The Founding Act mentioned is the NATO-Russia Founding Act which, as I am sure you can imagine, is now effectively abrogated by the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO in recent years. Russia finally forced the closure of the NATO office in Moscow last year, bringing an end to NATO-Russia cooperation, although this was dead in the water ever since 2014. It's also worth noting that many of the countries that Art mentions as consisting the 'contested zone' have been inducted into NATO since his writing. The Baltic Republics, Romania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia (now North Macedonia) are now all NATO members. It was announced emphatically that Ukraine and Georgia would become NATO members at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest.
NATO expansion (excluding Russia) is only one factor in creating the conditions for this current conflict. A significant one, for sure, but there is at least one other factor in European Union expansion (excluding Russia), in terms of actions that the west has been taking, but if you point these things out now, you are accused of being a mouthpiece for the miserable Kremlin regime.