Dissapearance of NATO would destabilize both Eastern Europe and Russia

Let's imagine a year 2017 when Donald Trump is the president of US, anti-European populists come to power in Germany and France and Britain falls into isolationism. Is this the happy hour of Russia? These developments would no doubt please the Kremlin but it also entails risks for Russia because without NATO Eastern European states would try to balance Russia. This could create serious instability across Eastern Europe and Russia.

NATO has stabilized Eastern Europe because the overwhelming might of the West was enough to guarantee reasonable security. Without NATO Eastern European states would have two choices, Finlandization and balancing Russia.

Promises and perils of Finlandization

Finlandization got its name after policies Finland adopted during the Cold War. Finland remained neutral and avoided confronting Russia. In return Finland was allowed to remain a capitalist democracy and to engage in lucrative business with Russia. Finlandization is sometimes the approach offered for countries like Estonia.

The problem with Finlandization is that it was probably a unique situation that is hard to replicate. Soviet Union avoided pushing Finland too hard because Finland had fought fiercely during the Winter War so the Soviets had a lot of respect for Finnish threat of military resistance if they were pushed too far. Finland used both political concessions and military deterrent to achieve a certain way of living next to Russia.

After the Second World War Czechoslovakia also tried to maintain some degree of freedom like Finland. It didn't work because communist influence was so strong that in 1948 they just organized a coup to cement their power. When Czechoslovakia tried again in 1968 to become a bit more like Finland in its relations with the USSR, Brezhnev sent in tanks. Czechoslovakia just didn't have Finnish military capacity so Russians felt free to push Czechoslovakia to ever greater concessions.

The same is probably the true with all post-Soviet states. None of them has in the eyes of Moscow a status similar to Finland because they haven't fought their own Winter War against Moscow and thus Russia feels that it can push ever further, until she meets some resistance. An advice to finlandize would probably mean for post-Soviet states an advice to accept ever-greater Russian meddling.

Balancing Russia

The reason why Baltic states like Estonia would be unlikely to finlandize would be decisions taken in Poland and Ukraine. Those nations would quite surely try to balance Russia, thus offering the Baltic states an alternative alliance for protection.

These days both Poland and Ukraine are staunchly anti-Russian. End of Western support would not encourage them to find an agreement with Russia, but would instead encourage a full confrontation with Moscow. Never in centuries has geopolitical situation been more beneficial to balancing the power of Russia, even without NATO. Germany is no longer a threat to Poland. Ukraine's turn to the West in 2014 was a major geopolitical event. Ukraine could have easily fallen for Moscow but instead pro-Western government maintained control over about 90% of pre-war territory and population. Now the anti-Russian alliance of Poland and Ukraine has about 60% or Russian population and about 45% of Russian GDP (in 2015, measured in US dollars). This looks like a solid Russian superiority but the Polish-Ukrainian alliance has to worry only about Russia, while Moscow has several security issues: Syria, Caucasus, China, Ukraine, even the Arctic. Russian power is split, it had four different navies and an expensive nuclear program.

This future Polish-Ukrainian alliance already has a name – Intermarium. This means land between the seas, namely between the Baltic and the Black Sea. The history of Intermarium stretches back to time after the First World War. Back then it didn't work out because too many nations were to be involved in it and Ukraine lost its independence after only a few years. It's different now. The core of the alliance has only two members – Poland and Ukraine, who only have one main problem – Russia. This core Intermarium would be strengthened by cooperation with other nations like Romania or Sweden.

Geography is here the key. For the first time in 500 years Poland is no longer a direct neighbor with Russia. Between Poland and Russia are Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is cut off from mainland Russia as long as Lithuania remains independent. This makes Lithuanian independence very important for Poland and gives Lithuania a secure place in the Intermarium alliance. Latvian independence helps to secure Lithuania and to cut Russia off the Baltic Sea, so Latvia can also count on Polish support, but less. Estonia is even further in the north than Latvia and is thus less vital for Polish security. This means Estonia has to work even harder to achieve  protection of the Intermarium.

Domination of the Baltic Sea

Poland would inevitably try to neutralize the Russian fleet on the Baltic Sea. Russian fleet's main base in Baltiysk in Kaliningrad is within range of Polish artillery so the Poles can consider this problem to be under control. The second port of the Russian navy is in Kronstadt in the Gulf of Finland. Before WW2 Estonia and Finland had plans to block the gulf so that Soviet navy couldn't get out of the gulf. It didn't work back then because in 1939 Estonia decided not to fight. It didn't turn out well for Estonia back then so now Estonia has decided to fight for her freedom.

There are currently no known plans to block the Gulf of Finland. NATO doesn't need to do it, it's strong enough to defeat the Russian navy in the Baltic Sea, thus keeping the sea open to supply the Baltic states. Intermarium on the other hand would find blocking the Gulf of Finland the easiest way of keeping Russian navy out of the Baltic Sea.

Doing it would force Estonia to spend heavily on the navy. Estonia would need to develop mine laying capacity and would also probably need land- or shipbased anti-ship missiles. Developing those capacities will drive Estonian defense spending way above the current level of 2% of GDP. Also, all Baltic states would need to strenghten their anti-aircraft capacities and land forces. This will easily drive defense spending in all three states to 3% of GDP or even higher.

Destabilyzing Russia

That's not the end. For balancing Russia Intermarium would probably try to weaken Russia by supporting anti-Russian forces. This would for instance mean giving anti-aircraft MANPADS, like the Grom system, to opposition forces in Syria. West has so far avoided it, because there is a danger terrorists could use it against civilian planes, but Intermarium is not going to worry too much about a few planeloads of dead German turists. War in Ukraine has already killed thousands and the events between 1930-1950 killed millions of Ukrainians and Poles. This hangs heavily on decisionmakers in Warsaw and Kyiv.

Intermarium would also arm and finance anti-Russian forces in Caucasus and would try to establish a contact with Chechnya's strongman Ramzan Kadyrov who has a large private army. Intermarium would also be tempted to support Taleban in Afghanistan in the hope that Taleban's win will destabilyze the whole Central Asia, thus creating another nightmare for Russia. And Intermarium would support every Chinese attempt to capture Russian lands east of the Urals.

Despite Russian claims NATO hasn't tried to destabilize and divide Russia, mostly out of fear of what might happen to Russian nuclear weapons in case of Russian collapse. Intermarium on the other hand would be glad to see Russian collapse because it would diminish Russian threat to them. The weak and the strong behave differently. NATO is so strong that it can think about the longe term dangers of Russian instability. The weak can't afford such luxury because if they get their policy wrong the weak may have no "long term" to worry about. Memories about loss of independence are very vivid in Intermarium. Countries of Intermarium will anyway think that after Russian collapse nuclear weapons will remain in the hands of state actors and even if terrorists get them, those nukes are unlikely to be used against Intermarium countries.

For the Baltic states costs of Intermarium may not be limited to higher defense spending. Intermarium countries at the Baltic Sea are much richer then those on the Black Sea. Russia on the other hand is applying most pressure on the poorer countries on the Black Sea. This requires financial support of the richer Poland and Baltic states to poorer Ukraine and maybe Georgia to build up their infrastructure and militaries. In fact, the richer countries of Intermarium would need to copy some of the policies of EU that they have so benefited from. Those costs would also be significant. For Estonia both increase of defense spending and support for Ukraine may need an additional 2% of GDP. If there would be a Russian arms buildup near the Baltic states of if Russia would seriously attack Ukraine those extra costs may become even greater.

Going nuclear

Intermarium may achieve a conventional deterrent against Russia but will remain vulnerable to Russian nuclear blackmail. The only way out is getting an independent nuclear deterrent. Ukraine has some know-how and Poland has money so their nuclear path could be quite fast. To speed things up they might team up with other nuclear countries like North Korea, Iran or Pakistan.

Even a few nuclear warheads might give Intermarium an effective nuclear deterrent. They are of course very far from a credible second strike capacity but Ukraine is so close to Russia that Intermarium would not need nuclear submarines for deterrent. Several large Russian cities, including Moscow, are so close to Ukraine that Intermarium could target them with nuclear warheads delivered either in short-range missiles or fighter jets. Even a small probablity of losing a major city to a nuclear strike will make Moscow think twice about its nuclear threats and that's already something of a deterrent.

For the Baltic states all this would be just another terrible dilemma. Baltic states are way too small for any nuclear deterrent so they would prefer a Finnish policy of fighting a serious conventional war while ignoring Russian nukes. Poland and Ukraine would think of nuclear weapons mostly because those weapons are available to them. Baltic states would need to decide how they would react to Polish and Ukrainian nuclear weapons because being allied with them would make them targets of Russian nukes. Would Estonia be willing to have Polish nukes here so Poland could target St Petersburg? Even switching sides won't help because if the Baltic states would be allied with Russia then Russian bases in the Baltics would be tempting targets for Polish nukes.

How to avoid this bleak scenario?

If the West would withdraw from Eastern Europe at least some developments discussed in this article are likely to take place. No Western pressure on Poland and Ukraine is likely to stop those developments because pressure would be seen just as another indication that the West is an unreliable partner and that thus Intermarium needs an independent deterrent against Russia.

Continuation of current policies of NATO and EU would be great, because they help to solve Eastern Europe's security issues without the destabilizing effects of balancing Russia. If US would drop out of NATO there still are several things Europe can do. Europeans can strenghten the European pillar of NATO, they can keep EU operational and the sanctions against Russia in place.

EU sanctions against Russia are here an important milestone. If EU would drop the sanctions against Russia without serious improvement of the situation in Ukraine Eastern European nations like Poland could feel like they now have to respond with measures of their own, like direct military support to Ukraine with lethal weapons. If that would take place then it will be a sign that my warning of an independent Eastern European security policy would be becoming true.

A lesson from Estonia - fighting corruption in Ukraine takes time

Edgar Savisaar, the mayor of  Tallinn, is suspected in
taking bribes and also in taking money form Russia.

Those who are worried about the level of corruption in Ukraine should understand that it takes time to fight it. More than grand announcements Ukraine needs to liberalize it's economy, strengthen democracy and build institutions.

In 2015 Estonian score in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index was 70, while the cleanest country, Denmark, scored 91 out of 100. Estonia is the highest scoring ex-communist country and has better score than Portugal, Spain or Italy. Ukraine on the other hand scores just 27 points, indicating a high level of corruption. Ukraine is on a par with countries like Iran, Nepal, Nicaragua and Paraguay. Ukraine is even more corrupt than Russia. So one would expect that Estonia has a lot to teach to Ukraine about fighting corruption.

Soviet Union was a corrupted place but it wasn't as bad as Ukraine or Russia now. When it imploded in 1991 Estonia and Ukraine went different into different directions - Estonia become less, Ukraine more corrupted.

In the beginning in Estonia it wasn't really about fighting corruption, but about liberalization to join the West. The push for liberalization also helped to limit corruption. Liberalization itself was about efficiency and modernization because a minimalist state was easier to run.

Corruption in politics and public sector remained a serious issue in the 90s. Privatization scandals were common. Tiit Vähi, a prime minister in the 90s, lost his job because one corruption scandal. Once he was no longer in politics he turned out to be an owner of a large company called Silmet that was privatized while he was in office. Nothing happened about this or other major corruption scandals of the 90s. The politicians were untouchables. The prosecutors office was under political influence. The internal security service Kapo was operating at least partly outside of the law.

It got better when Estonia joined the European Union. Estonia had strengthened law enforcement and in the decade between 2000-2010 there were several corruption cases against civil servants. Convictions in corruption cases were no longer rare.  In 2008 25 traffic police officers of Harju county were convicted in taking bribes. Before it anti-corruption officials had in two major operations charged dozens of traffic police officers of Harju county for taking bribes. After they all were indicted the Harju county that includes the capital Tallinn for some time had almost no functional traffic police because most previous officers were waiting for trial for corruption.

In 2010 Villu Reiljan, a former minister of environment, was convicted in corruption. He was the first former minister in Estonia who was convicted for a crime he committed in office. It took 19 years of independence to convict someone of his stature. In 2014 he was once more convicted for corruption for a crime he committed as minister. He is now once more indicted for a third case of corruption, this time for intermediating a bribe.

Yet corruption remains a serious issue. Everything associated with cars is still rife with corruption. It is still possible to buy a driving license or pay your way through vehicle inspection even though corruption is in these days more hidden than before.

It was only in this decade that Estonia started seriously tackling political corruption. In 2012 there was a major scandal about funding of the ruling Reform party. There were several scandals about influence peddling, also often about the Reform party. Then in 2015 leader of the Center party, Edgar Savisaar, was charged with corruption for taking bribes as a mayor of Tallinn.

So why did it take so long in Estonia to fight political corruption and what has made fighting corruption possible now? It's about several actors working in tandem. The first is development of law enforcement agencies that prioritize fighting corruption and are no longer afraid of targeting politically influential people. Building up such capacities takes time.

The second is political pluralism. The dominant Reform party and Center party have attempted to manipulate rules in their favor and to cement their hold on power with public money. Yet their power has always been limited because all governments have been multi-party governments. This matters. When the state prosecutor Heili Sepp started investigating Reform party finances in 2012 the Reform party was very vicious in their criticism of her and they didn't deny their desire to destroy her career. They didn't succeed because she was able to work in institutions not controlled by the Reform party.

It also helps to have a free press and outside actors independent of political power. The Autorollo scandal that forced the former minister of foreign affairs Keit Pentus-Rosimannus (also from the Reform party) to leave office was uncovered by a businessman who lost money in the bankruptcy of the trucking company Autorollo. It was an investigation financed by him that uncovered a lot of dirty details and clear signs of influence peddling in the wheeling and dealing around that company that cost the tax-payer 325 000 euros.

Ukraine has the benefit of a strong civil society that is pushing for reforms. Emergence of a strong political force that campaigns against corruption has always been important in fighting corruption. The anti-corruption fighters in Ukraine should avoid pushing for individual indictments and concentrate on building efficient institutions. An anti-corruption agency would be great, it has worked well in Latvia and Romania. Yet the best cure against corruption is a well functioning modern state that no longer has any soviet pockets nowhere in public administration.

Criticism of realism - Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy

Stephen M. Walt claimed in the Foreign Policy magazine that realists would have done a better job guiding American foreign policy than liberals or neoconservatives. He doesn't have any actual success stories to tell so he mostly criticizes decisions that were made and claims that adhering to realist theory of international relations would have produced better results. Criticising Walt's claims require playing a bit with alternative history just like he does but there's a helping hand - Walt's claims don't actually fit the realist theory. It's hard to understand how exactly does he derive his policy proposals from realist theory. To criticize him I use only some really core concepts of realism like the security dilemma, absence of trust and unpredictability of the future.

1. Walt claims:

"Second, had American leaders embraced the wisdom of realism, the United States would not have pushed NATO expansion in the 1990s or would have limited it to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Realists understood that great powers are especially sensitive to configurations of power on or near their borders, and thus experts such as George Kennan warned that NATO expansion would inevitably poison relations with Russia."

That claim doesn't fit with the idea of security dilemma. In short the security dilemma means that if another country has military capabilities near your country you never know weather that country will use them only for her defence or for attacking you. So to be on the safe side one has to increase one's own power even if it means that the other side will take it as a sign of a potential aggressive plans and will increase her military capabilities as well. The security dilemma is a vicious circle, because there is no trust among the countries and they can't predict the future.

The question is, why does Walt think that in 1992 Russia would have felt happy or secure in her new borders? Yes, NATO was very far from those borders but between Russia and NATO was a belt of nations, some of them, like Poland and Ukraine were big enough to be a danger for Russia herself in a theoretical future scenario, especially when allied with another strong state like China.

As soon as 1992 Russia again started to enlarge her influence by creating frozen conflicts in Georgia and Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia tried to reintegrate several countries (most notably Belarus) to Russia to increase her power and to deny territory and resources to a potential enemy. Even without NATO's enlargement it made sense for Russia to increase her control over foreign territories.

Yet NATO's potential enlargement would also inevitably be on the table for Russia. Moscow could never really believe promises that NATO won't enlarge so it still would mean it would make sense for Russia to behave like NATO was enlarging. This is exactly what we see now in Ukraine, when Russia sees every example of military cooperation between NATO's nations and Ukraine as a sign of NATO's enlargement even when there is none.

On the other hand, consider the situation of Poland. In the 90s Poland was in a geopolitical dream, because she was independent, Germany was friendly and Poland was separated from Russia by Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Russia's attempts to enlarge her influence would inevitably be interpreted as hostile signs and Poland would try to stop them, thus entering into conflict with Russia.

Enlarging NATO to Poland would help little because realists themselves say that one should not put too much trust in allies. Without enlargement of NATO Poland would have been left alone and Warsaw would probably have supported every anti-Russian force in the world with weapons and money to balance Russia. A conflict over Ukraine would have been especially likely because Ukraine was and still is a divided country and almost anything could have produced a conflict.

All of this would have meant a deeply unstable Eastern Europe. It was only avoided by a strong US presence in Eastern Europe which calmed some of the fears in Poland and meant that Russia had to think twice before acting. Strong US presence helps to stabilize that region.

2. Walt wrote:

"Fourth, realists also warned that trying to “nation-build” in Afghanistan was a fool’s errand — especially after the invasion of Iraq allowed the Taliban to regroup — and correctly predicted that Obama’s 2009 “surge” was not going to work."

How exactly did the realists derive from their theory that nation-building in Afghanistan can't work? The difficulties of building states were obvious for most people but realist theory really says very little about nation-building. In fact, realist theory deliberately avoids such subjects.

3. Walt wrote:

"Finally, had Obama listened to his more realistic advisors (e.g., Robert Gates), he would not have helped topple Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, creating yet another failed state in the process."

People tend to overestimate the stability of dictatorships. Dictatorships often collapse, leaving chaos behind. I'm not saying that the Libyan intervention was successful but the alternative had a downside too, because ignoring Qaddafi's brutal suppression of the revolt or even helping him would have created serious image problems for the West. Walt is worried about American image in case of Israel but doesn't seem interested about how it would affect American image if America would no longer support democracy abroad.

4. Walt wrote:

"A realist would also have warned Obama not to say “Assad must go” or to draw a “red line” about the use of chemical weapons. Not because Bashar al-Assad should be defended or because chemical weapons are legitimate instruments of war, but because U.S. vital interests were not involved and it was clear from the beginning that Assad and his associates had little choice but to try to cling to power by any means necessary. For realists, the overriding task was to end the civil war quickly and with as little loss of life as possible, even if that required doing business with a brutal tyrant."

Walt seems to overestimate US influence in Syria. In fact other actors, mostly regional, are much more important in Syria. Jon Alterman, a former State Department official, had a bleak comment about actual US influence in Syria.“U.S. allies in the Middle East are increasingly acting independently because they think the United States is too passive,” he added. “The limited nature of the U.S. response leaves people too free to feel they can act with complete impunity and they act without regard to the United States because we’ve become like part of the furniture.”

Walt made in Syria the same mistake he made in Eastern Europe - he assumed that local powers are incapable of acting on their own and the only important actors are great powers like the US and Russia. The Syrian crisis shows just how wrong such attitude is.

Walt complains that realists don't get much attention among Washington's decision-makers. His own article explains that both the media and politicians in the US are right to keep ignoring them.