Nigel Farage’s claim that NATO provoked Russia is naive and dangerous

On June 21st Nigel Farage acknowledged that the war in Ukraine was the fault of Vladimir Putin, but told the BBC that Russia’s president had been “provoked” by NATO and the European Union. The leader of Reform UK, the populist party snapping at the heels of the governing Conservatives in pre-election polling and threatening to push them into third place, was echoing Mr Putin’s own arguments. The Russian leader is focused mostly on NATO, which provides the hard security that makes the EU safe. He complains that the alliance’s expansion into central and eastern Europe after the cold war made Russia’s position intolerable. Some Western scholars concur.

Mr Farage and Mr Putin have the argument upside down. Countries join NATO not to antagonise Russia, but because they are threatened by it. To understand how the arguments have shifted, you need to look back to the unstable politics of Europe in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Back then Boris Yeltsin, Mr Putin’s predecessor, complained when members of the old Warsaw Pact applied to join. Over the years this hardened into the line of reasoning cited by Mr Putin as justification for massing troops on Ukraine’s border. It is an argument that has gained currency in much of the world. It is flimsy at best.

Critics of NATO enlargement say that it breaks an undertaking that James Baker, then America’s secretary of state, gave to Russia in February 1990 that NATO would not expand eastward. They add that it was also unwise. As NATO grew, Russia felt increasingly threatened, and was bound to protect itself by resisting. That is also the nub of Mr Farage’s argument. Some go on to point out that the West had other ways than NATO to enhance its security, such as the Partnership for Peace, which sets out to strengthen security relations between the alliance and non-members.

Mr Baker’s supposed undertaking is a red herring. He was speaking about NATO in eastern Germany and his words were overtaken by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact nearly 18 months later. NATO and Russia signed a co-operation agreement in 1997, which did not contain any restriction on new members even though enlargement had been discussed. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined almost two years later.

The undertaking that matters is the one that Russia gave in 1994, when Ukraine surrendered the nuclear weapons based on its territory. Among other things, Russia pledged not to use economic or military coercion against its neighbour. Its violations of this promise in 2014, when it seized Crimea and part of the Donbas region, and again on February 24th 2022 have been flagrant. Russia now claims, disingenuously, that the agreement from 1994 only covered nuclear war.

In fact NATO has every right to expand, if that is what applicants desire. Under the Helsinki Final Act, signed in 1975, including by the Soviet Union, countries are free to choose their own alliances. Is it any surprise that former members of the Warsaw Pact, which had suffered so grievously under Soviet rule, should have sought a haven?

The decision of Finland and Sweden to apply for membership of NATO in May 2022 illustrates why they might. For many years public opinion in Finland and Sweden had been against joining NATO. It shifted as a direct result of the invasion of Ukraine, which Mr Putin ordered ostensibly to forestall NATO’s expansion. Two countries proud of their long history of military non-alignment came to judge that the risk of antagonising their neighbour was outweighed by the extra security they would gain from joining an alliance dedicated to resisting Russian aggression. The right for sovereign countries to determine their own destinies is one of the many things at stake in the war.

Critics of enlargement retort that NATO should have said no to central and eastern Europe all the same. Expansion was bound to make Russia paranoid and insecure. Even though NATO is a defensive alliance, the government in Moscow perceives it as a threat. When Mr Putin attempts to restore his security, say by modernising his armed forces, NATO, in turn, perceives heightened Russian aggression. Especially provocative was NATO’s Bucharest summit in 2008, which promised membership to Ukraine and Georgia, countries that Russia considers essential for its security.

Such security dilemmas are common in the study of international relations, and one clearly exists between Russia and the West. But to blame the West for triggering it is scarcely credible. One reason is domestic. Mr Putin has increasingly used nationalism, Orthodox religion and violence to shore up his rule. He needs enemies abroad to persuade his people that they and their civilisation are under threat. Seizing territory in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014 and today has been part of that strategy.

The other reason is international. Russia has a long history as an imperial power and, like most declining empires, it finds the prospect of becoming just another country hard to swallow. Instead, Russia wants to undermine alliances like NATO that keep the West secure. Regardless of NATO expansion, Russia was likely to resist forcibly as its periphery drifted off. Backing off today by abandoning Ukraine, or attempting to impose a peace on it, would only invite the next aggression from Mr Putin.

Were there alternatives to NATO membership? Here, the choice of Finland and Sweden speaks loudly. Both are long-term members of the Partnership for Peace. Clearly, neither felt that this offered them sufficient protection. If one of them were attacked, NATO would have no commitment to intervene. Nor would America and British nuclear weapons have covered the two countries, as they do the rest of the alliance.

By contrast, NATO proper is based on the principle that an attack on one member may be deemed an attack on them all. Its protection is as unambiguous as can be. Far from creating a benign environment, denying central and eastern Europe membership of NATO would have created a security vacuum that Russia may very well have been tempted to fill. If so, today’s war may not have been taking place in Ukraine, but in Latvia or Poland. Mr Farage’s assertion that NATO provoked Mr Putin is naive, foolish and historically inaccurate. It is also dangerous. ■

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared in 2022 after Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO.