Russia–NATO relations

Based on Wikipedia: Russia–NATO relations

The Partnership That Wasn't

For a brief, hopeful moment in the 1990s, Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—the military alliance that had spent four decades preparing to fight the Soviet Union—tried to become friends. They signed agreements. They created councils. Russian generals sat in NATO headquarters in Belgium. Russian paratroopers served alongside American soldiers in Bosnia.

It didn't last.

Today, Russia and NATO stand closer to direct conflict than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine while NATO weapons blow them up. The alliance has declared Russia "a direct threat to Euro-Atlantic security." Russian saboteurs operate across Europe. The word "nuclear" appears in headlines with disturbing regularity.

How did we get here? The story involves broken promises (real and imagined), a former KGB officer's grievances, and the fundamental question of what happens to a military alliance when the enemy it was built to fight suddenly disappears.

The End of the Cold War and the Beginning of Confusion

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, NATO faced an existential question: what was it for? The alliance had been created in 1949 for one purpose—to deter Soviet aggression in Western Europe. The famous quip about NATO's purpose was that it existed "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Now the Soviet Union was collapsing. What next?

The answer came in stages. In December 1989, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze made an unprecedented visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels. Six months later, NATO's secretary-general traveled to Moscow. By November 1990, the Soviets and NATO had signed a treaty limiting conventional military forces across Europe—the kind of thing that would have seemed fantastical just a few years earlier.

Then came the contentious issue that would poison relations for decades: NATO expansion.

The Promise That May or May Not Have Been Made

In early 1990, as Germany hurtled toward reunification, Western leaders needed Soviet permission. A reunified Germany would inevitably be part of NATO—the alternative was unthinkable—but how could the Soviets accept their former enemy's military alliance absorbing East Germany?

What happened next remains bitterly disputed.

According to multiple accounts, American and German diplomats told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" beyond Germany. The West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, suggested the alliance publicly promise it would never expand to the east. American Secretary of State James Baker reportedly gave Gorbachev a "categorical assurance" that NATO would stop at the German border.

The problem? None of this was written down in any treaty. And Gorbachev himself later muddied the waters, at one point saying "the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all" during the reunification talks, while also complaining that NATO's subsequent expansion was "definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990."

What's clear is that in 1990 and 1991, Western policymakers operated on the assumption that NATO had no business expanding eastward. Such a move, they believed, would badly hurt long-term stability and security. By 1992—just months after the Soviet Union formally dissolved—the United States was openly discussing inviting former Warsaw Pact countries to join.

From Moscow's perspective, this looked like betrayal. From Washington's perspective, the Cold War was over, history had ended, and the countries of Eastern Europe were free to choose their own alliances. Both perspectives would prove catastrophically incomplete.

The Yeltsin Years: Grudging Cooperation

Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president, had a complicated relationship with NATO. He understood that Russia, economically devastated and militarily weakened, was in no position to dictate terms. But he also faced domestic pressure from those who saw NATO as an existential threat.

In 1994, Russia joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program—a kind of halfway house for countries that weren't members but wanted closer ties. Yeltsin apparently believed this would be an alternative to full NATO membership for Eastern European countries, not a stepping stone toward it. When NATO made clear in December 1994 that the partnership was indeed a path to membership, Yeltsin began opposing expansion publicly.

Yet he kept cooperating. Why?

Partly because Russia needed Western economic support. Partly because Yeltsin genuinely hoped for integration with Europe. And partly because, in 1995, something remarkable happened: Russian troops joined a NATO military operation for the first time since World War II.

Side by Side in Bosnia

The Bosnian War had raged since 1992, killing over 100,000 people in the heart of Europe. When NATO finally intervened to enforce a peace agreement, Russia—traditionally Serbia's ally—could have caused enormous problems. Instead, Moscow agreed to participate in the peacekeeping force.

In October 1995, Russian generals arrived at NATO's military headquarters in Belgium. A Russian general was appointed deputy to NATO's supreme commander specifically for Russian forces. A brigade of Russian paratroopers deployed alongside American, British, and French soldiers.

It was, by all accounts, a success. Both sides praised the cooperation. The NATO supreme commander, General George Joulwan, credited it with enabling the landmark agreement signed the following year.

The Founding Act: A Road Map to Nowhere

On May 27, 1997, in Paris, NATO leaders and President Yeltsin signed the grandly titled "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security Between NATO and the Russian Federation." It was supposed to be the blueprint for a new era.

The document declared that NATO and Russia "do not consider each other as adversaries" and would "build together a lasting and inclusive peace." It established a forum called the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council where the two sides would consult on security issues. Russia got a voice in NATO, though not a veto—and NATO couldn't veto Russian actions either.

Yeltsin called it "the foundation for a new, fair, and stable partnership." He admitted NATO expansion was a mistake but said the agreement would reduce its "negative consequences." American National Security Adviser Sandy Berger called it a "win-win."

One crucial provision: NATO pledged it had "no intention, no plan and no reason" to station nuclear weapons in new member states. This meant countries that joined NATO couldn't participate in the alliance's nuclear sharing arrangements—a significant concession to Russian concerns.

Reading the Founding Act today feels like examining an artifact from another civilization. Its optimistic language about "democratic partnership" and "cooperative security" belongs to a world that no longer exists.

The Kosovo Crisis: First Cracks

The fragile partnership began cracking in 1999 when NATO bombed Yugoslavia.

Serbia's Slobodan Milošević was waging a brutal campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. NATO decided to intervene, but Russia threatened to veto any authorization in the United Nations Security Council. So NATO bombed anyway, without UN approval.

The legal and diplomatic fallout was enormous. Many international lawyers considered the bombing illegal under international law. For Moscow, the precedent was terrifying: a military alliance attacking a sovereign country without UN authorization, based on humanitarian concerns that Russia didn't recognize.

Yeltsin declared that NATO "has trampled upon the foundations of international law and the United Nations charter." His critics put it more ominously: "Belgrade today, Moscow tomorrow!"

The war ended in June 1999, and a joint NATO-Russian peacekeeping force was supposed to deploy. Russia expected to control its own sector, independent of NATO command. When this was refused—partly over concerns that a Russian sector would lead to Kosovo's partition—Russian troops seized the Pristina airport in a surprise move that briefly raised fears of armed confrontation.

The incident was resolved peacefully. But something had shifted. The cooperation that had worked in Bosnia now felt fragile, contingent on circumstances that might not last.

Putin's Rise and the Brief Thaw

Vladimir Putin became Russia's president on December 31, 1999, when Yeltsin resigned unexpectedly. A former KGB officer, Putin was initially an unknown quantity to the West. His first years in office suggested he might continue Yeltsin's policy of grudging cooperation.

Then came September 11, 2001.

Putin was the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush after the attacks. Russia shared intelligence that proved vital to American forces in Afghanistan. Moscow allowed NATO supply routes through Russian territory. For a moment, it seemed like the two former enemies might become genuine partners in a new struggle against Islamic terrorism.

In May 2002, at a summit in Rome, NATO and Russia created the NATO-Russia Council to replace the earlier joint council. The new forum was designed to treat Russia more as an equal partner—each member state and Russia would meet together on issues of common interest, rather than the previous "NATO plus one" format that made Russia feel like an outsider.

Cooperation expanded. NATO and Russia worked together on terrorism, Afghanistan, and even began collaborating on missile defense. Russian officers served at NATO headquarters. NATO established an information office in Moscow. It felt, briefly, like progress.

The Missile Defense Dispute

But underneath the cooperation, a dispute was festering that would prove impossible to resolve.

In 2001-2002, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a Cold War agreement that had strictly limited each country's missile defense systems. The logic was straightforward: the treaty was designed to prevent either superpower from gaining an advantage in a nuclear war. With the Cold War over, the US wanted freedom to build defenses against missiles from Iran and other "rogue states."

Russia saw it differently. The ABM Treaty had been a cornerstone of strategic stability—the idea being that if neither side could defend against nuclear missiles, neither would be tempted to launch a first strike. American withdrawal, combined with plans to build missile defense installations in Poland and Romania, looked to Moscow like preparation for neutralizing Russia's nuclear deterrent.

The Americans insisted the systems were aimed at Iran, not Russia. They even offered to share technology and coordinate with Moscow. But many Russian strategists didn't believe it. They saw a weakened Russia being exploited by an America that no longer felt constrained by Cold War agreements.

This dispute—missile defense in Eastern Europe—would become a recurring irritant in NATO-Russia relations, never resolved and always ready to flare up.

The Orange Revolution and Putin's Turn

By Putin's second term, which began in 2004, the relationship was deteriorating. The breaking point came not over NATO itself but over Ukraine.

In late 2004, Ukrainians took to the streets to protest what they saw as a rigged presidential election. The "Orange Revolution" swept pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to power, replacing the Russian-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych. Putin had personally endorsed Yanukovych and congratulated him on winning before the protests began.

Moscow was furious. Kremlin officials became convinced that the revolution was orchestrated by Western intelligence agencies, part of a deliberate campaign to peel former Soviet states away from Russian influence. Whether this was true or paranoid delusion, it shaped Putin's worldview for the next two decades.

NATO's continued expansion didn't help. By 2004, the alliance had absorbed not just former Warsaw Pact countries but the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—which had actually been part of the Soviet Union. NATO was now on Russia's border.

The Munich Speech

On February 10, 2007, Putin delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference that shocked Western diplomats. He accused the United States of creating "an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations." He condemned NATO expansion as a "serious provocation" and asked: "Against whom is this expansion intended?"

The speech was widely interpreted as a declaration that Russia would no longer accept the post-Cold War order. Some analysts date the beginning of a "Second Cold War" to that moment.

The following year, NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members—not immediately, but "at some point in the future." Putin reportedly told George W. Bush that Ukraine "wasn't even a real country." Five months later, Russia invaded Georgia.

The 2008 war was brief—five days—but consequential. Russia seized two Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and recognized them as independent states. NATO condemned the invasion but took no military action. The message to other former Soviet states seemed clear: seeking NATO membership could be dangerous.

The Ukraine Crisis: Point of No Return

The final breakdown came in 2014, triggered by events that had little to do with NATO directly but everything to do with the broader contest between Russia and the West.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—the same candidate Putin had backed in 2004—was now actually in power. He was negotiating an association agreement with the European Union when, under Russian pressure, he abruptly reversed course and rejected it. Ukrainians, particularly in the capital Kyiv, erupted in protest.

After months of demonstrations and violent clashes that killed over 100 people, Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014. Within days, Russian soldiers without insignia—the infamous "little green men"—had seized control of Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula with a Russian naval base and majority ethnic Russian population.

Russia held a hasty referendum and announced that Crimea had voted to join the Russian Federation. It was the first forcible annexation of territory in Europe since World War II.

Simultaneously, Russian-backed separatists launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. What followed was a grinding war that would kill over 14,000 people by 2022, with Russian troops and equipment flowing across the border while Moscow denied any involvement.

NATO's response was significant but measured. The alliance suspended all practical cooperation with Russia. Many member states imposed economic sanctions. A small "tripwire" force was deployed to the Baltic states and Poland—enough soldiers that any Russian attack would inevitably kill NATO troops and trigger the alliance's mutual defense commitment, but not enough to actually stop a Russian invasion.

The NATO-Russia Council, that optimistic creation from 2002, went dormant. The Founding Act, with its promises of partnership and its pledge that NATO and Russia would not consider each other adversaries, became what analysts called "a dead letter."

The Long Countdown: 2014-2022

For eight years, Europe existed in a state of frozen conflict. The war in Donbas continued at low intensity, killing soldiers and civilians regularly but never escalating to full-scale invasion. NATO and Russia exchanged accusations and military posturing.

Russian aircraft probed NATO airspace with increasing frequency. NATO fighters scrambled to intercept them. Russian submarines lurked near undersea cables. Russian intelligence operatives carried out assassinations on NATO territory—most notoriously the 2018 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain, which killed an innocent bystander.

Some NATO members, particularly those closest to Russia, began quietly helping Ukraine build up its military. American and British trainers worked with Ukrainian forces. Western weapons, though not the most advanced systems, began flowing east.

In October 2021, NATO expelled eight Russian officials from its Brussels headquarters for alleged espionage. Russia retaliated by suspending its mission to NATO and ordering the closure of NATO's office in Moscow. The last institutional links between the two sides were severed.

That December, Russia issued sweeping demands: NATO must promise never to admit Ukraine, must withdraw forces from Eastern Europe, and must essentially return to its pre-1997 boundaries. The demands were widely seen as designed to be rejected.

Putin claimed, without evidence, that NATO was building up military infrastructure in Ukraine and planning to attack Russia. Western analysts suggested he was using NATO as a pretext for something he had already decided to do.

February 2022: The Invasion

On February 24, 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine from multiple directions. Putin called it a "special military operation" aimed at "denazification and demilitarization." It was the largest military attack in Europe since World War II.

Russia expected a quick victory—its forces advanced on Kyiv with dress uniforms packed, apparently expecting to attend a victory parade. Instead, Ukrainian resistance proved fierce, Western weapons poured in, and Russian forces were pushed back from the capital within weeks.

The war transformed NATO. At its 2022 summit, the alliance officially declared Russia "the most significant and direct threat to Allies' security." Finland, which had maintained neutrality throughout the Cold War, applied for membership within months. Sweden followed. Both joined in 2023 and 2024, adding over 800 miles to NATO's border with Russia—exactly the outcome Putin claimed to be preventing.

NATO member states sent Ukraine tanks, artillery, air defense systems, and eventually fighter jets. Billions of dollars in military aid flowed east. Russian propagandists accused NATO of waging a "proxy war," while NATO maintained it was simply helping Ukraine defend itself.

Hybrid War and the Present Danger

As the conventional war in Ukraine ground on, Russia opened what analysts call a "hybrid war" against NATO itself. The methods were often deniable but unmistakably hostile.

Sabotage incidents multiplied across Europe: suspicious fires at military facilities, damage to infrastructure, cyberattacks on government systems. European intelligence agencies uncovered Russian plots to assassinate defense industry executives. Russian aircraft violated NATO airspace regularly, sometimes flying without transponders in dangerous proximity to civilian airliners.

Disinformation campaigns targeted NATO publics, amplifying anti-war sentiment, spreading conspiracy theories, and attempting to undermine support for Ukraine. Russian intelligence recruited local assets to conduct surveillance and disruption.

NATO, for its part, massively reinforced its eastern flank. Where a few thousand troops had served as a "tripwire" before 2022, tens of thousands now deployed. Military spending across the alliance increased dramatically after years of decline. The alliance that had spent the 1990s wondering what it was for had rediscovered its original purpose: deterring Russia.

What Went Wrong?

How do we explain the collapse of what once looked like a promising partnership?

The Russian narrative, promoted aggressively by the Kremlin, blames NATO expansion. In this telling, the West promised not to expand eastward, then broke that promise repeatedly, ignoring Russian concerns and encircling Russia with hostile military bases. The invasion of Ukraine was defensive—a desperate response to NATO's relentless advance.

The Western narrative emphasizes Russian aggression. NATO expanded because Eastern European countries, with bitter memories of Soviet domination, desperately wanted protection. No one forced them to join; they chose to. Russia's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine proved those fears were justified. Putin, in this view, is a revanchist autocrat who cannot accept that former Soviet states might choose their own paths.

The truth, as usual, is messier than either narrative allows.

Western leaders almost certainly made assurances about NATO expansion in 1990 that they later abandoned. Whether those assurances were binding commitments or offhand remarks, they created expectations that weren't met. The decision to expand NATO eastward, made in the early 1990s when Russia was weak and compliant, looked different once Russia recovered and pushed back.

But Russian grievances, however legitimate some of them might have been, cannot justify invading neighbors and annexing their territory. The countries that joined NATO did so voluntarily, and their fears of Russian domination have been vindicated by Russian actions. Whatever promises may have been made in 1990, they did not include permission for Russia to dictate its neighbors' foreign policies forever.

Perhaps the deeper problem was that neither side ever fully trusted the other. The cooperation of the 1990s and early 2000s was always transactional, built on mutual weakness rather than genuine partnership. When Russia grew stronger under Putin and oil revenues, the underlying tensions resurfaced. NATO expansion was the presenting symptom; the underlying disease was the unresolved question of Russia's place in the European security order.

Where We Are Now

As of late 2024, the war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Hundreds of thousands have died. Cities have been reduced to rubble. The largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II has displaced millions.

NATO and Russia communicate only through intermediaries, when they communicate at all. The arms control treaties that once limited nuclear weapons—already fraying—have largely collapsed. Both sides conduct military exercises that the other interprets as threatening. The risk of miscalculation leading to direct conflict, while still small, is higher than at any point since the Cold War.

The institutions built to manage NATO-Russia relations—the Founding Act, the NATO-Russia Council, the various cooperation programs—exist only on paper. The Russian mission to NATO is closed. The NATO office in Moscow is shuttered. The Russian generals who once sat in NATO headquarters are now planning operations against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces.

What comes next depends on how the war in Ukraine ends, and on who leads Russia afterward. A Russian victory would embolden further aggression and likely trigger even greater NATO militarization. A Russian defeat might lead to regime change in Moscow—with unpredictable consequences. A negotiated settlement might restore some minimal communication, but the deep mistrust would remain.

One thing seems certain: the brief post-Cold War experiment in NATO-Russia partnership is over. Whatever comes next will be built on different foundations—or won't be built at all.