Latvia lost its independence for a very long time, and it knows the meaning both of liberty and the loss of it. Latvia knows the meaning of security and the loss of it. And this is why being invited in an alliance that will ensure our security is a momentous moment that will be writ large in the history of our nation.
We in Latvia would like to build our future on the rock of political certainty, not on the shifting sands of indecision. We do not want to be in some sort of grey zone of political uncertainty, we would like to enjoy the full sunshine of the liberties and the rights that NATO has been defending so long. We do not want to be left out in the outer darkness, and we would not wish this to happen to any other nation who has expressed the desire to join those nations that hold the same values, that follow the same ideals, and that are ready for the same efforts and the same strivings. Our people have been tested in the fires of history, they have been tempered in the furnaces of suffering and injustice. They know the meaning and the value of liberty. They know that it is worth every effort to support it, to maintain it, to stand for it and to fight for it.
Her audience – all male heads of state – almost stopped breathing as she spoke. Alexander Kwaśniewski, the president of Poland, recalled later in an interview: ‘I had tears in my eyes, to tell you the truth. It was one of those touching moments that showed that the Second World War was really over. We were starting a new era. This feeling… I sensed it through my skin, a shiver through my body. The Second World War was finally over in Prague, in the palace that was previously used for communist meetings, where Václav Havel, now president, was host.’9
Everyone present felt the same. Except, perhaps, the Russian delegation, which had turned up for a brief, pro forma session of the NATO–Russia Council the next morning. The foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, recalled how he tried to explain to his Western partners that by ensuring their own ‘security’ the new NATO members were making Russia feel less secure: ‘What was the real interest of those states in joining NATO? Yes, there was a political interest, but where was the threat coming from? One should first formulate real threats and then think in what way one can minimise or confront those threats.’ And he added: ‘In reality this does not add to anyone’s security, neither to NATO countries nor to Russia. It adds an element of distrust. You want to think about your own security, but you don’t want to think about the security of Russia.’10
The Americans had an answer to such complaints. This is Nick Burns:
You know, by expanding NATO, we were also calling Russia’s bluff. The Russians had been saying, since the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, that they were different, that they also believed that Europe should be a place where people should be free to decide their own futures without fear of external domination. By inviting those seven countries into NATO in November 2002, we were saying: if you choose freedom in a future democracy, we can help to guarantee that and to sustain it. The fact that many Russians subsequently said that this was a treacherous move by NATO, that this was an indication of bad faith by NATO, I think tells you everything you need to know about those Russian leaders – that they didn’t believe in the promise of democracy.
The Russians don’t, in the modern world, in the post-Soviet world, in the post-1991 world, the Russians don’t have a right to decide other people’s futures. They don’t have a right to impose their empire on other peoples in what they call their near abroad. And if we had the strength, as we did, to see that other peoples could be free and democratic, it was certainly the right thing to do to help them achieve that freedom.11
The ability of the Russians and Americans to talk at cross purposes was astounding. The Russians could not understand why their own behaviour at home meant that their neighbours continued to fear them. The Americans and their allies could not see that the Russians were upset by being cast in the role of potential aggressor. NATO’s two summits in 2002 were hailed as ending the Cold War. In fact they helped to blow on its embers and start a new one. Seen from Moscow, the old Iron Curtain, running through the centre of Europe, was being replaced with a new one, much closer to home.
Putin’s tongue lets him down again
In his state-of-the-nation speech in the spring, President Putin spoke as if he was already where he wanted to be – accepted as a respected voice on the world stage, and virtually claiming joint leadership of the war on terror. ‘Russia is today one of the most reliable guarantors of international stability,’ he said. It was ‘precisely Russia’s principled position’ that had allowed a durable anti-terrorist coalition to be created. By joint efforts, he said, ‘we’ liquidated the most dangerous centre of international terrorism in Afghanistan.
He then went on to talk of Russia’s ‘numerous concrete steps towards integration with Europe’ and his goal of forming a ‘single economic space’ with the European Union.
Fine words, but as so often with Vladimir Putin, he then blew it. On a trip to Brussels for a summit meeting with EU leaders in November 2002, he lapsed into the kind of language that labelled him not as a world statesman but as a bar-room thug. At a press conference a French journalist asked him a direct but not particularly offensive question about Chechnya: why was Russia using anti-personnel mines and shells that were killing hundreds of people? And did the president not think that by trying to wipe out terrorism in this way he was wiping out the population of Chechnya?
Perhaps the poor Le Monde correspondent did not know that this was Putin’s rawest nerve. By merely asking such a question, he was in Putin’s eyes a terrorist sympathiser. ‘If you’re so keen to be an Islamic radical,’ he railed at the journalist, ‘and are happy to be circumcised, then I invite you to Moscow. We are a multi-faith country and have specialists for this. And I’ll recommend they do the operation so thoroughly that you have nothing left to grow back.’
This happened just one week before the Prague summit – a handy reminder to NATO’s old and new members that Putin, perhaps, was not quite ready to join the civilised world.
Allies against the Iraq war
Had President Putin deployed such crude language with regard to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein he might have earned a wry smile and some kudos in Washington. But the growing confrontation with Iraq was to drive another wedge between Russia and America, and demonstrate that, when it came to pursuing its foreign policy goals, Washington scarcely pretended that Russia was a superpower that mattered: certainly they would court Putin to try to get his backing, but if they failed it would not hold them back. The Bush administration was no more interested in taking Russia’s advice on Iraq than Clinton had been on Yugoslavia.
The Iraq crisis had been deepening throughout 2002, as suspicions grew that Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce and store weapons of mass destruction, in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions. A new resolution, number 1441, passed on 8 November 2002 after two months of tough negotiations, gave Iraq a ‘final opportunity’ to disarm or face ‘serious consequences’. Weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in late November. Over the coming months they discovered no banned weapons, but Iraq failed to prove they had destroyed stockpiles that had previously been documented. The diplomatic confrontation that now developed centred on two things: whether the weapons inspectors should be given longer to complete their task (as the chief inspector, Hans Blix, wished), and what to do next – given that Resolution 1441 did not authorise the use of force. It pitted the US and the UK, broadly speaking, against Russia, France and Germany. Since Russia and France were permanent members of the Security Council with the power of veto, it was clear that the US and Britain would not be able to push through a second resolution, authorising military action. The Americans disdainfully referred to the Putin–Schröder–Chirac alliance as the ‘axis of weasels’ – an ironic reference to Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ (Iraq, Iran and North Korea). US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld inadvertently alienated France and Germany still further when he referred to them disparagingly as ‘Old Europe’, as opposed to the more obliging ex-communist countries to the east – ‘New Europe’ – which by and large supported the American position.