Thomas Friedman says he always opposed NATO expansion, and that the focus of American policy 20-25 years ago should have been on building a liberal democratic Russia–not on containing it and giving it an excuse to be a revisionist power. Is he right?
Only in part. I thought from the start that NATO expansion was a mistake, but not because building democracy in Russia was a more plausible alternative; if we couldn’t do it in Afghanistan, how could we possibly succeed in Russia? Friedman assumes that we had far more power and insight than we actually did. No, NATO expansion was a mistake because it was a bad bargain. The former USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries added little military capability to the alliance, while expanding our security commitments exponentially. That is as true today as it was then, but it is what it is, and we have to live with the results, even if they aren’t in our short-term interests.