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Marshal Ferdinand Foch was the author of one of history’s most accurate predictions. Surveying the Treaty of Versailles and the humiliating terms imposed on Germany in 1919, the former “Generalissimo” of Allied Forces declared: “This is not peace — it is an armistice for 20 years.” And so it proved.
The triumphalism of the victors of the First World War laid the foundations for another cataclysm. When Europe had to be rebuilt again in 1945, Churchill and Truman, haunted by the mistakes of Versailles, ensured that a new Germany was resurrected and included rather than cast out.
The most recent re-ordering of Europe began exactly 25 years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the passage of a quarter century, can we now conclude that western leaders have repeated what may be termed the “Versailles folly”? When crowds surged through the Brandenburg Gate, presaging the birth of a new Europe, did America and its allies then bungle the moment and behave in a way that made today’s confrontation with Russia all but inevitable? Put bluntly, did they cheat and humiliate Russia at its moment of weakness, thereby sowing the seeds of President Vladimir Putin’s revanchism? That is certainly the view of Mikhail Gorbachev.
On the anniversary of the Wall’s demise, the man who did most to bury the Cold War delivered a speech in Berlin that seemed tinged with sorrow and bitterness. Europe is more “tense and fraught” today than at any time since the beginning of this century, declared Gorbachev. “The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it’s already begun,” he said. As for why this had happened, Gorbachev traced the “roots” back to the 1990s, when western leaders supposedly took “advantage of Russia’s weakening to seek domination in the world”. He offered a “shortlist” of examples, citing the “enlargement of Nato, Yugoslavia, particularly Kosovo, missile defence plans, Iraq, Libya, Syria”. All of this, added Gorbachev, had served to transform a “blister” into a “bloody festering wound”.
That is a striking phrase from a man of Gorbachev’s stature. Unlike today’s occupant of the Kremlin, he cannot be accused of blinkered nationalism or obduracy. Moreover, Gorbachev spoke with the resentment of someone who believes he was misled. In earlier interviews, he has accused the West — and specifically America and Germany — of breaking a deal they allegedly offered in 1990.
In return for allowing a reunited Germany to be part of Nato, Gorbachev says he was promised that the alliance would not expand one inch towards the East. Despite this, Nato proceeded to leap eastwards, enlarging its membership to include six previous members of the Warsaw Pact and three former Soviet republics.
In an essay on nationalism, Isaiah Berlin compared the backlash of a humiliated country to “bent twigs springing back after being stepped on”. In Gorbachev’s version of events, fervently embraced by Putin, the West committed the folly of stepping on Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall — and the country is now springing back. Gorbachev’s critique is clear, but it would carry more weight if the events of 2014 could somehow be overlooked. Rule number one of being a responsible nation, after all, is “never grab the territory of your neighbour”.
Back in April, Russia seized more than 10,000 square miles (16,093km) of Ukraine by annexing Crimea. Only last Friday, Russia sent 32 tanks escorted by artillery and infantry into eastern Ukraine, where Putin has achieved de facto control over a swathe of his neighbour’s industrial heartland by sponsoring an armed rebellion. When does a heartfelt critique become special pleading and an attempt to defend the indefensible?
Gorbachev may seem righteously indignant, but his case is unconvincing. Was Russia given specific promises that Nato would not enlarge? The answer in the archives is clear: Some western ministers did indeed give these assurances. Foremost among them was Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then German foreign minister. During a meeting with his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, on February 4, 1990, the recently declassified German record shows that Genscher said: “We are aware that Nato membership for a unified Germany raises complicated questions. For us, however, one thing is certain: Nato will not expand to the east.”
The meaning of those words is indisputable. But this does not vindicate Gorbachev’s case — for a reason that goes to the heart of what should have changed with the demise of the Cold War. No pledge made by any German minister — or any other leader for that matter — could have bound the new states then in the throes of emerging from the wreckage of the Communist bloc.
Six nations broke away from the Warsaw Pact; the Soviet Union, meanwhile, dissolved into 15 successor states. The essence of the revolution in Moscow’s thinking that Gorbachev presided over was his acceptance that each of these countries had every right to go its own way and choose its own path. His totemic contribution to history was to abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine, whereby Moscow imposed Communism on Eastern Europe by force of arms. But, oddly, Gorbachev never seems to have followed his logic through to its own conclusion. If the satellite states were going to be free, then they would be able to take their own decisions. And some of them might freely decide to join Nato.
Once you accepted the principle that countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania had every right to be sovereign, then you could not logically object if they chose to seek Nato membership. Gorbachev did accept this logic in relation to a reunited Germany. In 1995, he explained that he had allowed the restored Germany to be in Nato because that was the will of its people. “The united Germany decided that it wanted to be a member,” he said, “and I had to accept that given reality.”
If Germans had a right to decide to join Nato, then why not Poles and Czechs — or, for that matter, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians? Would Gorbachev really have told the peoples of all these countries that they had no right to be in Nato because of private assurances given by a retired German foreign minister? And what would have been Gorbachev’s recommended policy for the West? Should America have told the restored states of Eastern Europe that Nato membership was off the cards because, above their heads, the big powers had decided that such a course would tread on Russia’s toes?
If Gorbachev really thinks that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia should have been granted a veto over Nato membership for its former satellite states then that is an example of the very Cold War mentality he was supposed to reject. Today, however, that is effectively what Putin seeks. He will not tolerate Ukraine turning West and seeking eventual membership of the European Union, even if that is what most of its people want.
While denouncing the West for its “Cold War” mindset, Putin — and, sadly, Gorbachev — cling to precisely the attitude they profess to spurn. Why this mental blindspot? Perhaps Russian leaders find it too painful to ask why a country like Poland may wish to join Nato.
When you have been invaded by the Kremlin within living memory — as Poland was in 1939 — then it makes sense to join an alliance designed to prevent such a calamity from ever happening again. If Moscow were to probe the motives of Nato’s new members, this may expose the inconvenient reality that Russia does not have anything to fear from its immediate neighbours. The truth, rather, is vice versa. So a repeat of the “Versailles Folly” does not explain the new shadow over Europe. Instead, the answer lies within Russia itself — and with the cast of mind that even Gorbachev has not quite shaken off.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2014