Bingo. Exactly. Ukraine initially wisely adopted “the Austrian model” and initially enshrined neutrality in its constitution. Neutrality has its place, certainly when it comes to certain areas of the map, and can be quite beneficial to the neutral country as well as its neighbors. Austria and Switzerland certainly thrived, for example.
Actually, as I’m sure you know, Austria adopted neutrality before the Cold War began in earnest. At the time, Austria was divided into sectors occupied by the victors of WWII, one sector being the USSR’s. Stalin was happy with their neutrality, and the Soviets said “do svidaniya” and marched back home.
Germany was offered the same deal by Stalin, but we preferred a re-militarized Germany under our big NATO thumb, and so NATO came into being and Germany remained divided between USSR and USA/NATO for the duration.
Some historians think the Soviets would have said “do svidaniya” and marched out of Germany, same as Austria, had Germany declared neutrality like Austria, and furthermore might (even would) have extended to same deal to other countries that wound up in the Warsaw Pact. They believe Stalin was showing his seriousness about honoring such deals to other countries partially occupied by Soviet forces (Germany) or even wholly occupied by them when the Soviets left Austria.
Others think Stalin was trying to trick us into letting Germany (and others) go neutral and would not have honored such a deal. This seems to be the prevailing attitude.
While it’s true that NATO came first (inception 1949}, and the Warsaw Pact thing was in response to NATO (inception 1955), who knows for sure who is right? Life (and history) isn’t like a computer game where you can go back and play that level again, doing something differently, and seeing if it would have turned out differently.
Who knows? Would Stalin have truly allowed Germany to reunite and remain whole like Austria in exchange for its neutrality and demilitarization? Czechoslovakia and other Soviet occupied countries, too?
Well, Stalin was an evil psychopath, a monster responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of his own people (okay, he was a Georgian, so not exactly his own, but ...). Given the shocking inroads the stinky commies had made into Western Europe and even the US in the 1930s, we had good reason to want to counter and contain International Communism, which I consider pure poison. So...
Anyway, it would be cool if we could run a reliable computer simulation of “playing that level again” and see what would have happened, but we can’t.
Sorry for the digression. It’s just a question I find intriguing even though the answer is unknowable.
Yes, anyone who has been reading our establishment foreign policy journals knows our neocons/neocons have been dreaming of breaking Russia into pieces (five pieces being the usual number) and scheming toward that end for decades.
Re former Yugoslavia: The Germans were ahead of us in wanting to break it up into easily digestible pieces once they got their EU (the kinder, gentler version of German Empire where the other European countries get to keep their flags and even a picturesque but powerless “monarch” here and there, but actually ruled by Brussels bureaucrats in the service of Germany — but still under the thumb of the Americans who got the King Arthur Seat at the NATO HQ round table across the street, presiding over European vassals wearing today’s equivalent of shiny knight armor — that would have been Hermes ties and Armani suits at the time, and weilding Mont Blanc fountain pens, of course). Yes, they had it all planned out in advance. Croatia and Slovenia were “tier two” in both Germany’s “labor pool” and “market for German goods” departments. Checked those boxes!
Germany had already been clandestinely shipping arms to Croatia via Hungary back in the late 1980s in anticipation of the happy day.
We then outflanked the Germans and showed them who their Daddy is, while at the same time supporting their aim of breaking up the unwieldy and ultimately indigestible Yugoslavia.
Admittedly, Yugoslavia was a Frankensteinish creation thrown together by outside pressures after the dissolution of powerful empires (twice!), destined to eventually break apart, but it could have happened with less bloodshed had we wished it. Note I said “could” not “would”. James Baker seemed to have shared my view on this, so I suppose — though I do wonder whether — that puts me in good company.
There are a number of striking parallels between Croatia and the part it played in the early to mid 1990s and Ukraine and the part it’s been playing, with a few important differences. Our playbook and the way we used them was pretty much the same, though.
I may be boring you, so I’ll stop here. I’ll continue if you’re interested and when I have time.
Again, astute observation on your part! Well done, and thanks for prompting me to consider more deeply. That’s what smart productive dialogue should be all about,.and I thank you for it. It’s become rarer and rarer on FR, and therefore doubly precious to me.
Feel free to elaborate. I know the work experience that renders you particularly knowledgeable of people and events there. You might as well not let that go to waste.