OPINION — As part of The Cipher Brief’s coverage of this week’s 75th-anniversary NATO Summit in Washington, international correspondent Ia Meurmishvili spoke with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a Cipher Brief expert who served from 2006 to 2016 as President of Estonia. Ilves was among those critical of NATO for an overly timid response to the war in Ukraine and the threat of Russian aggression generally. He said the alliance suffered from a “wimpy fear of escalation” in the face of Kremlin threats, and that overall, NATO had failed to respond adequately to what he called “a moral obligation” to help Ukraine.
The Cipher Brief: What are your impressions of the summit – what did it accomplish?
Ilves: Since it was the 75th anniversary, of course there would be celebrations, which are difficult to do, given the current context of NATO. I went to the 50th (anniversary). Then, there was reason to celebrate, celebrating the new members from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. It was a moment when the world was riding high and Russia was not viewed as a threat — not perhaps very wisely, but nonetheless, there was a certain optimism at the time.
Now, the celebratory aspects of the 75th (anniversary) seem tasteless, because we are facing a genuine threat, a real crisis, with huge doubts about what will happen to NATO itself — beyond the war going on right now in Ukraine. On top of that, in the back of everyone’s mind is, Where will NATO be in six months? That, combined with various other disturbing news – the bombing of the children’s hospital right before the summit began – it certainly made the hype even more tasteless. And the lack of action, as well.
When you see the U.S. National Security Advisor talking about the strength of NATO, you go, Well, where? What is NATO doing? What is it that we should feel so proud about? In fact, I think there is a crisis in NATO, between the values that it purports to defend and the reality on the ground in which there is, I would call it, a wimpy fear of escalation.
Certainly ever since the invasion on the 24th of February, 2022, the West and NATO in particular have been engaged in self-deterrence. To this day, we do not have a no-fly zone over Ukraine. It took ages for minimal weapons to be sent to Ukraine. To be proud of sending Patriot (batteries), which are anti-missile defensive weapons, while continuing a ban on anything but immediate cross-border attacks on Russian positions, all of that leaves a bad impression.
The Cipher Brief: What do you make of that self-deterrence? What are the reasons behind it?
Ilves: I could go into a long disquisition, but I would say, first of all, we have still not gotten over the La La Land, Kumbaya belief in post-communist Russia being now altogether different. And people cling to that. They can’t give that idea up.
Of course, we also have some rather mercantile members of the alliance who do not want to do anything that would really upset Russia, lest they not get new contracts once the war is over.
And then third of all, there is clearly a lack of leadership here. No one really wants to do anything. Or the smaller, less capable members are waiting for the big ones to do something, but the big ones don’t want to do it or are afraid to do it. And certainly, a component of self-deterrence is the very effective use of a concept in Soviet and later Russian thinking of reflexive control, which is this idea that you get your adversaries to do what you want them to do by scaring them.
We see, with (former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry) Medvedev and various talking heads on TV, talking about how they’re going to nuke this place or another, the West goes, Oh no, oh no, we can’t do anything because they might nuke us. When in fact, a rational calculus would show that, No, they would not want to take that step because of what it would mean for all of them.
The Cipher Brief: Do you think people actually believe that Russia might use nuclear weapons?
Ilves: It’s hard for me to say since I don’t believe that Russia would do something like that. They have clear rules on when they would, in fact, use nuclear weapons, which really don’t differ from the rules of the United States. It requires a serious attack on a country. We don’t see serious attacks.
So we end up with, [Russia] freely firing missiles at Ukrainians who can’t do anything about it because they are prevented from using any of the necessary weaponry to take out the airfields and so forth.
On top of that, what is often forgotten is the obligation that the United States and the UK have had to Ukraine since 1994 and the Budapest Memorandum. The wording there did not mean a guarantee. There were assurances. Nonetheless, we must keep in mind that not only did Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons, it gave up its missiles and it gave up its bombers, which today are being fired against Ukraine.
There is a moral obligation that the West has toward Ukraine. All of the self-congratulatory back-patting that we saw in the 1990s about reducing the nuclear threat by Ukraine giving up its weapons, now it has come back to haunt everyone. And people are ducking the issue.
The Cipher Brief: Now it’s a sensitive issue for everybody, because the West did not deliver on the promise that they made.
Ilves: They didn’t. That’s basically it. And so it just becomes very hard to take the moral claims of the NATO member countries seriously when you make serious promises that you don’t live up to.
And it’s not only the current period. Let’s recall, after the invasion and occupation of Crimea, (President Barack) Obama forbade any weapons being sent to Ukraine. That seems to me like a complete failure on the part of the United States to live up to its moral obligations, even if you hide behind “Well, these weren’t security guarantees.” Sending weaponry to Ukraine is not a security guarantee.
The Cipher Brief: In Obama’s case it was a “reset” with Russia that prevented any sort of actions.
Ilves: In Estonia about 30 years ago, when we first started having ads or billboards, there was a billboard that had a picture of a big bottle of vodka, and next to it there was just a little short expression. “You can always find a reason.”
The Cipher Brief: What do you make of the Alliance’s statement on China? Was it expected?
Ilves: Well, it was certainly tougher than previous communiques. On the other hand, that’s a whole field and area of discussion, which is what is the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with an issue that really has to do with a completely different part of the globe? Where it is relevant is what China’s doing as a participant — unacknowledged, largely, but nonetheless a participant – in the war against Ukraine.
So it’s stronger than before.
The Cipher Brief: Do you think the language on Ukraine was strong enough?
Ilves: It was clearly signaled already, long ago, that there would be no change from the not-so-happy result at (the 2023 NATO Summit in) Vilnius. So we knew this was coming. And I think any hopes that it would be much different from what we got were unrealistic. So we got a little change in the wording, but it’s not really what’s needed at this point.
Personally, I would have been much happier with a firm commitment on the part of the NATO allies to eliminate the restrictions on retaliation. That I think would have been an effective decision on the part of NATO, releasing the various obligations that countries have. Because, as we know, in order to use the weapons that are made in other countries who need the permission of the producer, and releasing everyone from those kinds of restrictions, I think, would have would have been far more effective than just relying on the rhetoric that really has no set time or end point.
The Cipher Brief: One of the criticisms or concerns about the summit was that it should not take a NATO summit to give Ukraine five Patriot missiles. What do you think from that perspective?
Ilves: It’s hard to disagree. I mean, it’s not a great accomplishment.
And as I mentioned, those are defensive weapons, which doesn’t really resolve the problem of glide bombs coming in from planes flown from Russian air bases that no one is allowed to hit.
The Cipher Brief: How do you see the security of the European continent by the end of this year? Next year?
Ilves: There’s so many factors there that are not predictable at this point. There is a strong likelihood that after January 20th of next year, we will have a whole different approach on the part of the leading member of NATO — that’s the United States. While we currently have a strong, at least verbal, commitment of the United States to NATO, and as well as the physical and troop commitment, it’s not at all clear what will happen should Donald Trump win the election, given the various statements that he has been making over the years.
I mean, he wanted the United States to leave NATO already in 1989 or ’88. So, that was 35 years ago. Where we are now, even as late as this year saying that if Russia attacked a country that hasn’t paid its so-called dues — it doesn’t work that way anyway — he would tell (the Russians) to do “whatever the hell you want.”
So that’s what, Donald Rumsfeld called a known unknown, but it’s a pretty big unknown. Trying to juggle all of those and trying to come up with a coherent view of what might happen, it’s very difficult to say.
We don’t know what’s going to happen in Russia, where Russia clearly is spending at least 8% of its GDP on the military. That’s all up in the air. I mean, what they can do with that? How sustainable that is? And of course, China is another actor in there that it’s not clear what their, what they want to do.
There’s no tea leaves here. The world is so much more complex today than it was and the kind of simple, binary case of the Cold War, and then the far more complex intermediary period, which is now gone but lasted almost 35 years, of everything is fine now that communism is dead. But we in our part of the world, we’re fairly used to Russian imperial behavior anyway, and never really thought of it as strictly being just a matter of means of production and state ownership.
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