Railing Against Imaginary Appeasement
Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig have a weekly exchange at Foreign Policy in which they debate the issues of the day. I was struck by the weird hawkish tics in Kroenig’s statements that have nothing to do with the current reality in Belarus. For instance, he writes:
MK: Propping up unsavory leaders is not nearly as satisfying as bringing them down, which brings us to Belarus. The opposition to longtime President Aleksandr Lukashenko is much larger and more resilient than many realized, raising big questions about how Putin and the West will respond. Some are saying that Washington should strike a deal with Putin in which the U.S. government promises that a free Belarus would never be part of NATO or the European Union. But I think that is not for outsiders to decide right now and that the people of Belarus should have a say.
I don’t know who the “some” are that he refers to here and he includes no links to anyone saying this. Most close observers of the situation understand that there is no danger of Belarus joining NATO or the EU. As far as I know, no one advocates for these outcomes, and the protesters are focused on having free and fair elections. The U.S. doesn’t need to promise anything because it has nothing to do with us, and Russia doesn’t have any reason to fear “losing” Belarus. No one is suggesting that “outsiders” should decide this dispute, which is a purely internal one, so what is he talking about? If he is saying that Belarus shouldn’t be subject to great power machinations, no one will object, but the more important point is that no one is arguing for this.
Ashford brings up how previous rounds of NATO expansion have harmed the U.S.-Russian relationship, which prompts Kroenig to ignore her point:
EA: This is what got us in trouble before. The assertion that states should be able to choose whether to join NATO sounded good in the idealistic 1990s, but it ended up producing today’s disastrous relationship with Russia. And in Ukraine, Sam Charap and Tim Colton have argued that it created the impression that states can’t stay neutral. If states think they have to choose, it can cause domestic turmoil and even conflict.
By far, the best thing we can do in the case of Belarus is stay out of it so that it doesn’t become another Russia versus NATO dispute.
MK: I strongly disagree. NATO expansion has been a major achievement. While I am sure Putin is angered that Russia cannot lord it over his neighbors anymore, appeasing him with a sphere of influence is not good for U.S. interests or for the people in Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics.
Kroenig’s answers are usually just reciting ideological talking points without regard for their relevance to the issue at hand. No one is proposing that the U.S. “appease” Russia, but he is fiercely opposed to this appeasement that no one supports. He ignores that NATO expansion has antagonized Russia in the past (this is a matter of record), and he ignores that this has had destructive consequences (see the August 2008 war for starters). He ignores the point from Charap and Colton about neutrality and the danger of forcing countries to pick sides.
He doesn’t have to do any of this in order to defend the policy, but he does it anyway. None of this has anything to do with Belarus, where most people don’t want to join NATO and an overwhelming majority want neutrality. Kroenig isn’t engaging substantively with what Ashford said, and he is so busy warning against imaginary appeasement that he isn’t really responding to the events in Belarus, either. Hawks usually fling the charge of appeasement to discredit diplomatic engagement. In this case, Kroenig just brings it up out of habit.