In my discussion at the November 23-24 Yerevan Peace Conference, organized by Arthur Khachikian, I argued that Joe Biden and American officialdom completely missed the boat as to how NATO enlargement would link Russia and China even closer together. This slightly revised version of my talk presents themes of my forthcoming book, Reducing the Risks of War between the Major Powers.

Biden’s address

Just after the signing of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act—in which Moscow had reluctantly agreed to NATO enlargement—then Senator Joe Biden gave an Atlantic Council talk recorded on C-SPAN in June 1997. I read the entire transcript, so I don’t believe it is a deep fake!

In his address, Biden downplays the Russian threat to forge a Sino-Russian strategic « partnership » in response to NATO enlargement with the myopic, if not arrogant, argument that political-economic cooperation with the US and Europe represents Moscow’s only option—and not deeper ties to China or Iran.

Ironically enough, Biden’s comments deriding the possibility of a Sino-Russian-Iranian strategic partnership came just a few months after Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin had signed a declaration on a “multipolar world” on 20 May 1997. This was at the time when the “Primakov doctrine,” calling for a strategic partnership between Russia, China, and India, was beginning to take hold.

Throughout 1995 and 1996, the Clinton administration was openly discussing NATO membership for Central European states to help Clinton to win the second term presidential elections versus the Republican candidate Bob Dole, who was strongly pressing for NATO expansion.

On the one hand, the Clinton administration was trying to make sure US calls for NATO enlargement would not spoil Boris Yeltsin’s hopes to win the 1996 Russian presidential elections. On the other hand, in addition to publicly urging NATO membership for Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, the Clinton boys were secretly proposing membership for the three Baltic states and Ukraine as well—states that Boris Yeltsin had declared to be Russian “redlines.”

Critics of NATO enlargement

At that time, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), Andrew Jackson Goodpaster (1969-74); NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General Jack Galvin (1987-92); NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (1992-93); and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1993-97), General John Shalikashvili; US Secretary of Defense, William Perry (1994-97); the founders of Containment, George Kennan and Paul Nitze, among others, all opposed NATO enlargement and supported the Partnership for Peace as a viable alternative.

During the NATO enlargement debates, Cold Warrior Paul Nitze, who had helped to negotiate the 1987 INF Treaty, sent me a then unpublished editorial in May 1995 that warned of the conventional and nuclear arms race and global crisis to come if the US expanded NATO without forging new European security accords with Moscow. I published this excerpt in my book, Dangerous Crossroads (1997):

With the vulnerability of Russia’s new democracy, pushing for NATO enlargement will likely exacerbate the existing, destructive internal pressures. A wrong move on our (US) part could easily backfire, triggering the rise to power by Russia’s nationalists, sidetracking START II and possibly unraveling other arms control agreements without which NATO will find itself back in a Cold War environment. It is far better to act on the belief that Russian nationalists are growing in political power and be wrong by curtailing NATO expansion, than it is to risk European instability in the face of a new confrontation with Moscow…. Our long term objective should be to promote the engagement not the exclusion of Russia in Europe.

Nitze’s warning should have been heeded by the Clinton administration, Republican Senator Bob Dole, as well as by then Senator Joe Biden. And Trump should be cautious now that the US and Russia are no longer abiding by the 1987 INF treaty that eliminated US-Soviet medium and intermediate range land-based missiles―but not those of China, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

The 1999 Air War « over » Kosovo

By 1999, contrary to Biden’s comments deriding the possibility of a closer Sino-Russian strategic partnership, NATO expansion, plus NATO’s air war vs Serbia “over” Kosovo, would press Russia and China even closer together.

And against Senator Biden’s promises that NATO would not represent a security threat, both Moscow and Beijing saw the U.S.-led NATO intervention versus Serbia not as a war of “humanitarian intervention” but as a war of “aggression.”

NATO’s use of information technologies, satellites, computer-guided weaponry, stealth capabilities of air power, and electronic warfare appeared to pose a potential threat to both Russian and Chinese defenses and thus required the high-tech modernization of their militaries.

To this day, Beijing has refused to accept the American excuse that a B-2 Stealth bomber (under command of the CIA and acting outside of NATO command) struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with precision bombs by “accident” because of a mapping error as Washington officially claimed.

In political terms, Moscow saw the NATO air war “over” Kosovo as a violation of the recently signed NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. In the latter, Moscow had been promised that the establishment of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council would “provide a mechanism for consultations, coordination, and, to the maximum extent possible, where appropriate, for joint decisions and joint action with respect to security issues of common concern.”

The catch was: The consultations will not extend to internal matters of either NATO, NATO member states, or Russia. (Emphasis mine.) Russia had a “voice” but not a veto in NATO affairs…

Alternative to the Air War “over” Kosovo

There was a plausible alternative to the Kosovo conflict: a joint US-NATO-Russian 30,000-to-60,000-person interpositionary force to be deployed between Serb and Albanian Kosovars.

This option would have strengthened the Partnership for Peace. Russian Prime Minister Primakov turned his plane around rather than discuss the issue further when NATO started bombing. The Clinton administration and US Congress were not going to take Russian proposals into consideration.

Sino-Russian partnership

On July 16, 2001, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation signed a twenty-year strategic treaty, the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. That treaty would be extended 20 years later when Beijing and Moscow forged a “no limits” partnership on the eve of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

GWOT

US neoconservatives of the “Bush-Cheney” administration had declared a Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Issuing a blank check that risked financial crisis and US global overextension—now at the cost of $8 trillion in debt and counting—the Bush administration targeted North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (meaning Hizballah), Libya, and Somalia for actual or potential “regime change”—in addition to Afghanistan.

A Machiavellian Putin worked with the US and NATO-Russia Council on providing logistics for NATO deployments in Afghanistan. At that time, Putin, like Yeltsin before him, expressed the possibility of joining NATO—but as an «equal».

GWOT was ostensibly taken to sustain the US "unipolar moment”—but the Pentagon largely ignored Russian and Chinese military build-ups behind the scenes while concentrating on “peacemaking” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US dumps 1972 ABM treaty

Both Russia and China denounced the Bush-Cheney decision to dump the ABM Treaty in 2002. The US then began to deploy the phased deployment of Aegis missile defense (MD) systems in Europe in 2009. These MD deployments were justified as being against Iran’s future missile capabilities, while MD deployments in Asia were blamed on North Korea—but both angered Moscow and Beijing.

Due to what I call the “insecurity-security dialectic,” American MD deployments worked to press all four powers—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—even closer together.

Proposed NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia

In 2008, before the NATO Bucharest Summit had promised Ukraine and Georgia eventual NATO membership, former US Ambassador to Moscow and Biden’s present CIA Director, William Burns, argued against NATO enlargement to Ukraine, as cited in Wikileaks:

Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.

Burns’ statement indicated that Moscow would prove reluctant to intervene militarily in the Donbass and Ukraine, but Russia could still make that risky and dangerous choice.

As Ukrainian-Russian tensions built up in the Donbass region, Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 in an act of preclusive imperialism―largely in fear that the Euromaidan political movement would permit NATO to deploy MD systems and/or a naval base on the island. By 2022, Moscow invaded Ukraine after forging a “no limits” partnership with Beijing.

Iran and the SCO

Ironically, the 2003 Iraq war permitted the expansion of Iranian influence into both Iraq and Syria. At that time, after the US show of force that devastated Iraqi society, the US claimed that it had concurrently frightened Iran into engaging in talks to prevent Tehran from enriching uranium to weapons grade levels, the JCPOA.

Not true: Tehran was elated that the US had eliminated its arch-enemy Saddam Hussein! Iran hoped that a friendlier Washington would put an end to sanctions and that it would soon obtain US and EU investment. It took years, but Iran did eventually sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015.

Ironically, however, preventing Iranian membership in the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization was one of the rationales that the Trump administration had used in 2018 to justify the US decision to drop out of the JCPOA: “The lifting of U.N. sanctions under the (JCPOA) opened the path for Iran to resume its membership application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

Despite Trump’s decision to dump the JCPOA treaty, coupled with new US sanctions, Iran joined the SCO and the BRICS+ anyway. And upsetting the UN, the Europeans, as well as Russia and China, Trump's decision in 2018 to drop out of the JCPOA subsequently led Tehran to accelerate its quest to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels—in part in an effort to assert its geopolitical independence and at the risk of war with Israel.

SCO and BRICS

As a rising global actor, China has apparently calmed tensions with India over Kashmir and brought Iran and Saudi Arabia into a rapprochement. Beijing has likewise sought peace in the Middle East by reaching out to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority, Hamas, and Indonesia, as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran appear to be taking a common stance against Israeli militarism: On November 11, 2024, the Arab and Islamic Summit warned “of the danger of the escalation… (and)… of the expansion of the aggression that has lasted over one year on the Gaza Strip and extended to include Lebanon, and of the violation of the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, without the international community’s concern.”

Israeli democidal actions in Gaza and attacks in the region risk the real possibility of a much wider war. And as a key pivot state, Saudi Arabia is still hesitating about joining the BRICS+. Like Turkey, India, and Indonesia, among other states, Riyadh could soon shift its political allegiance toward the US or toward Russia and China.

To which side will these states turn if they cannot remain “non-aligned”?

China, Russia, and North Korea

Since the 2022 Ukraine war, Russia has been augmenting support for North Korea after Donald Trump's miserable failure to reach an accord with Kim Jong Un. Moscow has promised North Korea to enhance relations "in all areas" as Russia seeks to replenish its supply of arms.

Although Beijing has hoped to sustain its hegemony over North Korea, China did not strongly condemn Russian arms dealings with North Korea, probably because Beijing and Moscow seek closer strategic cooperation as well.

Playing the North Korean “card” not only represents an effort on the part of Moscow to divert attention away from Ukraine and to obtain North Korean weaponry—and now troops to fight the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region―but it also presses China into closer defense relations with Russia and Moscow into greater political economic dependence upon Beijing.

Japan, South Korea, and the US will all build up their military capabilities in response to North Korean nuclear weapons and feared Russian high-tech and satellite surveillance assistance to Pyongyang.

The years 2025-26: toward a US-Russia-China showdown?

The Trump administration had opted in 2019 to dump the 1987 INF treaty that had helped to put an end to the Cold War by eliminating US and Russian land-based medium and intermediate-range missiles. Yet Trump did not attempt to revise that treaty, ostensibly because China would not negotiate its deployments of such weaponry in a new treaty.

Trump also did not attempt to negotiate with Moscow, whom he accused (correctly) of developing new intermediate-range missiles. But so too was the US developing such weapons that were tested very soon after Trump dumped the INF Treaty.

To counter Russian intermediate-range nuclear capabilities, the Biden administration, Berlin, and NATO have planned to deploy conventionally armed, ground-launched intermediate-range missiles in Germany on a rotational basis beginning in 2026. These weapons could include the Tomahawk cruise, SM-6, and hypersonic missiles that have a significantly longer range than existing missiles.

In mid-November 2024, after Biden approved the use of ATACMs to strike deeper into Russian territory, Moscow fired a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in clear violation of the 1987 INF treaty in retaliation.

To counter Chinese and North Korean nuclear and hypersonic capabilities, the Biden administration has also planned to deploy such weaponry at US military bases in Guam and the Philippines.

For the first time, the US Nuclear Employment Guidance speaks of “the need to deter Russia, the PRC (China), and North Korea simultaneously.”

The return of such weaponry to Europe and the Indo-Pacific threatens both a new Euromissile crisis of the period 1978 to 1987 as well as a brand new “Asia missile” crisis—upon the threat of major power, if not nuclear, war.

The world was very lucky that a nuclear war did not break out in November 1983 during NATO’s Able Archer military exercises―at the time when Washington was beginning to deploy Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe in an effort to pressure Moscow to eliminate its intermediate range SS-20s in accord with NATO “double track” decision. We might not be so lucky this time.

Alliances and counter-alliances

The US has sought to strengthen the NATO alliance in defense of Ukraine vs. Russia while backing Israel against Iran and its Axis of Resistance. And in the effort to defend Taiwan and South Korea, Washington is also working in the Indo-Pacific with the AUKUS Pact of the US, UK, and Australia, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of the US, Japan, and Australia, as well as India, that is still “neutral” or “non-aligned.”

In 2023, South Korea agreed not to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for American deployment of nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea.

The Pentagon sees Russia and China as cooperating against Taiwan, while Moscow and Beijing see Taiwan as trying to stir up a “Ukraine-style” crisis in Asia in an effort to attract outside support.

Peace through strength?

After the US failure/refusal to bring Russia into a new system of European security in the 1990s, the global system has transformed from an essentially bicentric global system to an even more dangerous asymmetrical polycentric global system characterized by rival states and anti-state movements with highly uneven power capabilities and influence.

US efforts to sustain its alliance coherence, its military predominance, and political economic hegemony vs. Russia, China, and their allies are risking major power war if innovative diplomatic compromises cannot soon be found.

In the coming years, it is essential to press the Trump administration to make good on Trump’s claims that he can bring peace between Ukraine and Russia, North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, as well as Israel, the Palestinians, and Iran, among other conflicts. A global peace initiative to prevent a US-Russia-China-North Korea showdown must be forthcoming if we are not to witness even greater horrors than we have seen in past human history and are beginning to witness once again…