Now, while any small town club is able to reject applications for membership and scholarships are tied to preconditions — and ignoring for a minute that NATO even refused to talk about Russia’s security interests, including its unwillingness to accept NATO right on its borders1, in November/December 2021 — NATO has maintained that its open door policy essentially keeps it from outright rejecting Ukraine’s attempts at joining the “alliance”.
Curiously though, NATO’s open door policy either wasn’t a thing back in the early nineteen-fifties, shortly after it was founded2, or the door isn’t quite as open as NATO strategic communications — a neologism for propaganda — would make us believe.
Not only did the USSR — aka Soviet Union — of which Russia eventually became the sole successor in terms of international law3 apply to NATO in 1954, one year after Stalin’s death; nope, Russia did again according to the account of George Robertson. Although perhaps the term “apply” is a stretch here, given the form it is alleged to have had. That is, Putin allegedly said he didn’t want Russia to wait in line with “countries that don’t matter”.
Still, it turns out that, in fact, NATO doesn’t have an open door policy.
Just like Putin reached out to Germany, to the West, exactly two weeks after 9/11 and tried again, but slowly realizing that Russians were not welcome by “the West”.
Well, one should not be surprised, since in the words of NATO’s first secretary general the purpose NATO’s creation always has been to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”4
The supposed open door policy seems more like a ruse to get Ukraine to fight for NATO’s interests to the last Ukrainian. After all, let’s not forget that Saakashvili, mistaking the outcome of the NATO summit in 2008 for something it wasn’t, attacked South Ossetia and got rebuffed by Russia. A fact that is these days often distorted into “Russia attacked Georgia”, despite the findings of a EU-sponsored study which found the opposite: i.e. Georgia attacked Russia.
// Oliver
- Imagine the scenario with tables turned! [↩]
- and before the Warsaw Pact got founded! [↩]
- including taking over debt service! [↩]
- Anyone wondering why Germany is in NATO at all? [↩]