"Albright changed history."
The funeral of Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State of the United States, was held on the 27th of last month at the National Cathedral in Washington.
US President Joe Biden, who attended the ceremony, expressed his condolences with tears in his eyes.
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“What makes the NATO alliance so strong today is because of Albright…she changed the course of history.”
Albright has served as US Secretary of State since 1997, where he spearheaded NATO expansion.
As a result, former communist countries Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which were members of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War era, joined NATO in 1999, and Estonia and Latvia, which border Russia, also joined NATO in 2004.
Thanks to this expansion policy, 14 additional countries joined NATO only after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the number of member states now stands at 30.
"Historical Mistake" vs "Fatal Mistake"
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Albright wrote in The New York Times a few days before Russia invaded Ukraine, warning that it would be "a Historic error" if President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine.
However, it is also pointed out that NATO expansion policy was rather the background for the invasion of Russia.
The basis for this point of view is an article entitled "A Fateful Error" that, coincidentally, George Cannon, who is called the father of the Cold War, sent to the New York Times in 1997.
Exactly 50 years before George Cannon wrote an article for the New York Times, he wrote an article entitled 'The Source of Soviet conduct' under the pseudonym 'X'.
And this thesis is the beginning of the Cold War based on the 'Soviet blockade'.
That's why George Cannon is called the father of the Cold War.
The person who was called the father of the Cold War for the idea of the Soviet blockade explained why the NATO expansion policy to contain Russia was "the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era" )" and set up a day of criticism?
George Cannon explains why in his article:
"…These decisions (NATO expansion, eastern progress) will further promote nationalist, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russia. It is expected to have a negative impact on the development of Russian democracy. Reversing the Cold War atmosphere and Russia's foreign policy It's going to go in a direction we don't want it to go."
-Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was willing to be a part of Europe and even NATO.
Russia wanted a status as a victorious country that ended the Cold War by joining forces with the West, but the West isolated Russia by embracing Communist countries one by one.
It was too easy to break the 'oral promise' that NATO would no longer advance, while at the same time signaling Russia's defeat in the war without gunfire of the Cold War.
Naturally, Russia was in turmoil, and Putin, who took the opportunity to take power, changed Russia just as George Cannon had warned.
Shadow of the New Cold War
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Nevertheless, I don't think it should be concluded that NATO's expansionary policies led to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Because it was Putin who invaded neighboring countries, which ended up using NATO's expansionary policies to his advantage to maintain his power.
However, if George Cannon had returned alive and looked at the current situation, I think he would have criticized it like this.
"Nato's expansionary policy has ruined the half-century opportunity that Moscow could become our partner."
Lost of opportunity, we are now in the shadow of a new Cold War era.
Russia, which it hoped to be a partner, has become an enemy again, and, like George Cannon's containment strategy, the Western world is pouring out all sorts of sanctions on Russia and is in the midst of a deadly operation.
In the past, during the Cold War, Europe expanded its energy trade with the Soviet Union to manage the risk of conflicts and conflicts caused by the Cold War.
Ironically, thanks to this, Russia is still exporting crude oil and natural gas to Europe despite the sanctions of the international community led by the United States. only.
The cost is disastrous.
The war, which has been going on for more than two months, continues without any contact point.
Not to mention the damage to Ukraine, the battlefield, and the damage to neighboring countries watching it cannot be ignored.
Countries with weak economic foundations are concerned about default, and countries that buy a little are concerned about stagflation for the first time in 50 years.
Will it be a bastion of peace or an excuse for an invasion?
In his last article to The New York Times, Albright declared unequivocally that even great powers today do not have the right to invade and trample other sovereign states as the great powers of the past were colonizing and exploiting them.
The expansion of NATO pursued by Albright was also to prevent the repeating history of sovereignty and chaos in the sudden power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That might have made NATO more than doubled in size, but it did not prevent Russia from invading Ukraine.
Today, NATO serves as a bastion of peace for member countries and an excuse for invasion by non-member countries.
It seems accurate to diagnose that they are showing ambivalence while being vaguely positioned somewhere between the two.
But just as the war entered a new phase with Russia's focus on eastern Ukraine's Donbass, NATO's expansionary policy also presents new challenges.
On the 25th of last month, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine's capital Kiiu and then moved to Poland to hold a press conference and remarked as follows.
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"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. So it has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of, a lot of its troops, quite frankly."
Russia has lost a significant amount of military operational capability in this war, which means Ukraine must counterattack more effectively, making it weaker so that Russia can never again invade its neighbours.
It also shows a shift in perspective that Ukraine is now at war with Russia on behalf of NATO.
As if to support this interpretation, Secretary Austin moved to Germany the next day and supported the German government's decision to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine for the first time since the invasion. It has asked the parliament for a budget for 'Ukrainian aid'.
Now, it seems that the outcome of this war will determine the fate of Ukraine and Russia as well as NATO.
Will NATO be able to properly establish itself as a bastion of peace this time around?
Or will it remain as a sure reason for the invasion?
(Photo = Getty Images Korea)