HULSMAN: GEORGIA SHOULD NOT BE A NATO MEMBER – May 6, 2009

- an interview with John C. Hulsman, a foreign policy scholar at the German Council on Foreign Relations and the co-author of The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable, which just hit the bookstores in the United States.

Sebastian Aulich: Why do you believe Poland is wrong to support NATO’s membership for Georgia?

John Hulsman: Well, I understand why Poland does support Georgia’s

membership in NATO. Poland, like Germany, wants to be surrounded by

allies and wants all of them to be integrated into the West and that’s perfectly

sensible position, but I would argue that there are two flaws of that. My point

of view is –   and I am an American, and like the Polish nationalists I am an

American nationalist – that it is not in my interest and I don’t think it is in

Poland’s interest either. I have argued that to my friends in Poland. Poland

is incredibly important country in NATO and I have worked very hard to get

Poland into NATO. But the problem with Georgia is that it is indefensible in a

strict conventional military sense and in a nuclear sense. Nobody is going to

fight a nuclear war for Georgia. And if we let people in, and not only Georgia

but also countries like Tajikistan or Turkmenistan, into the Alliance and

someone was to invade them, then Article 5 would mean nothing. Article 5 is

the reason why Poland joined NATO in the first place because if you are half

a way between Germany and Russia, geopolitically you want a security

commitment by an outside power, particularly a democratic one, which

supports your aspirations like the United States does. By admitting Georgia

we would be undoing a very important thing, which I believe is absolutely vital. Article 5 is the core of the Alliance and without Article 5 there is no Alliance. Everything else comes after that. Georgia cannot be defended, so it cannot be included in Article 5. I say that not because I don’t like Georgia. I have nothing against Georgia at all. But because I believe in NATO, I can’t be for inclusion of Georgia and neither should be you. I know that you believe in NATO and Poland is actually a country that does believe in NATO, unlike many of our allies. But for the sake of our future we should be very careful how far we expend the Alliance and we need to be very sure that anybody we include is indeed defensible, and that’s true of any new member. Should we coordinate that better with Poland? Yes.

SA: How about Ukraine?

JH: I think that’s a more interesting case and the answer is that I simply don’t know. My instinct is: no I don’t think Ukraine is defensible, but I am not sure that I’m right. I wouldn’t rule it out. I don’t think we need to slam the doors anywhere. If Ukraine gets its political act together, which is a huge “if”, if it gets its economic act together, which is another huge “if”, and if Ukraine looks up to the terms of the MAP and NATO’s specifications – if all those huge “ifs” were in place then, I think, we would have to talk about Ukraine. But I need to be convinced that Ukraine is indeed defensible. One of the problems in Ukraine is, as you probably know, that 40% of the country is actually actively against joining NATO and any other club. I, politically, kind of worry about that because you don’t have a political basis over there as you have in Poland, where 90% are in favor of NATO or in the United States where two thirds are in favor of NATO. But, unlike Georgia, I would not inherently rule it out, although there are huge “ifs”. Never say never. It is an argument between Eastern Europe, Poland and the United States, but let’s see if the Ukrainians do these things first, because if they don’t then the answer is simply “no”. If they do them, then I am open-minded to evaluate it. For now, let’s just not shut the door.

SA: President Obama has expressed some doubts whether to deploy the antimissile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. What is your position on that?

JH: The first thing is that I would not give it up for nothing. Just to give it up and give the victory to the Russians is not something that I think we should get a business in doing. If it were a part of a broader trade about the issues that we need to talk about with the Russians, such as Iran, proliferation, counter-terrorism, then maybe. Because the argument the Obama’s people are making is that if we were to get a deal with Iran and Russia was serious about that, then there would be no need for a missile defense system. There is logic to that argument. So, I think it is a good place to begin with, but I am not just for walking away from the system, unless there is some movement from Russia, and unless we are actually getting something tangible from the Russians, and not only for us but for all of the West, including Poland and the Czech Republic as well. But I need to see if the Russians are willing to move into that direction first.

SA: You said that you are a Republican, so what is your opinion about Obama’s idea to get rid of all nuclear weapons, which he expressed during his last trip to the Czech Republic?

JH: Wouldn’t it be nice? It would be wonderful if I lived in a world without nuclear weapons…

SA: Well, I can’t imagine anything better for Poland than Russia without nuclear weapons.

JH: Exactly. I go to Poland and we both hit the beach. Life would be really good. The problem with this is, and Obama mentioned it, that America won’t give up its nuclear weapons until every single guy in the world gives it up. What it means is that we are not giving it up. The problem with the system is that more countries want nuclear weapons, not fewer, because they learned the lessons of the 90’s that if you don’t have the nukes, like Saddam Hussein or Milosevic, you either die in the Hague or are hanged in Baghdad. But if you have them, like Russia, you can do whatever you want in Grozny and we all have to put up with it. Unfortunately, Kim Jong Il has learnt this lesson. Iran seems to be learning the lesson too and it is a great problem. Obama’s was a lovely speech, but it’s not a real world politics. And, again, I wish to God that I was wrong, but I am not.

SA: In retrospect, what do you believe George W. Bush did right in foreign policy? What would you preserve from his policies for the future?

JH: Almost nothing. I will be honest. I think he got the polarity of the world wrong, it is not a unipolar world we live in. Also making anyone, who is not with you, against you, is a terrible idea in foreign policy. Most countries are neither fully pro-American nor fully anti-American and you don’t want to lose those countries. I think that working with people on the issues is a way to move forward and it should not be about the ideology. Who is stopping the world’s economic crisis, the Germans or the Chinese? Obviously, the Chinese. And why would I not work with them, just because they are not a democratic country? The whole basis of Bush’s foreign policy was badly conceived. The good news is, I think, that he was so wrong that the people now accept it and there is a correction occurring. This is what America does well. We have been a Republic for a long time because we can overcome the stupidities that we make so that we don’t get into new trouble, but we get out of it. We have a system that corrects, which is the same as in Poland, which I think is a great thing. I would say that the most of Bush’s foreign policy was utterly disastrous. He was the worst President in memory. He is in the bottom five presidents in history among James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover. The good news is that the country survived it. He empirically tested a series of facts based on his ideology and that’s a good thing. Now we must say: it did not work and what do we do now to make things work better? That’s the moment we have right now and it is a very exciting moment, all that creativity in countries like Poland, Eastern Europe, America and Western Europe, and this is when the new ideas are absolutely vital. That’s a great thing, which happened already and everybody would agree on that. That’s the one dubious success of the Bush Administration. And let me put it this way. I have spent most of my life betting against the Bush Administration and my career has not suffered as a result.