It’s standard in the West to speak of Russian President Vladimir Putin as the bad guy, and to see the present Russian positioning as yet more of Russian aggression of the Afghanistan kind, and earlier into East Europe after World War II.

But the changing map over recent years tells a different story. It tells the story of a steady North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) advance into Eastern Europe to confront Russia.

The extent and speed of that advance would inevitably have a Russian President worried. And signs of a recognition of legitimate Russian worry are beginning to show through cracks within NATO. Most significantly by way of positions taken by French President Emmanuel Macron. But there are other signs; the German naval chief was forced to resign after declaring that Putin’s position was understandable and that he is not necessarily invasively inclined.

From 12 member countries in 1949, NATO has expanded to 30 now, mostly towards the East, advancing steadily up to Russia’s doorstep. Fourteen East European countries joined after 1997 . From an alliance around the north Atlantic, NATO has begin to ground around Russia.

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Ukraine is not a NATO member, not yet that is. But it is already a NATO partner country, and stands next as a NATO member in its expansion eastward. An estimated eight million ethno-Russians form 17 percent of the population of Ukraine. And they are the bulk of the population in Crimea. Crimea could be an odd inclusion within a NATO alliance. And it is with that in mind particularly that Putin appears to have drawn a line in Ukraine.

That he has done so with backing from China underlines significantly the strength of his stand. The days are gone already when NATO was too overwhelmingly strong an alliance for the likes of Russia and China to challenge.

Brittle

NATO is mighty still, yet brittle. Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack on one member will be considered an attack on all, is increasingly being seen as hard to sustain. NATO joined the US push into Afghanistan, but the US pulled out without consulting any other.

French President Macron told The Economist in an interview two years back that NATO is becoming brain-dead. The European part of NATO, he said, can no longer rely on the US to protect it. “What will Article 5 mean tomorrow,” he asked.

And now after a five-hour meeting with Putin in Moscow, he said there is no security for Europe without security for Russia. Macron has become the voice within that now lose NATO alliance that Russia seems to trust, at least to talk with. The British sought to step in by way of a meeting between Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. At the end of that meeting, Lavrov said it was “a bit like talking to a deaf person.”

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Most significantly it is through talks between Macron and Putin that hopes have emerged of an avoidance of an invasion. A French government spokesperson said that there had been no indication from Putin that he was planning an invasion. Not definite, not the last word certainly, but through the present crisis the most promising indicator yet that Putin is not necessarily in warlike mode.

That understanding has been strengthened by further indications that Russia is in no rush to drive into Ukraine. Some reports have been put out suggesting a limited Russian pullback from the borders, a diplomatic signal that Russia will hold back if NATO agrees to hold back its push eastward.

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Some signs of that too are emerging. Putin’s warnings on the borders appear to have hit home, and NATO hawks are being restrained at the least to limit their plans, and at least for now, for roping Ukraine into the alliance. It will take that, and no less, to prevent a war. Too many NATO members have neither the means nor the will to go to war with Russia, and that includes emphatically France, Germany and even the US. NATO may be more than just brain-dead.

— London Eye is a weekly column by CNBC-TV18’s Sanjay Suri, which gives a peek at business-as-unusual from London and around.

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(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)

First Published:Feb 16, 2022 7:41 PM IST