My Take | Nato expansions and the West’s hubris threaten peace in Asia
- Most Asian countries can manage frictions with China, and do not want to see a Nato presence to worsen security and prosperity in their neighbourhood
Someone said history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. There is certainly much rhyming at the moment.
The peace deal made by the allies at the Congress of Vienna with France after the fall of Napoleon was relatively lenient and farsighted. About a century later, the bitter yet arrogant men of Versailles thought they could do much better and made a highly punitive peace, which paved the way straight to the Nazi nightmare and the second world war.
After a second cataclysm, a few wise men in Washington rediscovered the meanings of leniency and integration, especially through the famous Marshall Plan in western Europe.
That lesson was not completely forgotten when the United States won another global confrontation at the end of the Cold War and with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As the Berlin Wall was crumbling, the European and American leaders who negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev over German reunification were still mindful of the peaceful lessons at the end of World War II. That was why they promised no Nato eastward expansion. That they didn’t sign a treaty to seal that promise did not mean they were not cognisant of the danger of future Russian revenge – they were only too aware.
