b. Next stages: potential this era joiners

b. Next stages: potential this era joiners

What about Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau? They are excluded from most formal Atlantic structures, as legal parts of China. Hong Kong may wish it had been included in Western structures when it was a part of the British Empire; Macao similarly, when it was under Portugal; but that is water under the bridge. Taiwan is included informally in Western security arrangements and wishes to join almost any international arrangement that will let it in. There could conceivably be a future diplomatic conjuncture in which it would make sense to include Taiwan in OECD; but it is not a matter to be toyed with lightly. It might be done for adversarial reasons; alternatively, China might realize it makes sense for its own economic self-interest, giving it half a foot in the First World.

Russia is, in terms of objective importance for the West, by the most important country on the expansion agenda. It is more important than China, India and Brazil combined. The latter add up to 12% of world GDP, but a 12% addition to OECD’s present 73% would be of minor significance. Russia, by contrast, carries power that is not minor for the West. The addition of Russia to the Atlantic group would raise its share of the world’s nuclear forces from about 60%¹⁰ to 98%. Much deeper nuclear reductions would become possible without denting the Atlantic’s edge over potential rivals. Indeed, the Atlantic’s military margin would leap to a qualitatively higher level, one many times larger than all the potential rivals combined. Russia also would bring a major share of world science and technology, a large military industry and weapons trade, a vast and central geopolitical position, oil and gas reserves that can undercut Islamist challengers, and many other mineral resources; each of these, if added in to the West, would visibly boost its global primacy and security.

Russia is civilizationally related to the West; it is European, with Orthodox Christian heritage. It is intimately related, ethnically and linguistically, to the new Slavic members of NATO. The intimacy is even tighter in the countries in the post-Soviet space that are debated regarding membership in NATO; because of this intimacy, most of them would not in the end decide to join unless together with Russia.

Russia is, however, a huge and difficult task, as Adams well knew. It also, after half a century of Cold War enmity, raises the blood pressure level in Western discussion. NATO in turn raises the blood pressure in Russian discussion. Democratization still has a good way to go in Russia. While the fundamental geopolitical opposition between Russia and the West was ended by Russia’s unilateral abandonment of Soviet positions after 1989, there has not been a two-way resolution of the residual divergences of strategies and interests, or construction of much of a common strategic perspective.

Positively, nevertheless, a common geopolitical interest was recognized in the Afghan war after 2001. Russia has been included in the G8; this helped head off a reversion to strategic enmity during the 1999 Kosovo war. OECD has endorsed the idea of Russian membership and opened negotiations with Russia on it; both sides share this goal, although fulfillment of the criteria or acquis will take some time. NATO in January 1994, in announcing a Partnership for Peace open to Russia, announced also the goal of membership for PFP participants, but gradually drew back from this, saying only that the door is not closed and Russia too can apply to join if it meets the criteria. It has treated the criteria, among them signing onto NATO’s strategic concept, as matters to be fulfilled one-way by Russia. A NATO-Russia Council (NRC) has been formed, in principle a venue fit for the two-way work of reconciling strategic perspectives; Russia has often complained that the West has used it for technical cooperation issues not the broad diplomatic context; the West in turn says that when it tries to discuss the larger issues, Russia isn’t cooperative.

Despite these obstacles, the broad picture is that Russia-West strategic perspectives are far closer than in Soviet times, and consultations continue, perhaps not creatively enough, on resolving outstanding issues. The door of NATO is not closed, and the central relevant standards are likely eventually to be met, no doubt in the same imperfect way all other new members have met them. In a matter of decades, then, an integration of Russia into the Atlantic space is still probable, as a natural consequence of the end of Communism, and of its happening in conditions of a modernized educated Russia and a concretized joinable West. The specific scenario laid out by Adams and Streit would then be completed.