Stephen Sestanovich.

• Position: Response to William Odom, The National Interest, Spring 1995 - Expanding NATO: An Exchange Between Odom and His Critics

William Odom [Spring 1995] insists that expanding NATO win actually be good for Russian democracy and believes he can prove his point by sitting us "Russia firsters" down for a little history lesson. He reminds us that, under both autocracy and communism, major military defeats gave a boost to reform. The Crimean War, emancipation of the serfs; World War I, the February Revolution; Afghanistan, perestroika. Get the idea? This pattern, which has been (to put it mildly) noticed before, argues for tough policies when dealing with dictatorships. But does it also tell us, as Odom seems to think, how to deal with the regimes that follow dictatorship? By his logic, we might actually be led to view the defeats that Germany inflicted upon Russia after the February Revolution as just another form of prodemocratic "pressure." Lenin, who...