Andrei Kortunov article: How Russia should break the deadlock in negotiations with NATO

The Carnegie Moscow Center website published an article titled "From Shock Therapy to Resting Therapy : What Russia Does After Negotiations with NATO" on January 17 by Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian Council on International Affairs. The full text is excerpted below:

What happened last week was something that many had warned about. The "Collective West," represented by the United States and its European allies, rejected Russia's demand that NATO stop absorbing new Eastern European countries and restore the bloc's military infrastructure to its position at the end of the last century.

There is no need to repeat again the statements of many experts at home and abroad, who question the realism of the Russian initiative. NATO countries have many strategic, political, legal, ideological and even psychological obstacles to meeting Moscow's demands, and in an extremely severe and uncompromising manner.

The principle of "all gain or total loss" is not advisable

So the question arises: how should Moscow act after the stalemate of its high-profile diplomatic blitzkrieg, and how to keep the stubborn Western opposition as difficult as possible. There is no shortage of such advice in the Russian expert community. The recommendations cover a wide range of areas: for example, the deployment of new missile systems near NATO national borders; military threats against the United States closer to U.S. territory; increased activities by international private military companies involving Russia in volatile regions of Africa; and escalation of information and cyber warfare on the Western Front.

Experts have also suggested various ways of punishing the West diplomatically. For example, withdrawing from the 1990 Paris Charter for New Europe, withdrawing from the OSCE and the Council of Europe, formally recognizing the independence of the "Donetsk People's Republic" and the "Luhansk People's Republic" in eastern Ukraine, and suspending negotiations between Russia and the United States on strategic offensive weapons.

If these or similar recommendations are adopted, their implementation will undoubtedly create new serious security problems for our Western adversaries. But it is unclear how effective all these steps will be in strengthening Russia's own security. The result is likely to be counterproductive: the spiral of confrontation between Europe and the world will generate powerful additional momentum, with the increasing likelihood of a direct military conflict and possibly even triggering a global nuclear war. If security in today's world is indivisible, so is the lack of security.

In some cases, games that incite situations are very effective, but in the current specific situation, are the inevitable risks that such games pose justified?

The first question that must be made clear in this regard is what is more important for Russia – to fight more forcefully against the intransigent and hypocritical West, to retaliate against the defeats and unilateral concessions of the 1990s, or to try to maximize its own security, taking into account all the objective limitations of the current geopolitical situation.

If it is ultimately the second task and not the first that prevails, Russia will have to adjust its original approach, which was originally announced on the basis of the principle of "all gain or total loss".

From shock therapy to conservative treatment

What specific issues need to be considered in order to break the current impasse?

First, it would be better to clearly separate the agenda of bilateral Strategic Arms negotiations between Russia and the United States from European security issues. The negotiations on the nuclear issue between Moscow and Washington have their own logic and trajectory. They are too important for both parties and for the international community as a whole to be linked to any other issue, including European security. Russia and the West have separated the nuclear agenda from other aspects of the relationship for decades, and today there is no reason to modify that principle.

Moreover, both Russia and the West recognize that the value of taking concrete steps to make confrontation more stable and predictable cannot be erased.

Any measure to consolidate confidence, even if it is very small — the establishment of a buffer zone along the Russian-NATO line of contact, the introduction of special provisions for military activities, the reactivation of the Russian-NATO Council, and the possible restoration of the Open Skies Treaty — all of these actions will help to stabilize the current fragile situation.

If, from Moscow's point of view, the main threat is that NATO's military infrastructure moves closer to Russia's western border, it would be reasonable to focus on those infrastructures rather than the theoretical possibility of NATO expansion in itself.

Specific issues restricting the geographical expansion of NATO's infrastructure could be addressed within the framework of the negotiation of a new Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. Such a treaty would be legally binding on Brussels and Moscow.

Moscow should not forget that it also needs to work for Russia's neighbors who are lining up to join NATO. When we habitually talk about Ukraine or Georgia being "drawn into NATO," the impression is that the initiative comes from the West, and the attracted countries are desperately resisting, but are forced to slowly succumb to pressure from Brussels. In fact, everything is just the opposite. Moscow should focus on finding alternative security mechanisms for its "common neighbors" to reduce their desire to seek NATO membership at all costs.

Some experts see Moscow's tough, aggressive and uncompromising demands on the United States and its NATO partners as a shock therapy designed to force the West to focus on Russia's legitimate security interests, which the West has long all but ignored. If that's the purpose of Russian policy, it's already been achieved — Russia's voice is loud and clear.

But logic and common sense suggest that shock therapy alone is not enough to address the many ills that have accumulated in Moscow-Western relations. Obviously, long-term conservative treatment is essential.

Source: Reference News Network