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Russia stirs a cold war spat about European security
11 Feb 2010
By Philip Stephens, The Financial Times
The other day I heard Sergei Lavrov expounding on the merits of Moscow’s plan for a new European security architecture. Sad to say, the Russian foreign minister was unconvincing. To listen to Mr Lavrov preaching the politics of mutual trust and shared security is to imagine Dick Cheney delivering a sermon on the inescapable virtues of multilateralism.
Like the former US vice-president, Mr Lavrov has a rhetorical style that contrives to be at once soft-spoken and bombastic. His pulpit discourses on the many sins of the west and Russia’s altruistic intent – the latest delivered the other day at the annual Munich Security Conference – are models of casuistry.
Elements of the Russian proposal for a treaty that would re-invigorate the Organisation for Co-operation and Security in Europe deserve serious consideration. A vital forum for east-west dialogue during the cold war, the OSCE has since fallen into the shadows. Moscow is right to say the organisation could be given a more prominent role in countering misperceptions and easing tensions in the former Soviet space.
As Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said in a recent speech in Paris, the west should have no argument with Russia’s view that the continent’s security is indivisible. For any one nation to pursue security at the expense of another is indeed a recipe for insecurity. Several centuries of intra-European wars should have taught us as much.
Incidentally, Mrs Clinton’s choice of the French capital to set out Washington’s views on the future of the Atlantic alliance was intended to serve as an antidote to the more hysterical fears among some Europeans that the US is about to abandon them to its preoccupation with a rising China.
It seems fair to say that Barack Obama views Europe with unfamiliarly cool detachment. The US president seems underwhelmed by the diplomatic flummery of the transatlantic relationship. Much to his chagrin, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy has had to wait more than a year for an invitation (now in the post) to the Obama White House. David Cameron, who hopes to be Britain’s prime minister within a few months, had to abandon his hopes of a pre-election audience. But none of this means the US is giving up on Nato – not yet anyway.
Back in Moscow, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, needs to think hard if he really wants to sell his idea of a pan-European security treaty. A first step would be to find a more plausible ambassador for the cause. The manner in which Mr Lavrov talks about his allegiance to “indivisible” security invites audiences to conclude the opposite: that Moscow’s goal is to divide Europe between east and west and thereby detach it from the US.
Mr Medvedev has been candid about many of the challenges facing his country. Mr Lavrov speaks from a mindset that always blames someone else for its troubles. Russia is forever the victim – first of supposed Nato imperialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, more recently and ludicrously, of Georgian aggression in the Caucasus.
In this narrative, the cold war never properly ended. The west still harbours hostile intent and Nato is the instrument of its expansionism. In this zero-sum game, if Russia’s neighbours embrace liberal democracy they subtract from Moscow’s security.
The pain of losing an empire is obviously part of the explanation for an enduring sense of grievance. It may also be true that the US could have been more sensitive during the post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. But the west has nothing to apologise for in offering the hand of partnership to Europe’s new democracies.
In any event, that was then. No objective view of the contemporary perils facing Russia could say they reside in the west. The threats are embedded in a demographic profile that foreshadows a calamitous fall in the Russian population; in separatist tensions and Islamist extremism; and in its failure to turn hydrocarbon wealth into sustained economic prosperity. If Moscow wants to look abroad for strategic rivals it should cast its gaze eastwards, where rising Chinese prosperity and power rub up directly against Siberian dereliction.
The supposition must be that Moscow is seeking an alibi. By casting Nato in the role of aggressor, the Kremlin diverts attention from its dismal domestic failures. Russian leaders might otherwise be asked to explain why the country’s resource wealth has not been channelled into economic modernisation and refurbishment of a crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure.
Nato members cannot afford to allow Russia a veto over their efforts to update the alliance’s purpose and capabilities by formulating what diplomats call a new “strategic concert”. The intelligent response to Moscow is to be both sensitive to its concerns and unflinchingly robust in rejecting any implication that Europe can be divided again into competing spheres of influence.
Sensitivity means that this week’s election of the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovich as Ukraine’s new president should be viewed with equanimity. The conduct of the election was as fair as anyone could have hoped for. The west’s offer for Ukraine to join the liberal democratic community of nations must remain on the table, but Ukrainians retain the right to take a different course.
Equally, Nato’s strategic concept must acknowledge the calls of its newer, central and east European members for the alliance to renew its founding guarantee of territorial defence. The war in Afghanistan has seen the US and some others seek to formalise Nato’s contribution to global as well as European security. But this shift will have credibility only if the alliance upholds confidence in its Article 5 guarantee of mutual defence.
Likewise, practical co-operation with Russia in areas of mutual interest, such as missile defence and nuclear arms reductions, will be possible only if it fully understands that Nato’s defence guarantees extend to all its members. As long as Mr Lavrov sees an opportunity to divide and rule, he will do just that.
All this leaves a salutary question for the political minnows who pass these days for Europe’s leaders. Two decades after the end of the cold war why is the debate about the security of their continent still being conducted largely by the US and Russia? They will find the answer, perhaps, by looking in the mirror.
Reference: www.ft.com