The author is a researcher at the Center of international studies and research at the University of Montreal (CERIUM). He was political advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016-2017. He just published Canada in search of an international identity.
“You might as well say it bluntly: NATO is playing a harmful role today. You are probably thinking that this sentence is taken from a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oh no! It is taken from a work by Dominique de Villepin, successively diplomat, Minister of Foreign Affairs and French Prime Minister. Villepin has been at the heart of his country’s foreign policy for twenty years and has drawn some thoughts on international relations, which he sets out in Memory of peace for wartime.
He was able to observe during his career how the American spirit dominates the institution and prevents any original reflection on Euro-Atlantic security. And for him, “any alliance leads to war”. We are not there yet, but the NATO enlargement process is once again a source of tension between the West and the Russians. The current dispute relates to a possible accession of Ukraine to the Atlantic Alliance.
Ukraine’s candidacy comes in the wake of the NATO enlargement process launched in the mid-1990s, which saw eleven countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union join. the organization. In three decades, the borders of the military alliance have reached those of Russia and some, in the Baltic countries, are now a hundred kilometers from Saint Petersburg. The Russians have always opposed this process. They had even received assurances from the West in 1990 that NATO would not expand “an inch” towards the east if Moscow accepted a reunified Germany member of the Alliance, as so well documented. American historian Mary Elise Sarotte in Not One Inch. America, Russia, and The Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, published a few weeks ago.
Westerners, writes Sarotte, have essentially taken advantage of Russia’s weakness to push their pawns. This was particularly the case under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, a false democrat but a true clown, whose escapades masked the monetary, industrial, health and military collapse of the country. He made Bill Clinton laugh so much when he danced on the stands, half drunk. French President Jacques Chirac had warned the Americans about NATO enlargement: it will provoke a nationalist reaction. This reaction was embodied in Vladimir Putin. He does not hear him dance or make people laugh.
New security architecture
The master of the Kremlin has been chomping at the bit for twenty years while regularly warning Westerners not to approach Russian borders. NATO ignored it. In early December, Putin had had enough. After deploying some 100,000 troops to Ukraine’s borders, he laid down his conditions to contain the Alliance. There are four: NATO will have to make a legal commitment to exclude any further eastward expansion; refrain from deploying bases and cease military activities in the immediate vicinity of the Russian borders; end military assistance to Ukraine; and ban intermediate-range missiles in Europe.
President Joe Biden has been well advised not to dismiss the Russian proposals out of hand. They open the door to a broader discussion on the creation of a new security architecture in Europe, a missed opportunity in the aftermath of the fall of the Eastern bloc. Indeed, at that time, Washington wanted at all costs that NATO remain a select club under American domination. Westerners have therefore focused on bringing the former Eastern countries closer together with NATO and the European Union. They did nothing seriously to adapt Western post-Cold War security institutions to make room for Russia.
Putin’s positioning has already started to make Washington think, where we only understand the language of force. Ukraine has been quietly informed that its membership application is on hold for the next decade, which arguably explains the angry statements by Ukrainian leaders to their Western partners last December.
A ten-year moratorium would make it possible to explore different options likely to calm things down on the continent and to develop security guarantees acceptable to both sides. Thus, one could imagine a neutral Ukraine but anchored in the West, on the model of Finland or Austria during the Cold War. On the continental level, NATO’s Euro-Atlantic mandate could be redefined in order to leave more room for a Europe of defense where the United States would weigh less and where Russia would no longer perceive the organization as a threat. Finally, on the military level, all the parties could launch negotiations on conventional and nuclear forces in Central Europe in order to find a balance between them. There is nothing like a crisis to force minds to focus on finding concrete solutions.
Biden and Putin agreed in two telephone conversations to open negotiations on Monday, January 10 in Geneva. It’s a good sign. Russian proposals will be on the table along with legitimate Western concerns about the security of the European continent. Security is indivisible, it cannot be obtained to the detriment of the other. We will soon see if Washington and Moscow can turn this evidence into reality.