Moscow-Washington talks on 9-10 January give the US a chance to make a decision and Moscow-Brussels two days later to formalise it in a form acceptable to them
The week of talks between Russia and Washington and then the leadership of NATO and the OSCE, which began yesterday, January 9, could prove to be a watershed for many of the processes that have been taking shape over the last 30 years. The order of the talks is fully in line with their degree of importance – NATO follows Washington, while the OSCE is at the bottom of the list of priorities for the Russian side.
RUSSTRAT earlier touched on the question of the distribution of real power within NATO. The US accounts for roughly 80 percent of the military and financial resources available to the alliance, making Washington essentially the only negotiating party with which it makes sense to conduct a dialogue.
It is difficult to expect more from negotiations with NATO as a counterpart than those with the United States. And in this sense, it is logical that Russia would first hold talks with Washington, and then the agreements reached could be refined at the level of NATO: without the consent of the suzerain, discussing important issues with vassals is simply pointless.
However, this kind of shuttle diplomacy has another motivation. The document that Russia is offering NATO to sign is in many fundamental points in line with the draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States on security guarantees that has been submitted to Washington.
Some points in the NATO-Russia document are much more specific and ambitious. Their inclusion in the Russia-NATO package rather than in the official Russia-US agenda could be a kind of diplomatic compliment to Washington: What the administration of US President Joe Biden is unable to voice on its own behalf for internal political reasons, can be passed down the chain of command to NATO.
As in the case of negotiations with Washington, some of Russia’s proposals can probably be accepted at Brussels level without much difficulty.
For example, it is difficult to expect problems with the theses mentioned in Article 1 about the obligation “to refrain from any use or threat of use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations” or “to exercise restraint in military planning and exercises to reduce the risks of possible dangerous situations, adhering to obligations under international law, including those contained in intergovernmental agreements to prevent incidents at sea outside territorial waters and in the air”, or “to exercise restraint in the conduct of military planning and exercises to reduce the risks of possible dangerous situations by adhering to international law, including those in intergovernmental agreements on prevention of incidents outside territorial waters and in the air.
Concepts such as “restraint” or “dangerous military activities” have no clear criteria, which means they will (or will not) include a wide range of actions. The real deterrence potential of such provisions is low, precisely because they can be interpreted subjectively. Conflicts could arise with the discussion of the thesis on the obligation of the parties to the transaction “not to create conditions or situations which could constitute or be seen as a threat to the national security of the other Parties”.
There can be no doubt that NATO representatives will try to include as many entities as possible in the list of such threats – from strengthening the military capabilities of the Black Sea Fleet within the national territory of Russia, to “Iskanders” near Kaliningrad and the development of new weapon systems, primarily hypersonic, by Russia in general.
Article 2 seems fully acceptable to all sides – due to its maximum streamlining. It envisages the use of urgent consultation mechanisms on a bilateral and multilateral basis, including the NATO-Russia Council, to resolve issues and address problematic situations. The sides also regularly exchange assessments of contemporary threats and security challenges, ensure mutual information about military exercises and manoeuvres, and the basic provisions of military doctrine – which, frankly, anyone using the Internet can do.
The establishment of telephone hotlines for emergency contacts between parties to the agreement is also unlikely to be difficult.
Some progress could be made with Article 4. In it, as in the document addressed to Washington, the parties to the treaty undertake to return to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Most likely, this is where the “space of most probable agreement between the parties” ends. Because the rest of the articles in the document proposed by Russia essentially involve changing the whole concept of NATO.
Nothing Military Nearby
NATO, which was created to confront the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries after 1991, switched harmoniously to confront Russia. In his most recent speech, on Jan. 7, 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke of “Russian aggression” right after wishing the audience a Happy New Year.
The main efforts of NATO’s main player, the United States, will increasingly focus in the coming years on the AUKUS bloc’s work towards China, which in itself implies an existential crisis for NATO. The adoption of the articles of the treaty proposed by Russia could be the final nail in the coffin of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Article 3 of the draft agreement, for example, stipulates that the parties formally renounce treating each other as adversaries. In terms of terminology, this has been the case since 27 May 1997, when the Founding Act on NATO-Russia Relations was signed. In practice, as we know, this has had little effect. Apart from waves of NATO expansion, the alliance has deployed strike weapons – or the infrastructure for their rapid deployment – in close proximity to Russia’s borders.
There are a fair number of synonyms for the term “adversary” in NATO documents, such as “destabilisation factor”, “threat” or “competitor”. This means that NATO’s refusal to consider Russia as a rival should be accompanied by sufficient measures to make this refusal manifest at the level of military infrastructure rather than in declaratory documents. To what extent NATO is prepared to do this now, the answer appears to be negative.
Who, in the event of a practical renunciation of confrontation with Russia, would be considered an adversary of NATO, is unclear. This question will inevitably lead to another – why does NATO need it at all if it has no adversaries demanding a structure of such a format? International terrorism might be the answer, but as events in Iraq and especially Afghanistan have shown, NATO has not been particularly effective in those cases either.
The fact that NATO would have to give practical substance to the 25-year-old Founding Act is illustrated by Article 4, which says that Russia and former NATO members “shall not station their armed forces and armaments on the territory of any other European country in addition to those forces deployed on that territory as of May 27, 1997.
In effect, this article suggests that NATO should conduct an audit of what has changed in terms of military infrastructure on EU territory over the past quarter-century – and return everything to its original state. The likelihood that NATO would be able to accept such a condition seems very slim.
Even before the talks, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s article 6, which obliges the alliance to halt its enlargement process, was highly controversial, stipulating specifically that Ukraine should not be included in NATO. On 21 December 2021, at a press conference in Brussels with Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, Stoltenberg categorically rejected “the compromise on Ukraine’s right to choose its path and apply for membership in the North Atlantic Alliance”.
NATO has not yet found anything at all to respond to Article 7 publicly. According to it, NATO member states “refuse to conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia”.
Furthermore, “in order to avoid incidents”, Russia and NATO do not conduct military activities above brigade level “in a strip of agreed width and configuration on each side of the border line of the Russian Federation and the states that have a military alliance with it, as well as the Members that are North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member states”.
The “width and configuration” of the strip referred to in the Russian proposal is not voiced. One can assume – based on the fact that the US describes Russian troops near Yelnya in Smolensk region as “in close proximity” to Ukraine – that the separation distance must be at least several hundred kilometres.
Thus, the whole of the Baltic States, a third of Poland, a good part of Ukraine and the Scandinavian countries are specifically and additionally included in the demilitarised zone. As far as we know, NATO is not yet claiming to exercise on the described scale in the part of Asia adjacent to Russia’s borders.
Consent, albeit in a measured form, to such demands would require a maximum revision of the worldview, not even from NATO, but from the collective West. Therefore, a voluntary willingness to accept such conditions by official Brussels looks like an extremely unlikely event.
Forced withdrawal
Most important, given the above, is Moscow’s categorical position. It is precisely this categorical position that the Western media have dubbed “ultimatum”, although in reality the ultimatum of the situation consists simply in the fact that Russia simply has no boundaries to retreat to. This, in particular, was said by the head of state at the annual enlarged meeting of the collegium of the Russian Defence Ministry on 21 December 2021.
“But what they are doing now on the territory of Ukraine or are trying to do and are planning to do, it is not thousands of kilometres away from our national border – it is at our doorstep. They need to understand that we simply have nowhere else to retreat to,” Vladimir Putin stressed.
This line has been repeatedly confirmed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, including by its deputy head Sergey Ryabkov. In a January 9 conversation with RIA Novosti, the diplomat once again stressed: Moscow does not intend to make “any concessions” and intends to categorically demand “the liquidation of all that the alliance has created, driven by anti-Russian phobias and all sorts of false notions about what the essence of Russian policy has been since 1997”.
That is, the Russian negotiating position is for NATO to begin its partial dismantling. Guarantees, even if legal, of “further non-expansion” can no longer satisfy us.
The reality of the treaty with NATO is entirely dependent on the actual position of Washington. A number of the provisions proposed by Russia obviously look difficult, not just to implement, but even to comprehend for NATO as a whole and its particularly odious members in particular.
Speaking about the measures that Russia will have to take if its concerns are not taken seriously, Vladimir Putin mentioned a certain set of military-technical solutions. He did not elaborate, but such solutions are evidently in place – and could be used as soon as possible.
It is unlikely that Washington, against the background of the officially announced strategic competition with China, is interested in creating new vulnerabilities for itself. The fact that Russia knows how to create such vulnerabilities for any potential adversary is clearly demonstrated by Avangard, Zirkon, Poseidon and other weapons systems that give the Russian army a qualitative advantage over similar NATO structures.
The question is to what extent the fractured US political elite is capable of recognising its own interest in de-escalation and putting that realisation into practice.
Oddly enough, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s “intransigent” position constantly linking “Ukraine’s security” to the NATO-Russia dialogue looks like a positive signal and an attempt to save face. Between the lines one can see the message: if Russia somehow “guarantees” the military security of the Kiev regime, NATO will have an excuse to make concessions.
What those “concessions” will consist of depends on the final outcome of talks with Washington on 9-10 January 2022.
RUSSTRAT