The New Cold War

Leaked drafts of NATO, US responses to Russia are surprisingly revealing
Have you ever heard the saying, ‘you should talk to the organ grinder, not his monkey’?
FEBRUARY 2, 2022
Written by Anatol Lieven

There is an old saying that “you should talk to the organ grinder, not his monkey.” This is what Russia has chosen to do in breaking off talks with NATO and negotiating directly with the United States. The wisdom of Russia’s choice is amply demonstrated by the contrasting content and tone of the U.S. and NATO responses to Russia’s demands concerning NATO expansion and the deployment of troops in eastern Europe, which have just been leaked by the Spanish newspaper El Pais. 

The NATO document also raises the important question of who the NATO secretariat (which wrote this document) actually answers to? Not, it seems, NATO members as a whole, several of which would disagree strongly with the tone of this statement. To Washington? But then why a document so much more hostile and undiplomatic than the American one? It seems that the NATO secretariat has developed an internal culture of Russophobia that has now taken on a life of its own and is capable of doing limited but unfortunate and unnecessary damage to European security, despite the fact that in itself the NATO secretariat is nothing but a luxuriously-funded retirement home for ex-politicians, mediocre military bureaucrats, and PR flacks. 

Before addressing these statements however, it is worth pointing out that one Western line about Russia’s demands has already been proved false: namely, that they were never intended as a serious basis for negotiations; and that Russia always planned to use their rejection as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Clearly, if that were the case, Russia would have invaded by now. 

All the indications suggest that, in fact, President Putin and his administration still want to avoid war and hope to extract enough concessions from the West both to provide certain concrete advantages to Russia, allowing Putin to claim at least limited success for his policy of pressure. One such limited success has been gained by the re-opening of the French- and German-orchestrated “Normandy Format” talks,  aimed at achieving a peaceful solution for the Donbas conflict based on guaranteed autonomy for that region within Ukraine.

A second path to a possible agreement allowing Moscow some appearance of success while avoiding any appearance of NATO surrender is set out in the U.S. (not the NATO) response to Russia’s demarche. This document raises a series of concerns about Russian actions but also expresses a willingness to launch a new nuclear arms reduction process and to enter into agreements on medium-range missiles in Europe, specifically on the stationing of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles in eastern Europe, provided Russia reciprocates by permitting NATO some ability to check its own missile deployments.

The U.S. message repeats the American commitment to NATO’s open door policy towards Ukraine. But it not only does not explicitly rule out a moratorium on membership for a fixed period of time, but also expresses a willingness to discuss “indivisibility of security — and our respective interpretations of that concept.” This is a phrase used by Russia in its opposition to NATO expansion, and it creates at least some chance of a wider comprehensive strategic dialogue that could lay the basis for solving the various local conflicts in Europe.

On Ukraine, a key passage reads as follows:

The United States is prepared to discuss conditions-based reciprocal transparency measures and reciprocal commitments by both the United States and Russia to refrain from deploying offensive ground-based missile systems and permanent forces with a combat mission on the territory of Ukraine.

A key question here is whether the United States will insist on including Crimea (which Moscow now claims as legally Russian territory) in such an agreement. If so, then obviously there can be no agreement since Russia is not going to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet and its garrison from Sevastopol and leave Crimea open to Ukrainian attack. If, however, Washington is prepared to glide quietly over this issue, then it seems that an agreement along these lines might be possible. 

The tone of the U.S. statement is firm but polite. It avoids rhetorical phrases, gratuitous insults, and dragging in additional issues that have no possibility of resolution and will only destroy any possibility of agreement. I wouldn’t describe it as a masterpiece of diplomatic language, but at least it reads as if it was written by adults who have some knowledge and understanding of diplomacy. And President Putin’s latest statement (in his meeting Tuesday with Hungarian premier Viktor Orban) also suggests a willingness to negotiate. As a result, in the words of a leading former U.S. diplomat, “we may now be inching towards a pragmatic solution,” at least if negotiations can be kept strictly secret.

The NATO statement could hardly be more different. It begins with blustering propaganda:

NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia. We have always striven for peace, stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area, and a Europe whole, free and at peace.

Very few people in the wider world have believed this since the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011. Moreover, the people who use the phrase “Europe whole and free” either do not realize or do not care that this is a mortal insult to Russians, implying as it does that they are not part of “Europe.”

The NATO message further states that,

For more than thirty years, NATO has worked to build a partnership with Russia… NATO and Russia signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act and established the NATO-Russia Council, which remains a unique framework and symbol of the Alliance’s openness to engage with Russia… Yet Russia has broken the trust at the core of our cooperation and challenged the fundamental principles of the global and Euro-Atlantic security architecture.

Nuts! As Moscow knows all too well, NATO’s approach to “partnership” with Russia was to draw up a common position (usually dictated by the United States) and then, in meetings with Russia, present a fait accompli. Even in cases where a majority of European NATO members agreed with Russia (for example, the Bush administration’s abandonment of the ABM Treaty), they were never willing to side with Russia at meetings of the so-called NATO-Russia Council. Russia was in fact completely excluded from the European security architecture designed by NATO. Moscow’s desire to change this is at the heart of Russia’s present strategy.

This document expresses NATO’s desire for a “constructive dialogue,” but accompanies this with insult after insult directed at Russia. Now, it may be that some of these insults are indeed deserved. But anyone who thinks that insulting your interlocutor is a good way to begin a constructive dialogue has never studied common sense, let alone diplomacy. 

Unlike the U.S. statement, the NATO statement demands the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine (presumably including Crimea), as well as Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of any agreement. None of this is ever going to happen. If the NATO secretariat — as opposed to Washington — were responsible for negotiating with Russia, there would be no possibility at all of agreement, and every possibility of a disastrous war.

By contrast, the Biden administration’s response is a reasonably creditable piece of diplomacy. And of course, from a military point of view, NATO is the United States. This is very evident from the military deployments underway in response to the supposed Russian threat to NATO. Washington’s dispatch of troops may be totemistic, but they are at least backed by an actual military superpower. European NATO moves are risible by comparison. Four Danish fighter jets to Lithuania; two Dutch fighters for Bulgaria (a country that doesn’t even border Russia); Spain “thinking about” sending planes to Bulgaria; Italy and Germany apparently thinking of doing nothing at all in military terms. Seriously?

Russia should ignore the NATO monkey. America might want to remind it where the coins are likely to be tossed — and it is not in Belgium where NATO headquarters are situated, or Norway, which has contributed Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to NATO – and what else exactly?

The NATO statement ends with a heroic declaration of NATO’s firm commitment to the principle that “an attack on one Ally is an attack against all.” Since Russia has no intention whatsoever of attacking any NATO ally, NATO can strike such heroic poses, and Denmark and Holland can dispatch their fighters in the serene confidence that they will never actually have to fight.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/02/02/leaked-drafts-of-nato-us-responses-to-russia-are-surprisingly-revealing/

Sotir wrote:Добро их је покопао.

Мада ово за НАТО дефанзивни савез су сами наместили оба гуза на волеј.

Јанош Винету wrote:

Такође смо видели током рата 2014 да другачији облик војних дејстава баш и није могућ, јер ни једна ни друга страна нису имале технику нити доктрину која би била другачија. 
Принуђени су били на ровове и поливање невођеним "Град" ракетама које су дословно технологија из Другог рата.

When Putin meets Xi in Beijing on Friday, expect a grand declaration on the new world order according to Russia and China. https://t.co/5771ZXeSqH pic.twitter.com/CHdluRWABz

— Lucian Kim (@Lucian_Kim) February 2, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/opinion/putin-russia-ukraine-europe.html

Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War
Feb. 3, 2022

By Ivan Krastev
Mr. Krastev is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and an expert on international politics.


VIENNA — In the final weeks of World War I, a German general sent a telegram to his Austrian allies summarizing the situation. It was, he wrote, “serious, but not catastrophic.” The reply came back: “Here the situation is catastrophic, but not serious.”

It’s a joke, of course. But it captures, in a nutshell, the disagreement between America and Europe about the situation in Ukraine. For the United States and President Biden, who on Wednesday formally approved a deployment of American troops to Eastern Europe, a Russian invasion led by President Vladimir Putin is a “distinct possibility.” For Europe, not so much. A senior German diplomat summed up the divergence. “The U.S. thinks Putin will do a full-blown war,” he said. “Europeans think he’s bluffing.”

Perhaps that’s to be expected. After all, full-scale war is generally as unimaginable for a Western European public as an alien invasion. The many decades of peace in Western Europe, combined with the continent’s deep dependence on Russia’s oil and gas, incline officials to assume aggressive Russian moves must be a ruse.

But the European tendency to accommodate Russia doesn’t explain why Ukrainian officials, after initial alarm, now seem to share the same view. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, last week played down the immediate threat of war, suggesting the situation was “dangerous, but ambiguous.” For a country menaced by 130,000 Russian troops at its border, it’s a striking assessment. What lies behind it?

The answer is surprising, even paradoxical. Europeans and Ukrainians are skeptical of a major Russian invasion in Ukraine not because they have a more benign view of Mr. Putin than their American counterparts. On the contrary, it’s because they see him as more malicious. War, they reason, is not the Kremlin’s game. Instead, it’s an extensive suite of tactics designed to destabilize the West. For Europe, the threat of war could turn out to be more destructive than war itself.

America and Europe aren’t divided on what Mr. Putin wants. For all the speculation about motives, that much is clear: The Kremlin wants a symbolic break from the 1990s, burying the post-Cold War order. That would take the form of a new European security architecture that recognizes Russia’s sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space and rejects the universality of Western values. Rather than the restoration of the Soviet Union, the goal is the recovery of what Mr. Putin regards as historic Russia.

In Washington and Brussels, the message has got through. There’s a general agreement on both sides of the Atlantic that the Kremlin, whatever it might do next, won’t stay still. Russia will not simply step back. But while Americans tend to believe that Mr. Putin needs a hot war in Ukraine to realize his grand ambitions, Europeans and presumably Ukrainians believe that a hybrid strategy — involving military presence on the border, weaponization of energy flows and cyberattacks — will serve him better.

That’s based on some sound reasoning. A Russian incursion into Ukraine could, in a perverse way, save the current European order. NATO would have no choice but to respond assertively, bringing in stiff sanctions and acting in decisive unity. By hardening the conflict, Mr. Putin could cohere his opponents. Holding back, by contrast, could have the opposite effect: The policy of maximum pressure, short of an invasion, may end up dividing and paralyzing NATO.

To see how that might play out, we need only look to Germany. Before the crisis, Germany was America’s closest ally in Europe, boasted a special relationship with Moscow and was the most important partner for Eastern and Central Europe. Today, some in Washington have questioned the country’s willingness to confront Russia, Berlin’s relationship with Moscow is fast deteriorating, and many Eastern Europeans are agitated by Germany’s apparent reluctance to come to their support. Germany’s difficulties are a hint of what could come if Mr. Putin continues his brinkmanship, without providing the certainty of an actual invasion.

Germany, crucially, has not changed — but the world in which it acts has. (The country is “like a train that stands still after the railway station has caught fire,” Bojan Pancevski, The Wall Street Journal’s Germany correspondent, told me.) Today, geopolitical strength is determined not by how much economic power you can wield but by how much pain you can endure. Your enemy, unlike during the Cold War, is not somebody behind an iron curtain but somebody with whom you trade, from whom you get gas and to whom you export high-tech goods. Soft power has given way to resilience.

That’s a problem for Europe. If Mr. Putin’s success will be determined by the ability of Western societies to steel themselves for the pressure of high energy prices, disinformation and political instability over a prolonged period, then he has good reason to be hopeful. As things stand, Europe is signally unprepared for these challenges. Remedying that, through investment in military capabilities, energy diversification and building social cohesion, should be the continent’s focus.

Europeans are right to believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not inevitable — and may even be correct that it’s not the most likely scenario. But we cannot deceive ourselves that we can skip the resilience test. “If you invite a bear to dance, it’s not you who decides when the dance is over,” the Russian proverb goes. “It’s the bear.”

Mór Thököly wrote:Postoji doduse 1 flaw u tom planu - tako nece obnoviti "historic Russia". Zato sam ja skeptican prema tome da nece napasti. Izmedju ostalog.

Mór Thököly wrote:Izmedju ostalog.

Sve je super u odlicnom Krastevljevljevljevom tekstu, zaista. Ali postoje problemi i izvan ovoga sto napisah. Nemoguce je drzati ovaj nivo pritiska godinama. A onog momenta kad krene da ga smanjuje i broj trupa da se smanjuje, reakcija ce biti - see, we told you he's bluffing. I to je kraj. Ne samo krize, nego i shvatanja ozbiljno Putina. Nemoguce je izbeci i to i neku vrstu eskalacije, prosto nema trece opcije vise.

Russia responds to Germany banning RT Deutsch:
Deutsche Welle has been ordered to shut down its Moscow bureau, press credentials of all accredited staff revoked.
An unprecedented step for post-Soviet Russia.https://t.co/LV2ocMJbB5

— Nataliya Vasilyeva (@Nat_Vasilyeva) February 3, 2022

Sotir wrote:

Mór Thököly wrote:Izmedju ostalog.

Sve je super u odlicnom Krastevljevljevljevom tekstu, zaista. Ali postoje problemi i izvan ovoga sto napisah. Nemoguce je drzati ovaj nivo pritiska godinama. A onog momenta kad krene da ga smanjuje i broj trupa da se smanjuje, reakcija ce biti - see, we told you he's bluffing. I to je kraj. Ne samo krize, nego i shvatanja ozbiljno Putina. Nemoguce je izbeci i to i neku vrstu eskalacije, prosto nema trece opcije vise.

Ценим да имаш криво схватање ситуације.

Подсетићу на претходни сукоб сличног типа - Осетија.

Руске јединице су и том приликом, сасвим у пригодном тренутку, држале вежбе на граници.
И опет су биле најаве да ће да изврше инвазију Грузије - што се показало погрешно.
Али кад се десио очекиван напад на Осетију - врло брзо су реаговали. И то по сценарију који су вежбали мало пре тога - помоћ миротворцима у Осетији.

И наредних година су држали сличне вежбе.

Тако да у овој фази, повлачење јединица у касарне уопште није некакав пораз или повлачење. Само њихово присуство може да спречи напад на Д/ЛНР.

Del Cap wrote:

Russia responds to Germany banning RT Deutsch:
Deutsche Welle has been ordered to shut down its Moscow bureau, press credentials of all accredited staff revoked.
An unprecedented step for post-Soviet Russia.https://t.co/LV2ocMJbB5

— Nataliya Vasilyeva (@Nat_Vasilyeva) February 3, 2022