Memorandum submitted by Oksana Antonenko
and Bastian Giegerich,[73]
The International Institute for Security Studies
REBOOTING NATO-RUSSIA
RELATIONS
1. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin
Wall and five years after the establishment of the NATO-Russia
Council, the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia sparked
a crisis in NATO-Russia relations. NATO suspended normal cooperation
through the council and Moscow responded by freezing military
exchanges. The crisis exposed how dysfunctional cooperation had
become. But rather than lament the failure of cooperation, NATO
leaders should use the opportunity to fundamentally reassess the
goals of and strategy for engagement with Russia and develop a
new, pragmatic approach that stresses mutually beneficial problem-solving.
The war between Russia and Georgia has reset NATO-Russia relations;
it is high time to think about how to reboot them.
A TROUBLED HISTORY
2. The history of NATO-Russia relations
is one of problems, mistrust and misperceptions; the relationship
could hardly be characterised as a true partnership even before
August 2008. Moreover, the fabric of cooperation, including the
NATO-Russia Council, has not produced meaningful strategic rapprochement
in terms of overcoming the legacy of Cold War perceptions or developing
a common assessment of threats and capabilities to deal with them.
From Moscow's perspective, relations during the 1990s and early
2000s involved a string of humiliating experiences in which NATO
or significant member states exploited temporary Russian weakness:
3. NATO enlargement in 1999 and again
in 2004, the war in Kosovo, the non-ratification of the Conventional
Forces in Europe Treaty, US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, Western support for the "colour revolutions"
in Georgia and Ukraine, US plans for deploying missile defences
in Europe. While Russian interpretations of some of these may
be somewhat peculiar, others do support the claim that the West
does not hesitate to ignore Russian positions when doing so carries
little cost.
4. The Russia-Georgia war caught NATO completely
unprepared. It was the EU, benefitting from the activism of the
French presidency, which helped negotiate the ceasefire and deployed
a civilian observer mission to monitor it, with the side effect
that Russia has discovered the EU as a potential security actor.
Together with the time-honoured Russian preference for bilateralism
over engagement with multilateral institutions, currently reflected
in an attempt to develop a new security dialogue with the new
American administration, this has, for Moscow, put relations with
NATO on the back burner. Russian leaders have accused NATO of
breaking off relations and say it is now up to NATO to restore
them. Moreover, senior Russian policymakers repeatedly assert,
with thinly veiled reference to NATO operations in Afghanistan,
that NATO needs Russia more than Russia needs NATO. But the argument
over who needs whom more is pointless; nobody gains from not talking.
5. The problem of Russia-NATO relations
involves Cold War legacies, differences in strategic culture,
and a preoccupation with process over substance. Cold War legacies
still shape mutual perceptions. Russians still view NATO as an
anti-Russia organisation which remains a threat to their security,
despite NATO's clear statement that the Alliance is defensive
and not directed against anyone. Russian policymakers also view
NATO as an instrument of US policy in both Europe and Eurasia.
Finally, they believe that NATO enlargement is a zero-sum attempt
to provide security for NATO states at Russia's expense.
6. NATO Allies are divided in their perceptions
of Russia. Many Western European states do not view Russia as
a threat, as the president of France reiterated at the Munich
Security Conference in February, and want to build a partnership
with Moscow to manage regional and out-of-area problems, including
Afghanistan. But a number of member states, including some of
Russia's neighbours, still view Russia as a potential threat,
due to a large extent to historical grievances and Moscow's increasingly
assertive posture. A number of these states sought membership
primarily for the Article 5 commitment to deter potential
aggression from Russia. The 2007 cyber-attacks on Estonia
and the cut-off of natural-gas supplies from Russia in 2009 as
a result of a dispute between Moscow and Kiev only confirmed that
threats still exist and are becoming more complex. The new pressure
to reaffirm the Article 5 guarantees through explicit contingency
planning to reassure Russia's neighbours could reinforce Russia's
concerns over NATO endorsement of US missile-defence plans and
its continued open-door policy with regard to future enlargement.
NATO argues that it will not, and should not, relinquish its decision-making
autonomy, but an awareness of the deep-rooted historical suspicions
on both sides would certainly help to avoid misunderstandings.
Major differences in strategic culture shape
threat perceptions and responses to security threats. Russia still
views security in terms of geography and realpolitik.
7. Its leaders remain worried about the
influence of external actors in what they consider to be Russia's
security space and continue to see such matters as a zero-sum
game. Russian security-policy elites feel that vulnerability comes
from regions adjacent to Russia's borders, which it sought to
dominate for centuries. As one expert observed, Russia has gone
from a Cold War to a pre-Cold War security mindset.[74]
8. Moscow remains reluctant to cooperate
with other players to address potential sources of insecurity
in Eurasia, viewing the presence of other major powers in the
region as an important vulnerability and challenge in itself.
Moreover, given their zero-sum view of security, most Russian
leaders believe the most effective strategy for managing relations
with other players in the South Caucasus or Central Asia is through
competition. Hence President Dmitry Medvedev's proposal to NATO
and the West in general to recognise the post-Soviet space as
a zone of Russian "privileged interests".[75]
9. NATO security culture is different, and
not just because it is much less concerned with geography since
the end of the Cold War. NATO and its member governments stress
the deterritorialised nature of many contemporary security threats
and are much more preoccupied with out-of-area missions such as
Afghanistan. Unlike Russia, NATO is a multilateral organisation
where different strategic cultures coexist. Moscow finds the resulting
diversity confusing and tends to mistrust NATO pleas to abandon
geopolitics in favour of functional cooperation on a common agenda,
or agreement to disagree when cooperation cannot be achieved.
It is telling that Russia and NATO have been engaged separately
in security cooperation with different Central Asian states for
over a decade, but have never really cooperated in addressing
regional security challenges.
10. Finally, the strategic bargain behind
the Russia-NATO partnership is built on unrealistic and asymmetric
expectations. These were exposed as a result of the war between
Russia and Georgia. For NATO members the expectation has been
that the more they talk to the Russians, through the NATO-Russia
Council or associated meetings and working groups, the more understanding
can be developed. NATO sought to envelop Russia in a tight network
of dialogues, meetings and exchanges in the hope that it would
transform or influence Russia's behaviour and its perceptions
of NATO and its own security interests. The institutionalisation
of the relationship, however, seems to have done little to change
underlying assumptions. The development of common threat perceptions,
common capabilities to address them and the trust to employ them
when a crisis occurs have all been found wanting.
11. On the Russian side the assumptions
were different but equally unrealistic. During a 2008 meeting
with the Valdai Discussion Club, a group of international experts
invited each year by RIA Novosti to meet with top Russian officials,
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complained that he had been misled
by NATO on the NATO-Russia Council. He argued that NATO had promised
to make the council into a 27-member decisionmaking and discussion
forum, while in practice Russia was always confronted with a united
NATO position, a 26+1 format. This suggests Putin thought
the council could offer Russia a sort of back-door membership
in which it could be embraced as an equal partner without being
forced to embrace and respect NATO's institutional culture, membership
criteria and obligations. The misunderstanding and frustration
fostered by this unrealistic expectation pushed cooperation down
the list of priorities for both NATO and Russia at a time both
were redefining their identities and developing new instruments
to address security challenges.
12. With hindsight, it is surprising that
neither Russia nor NATO saw a need for more meaningful engagement.
NATO, and in particular the United States, did not initially seek
Russian cooperation in Afghanistan, believing that Moscow had
little to contribute (including lessons from the Soviet experience),
preferring to engage with Central Asian states directly on matters
such as basing or border security. Moscow did not see NATO as
a natural partner for promoting Eurasian security, including stabilising
Afghanistan, and resolving or preventing regional conflicts. Instead,
NATO-bashing was used as a tool to mobilise domestic public opinion
against an external enemy, reinforcing the popularity and legitimacy
of the ruling elite.
13. This short-sighted complacency over
meaningful cooperation meant there were neither sufficient institutional
mechanisms nor political will to deal effectively with the August
2008 crisis in Georgia. The ensuing formula of "no business
as usual" was convenient at the time, insofar as neither
side had important vested interests in the way the usual business
had been conducted. Coming up with a formula for a business 'better
than usual' will not be easy. The starting point should be to
abandon reassuring but virtual institutions and unrealistic expectations,
and to take as many immediate, functional and mutually beneficial
measures as realistically possible.
BUILDING BLOCKS
14. Afghanistan is one important area of
common interest. Russia signed an agreement with Germany allowing
for the transit of German cargo for the NATO-led force (ISAF)
by rail through Russian territory, underlining a readiness to
cooperate with NATO members bilaterally. At the NATO Bucharest
Summit in 2008 Russia and NATO agreed on the transit through
Russia of non-lethal cargo to support ISAF. Recent Russian involvement
in Kyrgyzstan's moves to end US access to the Manas air base seems
to contradict this trend. Nonetheless, it would be important to
discuss transit agreements in an official NATO-Russia framework
to avoid bilateralism in an area of concern to the Alliance as
a whole.
15. Consultations on Afghanistan could also
take place between NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation,
which has already set up a contact group on Afghanistan, and between
NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which has
been engaged in training Afghan army units. Russia has emphasised
that a premature withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan could
undermine stability in Central Asia. Moscow has a clear interest,
for example, in stopping drug trafficking from Afghanistan. If
cooperation in this area can be developed, Russia and other Central
Asian states will likely be more sympathetic to NATO use of military
facilities in the region.
16. NATO and Russia should also seek to
re-establish military-to-military cooperation in general. While
this would help generate stronger capacity and interoperability
to address shared challenges, its main purpose would be confidence
building. The high point of NATO-Russian cooperation in the last
two decades has been working together on the ground in the NATO-led
Stabilisation Force in Bosnia.
17. In the longer term it is important to
find opportunities for real operational engagement, such as anti-piracy
operations or confidence-building measures between navies in the
Arctic, and for developing joint capabilities for peace-support
operations which might one day be implemented jointly under a
UN mandate. Although it might seem far-fetched, joint units could
be established between Russia and some NATO member states, modelled
perhaps on the Polish-Ukrainian Peace Force Battalion or the Franco-German
Brigade, to develop interoperability and trust. This could be
achieved in the context of Russian defence reform, which has the
declared objectives of restructuring and professionalising Russian
forces and developing specialised peacekeeping forces. If such
an experiment were successful joint units could eventually be
used for peace-support operations, possibly even in sensitive
areas like Nagorno-Karabakh, provided a political settlement is
agreed by parties.
18. With a new US administration unlikely
to push for NATO enlargement and with both Ukraine and Georgia
preoccupied with domestic problems, NATO and Russia have a window
of opportunity to develop a strategic dialogue on Eurasian security.
NATO should define its various partnership policies more precisely
and disentangle them from enlargement. On the one hand, NATO will
need to clarify that its Article 5 collective-defence
clause applies to members only and that there cannot be implicit
guarantees with regard to candidate countries, with or without
Membership Action Plans. On the other hand, other ways should
be found to reassure countries, such as Ukraine and Georgia, that
feel vulnerable. Such reassurances should come both through closer
ties between NATO and its partners and from a more open and strategic
dialogue between NATO and Russia on Eurasian security. Russia
and NATO should move away from the zero-sum dynamic and accept
each other as legitimate players -even partners- in promoting
security in the common neighbourhood.
19. One region where NATO-Russia cooperation
should be explored further is the Black Sea. Following the August
war tensions arose between the United States and Russia over US
naval deployments to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia and between
Russia and Ukraine over the involvement of the Russian Black Sea
Fleet in the conflict. Reviving and even expanding confidence-building
measures in the Black Sea, such as information exchanges and joint
exercises like those proposed in 2008 during a friendly call
on the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk of warships from
Germany, Greece, and Turkey, would be a step in this direction.
20. Missile defence will be an important
factor shaping both US-Russia and NATO-Russian relations. The
new US administration has put deployment plans on hold but has
not overturned agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic .
Russia has responded by delaying deployment of Iskander missiles
in Kaliningrad, always intended as a bargaining chip. But it is
not enough to simply pause. NATO-Russia cooperation on theatre
missile defence, where the two parties have common interests and
could both make contributions in terms of technology and doctrine,
should be revived and accelerated.
AVOIDING ERRORS
21. It is important that NATO develop a
collective strategy on how to engage partners in the East, particularly
Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration's decision
to conclude, in its final weeks, a special bilateral pact—the
US-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership—with a significant
security and defencecomponent could undermine NATO unity, provoke
Russia and weaken the credibility of such NATO policies as the
NATO-Georgia Commission. The new US administration should adhere
to the multilateral approach and seek to get other allies on board
in its efforts to develop a comprehensive security strategy for
Europe and Eurasia.
22. Finally, the recent determination, first
declared at NATO's Riga Summit, on the part of some NATO members
to develop a strong role for the Alliance in the field of energy
security urgently needs clarification, not least because it could
provoke a new crisis in relations with Russia. Energy security
is an important concern for many NATO members, but it should be
dealt with primarily through economic and political means, with
military or police limited to dealing with the physical security
of energy infrastructure and possibly maritime situational awareness,
as is the current, yet not clearly communicated, consensus within
NATO. The EU and the private sector should play a crucial role
in Eurasian energy security by promoting diversification of supplies
and energy efficiency.
* * *
23. One way to build a new NATO-Russia cooperation
agenda will be through discussion of the new European Security
Treaty proposed by Medvedev. Although there is disagreement as
to the substance and forum for such discussions, it will be important
for NATO to develop ideas, identify red lines and outline its
own proposals. At the very least NATO should seek to clarify what
the Russian president has in mind. Even if such discussions take
place through the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, it would be useful for the distinct NATO-Russia dimension
to be reflected.
24. An important dimension of such discussions
should involve arms control, but this is also an area where past
mistakes are most likely to repeat themselves. The Conventional
Forces in Europe Treaty seems to be dead, and there is a danger
that arms control more generally has been discredited. It is up
to NATO to get the ball rolling on reviving the treaty or negotiating
new confidence-building and transparency mechanisms to replace
it.
25. The war between Russia and Georgia brought
NATO-Russia cooperation, which in any case had failed to deliver
tangible benefits to either side, to a screeching halt. Cooperation
is not an end in itself, but should serve both strategic interests
and pragmatic problem-solving. Trust can only be rebuilt over
time; pragmatic, real-world cooperation offers better chances
of creating it than the institutional shell of the past.
6 March 2009
73 Oksana Antonenko is IISS Senior Fellow (Russia and
Eurasia). Bastian Giegerich is IISS Research Fellow for European
Security. Back
74
James Sherr, "Russia and the West: A Reassessment",
The Shrivenham Papers no. 6, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom,
January 2008, http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=CDI+Russia+Profile+List&articleid=
a1200420940. Back
75
Dmitry Medvedev, interview with leading Russian TV channels, 31 August
2008, http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2008/08/31/1850_type82912type82916_206003.shtml. Back
| 
