Russia 12

 

Memorandum from Professor Margot Light

 

 

1. Relations between Russia and NATO, which have been poor over the past ten years (with the exception of a brief interlude in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon), reached a nadir after the Russian-Georgian war last August. Recently, however, the Russian leadership's positive response to early foreign policy statements by President Barak Obama suggests that there is an opportunity to improve the relationship. Whether or not this improvement will occur will depend crucially on the decisions NATO and the US administration make on the two issues which the Russian leadership believes undermine Russia's security: the further enlargement of NATO and the deployment of elements of the US anti-missile system (BMD) in countries close to Russia's borders. In this submission, I will briefly discuss the consequences of the Russian-Georgian war, before turning to the issues of NATO enlargement and BMD.

 

2. The conflict between Russia and Georgia will not make it easy to establish trust and cooperation between Russia and NATO. Although Russia has not been able to persuade even its allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Commonwealth of Independent States to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it will not itself 'derecognize' them and nor will South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both of which declared independence in the early 1990s, agree to rejoin Georgia. In short, the conflicts are no less frozen now than they were before the war. It is unlikely, however, that having used military force in the South Caucasus, Russia will use it against its other neighbours, whether or not they have large Russian minorities. First, the costs (military and political) of the Georgian war were very high, and Russia will not easily incur them again. Second and more importantly, although Russia wants to expand its influence in neighbouring countries, it does not want to do this by force.

 

3. Russians have steadfastly opposed NATO enlargement since it was first mooted. Since they could do nothing to prevent the first round of enlargement in 1999, they appeared to resign themselves to the new situation. It seemed that they would similarly have to accept the second round of enlargement in 2004. After the 'colour revolutions' in 2003-4, however, when it became clear that Georgia and Ukraine were also in line for membership, Russian objections moved from rhetoric to more concrete actions, for example, suspending Russia's participation in the 1990 CFE treaty (on the grounds that the Baltic states have not signed the treaty and the United States and its European NATO allies have not ratified it) and harassing Georgia and Ukraine.

 

4. Russian insistence that further NATO expansion is unacceptable routinely produces the response, first, that Georgia and Ukraine are sovereign states and must be permitted to take their own decisions, and second, that Russia cannot be allowed to dictate NATO policy and that NATO must, therefore, continue to enlarge. On the issue of membership, however, NATO should make its decisions not in response to Russian objections, but on the basis of hard-headed realpolitik criteria. First, there is the question of eligibility. Arguably, the large majority of Ukrainians opposed to NATO membership and Ukraine's chronic political instability render it ineligible for membership, while Georgia's territorial disputes should mean that it is ineligible for membership until they are resolved. Second, there is the question of the consequences of admitting new members for the alliance itself. The really difficult questions that NATO needs to ask itself are the following. If Georgia had already been a NATO member last August, would President Saakashvili have been deterred from attempting to reclaim South Ossetia by force, or might membership have further encouraged him in his attempt? Similarly, if Georgia had already been a NATO member, would Russia have been deterred from responding? And if it had not been deterred, would NATO have invoked Article 5 to come to Georgia's rescue? If NATO had responded, the consequences would have been a wider war between Russia and NATO, with the attendant danger of escalation to nuclear confrontation. And if NATO had not responded, its credibility as a defence alliance would have been fatally undermined. These may be counter-factual questions, but they ought to make NATO members consider very carefully before any further enlargement

 

5. Russia has opposed ballistic missile defence (BMD) ever since it was first mooted at the end of the Clinton presidency. Similarly, Russians objected to the modification or abrogation of the ABM treaty, although once it had been abrogated, they seemed to come to terms with it. However, the US decision to base BMD interceptor missiles and radar installations in Poland and the Czech Republic produced a strong negative reaction from Moscow which has not abated.

 

6. While there are probably very few Russians who really believe that the planned BMD deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic threaten Russian security directly, even relatively moderate and pro-Western analysts are apprehensive. They argue that the deployments may start with one radar and 10 interceptors, but they are likely to end with many more, in the same way that NATO enlargement started with three countries and has now extended to 12, while other countries queue to join. For this reason, they warn that BMD deployments are bound to trigger a new arms race.

 

7. Policy makers and military officials everywhere tend to define threat by capabilities, not intentions. Even if BMD deployments, like NATO expansion, are not be intended to constitute a threat to Russia, they do represent an increase in capabilities and they are, therefore, perceived as undermining Russia's strategic capabilities. Russia's response to that perception has already begun to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, Russia has threatened that by hosting the interceptors, Poland is 'making itself a target'. As a result of that threat, when, after months of prevarication, the agreement between the United States and Poland on the deployment of the interceptors was finally concluded on August 20^th 2008, the US also agreed to deploy a Patriot missile battery with the interceptors and a garrison to support it. While the interceptors might be directed against 'rogue states', no-one pretends that the Patriot missiles and accompanying troops will be directed at any country other than Russia.

 

8. NATO and its members frequently trigger similar self-fulfilling prophecies, using rhetoric and taking actions in response to their perceptions of Russian hostility that simply serve to make Russia more hostile. The decision to deploy Patriot missiles together with the interceptors in Poland, for example, triggered President Medvedev's decision to deploy an Iskander missile system and electronic jamming devices in the Kaliningrad region (a decision that has since been suspended). The current overture by the US administration and the response by the Russian leadership offer the opportunity to the US, to Russia and to NATO to step back from this action-reaction reflex and to find a more constructive way of interacting.

 

9. Since the UK is perceived as the most loyal US ally, UK-Russian relations are affected by US-Russian relations. If US-Russian and NATO-Russian relations improve, therefore, there will be some improvement in UK-Russian relations. However, the fact that the UK has given political asylum to people the Russians wish to extradite will continue to affect UK-Russian relations for the foreseeable future. This makes it all the more important that the British government should make every effort to facilitate an improvement in NATO-Russian, EU-Russian and US-Russian relations.

 

16 February 2009