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GOOD NEIGHBORS AND GOOD FENCES
Moscow News
April 22, 2013 Monday
I was almost done reading 'The Fort Hood Sentinel' as part of my
morning routine the other day when I came across a fascinating story
about 22 Abrams main battle tanks (MBTs) being loaded onto a vessel
off the coast of Germany and shipped to America. Without much fanfare,
the Abrams left for South Carolina, according to an April 11 dispatch
from Kaiserslautern by U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Alexander Burnett.
The departure of the last American tanks from Europe reaffirms my
long-held suspicion that the United States, which has kept MBTs in
Germany for 69 years and which is allowed by the Conventional Forces
in Europe (CFE) treaty to keep 4,000 tanks on the continent, and its
Western European allies are no longer afraid that Russian tanks might
flood the Fulda Gap.
And they are right. But while a NATO-Russia war seems impossible,
there remains a possibility of an armed conflict on the continent,
which Europe is not adequately prepared to either prevent or manage.
Russian tanks are long gone from German soil, and Russia's own western
provinces have undergone a considerable demilitarization since the
end of the Cold War, as Moscow shifted military assets to face much
more real and serious security threats in the south. The European
Union is Russia's largest trading partner and there are more than 3
million Russians with EU residency permits, according to economist
Vladislav Inozemtsev's count.
But while a war between former Cold War foes in Europe is unimaginable,
the possibility of an interstate or intrastate armed conflict elsewhere
on the continent is quite distinct. For one, Armenia and Azerbaijan
remain locked in a tense stand-off over the Armenian-majority enclave
of Nagorny Karabakh. And whereas an easy truce holds there, a war did
break out between two former Soviet republics in the not so distant
past. In 2008 Georgia tried to recapture South Ossetia by force,
only to see Russia intervene and drive the Georgian forces from the
separatist republic, where tens of thousands hold Russian passports.
In the eyes of Russian leaders, that war highlighted the flaws of
Europe's post-Cold War security architecture. Earlier failures of the
existing continental security system as perceived by Moscow include
the expansion of NATO eastward, the bombing of the former Yugoslavia
by NATO, the declaration of Kosovo's independence in 2008 and its
recognition by Western countries.
It is evident that the European Union and United States are not
entirely happy with the state of collective security on the continent
either. Western leaders' memories of painful intervention, pacification
and nation building in the former Yugoslavia are as fresh as their
frustration with deadlock over Kosovo in the United Nations Security
Council. The Balkan experience must also have left the United States
hoping that European governments will start to play a more active
role in dealing with security challenges.
Western European leaders also probably wish the existing collective
security mechanisms were capable of preventing Georgia from attempting
to retake South Ossetia by force, if not resolving the frozen conflicts
in the former Soviet Union altogether.
So, it seems that Russia and Western powers agree that Europe's
collective security system is dysfunctional. What they cannot agree
upon, however, is how to fix that system.
During Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, Russia proposed a whole new
European Security Treaty to revamp European collective security. The
Russian leadership's central arguments for that treaty were that
the existing system was not working and Russia didn't have any
institutionalized meaningful say in European security decision making.
NATO wouldn't give Russia the right of veto, while other European
organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE), cannot give Moscow such a role, Russian diplomats
argued.
Medvedev's proposal got shot down by the United States and its East
European allies, who instead suggested empowering and revitalizing
the OSCE, which has seen its security basket shrink. But this counter-
proposal didn't lead anywhere.
Of all the options, Russia's accession to NATO would be the most
effective. It would not only bridge divides, but also empower Europe's
collective security system to respond effectively to new collective
security challenges both within and outside the continent. But
having once asked NATO's then-General Secretary Lord Robertson when
the alliance would invite Russia to join, Russian President Vladimir
Putin seems to have lost whatever interest he had in such membership
in the early 2000s.
The lack of consensus on how to rebuild the pan-European security
architecture doesn't mean the sides can just turn their backs on its
sorry state. If not addressed, the flaws of the existing system will
leave Europe woefully unprepared should interstate or intrastate
conflict flare up on the continent again as it did in the Balkans
and Caucasus.
U.S., EU and Russian leaders need to launch a serious discussion on
how to bridge continental divides and build an effective and inclusive
European security architecture that would prevent or resolve such
conflicts in a timely manner. And, given the demise of the CFE, it
would only be a bonus for European security if, in addition to conflict
management, that architecture also included elements of conventional
arms control, such as transparency and limits on new deployments of
substantial combat forces and long-range conventional systems.
One platform for such discussions could be the Euro-Atlantic Security
Forum that a number of leading statesmen and experts from America,
Europe and Russia proposed in their March 2013 report titled 'A New
Euro-Atlantic Security Community,' which offers a comprehensive
roadmap to reducing Cold War reliance on nuclear deterrence and
enhancing arms control in the Western powers' relationship with Russia.
The views expressed here are the author's own
From: Baghdasarian
Moscow News
April 22, 2013 Monday
I was almost done reading 'The Fort Hood Sentinel' as part of my
morning routine the other day when I came across a fascinating story
about 22 Abrams main battle tanks (MBTs) being loaded onto a vessel
off the coast of Germany and shipped to America. Without much fanfare,
the Abrams left for South Carolina, according to an April 11 dispatch
from Kaiserslautern by U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Alexander Burnett.
The departure of the last American tanks from Europe reaffirms my
long-held suspicion that the United States, which has kept MBTs in
Germany for 69 years and which is allowed by the Conventional Forces
in Europe (CFE) treaty to keep 4,000 tanks on the continent, and its
Western European allies are no longer afraid that Russian tanks might
flood the Fulda Gap.
And they are right. But while a NATO-Russia war seems impossible,
there remains a possibility of an armed conflict on the continent,
which Europe is not adequately prepared to either prevent or manage.
Russian tanks are long gone from German soil, and Russia's own western
provinces have undergone a considerable demilitarization since the
end of the Cold War, as Moscow shifted military assets to face much
more real and serious security threats in the south. The European
Union is Russia's largest trading partner and there are more than 3
million Russians with EU residency permits, according to economist
Vladislav Inozemtsev's count.
But while a war between former Cold War foes in Europe is unimaginable,
the possibility of an interstate or intrastate armed conflict elsewhere
on the continent is quite distinct. For one, Armenia and Azerbaijan
remain locked in a tense stand-off over the Armenian-majority enclave
of Nagorny Karabakh. And whereas an easy truce holds there, a war did
break out between two former Soviet republics in the not so distant
past. In 2008 Georgia tried to recapture South Ossetia by force,
only to see Russia intervene and drive the Georgian forces from the
separatist republic, where tens of thousands hold Russian passports.
In the eyes of Russian leaders, that war highlighted the flaws of
Europe's post-Cold War security architecture. Earlier failures of the
existing continental security system as perceived by Moscow include
the expansion of NATO eastward, the bombing of the former Yugoslavia
by NATO, the declaration of Kosovo's independence in 2008 and its
recognition by Western countries.
It is evident that the European Union and United States are not
entirely happy with the state of collective security on the continent
either. Western leaders' memories of painful intervention, pacification
and nation building in the former Yugoslavia are as fresh as their
frustration with deadlock over Kosovo in the United Nations Security
Council. The Balkan experience must also have left the United States
hoping that European governments will start to play a more active
role in dealing with security challenges.
Western European leaders also probably wish the existing collective
security mechanisms were capable of preventing Georgia from attempting
to retake South Ossetia by force, if not resolving the frozen conflicts
in the former Soviet Union altogether.
So, it seems that Russia and Western powers agree that Europe's
collective security system is dysfunctional. What they cannot agree
upon, however, is how to fix that system.
During Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, Russia proposed a whole new
European Security Treaty to revamp European collective security. The
Russian leadership's central arguments for that treaty were that
the existing system was not working and Russia didn't have any
institutionalized meaningful say in European security decision making.
NATO wouldn't give Russia the right of veto, while other European
organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE), cannot give Moscow such a role, Russian diplomats
argued.
Medvedev's proposal got shot down by the United States and its East
European allies, who instead suggested empowering and revitalizing
the OSCE, which has seen its security basket shrink. But this counter-
proposal didn't lead anywhere.
Of all the options, Russia's accession to NATO would be the most
effective. It would not only bridge divides, but also empower Europe's
collective security system to respond effectively to new collective
security challenges both within and outside the continent. But
having once asked NATO's then-General Secretary Lord Robertson when
the alliance would invite Russia to join, Russian President Vladimir
Putin seems to have lost whatever interest he had in such membership
in the early 2000s.
The lack of consensus on how to rebuild the pan-European security
architecture doesn't mean the sides can just turn their backs on its
sorry state. If not addressed, the flaws of the existing system will
leave Europe woefully unprepared should interstate or intrastate
conflict flare up on the continent again as it did in the Balkans
and Caucasus.
U.S., EU and Russian leaders need to launch a serious discussion on
how to bridge continental divides and build an effective and inclusive
European security architecture that would prevent or resolve such
conflicts in a timely manner. And, given the demise of the CFE, it
would only be a bonus for European security if, in addition to conflict
management, that architecture also included elements of conventional
arms control, such as transparency and limits on new deployments of
substantial combat forces and long-range conventional systems.
One platform for such discussions could be the Euro-Atlantic Security
Forum that a number of leading statesmen and experts from America,
Europe and Russia proposed in their March 2013 report titled 'A New
Euro-Atlantic Security Community,' which offers a comprehensive
roadmap to reducing Cold War reliance on nuclear deterrence and
enhancing arms control in the Western powers' relationship with Russia.
The views expressed here are the author's own
From: Baghdasarian