The author is a former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
In the face of military pressure from the Kremlin on Ukraine, US and European allies have held their ground this week in three rounds of talks with Russia. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman have said, NATO and the United States are ready to discuss military transparency and such arms control measures. than the reciprocal limits of missiles and military exercises.
But they did not give in to the main demands of the Kremlin. There will be no pledges to end NATO enlargement, no disruption of military cooperation with Ukraine, and no downsizing of US troops in NATO members such as Poland.
The United States and Europe have shown consistency in principle, stability and solidarity. But Western allies have made no apparent progress in getting the Kremlin to withdraw from its threats of further aggression. Now what?
Russia’s initial reaction to the talks was cold. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that there was no basis for further meetings with the United States. Russian military build-up against Ukraine continues. And the Kremlin is hinting at escalation. Ryabkov refused to rule out the deployment of Russian military assets in Cuba or Venezuela. According to the Stockholm media, Russia is sending naval units to the Baltic Sea and the Swedish army is increasing its patrols there.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Vladimir Putin started this crisis from scratch, seeking leverage through intimidation and relying on European disunity and American distraction after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is too much to expect a week of allied unity to set him back.
The United States and Europe have prepared powerful countermeasures in the event that Russia launches further attacks on Ukraine: new military equipment in Ukraine, American and other deployments to countries on the eastern flank of Ukraine. NATO, broader sanctions and other economic measures. But the United States has also indicated that it will withhold these measures until and unless the Kremlin acts. This offers Putin an opportunity to continue to press, seeking to weaken Western resistance to the Kremlin’s demands. Moscow could launch cyber attacks or limited military actions against Ukraine, testing NATO and US resolve and Ukrainian resilience. The coming weeks could see a rise in threats from the Kremlin and even assaults.
The United States and Europe are nonetheless well placed to prevail in this showdown if they keep their resolve and strength under pressure. As in the Cold War, the Kremlin has the tactical advantage of being able to threaten and brag at will. But, as we also learned during the Cold War, internal tyranny keeps Russia economically weak, politically fragile, and ultimately unable to withstand a prolonged confrontation with the United States and Europe. At home, Putin has all the weapons. But Russian society does not seem enthusiastic about a long war against Ukraine. Rolling one would be a risky roll for Putin. If the Kremlin does, or if not provokes the West enough, it is likely that it will generate sustained back pressure that will end badly for it.
The United States and Europe must continue to frame issues the right way: resist the temptation to respond to threats with concessions and maintain a willingness to discuss European security in a way that benefits everyone, not only in Moscow.
One trap for the Kremlin to avoid is to talk about NATO as if its enlargement were aggression for which Moscow must be compensated. There was no American promise not to expand NATO. In contrast, there was a formal Russian commitment to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, violated when the Kremlin seized Ukrainian territory in 2014.
NATO’s enlargement occurred alongside the development of a NATO-Russia understanding during the days of Boris Yeltsin and the Clinton administration. From the outset, the United States and NATO have been ready to discuss Russian military security as NATO has welcomed new members and honored its commitments limiting its deployments in Europe.
Putin hates the fundamental meaning of NATO and EU enlargement: the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union, and in their place a united Europe, with 100 million Europeans between the Germany and Russia free to join their Western European brethren. Ukrainians have seen the progress of freedom and prosperity in their West and naturally they want it for themselves.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov betrayed the game when he called the nations liberated by the fall of communism in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 not liberated countries, sovereign countries but orphan or masterless “territories”. Putin wants the empire back. He wants to reverse the end of the Cold War and regain Moscow’s sphere of domination.
The United States and Europe should not participate in this. They must be patient, determined and respond firmly to provocations. Then the Kremlin may well find a way to move from ultimatums to a more productive discussion of European security, perhaps by restoring arms control, transparency, and the stabilization measures that the Kremlin has ignored, violated or denigrated in these past. last years. There is a long way to go, but the coming weeks could be difficult.