Yves here. To answer the headline question (and I hope Aurelien will pipe up), none. The same way NATO is unable to buy weapons from the US, so to is it practically impossible for NATO to agree to anything outside the parameters of its charter. That charter does not have mechanisms for NATO to enter into new agreements. It deliberately is a weak organization so as to make it seem like not too much of a burden to sign up. Unlike the EU, which has rules on when a unanimous vote versus a “qualified majority” is required, NATO purportedly operates by consensus. It does have provisions regarding how new members can be added, and even that (as we saw with Sweden) requires unanimity as well as, when required (as for Germany and Turkiye) approval of national legislatures.
So I have no idea how Putin thinks his “new European security architecture” gets done…absent Russia joining NATO. Perhaps enough key European states, most importantly France and Germany, signing parallel pacts with Russia?
Nevertheless, Alexander Korybko does usefully describe below how Poland would be a linchpin of any new European arrangement vis-a-vis Russia.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
This is the most effective way to reform the European security architecture and keep the peace, but a lot will depend on Poland, which plays the most decisive role among all of the US’ NATO allies.
Putin recently proposed providing Europe, the majority of whose countries are part of NATO, with formal guarantees that it won’t attack. In connection with this, he also assessed that those who fearmonger about Russia are serving the interests of the military-industrial complex and/or trying to bolster their domestic image, which exposed their ulterior motives. In any case, his proposal could hypothetically lead to a NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact (NRNAP), but only if the political will exists on both sides.
One of Russia’s goals in the special operation is to reform the European security architecture, which the US is newly interested in too as suggested by some of the ideas in its draft Russian-Ukrainian peace deal framework. All of this follows the Pentagon’s drawdown from Romania, which might precede a larger pullback from Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), albeit one that wouldn’t be total nor lead to abandoning Article 5. Such a move could still alleviate the American aspect of the NATO-Russian security dilemma.
The greater the scale of the US” “Pivot (back) to (East) Asia”, especially if it leads to the redeployment of some forces from Europe, the less likely that NATO’s European members (except the UK) are to saber-rattle against Russia since they’d doubt that the US will rush to their aid if they provoke a conflict. Their newfound sense of relative vulnerability, which is derived from their pathological intertwined hatred and fear of Russia, could then soften them up to a US-mediated NRNAP that they’d otherwise not agree to.
Just as “The US Will Struggle To Get Europe To Abide By Putin’s Demand To Stop Arming Ukraine”, so too might it struggle to get them to abide by whatever it proposes with respect to the new security architecture in Europe that it envisages jointly creating with Russia after the Ukrainian Conflict ends. Nevertheless, the US’ presumably reduced military presence in CEE by that point could facilitate agreements on the status of NATO forces in the Arctic-Baltic, CEE, and the Black Sea-South Caucasus.
This vast region uncoincidentally overlaps with the “cordon sanitaire” that interwar Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski wanted to create via the complementary “Intermarium” (a Polish-led security-centric regional integration bloc) and “Prometheism” (“Balkanizing” the USSR) policies but ultimately failed to achieve. In today’s context, US support for the revival of Poland’s long-lost Great Power status could see Poland leading Russia’s containment there on the US’ behalf but within strictly agreed-upon confines.
Russian-NATO tensions can still be managed so long as the risk of war in CEE is reduced, which can be achieved by placing limits upon Poland’s militarization and hosting of foreign forces in exchange for Russia withdrawing some or all of its tactical nukes and Oreshniks from Belarus. A fair Polish-Belarusian deal could thus form the core of any NRNAP. Successful mutual de-escalation on this central front is expected to lead to agreements on the peripheral Arctic-Baltic and Black Sea-South Caucasus ones.
The devil is in the details, and some NATO members might either obstruct talks on a US-mediated NRNAP or subvert it afterwards, so nobody should get their hopes up. That said, Russia and the US should set their sights on the end goal of a NRNAP, which could parallel talks on modernizing the New START. This is the most effective way to reform the European security architecture and keep the peace, but a lot will depend on Poland, which plays the most decisive roleamong all of the US’ NATO allies.
The Polish Problem can only be addressed by a “genuine” German-Russian rapprochement, like at the time of Bismarck and Gorchakov. This is not a sure thing even when it happens on paper (Molotov-Ribbentrop obviously did not last, for example.).
Indeed. It would require something on the order of “The Concert of Europe” or the Dreikaiserbund. But where in the wasteland of our rootless, cosmopolitan PMC “citizens of nowhere” are we supposed to find a Metternich, let alone a Bismarck?
It’s hard for me to see how or why Russia would be interested in any kind of negotiated arrangement with the US or with the major EU powers. One thing the Western parties have shown over and over again since the 90s is that they are completely unwilling to stand by treaty obligations and will either abrogate treaties they find inconvenient, or just ignore them. There are well documented cases of Western powers cynically engaging in negotiations in order to buy time for rearming or other reasons.
In order to have a negotiated settlement, there have to be people you can negotiate with. I’m certainly not opposed to negotiation instead of fighting, but the fruits of the former strategy have been pretty meager in the last few decades. Certainly the Russians understand this, so they are either displaying great courage and faith or else great cynicism in proposing a negotiation-based new security architecture.
In a multipolar world actions tend to have more consequences. I’m pretty sure Russia would want to negotiate the new Start with all the checks and balances no matter how much they think they can trust USA.
As for Europe, I assume Russia would prefer a negotiated security arrangement, but it feels also capable of making one by itself, if the need be. Naturally any real security arrangement in Europe would have to get rid of NATO, which is basically the insecurity arrangement of Europe by definition.
One move would be for Russia to offer guarantees to individual states and then, when they refuse because NATO, use that to demonstrate how NATO membership adds to the vulnerability of the member states. The individual state offers could be made alongside a standing offer to NATO, but that recognition should be avoided. Instead, each separate state treaty could be portrayed as a model for a larger, multistate arrangement.
In my view Russia has handled this mess pretty well overall but, at least from what I’ve seen here and from other sources they have not given this enough emphasis. It lies on the table when it should be foregrounded with a “Carthage must be destroyed” monotony . Are they leery of going to the masses? A bit of the spirit of the 1918 Brest-Litovsk negotiations, which Trotsky used as a propaganda platform against the Germans, is in order.
If Putin intends to show the world and put in writing Russia has no intention to invade Europe via offers of non-aggression pacts with each individual state, what would their argument be for rejecting such offers?
And should they reject said offers of non-aggression, could this rejection be construed as intent to commit acts of aggression, to violate Russian borders? I would certainly think so.
The argument is, of course, Putin=Hitler, so deals can’t work. It’s Deja vu all over again.
The Russians, with unlimited generosity, speak of a “European Security Architecture” but that is a euphonism for a security architecture which enables Russia to turn her back on a Europe, such as it is, in rapid social, industrial, military, political and diplomatic decline which will, more likely then not, result in intra and inter-state violence.
The most obvious basis for such an architecture will be the formal relationships Russia can rely upon which will be China, North Korea and – depending on Russia’s willingness to militarily support it in the event of any of any future attack by a state morally inclined to genocide and/or one naturally inclined to elect political leaders with a limited capacity to understand that the balance of forces in the world have undergone a fundamental change over the last decade alongside a a profound belief in its God given, lucre-driven murderous exceptionalism – Iran. And I am sure many other developing powers will wish to minimise the adverse collapse of the West on the rest of the world and constrain its violence as steel bars constrain cage fighters.
It may be that some European countries, through the electoral process or the possibly violent overthrow of the existing order, prove themselves capable of dealing sensibly with the new reality but, given the demonstrations of the political sensibilities of the EU and most of its member states since the overthrow of Gorbachev, I feel it more likely that the European élites will concentrate on ensuring that “life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and cowing their subjects with extreme violence whilst fighting each other to determine which particular national élite can grab the most spoils from the others: out with the old, in with the older.
Better than the Chiefs’ chances of making the playoffs. :(
9 Division Championships in a row7 AFC Championship Game appearances in a row3 Super Bowl appearances in a rowPats fans can attest that a little wandering in the wilderness after a ridiculous stretch of success refreshes the appetite for even the slightest return from the abyss.
Just don’t let it become a New York Jets sort of permanent exile, if you can possibly avoid such a fate.
No agreement gonna happen. As any redeployment of WMDs away from Belarus.
On that note a recommendation which I might have mentioned before:
Netflix has a polit-thriller TV-series from 2018 about Polish high stake politics and secret services in an alternate dystopian near future, where the Iron Curtain is still intact , titled “1983”.
Wiki has the premise here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_(TV_series)
Interestingly the major idea is omitted by Wiki: Poland is trying to acquire nukes by secretly taking possession of Russian bombs on their territory – in a conspiracy of some Polish military men with US operatives.
Andrei Martyanov yesterday briefly commented, that if Germans were trying to get nukes RU would put down their foot and say “no you´re not”. Same would go for Poland, an idea which I assume has been floated in some Polish circles.
p.s. NATO violated the Paris Agreement and Art. 1 of its own Charter both of which urge the signtatories to solve conflicts peacefully and in the framework of the UN.
Add to that the violation of the Budapest Memorandum and the covert sabotage of Minsk.
Since you kindly ask, Yves, there are two points. First, NATO has no legal personality, and cannot sign treaties or legal agreements. The 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, although in essence bloc-to-bloc, had to be negotiated and signed between states. “NATO” appeared nowhere in the text.
Second, a non-aggression pact is like any other treaty: it applies until it doesn’t. It can be a sign of stability, but it doesn’t create it. And of course the most famous NAP in history is that between Germany and the Soviet Union, which Stalin clung to until the last moment, because he couldn’t believe that the Germans would forego the benefits to them (basically raw materials to make war on the rest of Europe.) Not the greatest of precedents.
“a non-aggression pact is like any other treaty: it applies until it doesn’t.”
I refrained from posting that problem since you would formulate it so much better.
This demise in reliability and honesty is a sad fact. Would it be naive to assume that in the past at least the big treaties between the blocs were treated with more respect? (I am actually not sure I believe my own statement here.)
Or is it just because the West back in the old days simply had less boundaries than now for its economic expansion and could afford it to stick to treaties it signed without really giving up anything.
“So I have no idea how Putin thinks his “new European security architecture” gets done…”
Probably when Russia gets to the Dnieper and also occupies the Black Sea coast. All the while Europeans and the US destroying their social safety nets without buldingany industry and anything in place. And with a more and more resentful population on both sides of the Atlantic.
Russia doesn’t need any security guarantees, the writing on the wall is biblical…
You might have a point. When this war gets wrapped up there will be a banquet of consequences for those nations that supported the Ukraine at the cost to their own economies. Think of all those debts that will have to be paid out as well as all those multi-billion dollar payments given to the Ukraine annually when those countries cannot afford it. The UK is the worse here. There will be a lot of countries whose governments will fall and probably they will be replaced by hard right governments but the question is whether they will be able to roll back all the things that are being done right now like huge contracts to the MICs. Europe is going to be a mess.
I’m not sure about your use of the term, “hard right”. I see the neo-libs and neo-cons as “hard right” simply because they continue to impose failing ideologies on a citizenry which has been impoverished by their imposition, not least through exercising highly specific censorship and continuation – and deepening – of austerity.
I see what the uni-party cocktail of neo-libs with neo-con leanings and neo-cons with neo-lib leaning, supported by the MSM, deride as neo-Nazis or the “hard right”, like like the AfD, the National Rally, the emergent Reform in the UK as being relatively traditional political parties trying to create a degree of stability in countries which have been impoverished and the futures of their subjects made increasingly uncertain by this heady brew of highly credentialed self-regard and indifference to the pain of others.
I also see the ultimate goals of Your Party as regaining a sense of stability in the UK by dramatically reducing private debt whilst deepening individual rights to privacy and control over their personal and family life, increasing control and ownership of public utilities and services, and easing the path out of semi-employment and precarity into stable employment funded by devices like a progressive negative income tax (Friedman’s best idea, imho), along with several different approaches to taxing wealth ensuring that the markets work in the interests of families and individuals, and not families and individuals forced to work in the interests of the market.
There is actually a helluva lot of overlap between the left and the right which is defined best by Oakeshott as a matter of predisposition. Some of us are more disposed to conservatism whilst others lean towards the progressive, and it is my experience that the two can meet and agree on a wide range of policies, whilst agreeing to disagree on others and it is up to the majority to decide which is the most appropriate stance for the moment, and it is then up to the politicians to negotiate policies which reach an optimal degree of consensus, taking into account the views and interests of the minority – not unlike the approach of Churchill’s post-war government which built on and stabilised the social and economic reforms of the Attlee years and only reversing the short-lived nationalisation of the steel industry.
“revival of Poland’s long-lost Great Power status” ??? I tracked down what Korykov is talking about, and apparently, it refers to building infrastructure in Ukraine. Good luck, Poland; that investment sounds like advancing to greatness, backwards.
I expect Mr. Oreshnik will need to visit European NATO bases to inspire that warm non-aggression pact feeling- it’s not as if Europe can re-industrialize to re-militarize without access to cheap energy (global warming favors Russia, while making southern Europe unlivable).
Poland may play a significant role in the final settlement. I saw an article around a year ago. The article was about then North Western part of Ukraine that was originally part of Poland. This is the area the Ukrainian Nazis killed a 100,000+ Poles during WWII. There’s not much love between Poland and Ukraine.The Ukrainians have refused to acknowledged the the genocide. The article said that when Russia was in the settlement phase of The SMO, Russia might work out and arrangement with Poland to get these areas returned. Most of the people in this region speak polish and identify as polish. If you noticed of late the building hostility of Poles toward the Ukrainians refugees in Poland. The majority of the polish population wants them gone.
From the Russian (and a little Chinese) government perspective, one can actually come up with a (hypothetical) answer, based on what they are putting out in the public media. Whether I agree or not with their thinking is another matter. But.
Basically, the starting proposition is that “Europe” (not the UK, and not the Baltic States slash Poland slash whomever axis of anti-Russianness) will break. If the US continues to push Europe vs. Russia and, increasingly, vs. China, their economies will suffer too much, their governments will eventually be taken over by Orban-AfD clones, and the EU will break apart first, and then NATO will be less than relevant. Call this option A. If, on the other hand, the US withdraws from Europe to deal with China/LatAm/whoever, then NATO will break apart first, and then the Orban-AfD clones will (again) take over asking why are we still doing anti-Russia/China things. Call this option B.
Parenthetically, AfD et alii generally are presented in a VERY good light across the Russian government-adjacent media. And the notions “EU will break” or “NATO will break” – because the European electorates can only take so much abuse – are voiced by a number of commentators, though not all.
So. If you believe option A will happen, then in the wake of AfD taking over Germany, Front Nacional taking over France, etc., the Russians will sign something with these new governments, and voila, most of the new security architecture is in place. Excluding Poland et al., but whatever. On the other hand, if you believe option B is happening, then you sign something with the US, and then wait for the Europeans to fall like so many dominoes.
Incidentally, the whole Russia-China investment into the Northern Sea Passage (across the Arctic, from the Pacific to the North Sea) is predicated on the notion that at some point in the future, there will be trade with Europe. “Again” in the case of Russia, “still” in the face of China (which fully anticipates trade relations with the US and its vassals to worsen over time, if Global Times is to be believed).
Simultaneously, as well as at the same time, Putin likes to present himself as the great-peacemaking-diplomat-whatsit to the non-China members of BRICS, most notably Brazil and India. “We want to sign a grand security pact, it is the Europeans or the Americans who are being unreasonable.” Something along those lines. So there is an element of showmanship here, too.
I myself am very skeptical of this logical chain – I am posting it here simply because I periodically hear more-than-hints of it, for example on Solov’ev’s TV channel slash program (he now has a whole private little media empire going over there). I do not think the US “Deep State” will just up and abandon its 25-year program of regime change in Russia, and I think the EU is more likely to use quasi-fascist repression to deal with any disgruntled populace than let “upstart” political parties gain too much power – though buying off the upstarts works too, Farrage apparently is now anti-Russian again after a $9 million donation to his party by some oligarch. But there we are.
As a footnote, it’s always fun to look at some (historical or present) conflict, and try to fiture out what thought bubble each party to it exists in. Oftentimes, you get wildly differing versions of ostensibly the same world.
Hmm, makes we wonder if Europe would be prepared to give security guarantees to Europe, such as vowing not to destroy its pipelines. I am American, not European, but if asked I’d advise Europe not to trust any promises from Europe, given its track record.
NATO, the paper tiger, shrinking rapidly in capability and leadership intellect, to become the paper mouse. Russia can wait while it collapses from within.
Equally, we can all wait while the EU collapses from within. For all extents and purposes, they are one and the same thing.
When reality returns, and European countries restore their sovereignty, then they can re-engage with Russia on healthier and more productive terms.