Eurasia Press & News
The NATO 2030 report, presented in early December in Brussels, recognizes Russia as the main threat of the coming decade. The alliance is moving to a containment strategy characteristic of the Cold War. Military observer Alexander Golts believes that the unity of the West is especially evident against the backdrop of the CSTO created by Russia, where each participant ritually bows to Putin, but is not ready for confrontation with the Kremlin’s opponents.
Wars are not usually declared these days. Their beginning is marked by missile launches, air and artillery strikes. But the beginning of a Cold War is marked by lengthy declarations (let us recall Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech). In Russia, they tried not to pay too much attention to the report “NATO – 2030. Unity in a New Era” recently presented in Brussels. In two scathing paragraphs, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only emphasized the stupidity of NATO experts who do not want to notice Moscow’s desire for cooperation and justify Brussels’ Russophobia. As is customary with Russian foreign policy officials, from the words of Maria Zakharova it followed that this Russophobia engulfed NATO members for no apparent reason. As if there had been no annexation of Crimea or “secret” war in Donbass
Meanwhile, this report is more than just a reason for Zakharova’s angry tirade. A year ago, during the summit in London, the heads of NATO member states instructed Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to begin an analysis of the alliance’s development prospects. In late March 2020, he created a group of several well-known experts, headed by former German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere and Wess Mitchell, former US Deputy Secretary of State. And so, in early December, during a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers, a presentation of the report prepared by the experts took place. The speech of the NATO Secretary General left no doubt that he fully agreed with the conclusions. And, therefore, in the not-so-distant future, his theses will become the basis for NATO’s policy documents. The report, as is typical for such documents, covers a wide range of issues: the future threat that China may pose, the ongoing war on terrorism, control over breakthrough technologies, and respect for civil rights.
For us, the main thing is that this document records a fundamentally changed attitude towards Russia. The report states that the NATO Strategic Concept, adopted in 2010 and still in effect, clearly does not meet the changed situation in the world. One of its main goals was to establish strategic partnership relations with Moscow. After the events of 2014, this looks like a strange anachronism. The experts state:
Russia’s aggression against Georgia and Ukraine, accompanied by the ongoing build-up of its military power and aggressive activity in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Far North, has led to a sharp deterioration in relations and has had a negative impact on the security of the Euro-Atlantic region.
It must be said that such a description is typical of NATO directive documents that have been adopted over the past six years. Similar passages can easily be found in the final documents of the summits in Wales, Warsaw, Brussels and London. However, the report represents a new step. For the first time, it points to Russia as the main source of military threat for the next decade. Our country is unconditionally assigned the first place on the list of threats.
The report for the first time points to Russia as the main source of military threat in the next decade
For quite a long time, Western politicians and experts avoided comparing the current confrontation with Russia with the previous Cold War. It is not only that today’s military confrontation is significantly different from what divided the world in the 1940s – 1980s. At the same time, they pointed out the absence of the notorious struggle between two systems, two ideologies. And Russia’s capabilities are now much more modest than the USSR had. Not a very large economy, a rather weak industry, obviously incapable of mass production of weapons. Plus an elderly population, from which it is no longer possible to form a five-million-strong armed force. In addition to these objective factors, subjective political calculations also played a role. NATO viewed the collapse of the USSR as a victory. Therefore, the leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance resolutely did not want to acknowledge reality, namely, that Russia, having now become a full-fledged successor to the Soviet Union, has resumed military confrontation with the West. Only now, considering the prospects for NATO’s development, experts have made the inevitable conclusion.
The authors of the report try to avoid using the phrase “cold war”, but the document contains a fair number of direct references to this concept:
In some ways, NATO’s political role is more reminiscent of the pre-1989 period, when it was a bulwark of democracy against an authoritarian adversary.” They insist on the need to build relations with Russia based on two approaches. The first is the full-scale deterrence characteristic of the previous Cold War: “NATO must maintain adequate conventional and nuclear weapons capabilities, with the ability to resist aggression throughout the alliance.
The second approach is supposedly a dialogue with Russia. But the dialogue is quite specific: “NATO must remain open to discussing peaceful coexistence and respond positively to constructive changes in Russia’s position.” However, “to be productive, such a dialogue must be firm and conducted from a position of unity and strength. Dialogue cannot replace … the fulfillment of Russia’s obligations under international law and bilateral agreements, including the renunciation of the use of force.” The authors of the report bluntly demand that NATO states adhere to a unified position regarding Russia. The report, which will form the basis for the future Strategic Concept of the alliance, leaves no doubt: NATO is entering a period of long-term confrontation with Russia. There is no reason to expect that relations will return to normal. The document directly states that such a return is possible only if Russia once again begins to follow international law. This obviously means the return of previously captured territories, which is impossible in principle under the current government. The Cold War is becoming a reality before our eyes. And Russia’s position in it is quite weak.
The authors of the report “NATO – 2030” honestly point out the internal problems of the North Atlantic Alliance. In the future, they believe, it is necessary to avoid friction between the United States and its European allies (as we know, the escapades of the outgoing president have caused considerable damage to transatlantic relations). The document also requires eliminating situations where the disagreement of just one country blocks the adoption of important decisions. But intra-NATO conflicts seem like an almost ideal unity if we compare the situation in the alliance with what is happening in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), created by the will of Russia. The longer this alliance exists, the more obvious it becomes that its only purpose is to appease the inferiority complex of the Kremlin bosses.
The only point of the CSTO is to appease the inferiority complex of the Kremlin bosses
On the very day when the NATO-2030 report was presented in Brussels, Vladimir Putin held a video conference with the leaders of the CSTO member states. The entire meeting was held according to the laws of Chekhov’s dramaturgy – with the semblance of dialogue, everyone was talking about their own thing. The Prime Minister of Armenia – about the fact that “Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey and terrorist mercenaries from the Middle East, unleashed a war against the Armenian people.” The permanent leader of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon expectedly recalled the alarming developments in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, which has just experienced another political upheaval, and the seemingly “stable” Kazakhstan focused on the upcoming elections in each of their countries. And only the Belarusian president tried to explain the fact that the residents of Belarus do not want to tolerate him by NATO intervention. It is quite obvious that each of the countries has its own security threats. Their leaders are ready to make ritual bows to Putin. But that’s all. They are not going to support him in confrontation with the West.
CSTO leaders are ready to bow to Putin, but are not going to support him in confrontation with the West
NATO’s obvious superiority in the new standoff only makes this confrontation more risky. After all, the weaker side is more inclined to take risks. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin scares Western “partners” with Russian wonder weapons almost every day. Russian and NATO troops are in close proximity to each other. Their aircraft regularly fly out to intercept, and their ships threaten to collide with each other. Just recently, a Russian large anti-submarine ship threatened to ram an American destroyer in Peter the Great Bay. And there are fifty Tomahawk cruise missiles on board the American ship. Any incident threatens to entail irreversible catastrophic consequences.
The representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova was particularly outraged by the fact that NATO members consider the best option for relations with Russia not full-scale cooperation, but “merely” peaceful coexistence. Meanwhile, this is precisely the only positive experience of the past Cold War. It was peaceful coexistence, which includes rules of conduct for states with directly opposite values, that actually saved the planet from a nuclear catastrophe.
The Institute of the USA and Canada and the Institute of Europe have just published a remarkable study: “The Russia-NATO Dialogue. How to Reduce Tensions and Avoid Crises.” Four dozen well-known experts, former high-ranking politicians, diplomats and military personnel from the USA, Russia and other European countries worked on it. In fact, we are talking about a wide range of new measures of mutual trust that should reduce the threat of war. In particular, it is proposed to create special channels of emergency communication between Russia and NATO in sensitive regions – the Baltic and Black Sea – as well as in the Far North, to develop a set of uniform joint rules that would determine the minimum distances when aircraft and ships approach, as well as the procedure for interaction between crews. In addition, the authors of the recommendations believe that NATO and Russia should agree to refrain from the constant deployment of additional significant combat forces in areas located near the territory of the other side in Europe.
The issue also concerns the modernization of the Vienna Document, the last agreement that somehow regulates military activity on the European continent. In particular, special restrictions could be agreed upon regarding military activity in the Baltic region (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and Germany), Kaliningrad and the Western Military District of Russia. Russia and NATO could agree to conduct large-scale military exercises at a significant distance from their common borders from a military point of view, taking into account the specifics of certain contact zones. As for holding snap exercises, which remain a source of tension and are not subject to prior notification (in 2014, Moscow, under the guise of such maneuvers, concentrated troops on the border with Ukraine), “quiet notification” should be implemented so that information about such exercises is confidentially transmitted at a high level to the other side, while remaining a surprise for the troops themselves.
It is clear that it is now very important to accept the new Cold War as a fait accompli and think about how to reduce the risks of military conflict.
