The signing of the New START disarmament treaty in March this year, reducing nuclear weapon stock-piles in Russia and the US, was a major achievement. Yet despite President Medvedev’s personal ambitions to renew Russia’s defences and Obama’s desire to fully hit the ‘reset’ button with Russia, there will remain large problems, one of which is still NATO, and around that issue, the European vultures continue to lurk.
Medvedev has been pushing a pro-reform agenda throughout his Presidency, but as his final term nears, his calls to modernize Russia are getting increasingly stronger. At home, he can sell the reduction in nuclear weapons as controlling the Americans, whilst enabling Russia to rid itself of an unnecessary and expensive nuclear stockpile. Yet the forces of resistance, particularly from the military, which is vastly beyond the size it needs to be, are growing, and there is no appetite from anyone for changing Russia's historical attitude towards NATO, which is still identified as one of the biggest threats to Russia in Moscow’s new military doctrine, published in February this year.
Best worst enemy
NATO is a blessing for Russia, particularly as it continues the war in Afghanistan. Russia is making a large profit charging for transit routes for NATO supplies to Afghanistan, as well as enjoying selling oil to the forces there. Whilst wanting NATO to have success for the reasons of domestic terrorism, Russia would also love a withdrawal, which would be portrayed as a defeat for the United States, just as Afghanistan defeated the Soviet Union. Obama has given NATO what Gorbachev gave the Soviets – a surge in troops and supplies, but if no results are forthcoming, the generals will have to withdraw.
The US aspect to NATO is the problem for Russia. By tying the United States into European security, NATO allows US influence and power to creep right to the very borders of Russia, and gives the American administration sway over States that would otherwise be firmly under Moscow’s shadow. Indeed, Russian cooperation in NATO activities has quietly taken place for a very long time, despite the temporary political spats, because NATO as a force is not a threat to Moscow; but rather it is the insipid and ingrained anti-Americanism that makes NATO a threat.
However, this does not mean that Russia is focused totally on NATO. As Sergei Pridhodko, a Russian foreign policy analyst noted, the Lisbon Treaty will make Europe a far more coherent force in the world. The Old Russian tactic of divide and rule when it comes to European affairs will be harder to achieve, though with Germany still in Putin’s pocket, it won’t be impossible.
Pridhodko noted that Lisbon makes the EU stronger, more united, and more predictable. All characteristics of dealing with one state, not with many, you might notice. And the EU has already had deployed in 2009 a task force under the EU flag of 13 ships in the Indian Ocean. Javier Solana commented that Lisbon now makes the EU a global security provider, and of course the Consolidated Treaties duplicate in Articles 42.2 NATO’s role as an agency of common defence and in 42.7 they duplicate NATO’s Article 5, making the EU a common defence organization. And, of course, Lisbon, in Article 34, compromises the UK and French independent seats on the UN Security Council, by forcing our states to consider the interests of the whole of Europe, effectively buying Brussels two seats at the highest table.
As the EU has grown into a semi-state with military force, Russia has continued resisting NATO, and the OSCE, and other international organizations. But it is now the EU which is making its rivals redundant, and pressing against Russia’s borders. By replicating everything its rivals do, the EU has secured itself as the patrol force along the Georgian-Russian border, with the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia, consisting of around 330 staff, with a budget of 49.6 million Euros.
The Future
The EU is thus replacing and making redundant NATO and other organizations, such as the OSCE. Expect them to fall into decline, and slowly disappear. America will become more frustrated with the growing lack of commitment to NATO, and the inevitable withdrawal of US forces from Europe will occur. Already, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, in seeing the scaling back of US missile defence plans, is calling for them to actually incorporate Russia as well, making a global shield, in which all share the cost. This is clearly not what the US Generals envisaged, and it is difficult to see how Congress would agree to such an international construction.
And so Russia will gain its desired Europe, free of America. Her price for allowing the Ukraine and Georgia into the EU will be influence over EU policy, to control the Europe that develops on its borders, and in what it regards as its sphere of influence. The relationship with Germany will be key here, and the Eastern European states that want to help the US, that remember America as the defender of the free world, will come under pressure not only from the Russian bear on the East, but also from the Chancellor’s of Germany on the West.
