Rethink the
reset
May 19th
2012
FOR 20 years NATO has wooed the Kremlin, with
disappointing results. The alliance has repeatedly said it does not regard
Russia as a threat and has forsworn putting nuclear weapons (or indeed anything
else significant) in member states that were once part of the Soviet empire.
Indeed, so keen was NATO not to offend Russia that for the first few years
after the newcomers joined in 2004, it made no plans to defend them.
Yet Russia’s behaviour to NATO is becoming
nastier. The chief of the general staff, Nikolai Makarov, recently spoke openly
about a first strike against future American missile-defence installations in
Poland and Romania. Russia has conducted ostentatious military drills on its
border with the Baltic states, NATO’s most vulnerable members. Vladimir Putin,
newly reinstalled in the Kremlin, has gone back to bashing the West. He is
shunning NATO’s Chicago summit next week (and also the G8’s, even though his hosts
moved that one from Chicago to make him happier). Residual cold-war thinking is
exemplified by Russia’s espionage efforts at NATO’s Brussels headquarters,
where its military observers are rather generously given an office and formal
accreditation.
What should be done? Nobody is challenging the
status quo publicly. But in private, some see a bargain: America stops standing
up to Russia in Europe, in return for Kremlin concessions on issues that
America really cares about, such as a new nuclear-weapons deal. That would
include America rejigging its missile-defence plans, to leave out any bases in
countries that were once part of the Soviet empire.
A softer stance could also include downgrading
NATO’s planned exercises next year in Europe. Named “Steadfast Jazz”, these
will be potentially the biggest manoeuvres since the end of the cold war. They
are largely a response to troubling Russian exercises in 2009, which simulated
the invasion of the Baltic states (followed by a dummy nuclear attack on Warsaw).
Some cash-strapped European countries would be happy not to pay for their part
in expensive wargames.
Wooing Russia this way would be a mistake.
America’s missile-defence plans are aimed at Iran, not Russia. But they are
also a token of transatlantic seriousness about Europe. Any suggestion of
making them a bargaining chip unsettles those in Poland and elsewhere who doubt
the durability of America’s security relationship with Europe.
Big talker
Russian sabre-rattling is not militarily
significant: even with its big increase in defence spending of recent years,
and the colossal sums promised for the future, Russia is no military match for
a united NATO. But it does signal unpleasant thinking at the top, and a desire
to bully. The right response from NATO would be to make Steadfast Jazz as
realistic a defensive drill as possible. By demonstrating NATO’s resolve, a
strong stance would enhance security; just as a weak one would only encourage
Russia to pick a bigger stick.
The irony in all this is that Russia should be
far more worried about China in the east and Islamists to the south than about
NATO. The alliance is beset with problems: inadequate defence spending, finding
a respectable exit from Afghanistan, and America’s “pivot” to Asia. NATO used
to worry about a loss of purpose. Indeed, had Russia not antagonised its former
empire in the 1990s, NATO might have shut up shop by now. The way things are
going, it is lucky that it did not.
The
Economist
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