NATO - Russia relations:

Rodinazombie wrote:

flamming_python wrote:

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:Better learn some lessions.

In WW1 USA destroyed the German Empire and the Russian Empire (by backing Bolsheviks) and earned an immense amount of money on exports while all other countries were lossers. During WW2 it provoked Japanese attack, defeated Japan and the Third Reich and lost the least out of all major players. Then after WW2 it dethroned the British Empire as the world's most powerful country and took control of the world's financial system without even having to fire a single shot.

Shouldn't we (Germans, Europeans) learn from them and imitate them? There is a lot to learn in the art of geopolitics and Americans are masters of it.

They were masters of it.

These days America is led by a bunch of spoilt, petulant, hubrid, short-sighted, amateur little imperialists who between them all can't work out how what foreign policy & diplomacy is for or how to use it.

Couldnt have said it better myself.


It may be obvious to say it here, but if you want to look for someone to model yourself on, you dont need to look further than putin. In the art of diplomacy he is second to none, despite his ruthless reputation. He has made an art out of being nice to his enemies whilst they are screaming obscenities about him. The chinese too, they are happy to just sit back and let the money flow, they have profited from peace and not sticking their nose in everyone elses business. Though i imagine they will look to involve themselves more in the coming years.

I agree.  I could not have said that better myself.  China will be doing more in the not only the coming years but in the coming months.  Remember those man made islands that they say belong to them.  Well each day that passes the ruffle their feathers more and more.  So it will only be time that will dictate.  But if NO ONE does anything about Turkey shooting down a Russian plan and then the rescue choppers, than I believe that China will see that as an opportunity as well as North Korea.

Russia Prepared for Conventional Arms Control Consultations With NATO

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2015/12/11/war-in-europe-why-the-army-is-worried/

War In Europe: Why The Army Is Worried

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized control of Crimea, Pentagon planners have been trying to figure out how they could cope with further land grabs by Moscow.  Their greatest concern is that Russia will move on the three small Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — the only former provinces of the Soviet Union that have joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and that other alliance members are therefore obligated to defend.  Internal Pentagon estimates suggest Russia’s military could occupy the Baltic states in 2-3 days — well before NATO could organize a coherent response.

More generally, the alliance’s entire eastern flank is vulnerable to invasion given the proximity of Russian forces and the absence of natural barriers to a quick advance (see map).  In the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion, Western military planners no longer think they can predict how Russian leader Vladimir Putin might react to perceived provocations or opportunities.  So the possibility of war in Europe is back on the table as a priority concern, and that means land warfare in which the U.S. Army would have to carry most of the burden.

After talking to a number of senior military officials over the past year, the picture I get is that the U.S. Army isn’t postured to stop a quick Russian thrust westward.  In certain circumstances, Putin could defeat NATO forces and upset the fragile European political order put in place after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  That outcome would depend on the conditions in which such a campaign unfolds, and there are dozens of factors potentially influencing the course of events.  But here are the issues that come up most frequently in discussions with the Army.

Russia would have huge geographical advantages in a European war due to its proximity, depth, and ability to control key chokepoints. (Retrieved from Wikimedia)
Russia would have huge geographical advantages in a European war due to its proximity, depth, and ability to control key chokepoints. (Retrieved from Wikimedia)


Preparation for high-end threats has been neglected.  Fifteen years of fighting counter-insurgency warfare in Southwest Asia has left the Army well equipped to take down irregular forces such as ISIS, but much less ready to fight an enemy armed with tanks, artillery and attack aircraft.  The number of brigade combat teams in the active-duty force has fallen from 45 to 32, and only a quarter of those are the kind of heavy armored formations that could repulse a Russian mechanized advance.  The active-duty force has also lost a quarter of its helicopters, with only modest investments being made to upgrade existing fleets or field new capabilities.  To make matters worse, the number of Army units stationed in Europe has been reduced to only two light brigades — a small fraction of what would be needed to deal with a major Russian advance.

Russia would enjoy huge geographical advantages in a war.  Russia historically has been a land power, and the vast preponderance of its military capabilities are deployed in Europe.  It routinely conducts military exercises near the eastern borders of Estonia, Ukraine, and other nearby states it might invade.  U.S. military forces are located far from where the military action might start, and would have great difficulty responding rapidly to a Russian invasion that began with no warning.  Given the scale of conventional forces in western Russia that could quickly be brought into action, Moscow might be able to present the West with a fait accompli in places like Ukraine — especially given the internal wrangling that would precede any NATO response.  Moscow would probably time its moves to take advantage of the fact that most U.S. ground forces now rotate in and out of the area rather than being permanently based there.

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Air support might not be available.  The Army trains to fight on the assumption that it will have continuous support from the U.S. Air Force and other allied aircraft.  However, Russian air defenses in Eastern Europe are so imposing that Army planners aren’t sure Western aircraft will be able to operate in support of ground forces.  Russian surface-to-air missiles such as the mobile SA-21 (over 150 launchers currently deployed) can reach into the air space of friendly countries to shoot down any aircraft that aren’t stealthy or supported by sophisticated jamming techniques.  For instance, most of Polish air space is potentially within range of Russian air defenses.  U.S. military planners don’t think the Russians could establish air dominance, but they could achieve sporadic air control sufficient to exclude all Western tactical air forces except for very stealthy fifth-generation fighters, leaving U.S. ground forces exposed.

Russian conventional weapons are increasingly capable.  Air defense is not the only mission area where NATO forces might be at a disadvantage.  As the Russian military has become increasingly professionalized, it has introduced an array of advanced conventional weapons while America and its allies have under-invested in new technology.  Army officials say the Russians might outgun U.S. forces locally in long-range fires, electronic warfare, cyber skills and the ability to practice mixed regular/irregular tactics known as “hybrid warfare.”  Russian antitank weapons are also said to pose a serious threat to U.S. armored vehicles, in part because the Army has failed to move ahead with plans to equip its existing fleet with active-protection systems that deflect the force of incoming rounds.  With the exception of the Stryker SYK +0.00% wheeled troop carrier, most of the Army’s recent efforts to field more agile, survivable vehicles have faltered.

Continued from page 1

Moscow might be willing to use nuclear weapons.  The Russians enjoy massive local superiority in tactical nuclear weapons, and Moscow’s military doctrine gives such weapons more prominence in warfighting plans than Western thinking does.  President Putin said earlier this year that he considered putting Russian nuclear forces on alert during the Ukraine crisis in 2014 to deter Western intervention.  Moscow’s military appears to view first use of nuclear weapons as a legitimate response to conventional threats endangering the Russian homeland, so NATO military planners have to at least consider the possibility that what starts out as a war over Russian land-grabs in the Baltic region or Ukraine escalates into a nuclear exchange as the campaign progresses.  Once that threshold is breached, there is no way of knowing where it might lead, and the U.S. Army has no clear idea how to respond if and when.

Surveying the decay in NATO capabilities for dealing with a Russian onslaught, my Lexington Institute colleague Daniel Goure recently argued, “The U.S. Army needs to redeploy multiple armored combat brigades, additional Patriot air defense battalions, attack helicopter units and advanced sensors to Europe.”  In other words, it needs to reverse the drawdown of U.S. ground forces in Europe that began when the Cold War ended and is currently enshrined in President Obama’s 2012 Strategic Planning Guidance.  I think Dr. Goure is right, because having a robust force permanently stationed in Europe would both deter aggression and give the U.S. a quick response if deterrence failed.  For all the money NATO spends on its collective defense, it doesn’t appear ready to cope with a Russian attack westward, and nobody knows what Putin might do if he thinks Washington is distracted elsewhere.

Well, yes, of course, why not.

https://www.rt.com/politics/326294-cancer-tumor-of-europe-/

‘Cancer of Europe’ – Russian Duma speaker calls for NATO dissolution

Europe now really needs to think seriously, should NATO really continue to exist ? And at the moment does NATO bring anything good to Europe ?

OLD NEWS

Russian Bombers Again Circle Guam

The Problem With NATO's Nukes

Time to Rid Europe of Its Cold War Legacy.


US President Barack Obama came into office promising to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Over the past several years, the United States has made uneven progress toward that goal. The nuclear agreement with Iran, if strictly implemented, will preclude an Iranian bomb and mitigate the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East for at least the next 10–15 years. But North Korea continues to develop and test its nuclear capabilities, India and Pakistan show no signs of winding down their nuclear competition, and Russia and China have forged ahead with the modernization of their nuclear arsenals, with little prospect of either country agreeing to negotiate nuclear reductions any time soon. And in Europe, the risk of nuclear use, although low, may be increasing.

It would certainly not be low-hanging fruit, but ridding Europe of its Cold War nuclear legacy would be a good place for the next president to achieve early progress in making the world a safer place. U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on the continent and NATO’s plans to modernize and increase the capabilities of its nuclear systems may be increasing the risk of nuclear use and undermining NATO’s conventional defense capabilities. The United States needs to take bold action to rethink NATO’s nuclear deterrent in order to reduce the dangers and strengthen the alliance. Such moves could include a freeze on tactical nuclear modernization, a phased withdrawal of all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, and measures to adapt and strengthen NATO’s arrangements for nuclear cooperation and consultations to reassure allies.

The Russian nuclear threat to Europe is not new. Moscow has leaned on nuclear weapons ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union took down the Red Army and Russia’s defense industrial base. Nonetheless, until very recently, the risk of nuclear war in Europe—indeed the risk of any armed conflict between NATO and Russia—has been virtually nonexistent. Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in the spring of 2014, however, what is rightly perceived as increased nuclear-muscle flexing has rattled European nerves. Russian officials have issued nuclear threats against NATO countries; at the same time, Moscow has increased air patrols of nuclear-capable planes, conducted simulated military exercises with nuclear weapons, and continued to modernize its tactical nuclear weapons opposite NATO.

There are signs, too, that Russia is officially changing its war-fighting doctrine in Europe to include the possibility of early use of limited nuclear strikes in order to bring conflicts to a halt on terms more favorable to Russia. This is a dangerous development—not so much because Russia is developing new capabilities, but because the deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations has increased the risk of an accident, mistake, or miscalculation that could trigger a conflict.
The United States' and NATO's tactical nuclear plans are not helping matters. The United States intends to spend billions of dollars over the next decade to upgrade its tactical nuclear bombs stored in Europe—and the United States’ European allies will need to allocate hundreds of millions of euros to improve the infrastructure supporting these weapons and associated dual-capable aircraft. The more modern U.S. nuclear warheads that will replace the estimated 160–200 U.S. nuclear bombs currently in Europe will be smaller and more accurate—and Russia is reportedly making similar improvements to its tactical arsenal. According to U.S. General James Cartwright, former commander of U.S. Strategic Forces and Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), these weapons will make limited nuclear strikes more conceivable.

It is unclear, moreover, whether NATO’s modernized tactical nuclear weapons would actually add to the alliance’s deterrence and defense posture. Over the past two decades, the military rationale for maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe has all but disappeared. Over five years ago, when Cartwright was the vice-chairman of the JCS, he declared that U.S. tactical nukes in Europe were redundant because they fulfilled no military function that was not already being met by U.S. strategic and conventional forces. Colin Powell, when he was chairman of the JCS in the early 1990s, supported elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, and in 2008, U.S. European Command ended its support for maintaining nuclear weapons in Europe. Few today within U.S. and allied militaries would question these judgments.

The more vexing issue for the alliance is whether these weapons have any political and psychological value if they do not possess any military utility. NATO experts including former Pentagon officials Franklin Miller and Kori Schake continue to maintain that the weapons based in Europe are essential for reassuring allies of the United States’ security commitment. They also argue that basing them in several NATO countries is a valuable demonstration of the alliance’s principle of “equal risks, equal responsibilities.” It is important to preserve this principle. But reassurance and burden sharing might be better served if NATO spent more of its precious defense resources buying weapons and capabilities—such as improved C4ISR, strategic airlift, and heavy equipment for defense in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states—that are relevant to the real threats the alliance faces today and will confront in the future. It isn't clear why allies would be reassured by investments in new nuclear warheads and infrastructure that offer no real increase in usable military capabilities and no added deterrence beyond what British, French, and U.S. strategic arms already provide. Nor is it clear why these allies would be reassured by more modern NATO tactical nuclear weapons that could actually lower the threshold of nuclear use on allied territory.
The alliance, after much internal debate, gave an important nod toward revising its nuclear posture earlier in the decade. In NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept and its 2012 Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, the alliance left the doors open to further nuclear reductions and to other means of providing reassurance and preserving burden sharing that do not require basing U.S. nuclear weapons on NATO soil, such as more rotational deployments of U.S. strategic bombers to NATO bases. Very little has been done in the past few years, however, to move in these directions. In view of Europe’s deteriorating security environment, the United States needs to restore momentum to these efforts or at least prevent backsliding.

The United States and Russia can and should begin a new high-level dialogue on deterrence and security issues writ large, including on the impact of planned developments in strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, conventional forces, cyberweapons, and missile defenses. And nothing should be kept off the agenda, as U.S. officials have occasionally tried to do in the past with missile defenses and so-called prompt-strike conventional weapons. The alliance should also take two more immediate and meaningful steps: impose a freeze on its plans to deploy upgraded B61 bombs in Europe and announce its commitment to undertake a phased withdrawal of all U.S. nuclear weapons from the continent.


There will be resistance to these measures. Some defense and arms control experts will argue that NATO should only change its nuclear posture if Russia takes reciprocal action through a new treaty. For example, Miller, Schake, and former NATO Secretary General and British Defense Secretary George Robertson have argued for either parity between NATO and Russia (where Moscow agrees to reduce its tactical nuclear weapons to NATO’s level) or equal percentage reductions in a legally binding treaty. This is a recipe, however, for forcing NATO to continue spending money on anachronistic nuclear weapons with little gain in deterrence, while siphoning funds from much-needed conventional defense improvements. Moreover, pressing Russia to negotiate reductions in—and especially the elimination of—its roughly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons is a fool’s errand. Moscow sees these weapons as a counter to what it perceives as NATO’s conventional superiority and China’s growing military capabilities, as well as a symbol of its great power status. Further, the total lack of trust in Russia’s relations with the West makes it very unlikely that Moscow would agree to legally binding transparency and other confidence-building measures for its tactical nuclear weapons programs anytime soon.
There will also be pushback within NATO. Some members of the alliance—Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, and Germany—would conceivably support nuclear risk reduction measures; however, others such as the Baltic countries, Poland, and other Eastern European members would oppose any changes in the alliance’s nuclear plans and posture. The key to bringing recalcitrant members on board is to demonstrate with concrete actions, such as the Pentagon’s new budget proposal to spend $3.4 billion in the fiscal year 2017 to bolster U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Central and Eastern European countries and the Baltic states, that greater and more sustained investments in conventional force improvements will make them safer; that allied strategic nuclear forces are and will remain the backbone of NATO’s strategic deterrent for as long as nuclear weapons exist; that NATO’s security and nuclear deterrent are not tied to the presence of nuclear bombs on alliance soil; and that both can be maintained through broader and more robust NATO involvement in nuclear cooperation, planning, and consulting arrangements.

To borrow from the Cold War lexicon of the great nuclear strategist Herman Kahn, Russia is re-conceptualizing the ladder of escalation from conventional to nuclear conflict. NATO’s agreement to abandon plans for tactical nuclear weapons’ modernization and to eventually remove its nuclear bombs from Europe could, over time and as part of a broader strategy to re-engage Moscow on all aspects of Euro-Atlantic security, influence Russia to climb back down that ladder. And it could immediately strengthen the alliance’s defense and deterrent posture against the full range of current and emerging threats. To remain a nuclear alliance, NATO does not need to spend billions of dollars to upgrade nuclear weapons and infrastructure that it does not need and that risk lowering the nuclear threshold in Europe. The Strategic Concept and the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review left the doors open to a safer, stronger, and more affordable NATO deterrent posture. It is important for alliance leaders to pry these doors apart a little more—or at least keep them from being shut—when they meet in July at the Warsaw NATO summit.

NATO expansion east was in focus of Russia-NATO Council meeting — diplomat

The US has announced that it is increasing fourfold expenses on maintenance of forces in Europe

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. NATO’s building up military presence in Eastern Europe was one of the focal points at a session of the Russia-NATO Council, Russia’s NATO Ambassador Alexander Grushko told Rossiya 24 television on Thursday.

"I will say without going deep into details that of course it was one of the main issues, as the military theme is the closest to the competences of the Russia-NATO Council and the aims it was set up for," he said, noting that the discussion had been very substantial.

According to Grushko, the Alliance’s countries put an accent on demand for instrument of control over arms in conditions of increased military activity, urging Russia to join a dialog on modernization of these instruments, as well as spoke about the Treaty on Open Skies.

"We said absolutely clearly that NATO is trying to ‘put the cart before the horse’. The prime cause of the worsening of the military situation is not in the lack of instruments of arms control - there is a lot of them and Russia in this sense is an intensive user of these instruments," Grushko said.

"The problem is that from the mid-2000s, NATO started getting closer to our borders in military and military-infrastructural terms, exploring territories of new members, and after the Ukrainian crisis, or taking advantage of the Ukrainian crisis to be more exact, it moved to the policy of deterrence, which is expressed in concrete military construction measures," he went on.

Grushko listed among them rotation of troops, setting up of headquarters and their strengthening, creation of permanent depots of American hardware on the border with Russia, deployment of an additional continent in Europe.

"The US has announced that it is increasing fourfold expenses on maintenance of American forces in Europe," he said, noting that the level of USA presence would be brought to that of division. "All this is accompanied by repeated exercises training defense against aggression of the so-called foreign enemy. The military presence is being built up in the Black and Baltic seas," Grushko went on.

The first in the past two years session of the Council was held in Brussels on April 20.

"NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements. Today’s meeting did not change that," North Atlantic Alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said after Russia-NATO Council session.

"But we will keep channels of communication open. Especially when tensions are high, political dialogue is necessary to discuss our differences and to reduce the risk of military incidents," Stoltenberg concluded.

Grushko, for his part, said "Russia is not against a new meeting of the Russia-NATO Council, but only when it has a real agenda".


More:
http://tass.ru/en/politics/871732

US spy plane flew ‘dangerously close’ to passenger jets near Russian border

WHO IS UNPROFESSIONAL NOW ?

A US defense attache has been summoned by Russia's Defense Ministry after an incident over the Sea of Japan near Russia's eastern borders, where an American spy plane was detected flying too close to civilian aircraft.

Russia's air defense detected an RC-135 spy plane belonging to US Air Force on Sunday, the ministry said in its statement. The plane was on an air reconnaissance mission with all of its transponders having been shut off, it added.

The US crew had not provided any information regarding its flight to air traffic controllers in the region, despite it flying at the same altitude as scheduled civil aviation flights.

“As the result of the unprofessional actions of the American plane crew, the hazard of a collision with civil aviation planes was created," Russia's Defense Ministry said, adding that it asked the US official to take measures to prevent such incidents from happening near Russia's borders in the future.

At least two passenger jets belonging to major European airlines were endangered by the then-unknown aircraft over the neutral waters of the Sea of Japan on Sunday, Interfax reported.

The "unknown aircraft" was flying at the altitude of some 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) and did not respond to air traffic control, the agency said citing its source. Russian air controllers had to immediately change the flight path of a KLM Boeing-777, which was in the same region en route from Japan to Holland.

Pilots from another airplane, operated by Swiss airlines, heading to Switzerland from Japan, even reported "visual contact with a large four-engine aircraft, which was in direct proximity to their plane" and sent no recognition signals, the source said. The flying altitude for the Swiss jet also had to be changed by the air traffic control.

Following the episodes over the Baltic Sea, Russia's Defense Ministry released an official statement, saying US surveillance planes should either not approach the Russian borders or at least keep aerial transponders switched on. "Turn on transponders for automatic identification by our radars," the ministry said at the time.

Russian NATO envoy says Black Sea will never be "NATO’s lake" More: http://tass.ru/en/politics/879042

Really good article and pretty sober of how Russian authorities actually feel (well, just Grushko, but he cannot just say things out of the blue of course).

JohninMK wrote:A Russian naval expedition to the Gulf of Mexico coming up perhaps?  

According to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's European Cooperation Department the entry of US vessels into the Black Sea will trigger response measures from Russia.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The entry of US vessels into the Black Sea will trigger response measures from Russia, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's European Cooperation Department said Friday.

"From time to time, US vessels enter the Black Sea. Obviously, we do not appreciate it and, undoubtedly, this will lead to retaliatory measures," Andrei Kelin told RIA Novosti.

Earlier this week, the US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman entered the Mediterranean Sea. The move was described by Kelin as a "show of power" ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/world/20160610/1041111937/russia-us-black-sea.html#ixzz4BAd4mbOt

Even in that case, the two sides wouldn't be on par with each other. The US has NATO (and non-NATO) allies in the Black Sea and the straits are under a NATO member's control. In addition the US vessels operate in the Black Sea under full cover of SM-3 based in Develesu, Romania (new blocks covers everything), various airbases filled with friendly jets and enjoys submarine cover in that sea. Furthermore USN doesn't accompany their ships with permanent group of tug boats.

On the other hand a Russian destroyer in the Gulf of Mexico will have no NATO-like allies around, no air cover, no SM-3 equivalents based in Cuba and not many friendly jets or subs around. It will be a big fat target, far away from home.

Volga-Dnepr Airlines stops providing NATO with transportation services

The Russian airline Volga-Dnepr notified the NATO command about the termination of the provision of services for the transportation of the Alliance's forces and assets by the An-124 Ruslan aircraft. This decision was made even before the missile attack on Syria on April 14 by the US, Britain and France.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3161433.html

George1 wrote:Volga-Dnepr Airlines stops providing NATO with transportation services

    The Russian airline Volga-Dnepr notified the NATO command about the termination of the provision of services for the transportation of the Alliance's forces and assets by the An-124 Ruslan aircraft. This decision was made even before the missile attack on Syria on April 14 by the US, Britain and France.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3161433.html

Antonov has confirmed to Jane’s its offer to provide additional outsized airlift to NATO following the announcement by Volga-Dnepr that it will no longer support the alliance.

http://www.janes.com/article/79771/antonov-confirms-salis-offer-to-nato?utm_campaign=PC6110_E18%20DF%20NL%20Defence%2008_05_18&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua

And the award of the best clown goes to ...

U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said Washington remained committed to a diplomat solution but was prepared to consider a military strike if Russian development of the medium-range system continued.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1MC1J6

NATO is the obstacle to improving Russian-Western relations

This is the first of a two-part commentary by CAST director Ruslan Pukhov for Defense News on a Russian perspective of NATO, and the future of Russian-Western relations. Click here for part one.

One of the distinctive features of the modern Western political narrative with regard to NATO is an almost total misunderstanding of how the alliance is perceived in Russia. First and foremost, the Western political establishment seems blithely unaware of the fact that the issue of NATO is the main stumbling block in Russian-Western relations, and that any detente is impossible while that obstacle remains unresolved.

In Russia, NATO is generally viewed as part of the American war machine and an instrument of U.S. global dominance. That view is shared by almost the entire Russian political spectrum. In fact, the same view also prevails among NATO members from eastern Europe, where the alliance is seen as an instrument of U.S. influence and U.S. defense assurances.

That is why Russia is utterly baffled by U.S. accusations that the Kremlin — and President Vladimir Putin specifically — are trying to “drive a wedge between NATO partners.” No one in Moscow has ever regarded NATO as an independent entity that exists separately from the United States. There is a deep conviction in Russia that NATO is nothing more than an instrument of U.S. military policy, and that Washington will always be able to ram any decision through the NATO governing bodies, regardless of what its Western European partners might think of that decision.

That explains why any NATO enlargement is automatically regarded in Russia as a ruse to deploy U.S. forces in close proximity to Russian borders; NATO’s own role in that ruse is seen as a cover story — nothing more. The ongoing deployment of NATO forces in eastern Europe with the ostensible purpose of “containing and deterring Moscow” is seen in Russia as another piece of evidence to confirm that view. These new deployments are conducted under direct U.S. leadership, and most of the new forces deployed are American. The military presence of other NATO members in places such as the Baltic states is insignificant and purely symbolic. Washington and NATO describe these deployments as a “clear signal to Moscow.” In Moscow itself, that signal is read as clear evidence that all the Russian criticisms and concerns about NATO have always been entirely justified, and that the moderate Russian reaction to NATO’s enlargement in the 1990s and early 2000s was a colossal strategic blunder.

The Russian hawks have always insisted that the only reason for admitting the Baltic states to NATO was to give the United States a new forward-staging post for military deployment against Russia. It now turns out that the hawks were right all along. That is why Russia is now determined not to make the same mistake again; it will do all it can to prevent any further NATO encroachment into former Soviet territory — namely, into Ukraine and Georgia. It’s only a matter of time until this unspoken “red line” drawn by Moscow becomes an official stance.
The West does not realize that Russia views NATO enlargement as a threat of U.S. forces (potentially including missile systems) deployed ever closer to critical Russian targets. As a result, Western decision-makers underestimate the strength of the Russian national consensus on this issue. There is a popular opinion in the West that Russia opposes NATO only because of President Putin’s personal animus. That opinion is a gross and primitive misreading of the situation.


The Russian political elite was actively opposed to NATO enlargement even during the era of former Soviet and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That opposition was solidified by the hostile U.S. and Western reaction to the first Chechen campaign of 1994-1996. That reaction convinced Moscow that the West has no intention of accommodating Russian interests even on the most fundamental national security issues, including the protection of territorial integrity and the fight against terrorism.

It became clear that the Western approach to Russia was radically different from the approach to Germany and Japan after World War II: Those two nations were turned into U.S. satellites in exchange for U.S. security assurances and a recognition of their right to self-defense. But when the Chechen crisis broke out in Russia in the 1990s, Moscow realized that Washington had no intention of offering it any security benefits or recognizing its right to self-defense, even as a theoretical proposition. Russia was required to become a loyal U.S. satellite without receiving anything in return. What is more, the situation gave rise to a deep and widespread Russian suspicion that Washington is seeking to assure Russian status as a loyal vassal by means of further disintegration, weakening and decline of the Russian state.

The gradual conversion of the Russian elites to such a view in the 1990s was the main reason for the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western orientation in the 1990s. The proponents of a pro-Western Russian policy (which essentially implied Russia becoming a U.S. satellite) have since been completely marginalized because they cannot explain what tangible benefits such a course would bring Russia to outweigh the inevitable losses for Russian national security and statehood in general.

Even now, the few remaining Russian liberals tend to avoid any discussions on foreign policy and national defense issues. Much to the disappointment of their Western “friends,” they make it clear by doing so that a well-articulated, pro-Western political platform has essentially ceased to exist in Russia.
Russia’s efforts against NATO enlargement are a result of the foreign policy consensus that had coalesced even before the arrival of President Putin. Ever since the first Chechen crisis, the United States has come to be seen as a potential threat to the very foundations of Russian statehood, and as a foreign power that has no interest in supporting that statehood, even in return for Russian loyalty. That is why the deployment of American proxy forces in the shape of NATO are seen as a threat when they move ever closer to Russian borders without any security assurances being offered to Moscow.

Meanwhile, Washington never had any intention of offering Moscow any such assurances. It believed that sooner or later, Moscow would become a U.S. satellite in any case; it also wanted to preserve a certain freedom of maneuver with regard to Russia. Such a stance served only to deepen Russian suspicions and reinforce the vicious circle of mutual distrust.

As a result, NATO came to be seen by most Russians as a deeply hostile, anti-Russian military coalition long before the current crisis. Russians believe that NATO’s sole task is to maintain a state of confrontation with Russia, and most would subscribe to the idea that “without Russia, there would be no NATO.”

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3589533.html

NATO’s growing membership, demonization of Putin drive anti-Western policies

This is the second of a two-part commentary by CAST director Ruslan Pukhov for Defense News on a Russian perspective of NATO, and the future of Russian-Western relations. Click here for part one.

At the beginning of his presidency, Vladimir Putin tried to pursue a flexible and moderate policy. In the early years, his foreign policy course was as pro-Western as possible under the circumstances. But his pro-Western policy pursued during 2000-2003 was unappreciated by the United States, which regarded Moscow’s policy as evidence that it was well on its way to becoming a U.S. satellite. Washington drew the conclusion that Russia would always have to accept, unconditionally, any and every decision made by the West.

Contrary to the popular but simplistic Western narrative, the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western foreign policy course in the 1990s had nothing to do with “Russian grievances against the West.” The real reason involved a fairly rational assessment of the pros and cons of various foreign policy alternatives by the Russian political elite and the public in general.

To summarize, NATO enlargement was instrumental to the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western foreign policy course in the 1990s. And the year 2003 saw another wave of NATO enlargement: The alliance admitted the three Baltic states. It also launched efforts to secure Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession at some point in the future. To that end, the West energetically supported the “color revolutions” in the two countries in 2003 and 2004. By doing so, it turned Ukraine into a nuclear time bomb in Russian-Western relations.

Meanwhile, President Putin continues to pursue a moderate, centrist and evasive foreign policy in an effort to preserve what little common ground still remains between Russia and the West. Despite saber-rattling by Russian hawks, he decided against a full-scale invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The Western mainstream, however, paints Putin as the devil incarnate and the leader of the world’s autocrats, hellbent on “undermining global democracy”.

That demonization of Putin ignores fundamental problems in Russian-Western relations and pretends that all would be well between Russia and the West were it not for Putin’s personal role. It also feeds into the mass, Western delusion that these problems can be resolved or ameliorated once Putin is out of the way. It is, after all, crystal clear that the main goal of the successive waves of Western sanctions against Russia is the deposal of Putin and a regime change in Moscow.

The truth is that the NATO enlargement has made any potential pro-Western foreign policy agenda in Russia impossible for decades to come. Any attempt by a Russian government, whatever its orientation, to make significant concessions to the West would quickly and inevitably run up against the question of Ukraine’s admission to NATO and the inevitability of U.S. troops and missiles being deployed a mere 500 kilometers from Moscow.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, no settlement is possible without Ukraine itself becoming a reliably neutral state, but the United States would never allow that. Further, any attempts at normalizing the broader Russian-U.S. relationship would also fall foul of the Ukraine problem and of Washington’s resolve to indefinitely maintain sanctions against Moscow as an instrument of pressure on a broad range of issues. Many among the Russian elite are already resigned to the idea that “the United States will never lift the sanctions, no matter what we do.” Washington’s rhetoric and actions only serve to reinforce that conviction.

As a result, the scenario of Russia reverting to its former position of a U.S. satellite is almost completely unrealistic for the foreseeable future, regardless of who succeeds Putin at the Russian helm. The foreign policy and domestic costs of the “satellization” course would quickly become unbearable for any Russian government. As a result, even the most “democratic” regime would sooner or later follow the same trajectory as the Yeltsin and Putin administrations did: from attempts at “friendship” and “partnership” with America to an inevitable new confrontation and the same kind of rhetoric we are hearing now.

A normalization between Russia and the West (which essentially means with the United States) would only become possible if the United States concedes to Russia a place in the U.S.-led global order that would satisfy key Russian security interests, probably in return for Russia relinquishing any claims to “a sphere of influence.”

Right now, the political elites in both countries lack such a vision of Russia’s place in the world order. Besides, the U.S. elite sees no need for granting such a place to Russia among its own satellites. It still entertains the delusion that once Putin is deposed and Russia “capitulates,” the Russian problem will be resolved automatically. That is the very same delusion that existed in the U.S. establishment in the early 1990s.

As a result, there is no realistic model of a Russian integration into the Western community in the foreseeable future, and the ongoing crisis between Russia and the West will continue unabated for a very long time.

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3589304.html