The Ukraine War and Eurasian Security, Part 2

The Road Toward Arming Down

In my first post* last week on the future of European security I argued that the policy of “arming up” after the end of the Ukraine War would not make Eurasia more secure. Instead, arming up – beefing up NATO, deploying more military systems forward, hurrying Ukraine admission to the EU and potentially to NATO – would accelerate security fears on both sides. Since, in my view, the Ukraine War is likely to end in a whimper of stalemate, further tension is the likely outcome.

Arming up will bring no peace to what British geographer Halford Mackinder long ago called the security “heartland.” Russia and eastern Europe were that heartland, in his view, spreading out into the “World Island,” including all of Europe and China. If security in this Eurasian region, beyond Ukraine, is the problem to be solved, we will need a different policy once the shooting stops.

Real security in Eurasia will need an institutional design and policy steps that ensure that the people of the front line states feel safe on both sides – Russian and Baltic-Pole-Slovakian-Hungarian-Bulgarian-Romanian-and Balkan. And it will need to reassure the US and China that confrontation in Europe is no longer a threat to global stability.

Defining this security regime will take vision, supreme imagination and sophisticated statecraft. The kind of vision and statecraft Paul-Henri Spaak, Robert Schumann, and Konrad Adenauer showed in 1952 when they searched for ways to prevent a third military confrontation between Germany and its neighbors. Their vision led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which linked Belgian, French, and German coal and steel communities together, binding the industries that were at the heart of war production.  The ECSC led directly to the creation of the six-nation European Economic Community, the precursor of the 27-nation European Union. 

It is the kind of statecraft and imagination that led Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s to imagine nuclear arms limitations between the USSR and the US and to recognize that China and Russia were not joined at the hip internationally. The statecraft George H.W. Bush and James Baker used to navigate the end of the Warsaw Pact and a united Germany, as the Berlin Wall fell.

The Biden Administration and NATO’s current policy is rooted in fear and mistrust. It proposes to meet that mistrust with arms, similar to the mistrust that led to the creation of NATO. As Lord Ismay said at the time the goal of NATO was to “Keep the Russians out, the US in, and the Germans down.” NATO may have been right for the times, but part of what made it right was containing Germany, out of fear.

The goal of such statecraft needs to be security for all in the Eurasian region.  The Russians need to feel as secure as the NATO members do.  In addition, the major powers – the US and China – need to be part of such a regime. Here are some issues and elements that need to be included; the list is suggestive in order to stimulate discussion.

-       First and foremost, all the interested parties need to be included in the regime so all security needs are met. Most important, Russia needs to be an integral member shaping and participating in the design. This was not done in the 1990s (yes, I was part of the administration that failed to do it). Instead, Russia was marginalized as NATO expanded. (Hard to do; probably impossible as long as Putin is in power in Moscow).

-       Including everyone means the regime should eventually replace NATO, not make NATO the heart of the regime. (Did I make this hard enough for you to imagine already?) Otherwise, including Russia is a non-starter.

-       This might mean putting the European Union at the heart of the regime, a European solution, not an American one. (OK, so that is hard too. I told you it would take supreme vision, statecraft and imagination.) This a major challenge for the EU, which has devoted only marginal attention to military capabilities and security strategies for Eurasia. NATO has been Europe’s default.

-       This means taking Macron seriously when he (like other French presidents before him) calls for “strategic autonomy” for Europe. We live in a multipolar, not a unipolar world. Europe will need and want independence of action; indeed the caution of France and Germany about confrontation with Russia reflects that realty. Autonomy will mean creating a more comprehensive European military capability, one that can work in tandem with the US and others, but also on its own. That would make a significant US military withdrawal from Europe possible, a step  that would reassure Russia, as well. But (and this is important) that capability would have to reflect the larger regime being defined.  The reassurances of such an agreement could make Europe’s military investment less costly.

-       Arms control and arms reductions would need to be a central feature of such an arrangement. Exactly the kind of measures that both sides have cast aside over the past 25 years. Yet, arms control agreements are the specific tools that can provide the necessary reassurance to all parties: confidence-building measures, observation and verification of each other’s military activities, exchanges of military data, communications hot lines, demilitarized zones, limits on each other’s forces, agreements restraining new technologies and capabilities (hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, cyber offenses, among others), among many measures. This is not myth making. Such measures have made a difference to security around the globe in the past; there is a lot of knowledge and experience at hand. Ending insecurity on both sides is the goal.

-       Arms control agreements will need to include nuclear weapons – strategic and tactical - and missile defenses. This means a revival of global nuclear arms negotiations, including the US and China, and specifically revived agreements on the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and missile defenses in the European region. It also means a serious discussion about the role of French and British nuclear capabilities in such a regime. (Well, I am blue-skying here for a purpose; everything needs to be on the table.)

-       New institutions will be needed. This is a moment for institutional innovation, as was the moment that let to the UN, the EU, NATO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Could the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) be redefined to play a central role, since it has a security mission and all European players belong? What changes would have to be made for it to play a serious role.

-       The US and China would both need to be central partners in shaping this regime. Would they be members?  Guarantors? Answering this question could ensure two things. 1) That the US plays a role but is less centrally involved with the decisions (did I make this hard enough, yet?). That should satisfy those in the US who want the Europeans to carry more of the burden. 2) It brings China, friendly to Russia, into the deal. It’s about Eurasia, remember. China is key and may be critical to reassuring Russia about such a regime. It could also provide a route for restoring US/China cooperation in at least one arena, lowering tensions. (A US-China confrontation could blow the whole thing up).

This is clearly a road less traveled right now, as the rhetoric rises on both sides. Current policy, however points away from security and toward long-term confrontation. Europe is likely to fall short in the beefing up department, which means the US will carry the load, if support in the US for such an enterprise does not flag. Russia is not ready for this discussion and is unlikely to be until the Ukraine stalemate is clear. But downstream, this kind of solution may be the only way to reassure a post-Putin Russia that security can be had in a less costly and confrontational way.

Lest this proposal be thought “idealistic,” it is actually realistic. If security is the goal, a Eurasian security arrangement is as realistic a way of providing security as “arming up.”

*I am posting Part 2 of “The Ukraine War and Eurasian Security” close on to posting Part 1 - Will Arming Up Bring Lasting Peace” at https://sheathedsword.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-war-and-eurasian-security.  Hopefully that will make the continuity of the argument more accessible.  I am also losing my computer to repairs for a week, making posting next week impossible.