European Security after the Ukraine Conflict: Respice Finem

Introduction

The tragedy that began to unfold in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, marked a dramatic turning point in the evolution of post–Cold War European and global politics and reversed almost all positive trends of the previous thirty years. The devastating conflict dispelled any remaining illusions about a better world in Europe after the end of bipolarity and exposed the shortcomings of the existing European security architecture. The latter, as conflicts in Georgia, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslavia show, has not been adapted to resolve problems in the post-Communist space.1 Many today are wondering if the various opportunities for escalation—whether in the course of hostilities in Ukraine or in the form of incidents involving armed collisions of Russian and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ships and aircraft in the surrounding seas and airspace—will result in nuclear catastrophe. If this apocalyptic scenario is avoided, the future of European security will depend on how and when the combat actions end and what lessons are learned, primarily, from the origins of the conflict. This paper focuses on the origins, dilemmas, and escalation lines of the Ukraine conflict, along with scenarios for a future European security architecture and new approaches to arms control.
 

Endnotes

• 1Nadezhda Arbatova, “Russia and the European Union: Deferred Partnership,” Social Sciences 52 (3) (2021): 34–52.

Three Faces of the Ukraine Conflict

The Ukraine conflict can be analyzed from multiple angles, offering a wide variety of interpretations of its origins. One view suggests that the conflict did not start in February 2022 with the Russian special military operation, or in 2014 when Russia incorporated Crimea. Instead, its origins are rooted in the 1990s, and the conflict was as predictable as the course of a Greek tragedy.

In this interpretation, the Ukraine conflict has three faces. First, it can be viewed as a quintessence of the conflicting Russian and Western perceptions of the acceptable foundations of post-bipolar European security. Second, it can be presented as a culmination of the Russian-Western spheres of influence rivalry in the post-Soviet space. Third, it can be defined as the final phase of the protracted collapse of the USSR, a result of the uneven dissolution of the Soviet empire.
 

The First Face of the Ukraine Conflict
 

The end of the bilateral era immediately brought into question the institutional foundations of post-bipolar Europe. Military alliances usually last no longer than the threats they are created to deter, but the collapse of the Eastern bloc persuaded Western leaders they did not need to change anything in post-bipolar international relations. Nothing was introduced to replace the binary security system created during the Cold War.

NATO celebrated victory—it had outlasted its rival, the Warsaw Pact—and argued that, for this reason, the North Atlantic Alliance should be the basis of European security. The need for a new world order was not on the agenda of the United States, NATO, or the European Union (EU). Indeed, the Helsinki decalogue, the ten principles of the Helsinki Final Act whose observance had prevented new conflicts in Europe during the years of bilateral confrontation, came to be seen as an anachronism in Europe and the United States. For its part, the United States, which pretended to be the main victor in the defeat of the Soviet Union, proclaimed itself “the pole of democracy and freedom.” American triumphalism after the Cold War had multiple versions, none of which set as a goal the restructuring of international relations in accordance with the new reality.2

The question of who lost and who won the Cold War has not only theoretical and philosophical implications but is directly linked with the evolution of post-bipolar international relations, above all relations between Russia and the main Western power centers—the EU and NATO/the United States. World wars—and the Cold War was a world war between the two systems—as a rule have ended with peace congresses at which the victorious countries establish a new world order. The Western countries, above all the United States, considered themselves, by default, to be the winners and Russia the loser in the Cold War. American historian John Lewis Gaddis believes that international détente extended the life of the Soviet Union.3 This point is debatable. On the one hand, détente provided the USSR and its satellites with a measure of legitimacy recognized by the West, albeit with many reservations. On the other hand, détente started a process of disintegration of a stringent economic, political, and ideological Communist system, which encountered growing problems of self-justification after accepting even minor liberalization and openness to the outside world.

After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian leadership considered the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to be conceptually better prepared for the new realities than NATO. The OSCE, after all, was the only collective security organization in Europe in which Russia had a full voice, which explains why the Kremlin preferred it as the main European security institution. Russia’s efforts in the 1990s to enhance the role of the OSCE in Europe, to turn it into a “European UN,” were largely prompted by disappointment in NATO’s policy decisions in the post-Communist space. However, the reforms of the OSCE launched in the early 1990s (the creation of a few new bodies while preserving the former decision-making mechanism) failed to include any cardinal changes or to increase the organization’s role in addressing specific European security problems, as witnessed by the first stage of the Yugoslavia crisis. Russia continued to insist on the consensus principle because it was afraid of being outvoted on issues that were important to its interests. The result was a vicious circle, with Russia opposing the implementation of a new OSCE model for which Moscow itself had advocated.

Russia lost all interest in the OSCE when the post-Communist space was divided between two security institutions: NATO, which became responsible for the former Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, and the OSCE, which was responsible for the post-Soviet space. This immediately created in Moscow the impression that the OSCE was a second-rate institution for second-rate countries. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the West had displayed a condescending attitude toward the OSCE, which had played a key role in strengthening stability in Europe during the Cold War, and claimed that the role of this “loose conference of nations could never be more than complementary.”4 Christoph Bertram, a prominent German political scientist, openly expressed the opinion predominant in NATO:

As the walls tumbled all over Europe, there were many who hoped that now the Cold War alliances would be replaced by an all-European security framework—and few foresaw that this new framework would in the end have to be provided by NATO. But this is how it has turned out, not only because NATO’s members continued to feel comfortable with their organization but also because there was no other structure in place which could offer a realistic alternative to them as well as to the many other states now seeking a stable international environment on the continent.5

NATO was positioned as the main pillar of European security and given a new function—expansion to the East—which would give the organization a new raison d’être without requiring radical changes to the alliance’s foundation. From NATO’s viewpoint, relations with Russia had been settled by the signing of the 1997 Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation and the creation of the Permanent Joint Council, which failed to withstand its first serious test, the Kosovo crisis.6 Later after Russia’s contribution to the U.S. counterterrorist operation in Afghanistan, the Kremlin was offered a special structure—the NATO-Russia Council—that also did not survive its first crisis (Crimea). Russia feared that the open-ended character of NATO’s eastward enlargement would inevitably lead the North Atlantic Alliance to the post-Soviet space. Leaving aside the question of whether a process can in principle replace a goal, NATO’s decision to expand marked the triumph of traditional views on European security despite all the rhetoric about indivisible security in the post-bipolar world.

Russia initially viewed potential EU enlargement positively, an attitude that shifted after the leaders of NATO and the EU repeatedly stressed that the former’s eastward expansion and the EU’s enlargement were complementary. Lastly, the process of NATO’s expansion created a new contradiction in the post-bipolar European security that did not exist in the Cold War era: nations’ right to freely choose security alliances and their right to oppose those alliances’ enlargement if they viewed them as a threat to their national security.

Despite its opposition to the expansion of NATO and its disappointment with the OSCE, the Kremlin waited until 2009 before presenting its vision of European security in the draft Treaty on Pan-European Security. The proposal was not taken seriously by the West, which had also ignored Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech of 2007, in which Putin criticized the United States’ monopolistic dominance in global relations. Russia’s treaty proposal, however, was a message addressed to the West, signaling Russia’s deep dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in European security. Later, many European experts acknowledged “that far too little consideration was given to Russian sensitivities, interests and residual capacity to influence events on the ground, particularly but of course not only in Ukraine.”7

Looking back, we can say that relations between Russia and NATO were developing in accordance with the logic of self-fulfilling prophecies. The growth of anti-NATO sentiment in Russia was not lost even on Boris Yeltsin, who from time to time delivered angry “Russia will not allow” tirades against NATO and Washington, thus convincing the West that it had chosen the right path. That NATO openly ignored Russia’s positions further fueled mutual suspicions, paving the way to a new confrontation.
 

The Second Face of the Ukraine Conflict
 

The post-Soviet space did not turn into one of the main arenas of international contradiction between Russia and the West (EU, NATO/United States) all at once. After the disappearance of the Communist bloc, EU/NATO strategies concentrated on the return of the Central and East European and Baltic states to their European roots and later on the accession of some of these states into the EU. This strategy was primarily based on security considerations. The war in Yugoslavia revealed the potential for conflict in the post-Communist countries. By integrating the former Communist states of Central Europe, the EU sought to neutralize that potential. The core of Europe would thus stabilize its Eastern neighbors by absorbing them and bringing their institutions in line with EU institutions. Russia, however, was left out of the EU/NATO regional strategies.

Practically from the moment the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created, Russia’s integration efforts were closely watched by the West, which soon began to fear that a new Russian empire was emerging. Initially, the CIS was seen by the West mainly as a structure for solving the problems of the Soviet nuclear inheritance. After that issue was settled, however, Western leaders began to see centrifugal trends in the CIS as a source of democratization and a guarantee that the USSR would never be revived. NATO and the EU sought to push the CIS countries as far away from Russia as possible.8

When Russia managed to stabilize the CIS space (albeit in an often heavy-handed manner through the freezing of conflicts), the EU and NATO began to show an interest in involving the post-Soviet states (all except Russia) in their regional strategies. Obsessed with the idea of a revived Russian empire, the EU/NATO emphasized the separation of the post-Soviet newly independent states from Russia as a guarantee against this negative scenario. Meanwhile, the Russian leadership was concerned about Western plans to oust Russia from its natural habitat—the space once taken up by the Soviet Union itself (but excluding the former Baltic republics).

Unlike the 2008 Caucasus crisis, which was from the outset a confrontation between Russia and NATO, the Ukraine conflict started as a clash between the EU and the Russian Federation—or rather, as the rivalry of their regional strategies: the EU’s Eastern Partnership and Russia’s Eurasian Union project.9 The prospect of Ukraine signing an association agreement with the EU, which envisaged the creation of a free trade zone, met with a negative reaction from Moscow.

The turning point occurred in 2012 with Putin’s return to the Russian presidency. Moscow then shifted the direction of its post-Soviet evolution from Europe to Eurasia, and it did not want Ukraine to be on the other side of the divide. Domestic enthusiasm for a Russian turn to Eurasia seems to arise whenever the country faces uncertainty over its modernization. The 2008 economic and financial crisis in the West led Putin to the conclusion that Russia should no longer solicit modernization guidance from the weakened EU. From his point of view, Europeans were in no position to lecture other countries on good governance and democracy. Putin decided that Russia should modernize its economy without looking to European technological innovations and should instead adopt a new industrialization plan based on modern national technologies and the Eurasian Economic Union. As former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov explained, a modernization strategy does not imply mere adoption of Western countries’ achievements. Russia was not yet ready to become a postindustrial society, renouncing industrial production in favor of science and services. Instead of leaping straight to a postindustrial state, Russia would have to adopt not only Western technological and scientific achievements but also the breakthroughs and positive trends of Soviet science that had been unjustly forgotten.10 Ukraine was supposed to be a pearl in the Eurasian Economic Union crown.

The Russian leadership began to suspect that the EU’s Eastern Partnership was a smokescreen to cover up NATO expansion into the CIS space. Some among the Russian elite believed that, after Moscow’s tough reaction to the Caucasus crisis, the West had decided to change its tactics and prioritize the EU by offering the Eastern Partnership program, which would pave the way for NATO to create its sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space. As early as 2009, when asked whether Ukraine should join NATO so it could eventually join the EU, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor replied that Ukraine should decide for itself whether to join the EU or NATO first.11

Russia’s setbacks on the path to democracy also rekindled its neighbors’ feelings of uncertainty and fear. Russia has only itself to blame for failing to formulate a realistic new concept of European security in a timely manner. The Russian leadership is to blame for failing to build new relations with the former Soviet republics and slipping into a counterproductive model of relations based on the exchange of economic bonuses for political loyalty. The euphoria over the dissolution of the USSR in 1992 gave way to a sense of loss and defeat in 1993—defeat not on the far approaches but in the immediate surroundings. In the end, mistrust and suspicion of each other’s true intentions turned the CIS into a zone of rivalry between Russia and the West. That this rivalry could spill over from economic and political spheres into military confrontation between the leading powers and their alliances soon became evident.
 

The Third Face of the Ukraine Conflict
 

The uneven dissolution of the USSR, with its uneven reforms and their uneven implementation, created an explosive potential. The USSR was dissolved with the stroke of a pen without serious discussion of the problems the newly independent states would inherit: territorial and border disputes, problems of national minorities, common infrastructure, and so on. This circumstance went a long way to determining Russia’s relations with its closest neighbors, cemented differences with the West, and ultimately fed the nostalgia of a large part of Russian society for the lost empire and former great-power status.

The collapse of the USSR opened up for Russia the prospect of economic and political modernization and a return to Europe as a modern prosperous state. Unfortunately, these opportunities were not pursued by the 1990s reformers. Moreover, their miscalculations in the choice of economic model largely discredited—in Russian eyes—the concepts of market, democracy, and cooperation with the West. Believing that its coming to power meant the triumph of democracy, the new leadership, for all its good intentions, set about ruling the country by essentially the same authoritarian methods. In creating a market economy at all costs (shock therapy), the reformers hoped that the invisible hand of the market would transform the political foundation of post-Soviet Russia. Having taken a step toward a parliamentary system, to be on the safe side they put the institution of the presidency above the separation of powers and created a hybrid form of state with elements of autocracy and undeveloped democracy. The imperative for the consistent Europeanization of Russia was supplanted by a naive-pragmatic calculation that “the West will help us.”

Both the United States and Europe, in spite of their support of the Russian democratic reformers, took a condescending, and sometimes dismissive, attitude toward post-Soviet Russia. The West perceived Russia as a weak and dependent state that had lost its superpower status. As American political scientist Michael Mandelbaum stresses,

This Western approach to Russia was not, as during the Cold War, one of active, principled hostility. Indeed, the two major Western initiatives were not, on the whole, aimed at Russia at all. On the basis of NATO and EU initiatives, however, neither could the Western approach to Russia be described as one of active embrace. Six years after the end of the Soviet Union, the door to the West was not closed to Russia; but neither was it flung wide open. Post-communist Russia was not, in any case, yet in a position to walk confidently through that door. When and if it is ready to do so, however—and indeed even before that—Russian foreign policy would not, and will not, be determined by Russia alone.12

In Europe, British political scientist Lawrence Freedman summed up this view most bluntly when he wrote, “There is now no particular reason to classify Russia as a ‘great power’ . . . It cannot therefore expect the privileges, respect and extra sensitivity to its interests normally accorded a great power.”13

The failures of the Yeltsin reformers, most significantly their economic policy, which impoverished the Russian population, coupled with the West’s disdainful attitude toward “a weak Russia,” fueled nostalgia for the Soviet Union in Russian society. The USSR had collapsed in 1991, but its democratic transformation never become final and irreversible.

The collapse of empires is in principle a painful process often accompanied by wars. Even the British Empire ended with a fight. Over several decades, Britain withdrew from its colonial possessions with one exception, the miniscule Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, where in 1982 the United Kingdom fought and won a brief war with Argentina—its victory a kind of imperial consolation prize.14 Apparently, Russia, contrary to expectations, was unable to escape the fate of all disintegrating empires, which cannot justify the tragedy in Ukraine.
 

Endnotes

• 2Ibid., 43–44.
• 3“When Worlds Collided,” The Guardian, January 7, 2006.
• 4Christoph Bertram, “Why NATO Must Enlarge,” NATO Review 45 (2) (March 1997): 14–17.
• 5Ibid., emphasis added.
• 6NATO’s military operation against Yugoslavia in 1999 was the newly enlarged alliance’s first operation, a fact that merely confirmed Moscow’s suspicions about the true meaning of NATO enlargement.
• 7Ian Kearns, “Kissinger’s Cold War Lessons for the EU’s Eastern Partnership,” European Leadership Network, February 19, 2014.
• 8Nadezhda Arbatova, “Three Faces of Russia’s Neo-Eurasianism,” Survival 61 (6) (2019): 7–24.
• 9The project was later renamed the Eurasian Economic Union since Russia’s partners advocated only economic integration.
• 10Nadia Alexandrova-Arbatova, “The EU-Russia Partnership: A New Context,” Policy Brief no. 5, European Strategic Partnerships Observatory, Hamburg, July 2012, 3–4.
• 11“USA: Ukraine Must Choose between the EU and NATO” [in Russian], Rosbalt, March 21, 2009.
• 12Michael Mandelbaum, “Introduction: Russian Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” Council on Foreign Relations, 1998; emphasis added.
• 13Lawrence Freedman, “The New Great Politics,” in Russia and the West: The Twenty First Century Security Environment, ed. Alexei Arbatov, Karl Kaiser, and Robert Legvold (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 26.
• 14Richard Halloran, “The Sad, Dark End of the British Empire,” Politico, August 26, 2014.

Justice versus Peace or Cease-Fire versus Escalation?

From the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, European public opinion overwhelmingly supported Ukraine and put the bulk of responsibility for the conflict on Russia, which helped to solidify Europe’s political response. Before the Ukraine conflict, Europeans have often appeared reluctant to coordinate their foreign, security, and defense policies, instead preferring to “go it alone.” The Ukraine crisis, however, has elicited a strong, unified response from the EU, NATO, and their member states.15

However, several months into the war a pan-European opinion poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations showed that clear divisions had emerged. Voters were asked whether Europe should seek to end the war as soon as possible—even if it meant Ukraine making concessions—or whether the most important goal was “to punish Russia for its aggression” and to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine—even if such a road prolonged the conflict and caused more human suffering.16 The first option defined the so-called peace camp; the latter, the justice camp, including not only Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans but also expatriate Russian opposition political figures who want Putin’s Russia to be defeated by any means.

The “peace versus justice” dilemma, which is presented as a choice between “surrender or revenge,” in practice means a different alternative: “a cease-fire agreement versus escalation.” Supporters of the justice approach oppose not only peace talks between Ukraine and Russia but also a cease-fire agreement. As Jake Johnson, an American journalist, has pointed out, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s position in June 2022 “was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined. Johnson, too, has publicly dismissed the prospect of an imminent diplomatic resolution to the conflict.”17  

They proceed from several premises. First, they say that Ukrainians alone are entitled to decide their future, and they refer to the November statement of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “There will be no peace talks between Ukraine and Russia as long as Vladimir Putin remains Russian leader.”18

Second, the justice camp compares the Ukraine war with past wars and claims that in those conflicts the winning sides were always ready to go to the bitter end. Perhaps this is true, but it ignores the fact that military luck is changeable and that none of the sides in past European wars possessed the destructive potential of nuclear weapons. The aggregate destructive potential of the world’s nuclear arsenals, 80 percent of which is controlled by Russia and the United States, is sixty thousand times greater than the destructive power of the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A global nuclear catastrophe today would have no winners, no losers, no right and wrong sides.

Third, the justice camp argues that Putin will use a cease-fire as a respite to regroup Russian forces and prepare new offensives. But a respite could also be used by the EU and NATO to rearm Ukraine. For instance, the agreed EU plan envisions military assistance to Ukraine in the form of a “security compact”; security assurances that would respond to renewed Russian aggression; economic support, giving Ukraine access to the EU’s single market; and help to secure Ukraine’s energy supply.19 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referred to this argument in his June 2023 briefing, which focused on a wide range of international issues: “Recently, Foreign Affairs published an article by Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, who described exactly this scenario: achieving a cessation of fire and having a respite. Of course, Russia will also get a respite but Ukraine has the entire West behind it. So, they argue, the West will make Ukraine much stronger and then they will continue to achieve the goals stated in Vladimir Zelenskyy’s ‘peace formula.’”20

Last but not least, the justice camp opposes a cease-fire agreement because the Russian president, who cannot be trusted, wants it. As the French editor Nicolas Tenzer wrote in his article “There Can Be No Peace With Russia,” “Ukrainian leaders have rightly made it clear that they cannot talk to the Russian regime as long as Putin is in power. Western leaders must adopt this position too. There can be no peace with Russia . . . unless they want to facilitate the Kremlin’s devious work, which also involves a fake discourse of peace.”21

In Russia, opponents of a cease-fire agreement want President Putin to escalate the war, use more devastating weapons, and hit Ukrainians even more mercilessly.

As the fighting in Ukraine continues, as cities are being destroyed and people are dying, the question inevitably arises whether all the possibilities of the Minsk Agreements have been fully exhausted or whether they were doomed from the beginning as a result of the differing policies, preferences, and ambitions of the politicians involved in this process.22 Recently, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel23 and former French President François Hollande24 exposed the true intentions of the West in the Minsk process by saying that the Minsk Agreements had been signed with the aim of giving Ukraine time to get stronger—a position that seems tailor-made to confirm the Kremlin’s justification of its “special military operation.” According to the Russian president,25 the Minsk Agreements were killed by the current Kyiv authorities long before Russia recognized the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.26 Still, the greatest weakness of the Minsk process appears not to have been imperfections in the text of the Minsk Agreements but the absence of any mechanism to establish a stable cease-fire under international control.

The argument most frequently repeated by opponents of a peacekeeping operation in a buffer zone is the assertion that it would freeze the conflict. However, in the absence of a mutually acceptable solution to the conflict, “freezing” the status quo is not the worst option if the conflict is frozen properly in accordance with a United Nations mandate and on a multilateral basis.

If the Minsk Agreements had provided a stable and reliable cease-fire—dividing the warring parties by an international peacekeeping contingent equipped with heavy weapons under the mandate of the UN Security Council—today’s conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided. As Jean Arnault, a French diplomat, points out,

concern over the agreement’s imperfections in terms of wording, feasibility or legitimacy should be weighed against the paramount need to maintain the momentum of the overall transition. Ambiguities, lacunae, even stark impossibilities are acceptable costs. Over time ambiguities will be lifted, lacunae will be filled, amendments will be made to take account of impossibilities and, most importantly, the relevance of seemingly intractable issues will erode as the parties gradually learn to value accommodation over confrontation. Implementation, in that sense, not only cannot, but should not, be expected to be a mirror image of the original agreement.27

There are many historical examples in which politicians were forced to sign unfair peace agreements that looked like a defeat, but in the long run turned out to be a win because they saved entire nations and brought durable peace. The Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt brokered by the United States and signed on September 17, 1978, are a classic example of this kind. In line with the “land for peace” formula, Israel agreed to withdraw its armed forces from the Sinai Peninsula. The Camp David Accords paved the way for the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Israelis and Palestinians, which in turn opened the door to the 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan. Despite the fact that the agreements brought peace to the Middle East, many in both the Arab world and Israel considered them unfair. There are also opposite examples. Tsarist Russia during World War I did not want to make concessions to Germany and in turn lost everything. Those who prefer justice to peace get neither.

A cease-fire agreement is only the first (necessary) step in a long and difficult peace process. The only realistic alternative to endless slaughter is “a cease-fire without preconditions” that will stop mass killing and bring the fighting to an end. Ukraine’s demand that Russia withdraw all its troops before a cease-fire agreement is established seems impossible, because the Russian leadership will not agree to it. The military has its own rules for the cessation of hostilities.

A cease-fire line can be established along existing fronts and should be extended to Russian and Ukrainian strikes against each other’s cities from within their own territories. The goal is simply to stop hostilities. The numerous remaining controversial matters—including “Russia’s withdrawal from the occupied territories” and Ukraine’s membership in NATO—should be the subject of negotiations after a cease-fire.

In “How to Avoid Another World War,” Henry Kissinger draws parallels between the current conflict in Ukraine and World War I: “Because no conceivable compromise could justify the sacrifices already incurred and because no one wanted to convey an impression of weakness, the various leaders hesitated to initiate a formal peace process.”28 A cease-fire agreement is often confused with peace talks. However, the distance between them is huge. Without a cease-fire, peace talks cannot be started. True, a military truce does not itself guarantee the success of peace talks, but it offers a chance for peace and helps to prevent the next round of escalation.
 

Endnotes

• 15Federica Fazio and Valerio Alfonso Bruno, “Is Russia’s War in Ukraine Creating a New European Security Architecture?” Fair Observer, July 12, 2022.
• 16Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, “Peace versus Justice: The Coming European Split over the War in Ukraine,” ECFR Policy Brief, June 2022, 1–27.
• 17Jake Johnson, “Boris Johnson Pressured Zelenskyy to Ditch Peace Talks With Russia: Ukrainian Paper,” Common Dreams, May 6, 2022.
• 18Sergei Kuznetsov, “Zelenskyy: There Will Never Be Peace Talks with Putin,” Politico, September 28, 2022.
• 19Piotr Buras, Marie Dumoulin, Gustav Gressel, and Jeremy Shapiro, “Survive and Thrive: A European Plan to Support Ukraine in the Long War against Russia,” ECFR Policy Brief, September 9, 2022.
• 20Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s briefing on a wide range of international issues, including humanitarian aspects in the context of developments in Ukraine, June 30, 2023.
• 21Nicolas Tenzer, “There Can Be No Peace With Russia,” CEPA, September 21, 2023.
• 22The Minsk Agreements, known as the Minsk Protocol drafted in 2014 and its revised and updated version Minsk II signed in 2015, were international agreements that sought to end the war in Donbas fought between armed pro-Russian separatists, who relied on Moscow’s support, and Armed Forces of Ukraine. The negotiations (the so-called Minsk process) were conducted by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. Minsk Protocol, in Russian; Minsk II, in Russian.
• 23Kevin Liffey, “Putin Says Loss of Trust in West Will Make Future Ukraine Talks Harder,” Reuters, December 9, 2022.
• 24Theo Prouvost, “Hollande: ‘There Will Only be a Way Out of the Conflict When Russia Fails on the Ground,’” The Kyiv Independent, December 28, 2022.
• 25“Attempt to ‘Give Ukraine Time’: Merkel on Minsk agreements,” TASS–Russian News Agency, July 12, 2022.
• 26Nadezhda Arbatova, “Were the Minsk Agreements Doomed to Failure? An Alternative Historyv,” Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, 2022.
• 27Jean Arnault, Good Agreement? Bad Agreement? An Implementation Perspective (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 2006).
• 28Henry Kissinger, “How to Avoid Another World War,” The Spectator, December 17, 2022.

Risks of Nuclear Escalation

The academic community in Russia and abroad disagrees on the possibility of nuclear escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Many concerned analysts say that the international community should take the risks of escalation seriously rather than talking about a Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat. Others argue that the irresponsible calls of some Russian politicians and experts to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine are no more than a bluff and that Russia will never use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict because doing so would be suicidal.29 They cite the example of wars between nuclear and nonnuclear states that did not lead to a nuclear conflict, such as the U.S. war in Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. But those were peripheral theaters whose importance cannot be compared with the existential challenge of the Ukraine conflict for Russia or the Cuban Missile Crisis for the United States.

According to threat analysis specialist Cynthia Grabo, threat assessment does not emerge from a compilation of “facts,” nor does it flow from a majority consensus. A threat assessment results from a focused and exhaustive research effort and is expressed in probabilities instead of certainties.30 A nuclear threat assessment is thus a specialized area of expertise that requires understanding of a wide range of issues, including escalation lines and even the place of analogies in political and military thinking. So, the issue is not whether “I believe escalation is likely” but whether a probability of escalation exists. If you are walking down the street, the probability that a brick will fall on your head is very small. But if you are walking on a construction site, the probability will be much higher, and you should wear a safety helmet. How serious the escalation of the Ukraine conflict looks for Russia and the world is confirmed by the recent revolt of the merciless field commander Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Fortunately, we can only guess what he would have done to end the war if he had seized power.

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has affected the state’s approach to nuclear weapons.31 President Putin, like other proponents of nuclear weapons in Russia and elsewhere, generally argues that they are a deterrent factor and thus important for ensuring peace and security worldwide, since they saved humanity from the threat of World War III.32 Nowadays this thesis is undergoing a severe test in Ukraine.

Addressing the Security Council of the Russian Federation in February 2022, President Putin presented a detailed interpretation of a threat to “the very existence of the Russian state.” Speaking about NATO’s possible expansion into Ukraine, he pointed out that “for the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.”33 Putin’s statement, which allows for a broader interpretation of nuclear deterrence, should be viewed not so much as evidence of Russia’s intention to start a nuclear war but as a warning against actions Putin finds undesirable, including NATO’s provision of military aid to Ukraine. This posture creates a dangerous linkage: the greater the military success of the Ukrainian armed forces, the higher the risk of nuclear escalation.

Despite Ukraine’s territorial gains, the war is not likely to end with the full restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity, as President Zelenskyy demands. Russia’s staying power is more substantial than Ukraine’s. Thus, despite economic difficulties and military problems, Russia is not likely to submit to Ukraine’s conditions. However, Russia cannot win a quick victory in a conventional war either, and at a certain point this increases the risk of using tactical nuclear weapons. According to Joris Van Bladel, a military expert in the Egmont Royal Institute, “Russia possesses the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons and a highly proactive nuclear strategy. Thus, Russia remains a world power even in its most vulnerable and weakest state. The danger of such an unbalanced power status is that the escalation ladder is steep and quick.”34

Four potential lines of escalation seem most plausible. First, stakes would increase exponentially if Ukraine were to launch missile strikes against Moscow and St. Petersburg, especially if the strikes involved long-range weapons provided by the United States (or developed indigenously by Ukraine, which still possesses significant technical knowledge and skill). According to Alexey Arbatov, head of the Center for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute for World Economy and International Relations, this scenario is associated with

the planned deliveries of American М207 and М142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine; in addition to rockets, they can launch ATACMS or PrSM tactical-guided ballistic missiles with a range of 300 and 500 km respectively (similar to Russia’s 9М723 Iskander M systems). Moscow warned that such systems would pose a threat to Russia’s territory, which might lead to a dangerous conflict escalation. Washington responded by saying it would for the time being abstain from delivering these missiles to Ukraine, confining itself to only supplying rocket shells (with a range of up to 80 km).35

Second, because Crimea—especially the military base in Sebastopol—holds special, almost sacred, meaning for the Kremlin, a Ukrainian assault on Crimea would cross a “real red line” for Russia and likely risk an escalation of the war. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledges that reclaiming Crimea would be “an exceptionally difficult fight” because President Putin has attached so much importance to it.36

Third, a collapse of the front could lead to a repeat of Russia’s experience in World War I, when the “poorly motivated and provisioned Russian army collapsed, helping bring down an out-of-touch czar.”37 Vladimir Putin, who portrays himself as a strong and successful leader, cannot afford to lose this war. In the event of the collapse of the front, he will take extreme measures, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

 Fourth, Russia’s tactical nuclear deal with Belarus could lead to an “extremely dangerous escalation.”38 Psychological factors also need to be taken into account. The Russian military likes to draw analogies to the past, particularly to past U.S. experiences. Using such analogical thinking, some Russian leaders might seek lessons in the U.S. use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to achieve decisive victory over Japan in World War II.

Sixty years ago, the diplomatic efforts launched by Moscow and Washington after the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly brought about nuclear disaster, marked a turning point in the Cold War. Hopefully, an agreed cease-fire in Ukraine will once more move the world away from the threat of nuclear disaster. Ukraine’s demands should then be discussed and agreed to in the format of peace talks. Although Western interests overlap with Ukraine’s, they are broader and include nuclear stability with Russia and the ability to influence the trajectory of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.
 

Endnotes

• 29Sergei Karagnov, “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” Russia in Global Affairs 13 (6) (2023).
• 30Cynthia M. Grabo, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (Washington, D.C.: Joint Military Intelligence College’s Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, 2002).
• 31The official “documents of the Russian Federation” define conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons. First, “the Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies.” Second, nuclear weapons may be used “in case of an aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.” The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, Kremlin News, February 6, 2020.
• 32“Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club” [in Russian], President of Russia, October 27, 2016.
• 33“Address by the President of the Russian Federation” [in Russian], President of Russia, February 24, 2022.
• 34Joris Van Bladel, “Whom Are We Fighting? Some Thoughts Related to Russia’s Latest Mobilization Plan,” Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations, October 3, 2022.
• 35Alexey Arbatov, “The Ukrainian Crisis and Strategic Stability” [in Russian], Polis: Political Studies 4 (9) (2022): 10–31.
• 36John Grady, “Losing Crimea Would Escalate Russian-Ukraine Conflict, Former Defense Secretary Says,” USNI News, February 2, 2023. Russia defends its annexation of Crimea by claiming it was necessary to secure its military base in Sebastopol and protect the Russian population in the region.
• 37Peter A. Wilson and William Courtney, “How the War in Ukraine Could End Sooner Than Expected,” The RAND Blog, January 17, 2023.
• 38“EU Condemns Russian Deal to Station Nuclear Warheads in Belarus,” Reuters, May 26, 2023.

Uncertain Future

Until the current conflict can be resolved, any discussion of the details of a post-conflict European security architecture will necessarily be speculative. Much will depend on the post-conflict domestic evolution of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the outcome of the next U.S. presidential election. However, the Ukraine conflict has already had serious security implications and highlighted the most important trends in the European security landscape.
 

Trends
 

Ukraine has emerged as a major state in Eastern Europe. Its army is the most efficient in the region for the first time in modern history. Regardless of formalities, it is already viewed as a de facto part of the Euro-Atlantic world, effectively a ward of the EU and NATO. As Belgian analyst Sven Biscop points out, “the independent Ukraine that is fighting for survival already today is a member of the Western security architecture. The EU underscored that by according the country candidate status in June 2022 (though that decision seems to have been motivated more by emotions than by conscious strategic thinking).”39

The Ukraine conflict has become a catalyst for the strategic autonomy of the EU and has sharply raised in Brussels the question of the EU’s capabilities in ensuring territorial defense. In March 2021, the EU created the European Peace Facility (EPF), “an off-budget funding mechanism for EU actions with military and defense implications” that will allow the EU to deliver lethal weapons to non-EU countries.40 Through the EPF, the EU has already provided €1.5 billion in financial support to Ukraine’s military, with an additional €500 million promised. EU leaders also agreed on the need for more effective defense spending (a €2 billion investment), which will spur defense innovation while reducing industrial fragmentation in coordination with NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic and the newly created Innovation Fund. Even Ireland, a neutral island with no geographical or commercial proximity to Russia, is doubling its relatively low military spending.41

At the start of the Ukraine conflict, NATO activated its Response Force, a highly capable, technologically advanced multinational force of forty thousand troops that can be deployed quickly in response to an emerging crisis. The alliance also extended its borders in Europe by embracing formerly neutral states Finland and Sweden. The Biden administration has used these developments to demonstrate that the United States remains an indispensable partner to its European allies. Although a return to the traditional Atlanticism of the Cold War is no longer possible due to U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific region, the American presence in Europe has, for the time being, been extended and strengthened. However, politicians come and go, and U.S. foreign policy changes with them. Therefore, “Europeans must not simply hope they can accommodate potentially dramatic shifts in U.S. policy in the coming years, but should instead take steps now to enhance and protect their own position in the world.”42

Russia has embarked on a path of fierce competition with the West and the search for allies in the South and East. “In the face of the perceived frontal onslaught of EU and NATO enlargement into Eastern Europe, Putin has been turning [to] Europe’s flanks. Russia has forged a special relationship with Turkey; it has intervened successfully in Syria, safeguarding its naval base in Tartus; and it has established a military presence from the shores of the Mediterranean to Central Africa.”43

In reality, Russia’s Eurasian pivot began much earlier than February 24, 2022. The publication of Putin’s article “A New Integration Project for Eurasia: The Future in the Making” in Izvestia on October 3, 2011, officially marked Russia’s departure from Europe and from the West more generally.44 The Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s incorporation of Crimea persuaded Putin that he was on the right track. The Kremlin now views China as the most important of the non-Western states, making it a significant factor in European security for the first time in its modern history. The Kremlin tries to be on equal terms with China, but at the same time it recognizes China’s role in international relations, which makes it a particularly valuable ally.

Although China portrays itself as Russia’s strategic partner, it is playing its own game, keeping a balance between all international actors to make the best of its position and upgrade its role in the international arena. Turkey is Russia’s “second best,” although it plays a controversial role in the Ukraine conflict. Ankara supports Kyiv politically and militarily while maintaining close ties with Moscow and participating in the extension of the grain deal. Taking into account Ankara’s diplomatic balancing game since Russia started its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Turkey can be viewed as a situational but important partner for Russia. Iran, given its general anti-Western orientation, is a more unambiguous partner for Russia. The war in Ukraine has led to unprecedented levels of Russian-Iranian cooperation in the military, economic, and political spheres. The rise of anti-Western hardliners in both Moscow and Tehran means that this cooperation is likely to continue and to intensify, despite the differences between them.45

Despite Russia’s activity in the southern European periphery, first and foremost in Serbia and the Republika Srpska in Bosnia, its capabilities have significantly decreased as a result of the special military operation in Ukraine, drastically changing its position in the Black Sea region. During the Cold War, most of the littoral states in the region were allied with the USSR, the only exception being NATO member Turkey. Now the situation is the opposite. Ukraine is at war with Russia, the other littoral states have troubled relations with the Kremlin, and Turkey, although still a NATO member, is now Russia’s situational partner. With the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the alliance’s area of responsibility has expanded, and the Baltic Sea—with the exception of the areas around Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg—has become a de facto NATO sea.

Current trends in international relations thus point to the continuation of a multipolar world. Will it remain so the day after the Ukraine conflict ends? The answer will depend on how and when that end comes.
 

Scenarios
 

There are many scenarios describing how the course of the war in Ukraine might play out. Most are intellectually exciting but give only a speculative or static picture and do not account for the multivector dynamics of the conflict or the time frame. For instance, the long grind scenario described by analysts with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) contemplates the war continuing in its current form for years, with each side taking wins and losses along the way but with neither side achieving a decisive victory.46 According to these analysts, this low-intensity warfare will be similar to what the Soviet Union experienced during its long war in Afghanistan and would risk destabilizing Russia. The parallel between the Ukraine and Afghanistan conflicts seems to be artificial, however. The Afghan conflict was a secondary theater of military operations for the USSR, while the Ukraine conflict has existential meaning for Russia. Similarly, the stalemate/low-level conflict scenario in which the war grinds on with lengthy trench warfare—the experience of World War I—seems anachronistic in the twenty-first century.

Regardless of how the Ukraine conflict evolves, the outcome will determine the future architecture of European security. If we discard the most dramatic scenario of a nuclear conflict, the range of options is not wide. Given deep divides between Russia and the West, at present two models of Europe could feasibly emerge from the Ukraine conflict.

One model is akin to Europe in the Berlin crisis era of 1948–1949; that is, a newly divided Europe, with Ukraine playing the role of Cold War Berlin. This outcome could result if a cease-fire does not lead to a peace treaty. During the Cold War, Berlin was the site of numerous crises, leading Europe to the verge of global conflict in 1961. As political scientist Steven Miller notes of this period, “Serious dialogue between the great Cold War protagonists was virtually nonexistent. States were unconstrained by arms control agreements. There were few norms or tacitly agreed codes of conduct. To the extent that order existed at all, it emerged from the uncoordinated unilateral steps and choices of states acting on the basis of their own perceived self-interest.”47 Thus, if this model were replayed today in Ukraine, the expected outcomes would include the end of Russian-Western cooperation on pressing international issues and the likely stationing of American nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory.

The role of international organizations, primarily the OSCE, would also be nullified. Moscow might systematically block consensus, which would paralyze the OSCE, severely obstruct the work of its autonomous institutions, and force the closure of its field operations. In turn, the Western states would join together to sideline Russia, leading to Moscow’s withdrawal from the OSCE and the loss of the organization’s raison d’être. Once it became just another international organization that excludes Russia, the OSCE would likely collapse.

The second model—Europe of the Berlin agreement of 1972—is more optimistic. The agreement opened a window for settling the most urgent issues in Europe and led to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. In this scenario, Russia and the West achieve a peaceful coexistence and limited cooperation on European security, with the OSCE again adopting an inclusive nature and framework. In the best-case scenario, participating states would compromise to preserve the OSCE as a multilateral platform for broader cooperation on European security. Eventually, a European forum would need to be held to determine a new order for Europe, work that would have to include security guarantees for Ukraine and the other East European countries. Instead of membership in NATO, they could be offered bilateral security agreements with the NATO states. Such an arrangement could ease these countries’ frustration with their “in-between” status.
 

Endnotes

• 39Sven Biscop, “War for Ukraine and the Rediscovery of Geopolitics: Must the EU Draw New Battlelines or Keep an Open Door?” Egmont Paper 123, Egmont–The Royal Institute for International Relations, Brussels, June 2023, 5.
• 40“European Peace Facility,” European Commission.
• 41Fazio and Bruno, “Russia’s War in Ukraine.”
• 42Célia Belin, Majda Ruge, and Jeremy Shapiro, “Brace Yourself: How the 2024 US Presidential Election Could Affect Europe,” ECFR Policy Brief, May 30, 2023.
• 43Biscop, “War for Ukraine,” 3.
• 44 The article is reprinted on the website of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union.
• 45Ellie Geranmayeh and Nicole Grajewski, “Alone Together: How the War in Ukraine Shapes the Russian-Iranian Relationship,” ECFR Policy Brief, September 6, 2023.
• 46Alina Polyakova, Edward Lucas, James Lamond, Bobo Lo, and Lauren Speranza, “What Does Europe Look Like 3–7 Years after Russia’s War in Ukraine?” CEPA, May 24, 2022.
• 47Steven E. Miller, “The Rise and Decline of Global Nuclear Order?” in Steven E. Miller and Alexey Arbatov, Nuclear Perils in a New Era: Bringing Perspective to the Nuclear Choices Facing Russia and the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021), 6.

Searching for New Approaches to Arms Control

Arms control may be perceived as an indispensable attribute of a historical period of transition from uncompromising confrontation to a cooperative and integrated new world order. It can last for decades with breakthroughs and pullbacks. Even before the Ukraine conflict, the professional strategic community harbored significant concerns about the disintegrating treaty network, which has created the risk of a new arms race. In 2019, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty, paving the way for deployment in Eastern Europe of medium-range hypersonic missiles, capable of reaching Moscow in a matter of ten to twelve minutes. The Trump administration withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty in 2020, threatened to withdraw from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and refused to prolong the New START Treaty at the end of Trump’s tenure.48

When Joe Biden’s Democratic administration came to the White House in January 2021, New START was prolonged for another five years, until February 5, 2026. However, this process was interrupted by Russia’s diplomatic démarche of February 21, 2023, when in a state-of-the-nation address to the Federal Assembly President Putin announced Russia’s suspension of New START: “I am compelled to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START Treaty.” To restore the treaty, he declared that the United States must cut off support for Ukraine and bring France and the United Kingdom into arms control talks.49

Notably, Putin did not announce total withdrawal from the New START Treaty, merely the suspension of Russian participation. This could, negatively, imply a return to an uncontrolled strategic offensive arms race, a hugely expensive outcome for a Russian state already struggling to bear the considerable costs of its military operation in Ukraine. Follow-on effects could include the collapse of the CTBT, Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so on, threatening to undermine the security of all nations, including Russia, since strategic parity would be put at risk too. The New START Treaty achieves parity, or approximate equality, of the two parties’ nuclear arsenals. However, in an unlimited arms race, the United States would most likely be able to increase its strategic nuclear forces faster and to a greater degree than Russia. U.S. leadership has indicated it will try to live with the suspended treaty before deciding on a full withdrawal.50

The most common explanation for the main nuclear powers’ declining interest in keeping the arms control regime alive involves two factors: the emergence of new technologies and the absence of new arms control methods to deal with them. However, the main reason for this is that the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine has brought relations between Russia and the West full circle, returning the world to “a Cold War–like environment” and bringing the powers back into confrontation. Well before February 2022, however, arms control had ceased to be a priority for the post-bipolar generation of politicians and experts. The latter proposed the abandonment of past practices and argued that nuclear multipolarity and innovative weapons systems would make irrelevant the old principles of arms control, including parity, quantitative levels and sublevels, and weapons counting and other verification methods.51 The old methods, along with the INF and START Treaties, seemed destined for the scrape pile. In exchange, the experts proposed a multilateral dialogue (primarily between Russia, the United States, and China) on new principles of strategic stability, military transparency, and predictability.52 Their goal was not to promote arms limitation but to strengthen mutual deterrence so as to prevent conflicts among the great powers. The notion of strategic stability was being blurred and interpreted as a general state of international security or even as a kind of global harmony. 
 

New Technologies, Strategic Balance, and Arms Control
 

The current state of strategic balance is contradictory. On the one hand, radical reductions in nuclear weapons have had a positive impact on strategic stability. On the other hand, the power of the remaining nuclear arsenals is immense, and the disruptive technologies can hardly negate it in the foreseeable future. The impact of disruptive technologies on the strategic balance should be monitored and constantly analyzed in order to adjust deterrence programs and arms control negotiations accordingly.53 But their role should neither be exaggerated nor used as a justification for abandoning arms control altogether.

The deployment of disruptive technologies and weapons is likely to have fewer tangible effects than did the deployment of long-range ballistic missiles at the end of the 1950s or the introduction of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) in the early 1970s, not to mention the shock of the initial creation of nuclear weapons. Disruptive technologies could have a negative impact on strategic stability by increasing uncertainty and unpredictability, but they will not replace nuclear weapons as the main threat to global security. “New technologies,” whether MIRVs, long-range cruise missiles, or the Strategic Defense Initiative, have always been accompanied by increased uncertainty in strategic relations. Still, arms control methods were able to cope with the new challenges.

How disruptive technologies might impact on strategic stability is not yet clearly understood (in contrast, for instance, to how the growing accuracy of MIRVed warheads has contributed to counterforce capabilities). Hence, there are no persuasive arguments against proceeding with traditional START reductions (even marginal reductions) as the best way to provide strategic transparency and predictability. At the same time, the revival of New START and its follow-on should serve as an indispensable foundation for future agreements that incorporate long-range conventional systems, tactical nuclear arms, and (if possible) disruptive technologies of the future.

The same logic applies to the world order. Revolutionary changes will not result from the advent of new arms technologies. Nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear conflict as a result of escalation must remain the focus of politicians and the strategic community. The most telling example is the Ukraine conflict, which can be seen as having resulted from the conflicting views of Russia and the West about a post–Cold War security architecture in Europe that genuinely meets the needs of all parties.

That the Cold War–era arms control treaties have been abrogated is evidence that they are far from ideal and insufficient to meet today’s needs. The development of new weapons systems—strategic conventional systems, space systems, hypersonic and autonomous systems, cyber warfare systems, and so on—poses new challenges. Nuclear multipolarity has encouraged serious thinking about how to engage third states in arms control. However, these complicated problems cannot be solved within the framework of “discussion clubs.” Concrete negotiations require a profound elaboration of the participating states and weapon systems—the subjects of the negotiations. Absent such conditions, the present chaos in the world order and the potential chaos introduced by new military technologies will be aggravated by the chaos in the legal system of disarmament and the disordered thinking of politicians and experts.
 

Rebuilding and Moving On
 

Today, many experts in Russia and abroad are talking about the need for new approaches to disarmament, but new approaches will not arise out of thin air. No “soft” arms control measures—parallel voluntary initiatives, cooperation on transparency and predictability, discussions of military doctrine—can serve as a substitute for the “hard core” arms control of verifiable limitations and reductions of weapons and forces. Such measures are reversible and useless on their own, helpful only as a supplement to arms control that rests on a strong legal basis. Thus, what has been destroyed will need to be rebuilt. For both global and European security, the restoration of New START is thus a vital precondition to any follow-on negotiations. New negotiations could then consider proposals from all sides; for example, limits on tactical nuclear weapons (a U.S. must-have) or limits on ballistic missile defense systems and high-precision long-range conventional weapons (long-standing Russian concerns).

Some within the Russian and foreign strategic communities claim that the involvement of China in arms control talks is thus of vital importance.54 If we assume that China will show interest in trilateral negotiations, then some agreement on equal ceilings for traditional strategic systems (say, five hundred to six hundred missiles for each party) might in principle be possible. The U.S. desire to simultaneously deter both Russia and China does not arithmetically translate into deploying forces equal to the sum of the Russian and Chinese strategic forces. The United States can equally deter both because the U.S. strategic armory predominantly consists of invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which the United States has already deployed in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Chinese missile build-up in no way threatens U.S. sea-based deterrence. If need be, the United States can add to its deterrence by deploying land-based medium-range missiles in Asia. Apparently, the obstacles to this are political: the need for the United States to recognize strategic parity with China, but strategic parity will occur de jure or de facto.

Russia’s idea to involve France and the United Kingdom in five-party negotiations with the United States and China does not look promising either. A more expedient option might be to split multilateral talks into three channels: 1) Russia-United States, 2) United States-China, and 3) Russia-France-United Kingdom.

The INF Treaty is still of utmost importance as a link between global and European security. Prior to the Ukraine conflict, Russia called for an agreement to ban the deployment of not only intermediate-range nuclear forces but short- and medium-range missile systems in Europe and to provide for on-site inspections. By default, the renewed treaty should also apply to U.S. allies.

The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty—one of the most significant treaties in the history of arms control—should be restored in its 1999 adapted version (Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, CFE II) through the development of a draft “framework” for new negotiations to strengthen European security. The national and territorial quotas called for by CFE II should be the guiding principle, with tactical ballistic and cruise missiles (e.g., those with ranges longer that three hundred kilometers) and drones also added to the treaty-limited items. The versatility of drones creates serious problems, but their range and weight might be determinative, as in the Missile Technology Control Regime.
 

Endnotes

• 48Arbatov, “The Ukrainian Crisis.”
• 49“Presidential Address to Federal Assembly,” President of Russia, February 21, 2023.
• 50U.S. Countermeasures in Response to Russia’s Violations of the New START Treaty, Fact Sheet, Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, June 1, 2023.
• 51S. Karaganov, “Suslov D. Sderzhivanie v novuyu ehpokhu” [Deterrence in the New Era], Russia in Global Affairs (4) (2019).
• 52Ibid.
• 53Disruptive technologies are a new weapons category that does not include nuclear weapons.
• 54Alexey Arbatov, “Strategic Stability and the Chinese Gambit,” World Economy and International Relations 66 (3) (2022).

Conclusion

Politicians, the media, and nonexperts may be tempted to explain the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West by pointing to a mutual lack of trust. But unlike trust between people, trust in international relations is a product of hard negotiations and agreement. Strategic arms control did not result from trust between the USSR and the United States. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought humankind to the edge of the nuclear abyss, trust between the two nations was at its nadir. The crisis was followed, however, by thirty years of hard work aimed at preventing nuclear war, primarily through arms control. This work, carried out in multiple countries at multiple diplomatic forums, then served as the basis for the unprecedented trust that evolved between the USSR/Russia and the West in the late 1980s and 1990s. In turn, Russia and the West, including Europe, enjoyed a state of security unprecedented in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years prior. Such lessons now need to be recalled. There is no sense in waiting for trust to fall on us from the heavens. We build trust when we together solve complex and urgent problems; in particular, the problems of war and peace.

The Ukraine conflict and the disintegration of arms control are the two most dramatic sides of the deepest crisis in post-bipolar international relations. In the best scenario, Russian-Western cooperation on arms control will help to restore trust and strengthen security in Europe. However, true stability can be achieved only through full reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine, just as Franco-German reconciliation opened a new era in Europe’s history, paving the way to European integration.

As Kissinger said, “The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either. The road of diplomacy may appear complicated and frustrating. But progress along it requires both the vision and the courage to undertake the journey.”55

Endnotes

• 55Kissinger, “How to Avoid Another World War.”