Around Russia

Transit will write off everything?

July 1, 2009 Alexander Golts

Russia and NATO have reconciled. Last weekend, even an informal, but quite full -fledged meeting of the Russian Council, NATO at the ministerial level, took place at Corfu. At the end of the meeting, the NATO Secretary General of Jaap de Hop Scheffer, as well as the Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov, demonstrated mutual location and readiness for cooperation. It should be recognized that all this Moscow can be considered a major diplomatic victory.

It is appropriate to recall that Russian-Natov contacts were frozen after the war with Georgia and the recognition of Moscow independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In Brussels, it was solemnly stated that they did not intend to do business with Russia in the style of Business as Usual. And after the year there is a return to this very “business”. With a tongue twister, saying that in Georgia, Russia and NATO remains “fundamental” contradictions, the parties preferred to leave them aside and discuss the possibilities of cooperation in other areas. This, in particular, is about the resumption of Russian participation in the Joint Endeavor operation, which is carried out in the Mediterranean, as well as joint actions against Somali pirates (this, by the way, was discussed with his Russian colleague and the chairman of the Committee of the Chiefs of the United States Admiral Michael Mallen). They even say about the resumption of cooperation in the field of missile defense of the theater of military operations interrupted by Moscow after NATO approved American plans for creating a global pro.

And most importantly, Moscow expressed its readiness to sign agreements on the transit of military cargo to Afghanistan with all NATO countries. It is possible that the main result of the upcoming American-Russian summit will be the signing of an agreement on the transportation of such goods by Russian railway. Such transit becomes vital for ensuring the US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Indeed, on the one hand, Washington throws additional contingents there, setting the goal of a military victory over the Taliban. It is clear that such an operation (accompanied by also serious economic assistance) requires a serious increase in the volume of transportation. On the other hand, an alternative “Pakistani” route is becoming less safe.

So, there is a victory of what is now called “realism”. This policy comes down to a statement: you can’t redo Russia with its nostalgia for the empire, you will not return the southern Ossetia with Abkhazia of Georgia. So is it not better to concentrate on mutually beneficial cooperation? And involving Moscow in various kinds of NATO and for Russia and it is obvious that, fighting in the same Afghanistan, NATO makes a considerable contribution to ensuring Russian security), the harsh customs of the Kremlin chiefs can gradually soften.

With this logic one could agree. In fact, Russia is the same as it is, and any demarches from the West only strengthen the Russian elite in the opinion that the whole world has taken up arms against our immense homeland. Is it not better to cooperate, albeit in strictly defined areas, hoping that such interaction and constant communication will protect, at least from excesses similar to what happened last year in the Caucasus?

Such logic, alas, has one significant drawback. It ignores the fact that the fundamental contradictions between Russia and NATO are by no means exhausted by the attitude to Georgia. The main problem, in my opinion, is that Moscow forms a confrontation model. She insists on preserving the balance of military power in one form or another. That is why the question of strategic offensive weapons was today at the center of Russian-American relations. But, whatever one may say, any contract for START will be built on a mutual deterrence doctrine, which involves mutual guaranteed destruction.

That is why, conducting the European Security System, our diplomats concentrate on its “hard” dimension: the number of armed forces and weapons. In fact, Russia claims to be treated as a small Warsaw treaty.

In this sense, the recent speech of Sergei Lavrov at the OSCE conference is extremely significant. There, for the first time, he specified what Moscow means by a new agreement on European security, to which the Kremlin has been calling for a year now. He proved the obvious: the safety of indivisible, it is impossible to strengthen it due to the safety of others. According to the minister, this principle does not work in modern Europe. And all because in the OSCE documents it is fixed only at the level of political declarations, and in NATO - legally. Here, Lavrov insists, to all European states and the principles of security should be fixed legally. In particular, “not to ensure their safety through the safety of others, to prevent actions and coalitions of actions that weaken the unity of the common security space, including preventing the use of their territory to the detriment of the security of other states, to the detriment of the world and stability in the Euro-Atlantic, not to allow the development of military unions to be carried out to the detriment of other participants in the contract.”

At the same time, Lavrov pretends not to notice two obvious problems. Firstly, the difference between the security system similar to NATO and the one that sets the OSCE. The North Atlantic Alliance was created by states united by common values ​​for joint protection against external threat. NATO countries guarantee each other mutual defense. As for the OSCE, there are fundamentally different security guarantees - guarantees that members of the organization will not attack each other. At one time, with considerable difficulty, it was possible to agree on measures of trust, involving mutual informing and mutual inspections, as well as determine the limiting amounts of the armed forces and weapons, which will not suddenly allow aggression. But now Russia proposes to find the opportunity to determine the damage to security caused by any actions of other states. This should be an objective indicator that would lead to the universal denominator subjective fears and prejudices of each country (we are, of course, first of all about Russia, which, it seems, the only one besides Georgia from European states insists on the existence of a military threat to its security). So, in Brussels, they insist that the reception of former Soviet republics in NATO does not threaten anyone's security. Moscow proves the exact opposite. And since there is no objective indicator and cannot be, there can be only one way out - all the solutions in the field of security, including NATO internal decisions, unanimously approve on some pan -European forum. Thus, Moscow will finally receive a veto to decide NATO, primarily to receive new members, the right, which it unsuccessfully achieved for the past ten years. Of course, Russian leaders are well aware that this is completely unacceptable for NATO. And they expect to negotiate on this subject to infinity.

This is the main element of the foreign policy strategy of Moscow-to take Western partners with a discussion of military-political problems, that is, to concentrate on a sphere where potentials and power, if not equal, are at least comparable. And in such an artificial way to strengthen your international prestige, prove both our citizens and the world around us, that we are still a great power with which everyone should be considered. And at the same time, to fundamentally stop what is interpreted by the Kremlin as interference in internal affairs - discussions of the lovely characteristics of Russian sovereign democracy.

In fact, the ideal model for such relationships is the current attempt to “reboot”, which, if called a spade a spade, is a caricature of discharge. But in order to pursue such a policy, it is inevitably necessary to periodically arrange a caricature cold war.

However, it is not necessarily very cold. Literally the day after the reconciliation at Corfu, the operational-strategic exercises of the Caucasus 2009 began. Their organizers, in general, do not hide the anti -Georgian orientation. A senior representative of the General Staff declares in an interview with Interfax that the goal of maneuvers (in which more than 8 thousand tanks, about 200 tanks and up to 250 artillery guns participate) “cool the fantasies of individual warriors”. And at the same time, he does not make a secret from who exactly he has in mind: “The current Georgian leadership did not abandon the new military adventures against Abkhazia and South Ossetia and leaves no attempts to solve the territorial issue with forceful methods.”

Frankly, I do not share the opinions of some of the colleagues who confidently predict a new war with Georgia (in fairness I note that in the last August I did not believe in the possibility of a full -scale military conflict). At least now there is no obvious reason for such a war. But in the course of such maneuvers, such an occasion may arise. Any provocation, any incident (it is not necessary that the Russian side will act as its initiator) can turn into a war. And then what will we do with the “policy of realism”, stagnation with NATO, and at the same time with Afghan transit?

Photo by RIA Novosti