The NATO-US response does not satisfy Moscow, but opens the negotiations and increases the pressure on Putin
The scoop was made by the Spanish newspaper El País , which managed to obtain exclusively the paper document containing the joint NATO-US response to Russian requests on security in Eastern Europe. Both Washington and Moscow deny having filtered it, but it is difficult to imagine that, without the active participation of one of the two main players in the current crisis, the paper could have reached a press. Immediately taken up by the main international newspapers, it became public domain in a few minutes. John F. Kirby, spokesman for the Pentagon, immediately took the opportunity to declare that " now the world has confirmation that our official statements corresponded to reality ", referring to Washington's willingness to find shared solutions.
So let's see what is said in the document, assuming that it does not present sensational revelations but yes some new elements that indicate at least a willingness to negotiate. In this sense, while the response of the Alliance ( NATO-Russia restricted ) is limited to reaffirming the founding principles of the organization (above all the open door policy ) and to remind Moscow of the repeated offers of cooperation in the post-Cold War years, that of Washington ( Non-paper / Confidential ) enters more directly into the merits of the issues raised by the Russian counterpart and sketches out some possible negotiating agreements: " we are willing to consider even formal agreements with Russia on issues of mutual interest ", reads the US statement . As widely predictable, none of Moscow's cardinal requests are taken into consideration: neither the demand for written guarantees on the end of NATO's expansion to the East, nor the dismantling of the allied presence in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, nor the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons in Europe. In exchange, however, the Biden administration offers Putin a " transparency mechanism " under which Russia could verify the absence of Tomahawk missiles in Romania and Poland, while the United States would do the same in two missile launch bases at them. choice in Russian territory.
It is a well-played card, for two reasons: on the one hand, it accepts the concern expressed on several occasions by the Russians over the fact that the NATO missile defense systems installed in Romanian and Polish territory could, if necessary, turn into offensive; on the other hand, it would allow Washington to defuse the threat from the enclave of Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea, where Moscow has deployed medium-range missiles capable of carrying conventional and nuclear warheads (which is why the United States and its allies have abandoned the ' INF Treaty , in 2019).
But there is a second important point in the document: the American proposal for a mutual commitment not to deploy offensive missiles or combat troops on permanent missions in Ukrainian territory. As Kiev's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, quickly noted, while the US currently has neither missiles nor assets in Ukraine, Russia has both: the implementation of such an agreement would therefore imply a Russian withdrawal. " We have no objections ," Kuleba said. An especially significant formulation when seen in the context of the sending of 3,000 US troops to Germany, Poland and Romania and if read together with another passage in the document, in which Washington warns that any new aggression against Ukraine would impose a " strengthening of defensive positions ”allies in Europe.
In short, a package of proposals well packaged by the White House, to which must be added the willingness to discuss another well-known Russian obsession, which in diplomatic language is known as the " indivisibility of security " – or the idea that a nation cannot seek to increase one's own security at the expense of another. Russia, ça va sans dire , has shown that it uses this concept intermittently, demanding respect from NATO members but happily caring about it when it came to entering Ukrainian or Georgian territory. It is not for nothing that the US has always refused its application in the sense of constituting a restriction on the right of a sovereign country " to choose or change its security agreements, including alliance treaties ". Open door policy , again, an indisputable piece.
The American openings clashed with a predictable niet on the part of the Putin-Lavrov duo which, while taking the time to reflect on the joint response, showed its dissatisfaction with what it considers to be a lack of responsibility on the part of the allies. All for granted, diplomacy runs its course, the war is looming but in the meantime both sides take time and the negotiations continue. Time, however, does not play in Russia's favor: sooner or later Putin will have to move his pawns on the board in order to prove that he has not bluffed . To wage war or accept Washington's arms control negotiations? 30,000 Russian soldiers are expected in Belarus for joint military exercises in the next few days, which will add to the 120,000 installed on the border with Ukraine for some time. Defense Minister Shoigu has been in Lukashenko territory since Thursday to inspect the troops: if not politically, at least at the military level, the Russian-Belarusian union is already a fait accompli.
But that of Moscow seems more and more a lose-lose situation, also because the Russian bet to weaken Ukraine's ties with the West through the annexation of Crimea and the war of attrition in the Donbass has not been successful. Since 2014, Kiev has not only strengthened its army but has consolidated its fragile internal democracy and has increasingly linked its destiny to American protection. A large-scale conflict would condemn Russia, at the very least, to an unprecedented battery of economic sanctions, not to mention the probably irreparable impact on its already largely compromised international prestige. Is it a future of isolation in Europe that Putin is preparing for the Russians in the name of the reconquest of Ukraine? With what guarantees of success? It is difficult to think that any objective other than the entire occupation of the territory or the manual settlement of a puppet government in Kiev can guarantee the Kremlin the control it claims to exercise over the country. And, even if he got it, at what price could he keep it?
Beyond the historical and traditional reasons that bind and, at times identify, Russia and Ukraine, beyond the geopolitical value of this middle ground, the current crisis is nothing more than the mirror of the controversial and often perverse relationship that Russia Putinian established with the West in the last decade, and which not coincidentally coincides with the declining phase of the presidency of the former KGB agent.
The mediation attempt by Emmanuel Macron, who will meet with Putin in Moscow on Monday and, subsequently, will travel to Kiev on Monday, fits into this context, already intricate in itself. Not that the desire to avert a conflict in the center of Europe is not appreciable in itself, as long as the roles and responsibilities are clear. In the Macronian view, on the other hand, the intention to mend relations seems to prevail that of opening the doors to a revision of the European security policy in agreement with Moscow. When the French head of state speaks of " a dialogue on Putin's initiative to develop binding and long-term security guarantees for the Russian Federation ", he essentially confirms that his is a personal initiative, contrary to the spirit of the joint letter NATO-USA, in which, on the contrary, the defense of the current status in opposition to the Kremlin's revisionist doctrines is reaffirmed. But the interpretation could be even more extensive, since Macron's statements could be read as the de facto recognition of the existence of a security problem on the European continent (music to Putin's ears), with consequent legitimacy not only of the Russian claims but also of the positions acquired on the ground following the annexation and war operations of 2014. Time will tell what role France has decided to carve out in this crisis, already complicated by German ambiguities.
Meanwhile, Putin, in Beijing for the inauguration of the Winter Games, collects the support of Xi Jinping on the NATO front: no to enlargement to the East, warns China, even without explicitly mentioning Ukraine. The first official reaction to the NATO-US document comes from the Chinese Communist Party.
The post The NATO-US response does not satisfy Moscow, but opens negotiations and increases pressure on Putin appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-risposta-nato-usa-non-soddisfa-mosca-ma-apre-la-trattativa-e-aumenta-la-pressione-su-putin/ on Sat, 05 Feb 2022 03:50:00 +0000.