by Srdja Trifkovic
In the second week of December Moscow made public its draft of the European Security Treaty. It was fi rst proposed a year and a half ago, in June 2008, as President Dmitry Medvedev’s fi rst major foreign policy initiative. Moscow has been criticized for offering few specifi cs of this proposal. It has now taken this step by putting forward a draft treaty, consisting of 14 articles. President Medvedev has invited proposals from Western countries on how to build a new security structure.
The draft, which would “fi nally do away with the legacy of the Cold War,” has been sent to all relevant leaders. The treaty would be open to “all states of the EuroAtlantic and Eurasian space, from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” as well as members of NATO, the European Union and groupings of former Soviet countries. It would create a new mechanism for confl ict resolution. The document reaffi rms the role of the United Nations Security Council, in which Russia has a veto, as the ultimate arbiter of international conflict.
Particularly relevand to Serbia is a clause (Article 2, paragraph 1) that appears targeted at NATO operations not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council. In addition, Article 7 provides that “every party shall be entitled to consider an armed attack against any other party as an armed attack against itself. In exercising its right of selfdefense under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, it shall be entitled to render the attacked party… the necessary assistance, including military, until the UN Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
Quite apart from its details and nuances, Moscow’s proposal can be taken seriously because it comes after a notable shift in U.S. rhetoric and behavior over the past year. This shift refl ects U.S. President Barack Obama’s evolving strategic priorities caused in part by the ongoing crisis in Pakistan and the escalation of fi ghting in Afghanistan. The two key elements are his Uturn on missile defense deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the quiet acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic that there will be no NATO expansion along the Black Sea coast anytime soon.
The problem is still what to do about NATO, and the Russian proposal offers ambiguous guidance. The alliance has morphed into something it was never intended to be: a vehicle for the attainment of American ideological and geopolitical objectives outside the core area. It is necessary to halt and reverse NATO’s recently invented mission as a selfappointed promoter of democracy and humanitarian intervention and guardian against instability in strange and faraway places.
Bill Clinton’s air war against the Serbs marked a decisive shift in that mutation. The trusty keeper of the gate of 1949 had morphed into a roaming vigilante in 1999. This event had a profound effect on Russian thinking. A decade later, the National Security Strategy approved by President Medvedev last May identifi ed the two gravest threats facing Russia as Ukrainian accession to NATO and predatory Western designs on its energy and other natural resources. The paper explicitly called the United States a major threat to Russian national security.
Such a conclusion was unsurprising. By virtue of its location, Russia controls the crossroads of Eurasia and therefore access to its fabulous natural resource wealth. Washington craves cheap and easy access to that wealth, and under the presidency of George Bush, the United States had developedsou an ideology to complement such geostrategic ambitions. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described it succinctly 18 months ago: in U.S. foreign policy there is no distinction between ideals and selfinterest. U.S. foreign policy is its values, and America will stop at nothing to ensure that its values prevail. The world is divided into two camps: one is made up of states that share U.S. values; the other of states (implicitly Russia and China) which were consigned to a lesser status because their relations with the United States are rooted more in common interests than in common values. Washington has changed its tone since, and that change appears to be for the better. Obama now has an opportunity to execute a paradigm shift and inaugurate a process in which the EastWest Security Pact would be just the fi rst step on a long journey, not its conclusion.
In principle the Russian proposal is not ranged against NATO, but it could help the United States sort out the incoherent mess NATO has become by restoring the alliance’s proper legal mission as defender of the territory of its member states. The proposal’s shortcoming, however, is that it neglects the potential scope in Europe for a robust and independent EU defense capability under the auspices of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP).
Subscription Form
