U.S. must resist Russia's 'sphere of influence'

Almost unnoticed in the U.S. media, Moscow last month proposed a new draft treaty on European security — thus making good on President Dmitry Medvedev's call after the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 for changes to the current system. In parallel, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brought forward a second and more worrying document in the NATO-Russia Council. This is the latest in a series of Russian moves to alter how European security is run, to constrain NATO and, above all, to stop any further enlargement of the Western alliance. Both documents suggest that we are on different planets when it comes to thinking about Europe's future. Rather than moving into the 21st century, a revisionist Russia seems determined to revert to a 19th-century policy of “spheres of influence.” With the Obama administration understandably focused on the war in Afghanistan and the looming challenge of Iran, Moscow may hope that a West in need of Russian cooperation on these issues could be willing to acquiesce to Russian claims of such influence on its borders, allowing it to stop further encroachment of Western institutions.

The Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the Istanbul Charter for European Security in 1999 were supposed to establish a kind of “bill of rights” designed to create the political foundation for a post-Cold War peace. These rules rejected spheres of influence, recognized the right of all countries to equal security and to choose their own alliances as part of a new cooperative security structure. Moscow agreed to the rules at a time when it, too, wanted to shed its imperial past and join an enlarging Western community.

But as the pro-Western drive in Russia waned and the imperial impulse began to return in the late 1990s, Moscow concluded that these rules were encouraging Western enlargement at its expense. I saw this thinking firsthand as a U.S. negotiator for the Istanbul Charter of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. At a dinner with my Russian counterpart in 1999, I explained our concept of strengthening a universal set of norms and rules covering the entire OSCE area, including Russia. But the deputy foreign minister drew a line through my sketch of Europe and claimed: “That is your half and this is ours. And the problem is that yours is getting bigger.”

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email