Russia submitted two documents last week to the United States as an offer of long-term security guarantees – a draft US-Russia treaty and an agreement with NATO. They are written in a language that borders on ultimatum.
That’s according to Moscow’s leading foreign policy expert, Fyodor Lukyanov, who is considered close to the Kremlin’s worldview and is known to advise senior officials. Lukyanov believes the West is unlikely to accept Russia’s demands because doing so would be politically impossible.
The draft treaty contains an explicit demand: “The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the alliance of the states of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” It also essentially rules out any bilateral military cooperation between the US and members of the former Soviet Union which are not part of NATO.
The text of the draft agreement proposal to NATO contains an obligation on the bloc to exclude further expansion, including by the accession of Ukraine or any other states, as well as the explicit statement that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine or other states of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.”
There is also a separate clause that requires both sides to limit activities which could be perceived as threatening security: “The parties shall refrain from deploying their armed forces and armaments, including in the framework of international organizations, military alliances or coalitions, in the areas where such deployment could be perceived by the other party as a threat to its national security, with the exception of such deployment within the national territories of the parties.”
The latter exception means that NATO cannot conduct military activities close to Russian borders, while Russia has the right to do what it sees fit on parts of its territory that border NATO.
This reflects the stance and the demands that Russia has been voicing for years, but more insistently so in the past few weeks. The question is: Why would you propose a draft like that? It’s hard to imagine it could even launch a dialogue with the Western counterparts, let alone be adopted.
From the US and NATO’s perspective, that would mean capitulating to Moscow, which is politically unacceptable. Moreover, Washington and the EU countries see no reason why they should agree to overhaul the post-Cold War European security system. To put it simply, there is no real threat, and Moscow probably understands that. So maybe they expect the West to publicly refuse, and later say that the offer was on the table and they didn’t take it. In other words, this would give the Kremlin free rein when it comes to reshaping the current system.
In that case, we will see more steps meant to demonstrate Russia’s determination to change the status quo no matter what the West has to say about it. The sheer scale of the proposed changes implies that simply accepting the refusal and leaving it be until the next round of talks is not an option. That would undermine the credibility of any further statements on the subject. So the question now is, what is Russia going to do should the West shoot down this proposal?
NATO must be aware that pushing further into Eastern Europe, past Moscow’s declared red lines, will make a military response inevitable, a top Russian diplomat has warned, amid escalating tensions with the US-led bloc.
Speaking to Rossiya 24 TV on Monday, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation to the Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control in Vienna said Washington was obliged to engage in a dialogue with Moscow on security guarantees for the sake of peace on the continent, whether officials wanted it or not.
“The conversation must be serious, and everyone in NATO is well aware, despite all the power and strength, that it is necessary to take concrete political actions, otherwise the alternative is a … military response from Russia,” he explained.
Gavrilov’s comments came shortly after Moscow issued two documents, one for NATO and the other for US officials, requesting a wide range of assurances it said were aimed at enhancing the security of all parties.
The proposal to NATO focuses mainly on the movement of personnel and hardware, and includes the requirement that Kiev’s long-held ambition to join the bloc would not be realized. A separate clause calls for the current members to renounce any military activity on the territory of Ukraine, as well as in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.
In its proposition to Washington, Moscow requested that officials commit to ruling out expansion into former Soviet republics. Concerns over the US-led military bloc’s potential widening into Eastern Europe have been reignited in recent weeks. Speaking via video link earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his US counterpart, Joe Biden, his country was “seriously interested” in getting “reliable and firm legal guarantees” that would prohibit NATO’s expansion further eastwards, as well as the deployment of “offensive strike weapons systems” nearby.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the beginning of December that further enlargement of the bloc in the direction of Russia was a red line for Moscow, and that Ukraine’s hopes of joining its ranks were unacceptable. The US was pulling Kiev into the orbit of NATO and turning it into a “bridgehead” of confrontation with Russia, she said, in a move that could destabilize Europe.