Dmitriy Trenin: Eighty years after the end of the World War II, the main threat of an armed conflict once again emanates for us from Europe
The United States will not leave NATO. The president cannot do this unilaterally, and the Senate would not allow it. Trump is frightening Europeans, but his real goals are to shift the bulk of the financial burden onto Europe and to reduce America's military commitments. The shift is ...
America steps back, and the Alliance starts to wobble
One of the more idealistic ambitions of the last Soviet leadership was the simultaneous dissolution of both Cold War blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Only half of that vision came to pass. The Warsaw Pact disappeared in the spring of 1991. NATO didn’t. Instead, it endured and expanded.
Over the following decades, the alliance not only survived but grew from 16 to 32 members....
... issues in Europe are undergoing both real-world and conceptual changes. On a real-world level, the region is in the midst of a severe political crisis. Its epicentre is the Ukraine conflict, and its core lies in the contradictions between Russia and NATO countries on a wide range of issues. These real-world factors, in turn, have led to a conceptual crisis of the idea of European security as it had evolved over several decades. At its core was the premise that security dilemmas in Europe could ...
... contrast to the Biden presidency, when the US and EU achieved unprecedented solidarity, including on the issue of containing Russia. But can we really speak of a transatlantic schism? After all, the US and the EU are linked by formal relations within NATO, a vast cultural legacy of alliance relations, and close economic ties. Are we witnessing a fluctuation, albeit acute, but reversible? Or are we witnessing a fundamentally new trend that will only manifest itself in the future?
Ivan Timofeev:
New ...
... embodied in the transformation of the CSCE into the OSCE. The ten principles of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 [
6
] defined the regulatory framework, including the principle of equal and indivisible security. An institutional platform for a Russia-NATO dialogue emerged in the form of the Russia-NATO Council. Another factor in normalising relations between Russia and the West was the comprehensive deepening of Russia-EU cooperation based on the 1994 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. [
7
] Europe ...
... postwar order sought to integrate Germany within the collective, facilitate its internal transformation, intertwine its interests with those of its neighbors, and subject it to close oversight, thereby preventing any deviation from the prescribed path. NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay,
summarized
the alliance’s mission as “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” This policy of Europe has achieved positive results, with no wars or military conflicts occurring ...
... more likely that Gorbachev truly believed in a new world order based on trust between former adversaries. And here we return to the second type of complaint, regarding how the European security system, emerging from German unification, was handled.
NATO as the Main Condition
For Germany’s Western allies, its status in NATO acquired fundamental importance. The U.S. was naturally concerned with maintaining its strategic presence in Europe, since German unification formally ended the entire postwar ...
... directly confronts Western countries, remains alarming
The situation in the Baltic region, where Russia directly confronts Western countries, remains alarming, although current events there do not arouse the same interest as did Swedish and Finnish NATO accession.
In recent years and still to this day, the most conflictual possible scenarios have typically played out in the region. But the situation there does not entirely resemble that of the Balkans in the 1990s.
Firstly,
in the Balkans, Russia ...
... racism, and many other detestable “isms,” including recently the liberal totalitarianism that is based on transhumanism, LGBTism, denial of history, and essentially anti-humanism.
First, about the prospects for our relations with Europe (the EU and NATO), then about what is to be done.
Our relations with Europe are the worst they have been in history. The level of Russophobia and anti-Russian sentiment is unprecedented not only among European elites but also among a growing share of the masses, ...
... rebranding of the Liberal International Order (LIO) that originated and developed in two periods of US preponderance: the post-World War II era and the post-Cold War era. Grounded in international institutions including the UN, the IMF, and chiefly NATO, it claimed to promote prosperity, global peace and economic cooperation; however, it has perpetually reflected US strategic and economic interests. However, the period of US unipolarity is now but history as it cannot unilaterally establish international ...
