Dmitry Trenin on Russia's successes abroad and why resisting NATO expansion to the east was a fundamental mistake.
Vladimir Putin has been in power for 20 years, but the time has not ... ... success lie in the fact that here Russian actions are clearly focused on its interests (and not on its own ideology; in its refusal to impose some geopolitical model on other countries; in a good knowledge of the region and the capability and readiness ...
... justify this choice for, as at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, it was about integrating a former adversary into a single regional system, or as in Versailles, its exclusion from such a system of postwar relations.
The double enlargement, i.e. of the NATO and the EU, as well as incomplete, in terms of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, institutionalization of the OSCE (as opposed, for example, to the African Union) have proved to be expressions of so short-sighted a policy. Russia has been invited to ...
The European Union is taking up a defensive position. This is not isolationism but pragmatism, which signals a revision of the ideas ... ... to the role previously fulfilled by the OSCE, as the only space bringing together everyone, making it the lowest common denominator. Now it’s needed not to force members to obey certain norms, but to search for common ground at a time when Europe is ...
... so-called MAD: Mutually assured destruction…
Yes. So, these treaties were supplemented by further ones like SALT 1, 2 and 3, and, in 1987, the
INF Treaty
. We were also proposing further agreements, both bilaterally with the US and in our dialogue with NATO.
Unfortunately, after the abrogation of the INF treaty, this backsliding continued. And the fact that the current US administration chose to kill the INF treaty sets a very dangerous precedent.
The US wouldn’t say they decided to kill it. What ...
... danger of war and prevent incidents, and not to waste forces on fruitless mutual accusations or attempts to fix non-consensus and deliberately confrontational topics from... ... political conditions unrelated to the activities of the Union. What is this, if not discriminatory attitude to the principle of multilateralism in practice?
Finally, it is quite... ... International Contact Group on Venezuela, which has slipped under pressure from the European Union on biased and non-constructive positions.
In short, increasingly, multilateral...
... more inclined towards pragmatism. Still, I think we should wait for his first key staff appointments. In any case, they will be working within the pro-Western paradigm and lead the country towards collaboration with international financial bodies, the European Union and NATO. Russia–Ukraine relations will largely depend on the general trends in U.S.–Russia relations, and I think gradually moving away from escalation is the maximum that Kiev would be willing to do in its relations with Moscow. This should probably ...
... flash of hope in the fact that EU leaders, for instance, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, are calling... ... Governmental Experts, especially emphasises that states should not allow deliberate usage of their territories for committing cybercrimes. Meanwhile they elegantly “forget”... ... London is considering the possibility of carrying a cyber-attack on Russia, as well as NATO preparations to conduct cyber wars.
Unfortunately, we are already accustomed to...
One of the distinctive features of the modern Western political narrative with regard to NATO is an almost total misunderstanding of how the alliance is perceived in Russia. First and foremost, the Western political ... ... alliance is seen as an instrument of U.S. influence and U.S. defense assurances.
That is why Russia is utterly baffled by U.S. accusations that the Kremlin — and President Vladimir Putin specifically — are trying to “drive a wedge between NATO partners....
... a somewhat different future.
“J’Accuse…!”
RAND Report “Russia’s Hostile Measures in Europe”
Before making accusations against Russia, the authors of the report make a series of important qualifications in their introduction that significantly ... ... countries into its sphere of influence;
increasing cooperation and trade with Western Europe;
undermining enlargement of the European Union and NATO into the post-Soviet space.
It is assumed that Moscow will use “measures short of war” as a tactic. This term was introduced ...
... bilateral ones. While trade is only a bit more than half of what it was before 2014, it is still important, particularly in the energy sector. Security matters will have to take a back seat: Europeans cannot decide alone on the issues that fall within NATO’s competence. The OSCE is essentially irrelevant, and the Russia-NATO communications line is but an add-on to the US-Russian one. Yet, a few EU member states, including France, Germany and Italy, prefer to keep open their channels of political ...
