Both sides still have important principles in common, and they share large parts of their risk assessment. They want to defend the present structure of the UN Security Council, regardless of other nations’ desire to take a seat at the High Table; they do not wish to admit new members to the nuclear club; they have an ambitious understanding of their own sphere of influence; and they fear the weapons and warriors of asymmetric warfare at home and abroad – while both sides tend to trespass, from time to time, into territory designated by the other side off limits. The Russians do resent interference by the West in the CIS and what they term the ‘near abroad’, and they are not impressed by the argument that any such interference is sanctified by democracy and liberal economics.
Too close for comfort is not only a rule to be observed in everyday life but also an important, though unspecified, part of the code of conduct between today’s great powers. This is a matter of territorial disputes, when US ships come close to Russia’s coastal waters and the twelve-mile zone, or Russian ‘Bear’ bombers on patrol cross, unannounced, into British airspace. All of this happened in the course of 2007. But coming too close is also a question of meddling in each other’s domestic affairs. US preaching about human rights and democratic values is suspected, by the Russians, as being subversive and part of a major attempt to undermine the present regime through all kinds of NGOs, foundations, publications and, ultimately, colour revolutions, from Ukraine in the west to Georgia in the south.
On the American side there is no real equivalent; the Russians are mostly not taken seriously as a powerful adversary, either in the Balkans, the Caucasus – especially Georgia – or throughout Central Asia. This is not only irritating for the Russians, it is also positively dangerous as it can lead to strategic misunderstanding concerning the value each side ascribes to its assets or what it sees as a vital interest.
We do not like NATO
The accession of Poland and the three Baltic states to NATO after 1994 is a case in point, and it has never been forgiven in Moscow. After the implosion of the Soviet empire and the inclusion of Germany’s eastern provinces in NATO, military and diplomatic experts in the West had suggested that ‘Partnership for Peace’ (PfP) might be a wise answer to a pressing problem, allowing the Russians to save face while giving enough warmth to the countries coming in from the cold. But Bill Clinton wanted reelection in 1994, and in crucial states of the American Midwest the Polish vote could mean victory or defeat. US domestic pressure at election time put the issue of Polish accession to NATO high on the US agenda. This was followed, inevitably, by more enlargement until the three Baltic states had been incorporated. NATO experts, in a display of black humour, called the exercise ‘a bad idea whose time has come’. The Russians still feel that, after the ‘Two plus Four’ agreement in 1990 had suggested that the Oder river would be the future eastern border of the Western alliance, the West has cheated.
The game is nothing but a modernized version of spheres of influence which, of course, need to be defended, whether they are defined in territorial or in value terms, or both. It is here that dangerous entanglements are most likely to occur. Ukraine’s Orange revolution is a case in point and, more especially, that fine line inside Ukraine that divides Russian speakers from Ukrainian speakers, and predominantly Russian sympathies from Western sympathies. The attempt in late 2005 and early 2006 to put pressure on Ukraine through a rise in gas prices and the future North Stream gas pipeline circumventing Ukrainian territory has backfired. Georgia, too, is a case in point, especially Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia, with Russian troops still present, or nearby South Ossetia. Or Moldova, where 500,000 Russians in what is called Transnistria are protected by Russia’s 14th Army, comprising approximately 1500 troops.
On the global chessboard, Putin linked three issues which, on the face of it, are not connected: the Kosovo conflict, the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and the US proposal to build a radar site for missile defence against Iran in the Czech Republic and deploy ten anti-missile missiles in Poland. After a while, the Russians developed second thoughts concerning missile defence. They realized that, once Iran was in possession of nuclear warheads and could combine them with medium- and long-range missiles, Russian territory would be much closer to the danger than European, let alone US. So instead of staging another missile crisis as in the early 1980s over Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF), Russian diplomats offered the Americans a disused radar site in Azerbaijan, thus taking the steam out of West European protests against the US project. One of the controversial issues was taken off the chessboard at least for a while. The Russians are unsure whether to oppose or cooperate – and so are the Americans – while most Europeans have a foreboding of confrontation.
Remember the Congress of Vienna
The absence of a grand design, tsarist or Soviet or post-Soviet, does not, however, mean that there is not a certain traditional methodology or approach at work and a set of rules more akin to nineteenth-century diplomatic practice than to the ideologically fraught competition that dominated the world scene after Lenin’s promise of world peace through world revolution in 1917 and Wilson’s promise of world peace through democracy in 1918. The basic principles are based on the concept of state power, sovereignty, equilibrium and the idea of a zero sum game between the players. If one side wins a promise or a province, other players in the game are entitled to compensation of equivalent value – whether Western foreign offices like it or not, understand it or not, follow it or not. The basic metaphor is a never-ending game of chess, not the high-tension high-risk drama of poker. Therefore springing a surprise on the other side is generally seen as dysfunctional and dangerous: the sin of adventurism, in Soviet speak. Predictability counts as a virtue, trust as an asset, personal relations as a channel of influence and a source of prestige.
Another principle important to understand as a key to Kremlin thinking is that big countries count for more than small ones who have, when asked, to sign on the dotted line or look for protection from further afield. The instinct for multilateralism driving most European countries and embodied in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security (CFSP) or even its Common Security and Defence Policy is something the Russians refuse to take seriously – not unlike the Americans. Whenever possible they choose the bilateral route, especially when and where they are in the stronger position: gas for Germany, Italy, Hungary or any other recipient is not negotiated with Brussels Eurocrats but with individual countries. The asymmetry is striking – and mostly successful.
Spheres of influence, while even the term is anathema to Western thinking, are seen as a reality in international affairs. For the Kremlin the CIS is not a makeshift halfway house but a claim to pre-eminence, whether governments in Kiev or Almaty like it or not. Those spheres of influence must be respected, and the term ‘near abroad’ was invented, after the fall of the Soviet Union, as the equivalent of the French chasse gardée. Its undefined nature invites trespassing and misunderstanding but it also keeps up a certain pressure on those who feel they might, willingly or unwillingly, be included.
The Western equivalent of the ‘near abroad’ is not only the tangible prospect of EU enlargement with all its accompanying money transfers, subsidies and other blessings, or a NATO Membership Action Plan. The Russians also feel unnerved by the open-ended mission to spread democratic values, to support democratic reform, to observe via the OSCE what goes on in elections, and to finance all kinds of NGOs. For Bolsheviks of the old school this looks like outright espionage and subversion, while the Kremlin of modern times also shows signs of nervousness. But up to a point Kremlin leaders are willing to accept moral sensitivities in countries like Germany that do not wish to be seen in too close an embrace with the Russian bear.