NATO, like all other alliances, is incontestably a flawed organization. At times it has handled both its own enlargement and intra-aAlliance relations rather insensitively. And in the post Cold War era it may even be suffering from an identity crisis as it deals with tectonic shifts in the international system.
Ambassador Rogozin is quite right to suggest that there is room for new thinking and benefits in improving NATO-Russia relations in the future. The alliance should strive for good relations with all its neighbours, including those with Russia, a large state with talented, educated people and vast natural resources. Unfortunately, there are considerable difficulties with the rest of Dmitry Rogozin’s analysis and prescriptions. In particular, his understanding of the alliance’s nature and aspirations, his confusion of cause and effect and disregard of the negative impact of Russian policies and actions, and his particular formulations of Russia’s international expectations and ambitions, are all problematic.
First, NATO, is unlike the late and unlamented Warsaw Pact, a voluntary, organic, collective defense alliance. This accounts both for its longevity and its attractiveness. Far from imposing membership on eastern European states, NATO responded to their strong and clearly expressed desire to join and to expand the zone of democracy. The voluntary and responsive character of this enlargement is crucial to a realistic relationship between NATO and Moscow, and also speaks to the aspiration of states that express their desire to join. If Georgia and Ukraine, for instance, eventually meet NATO’s criteria and decide to join, they should be able to do so as sovereign states, free from interference and intimidation from Moscow. The Kremlin cannot demand the respect of the alliance unless it is also prepared to recognize the free will of aspirant states and ceases to try to exercise a veto over central NATO decisions.
Second, Rogozin portrays Russia as a hapless victim of NATO enlargement and Georgian aggression. He does not seem to appreciate the irony that the more threatening and less democratic Russia becomes, the more it continues to induce the new democracies in eastern Europe to insist on or aspire to membership, and leads them to re-emphasize the collective defense dimension of NATO. He shows no awareness that Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Moscow’s recognition of the sovereignty of two separatist Georgian regions in defiance of virtually the entire international community, worked mightily to convince the Polish and Czech governments to agree to deploy the missile shield that the Kremlin so harshly condemns. Ambassador Rogozin’s characterization of the invasion of Georgia as a defining historical moment that further proves the justice of both Moscow’s security concerns and strategic proposals has an air of unreality about it. It is oddly reminiscent of the influential late Soviet jurist, G. I. Tunkin, who bizarrely defended the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and violation of jus cogens by claiming that Moscow was pursuing a higher norm of international law.
Third, though it is not wrong for Russia to desire a place “in the front row of international relations”, it is another matter for Rogozin to stipulate this as an entitlement – one requiring NATO’s deference. Along with major energy price declines that in the long term could seriously diminish its uni-dimensional economy, Russia also faces a dire demographic crisis, rampant and corrosive corruption and the stifling of civil society. Moscow is hardly in a position to dictate to the world. Its “new legally-binding treaty” proposal that would keep the U.S. out, and that puts Europe down as behaving as “an occupied continent”, confuses utility and principle while trying to put Russia on top. It is a reminder of Cold War prose rather than the poetry of a new security architecture.
Warm NATO-Russia relations are a two-way street that in turn requires mutual respect. Moscow will for its part have to appreciate that a policy of reassurance will be more productive than one of trying to divide or supplant NATO. And such reassurance would be aided mightily by building the real “non-hyphenated” democracy that its President Dmitry Medvedev spoke of, and would help foster a larger democratic and security zone from Vancouver to Vladivostok.