We should also take a step back and look at somewhat longer horizons, not just the moment - the aim must be to win Russia back as a partner. One sentence by Egon Bahr remains true: "Without or against Russia, there will simply be no peaceful future on this continent."
"Nato should not hold on to Ukraine's accession option"
by Urs P. Gasche
The closer Nato gets to Russia's borders, the more Putin can rally his people behind him, says Stephen Wertheim.
[This article published on 2/13/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, «Nato sollte an Beitritts-Option der Ukraine nicht festhalten» - infosperber.]
Nataliia Galibarenko, representing Ukraine, and Ludwig Decamps of Nato extended a "technical cooperation" agreement on Jan. 17, 2022.
He says Ukraine's decision not to join NATO must be part of a compromise to make a diplomatic solution even possible. But anyone who proposes such a thing and seeks compromises is today "accused of arguing like a Russian," Stephen Wertheim laments in a major interview published by the "Tages-Anzeiger" and other Tamedia newspapers on February 12.
The historian Stephen Wertheim works for the "Carnegie Center" in Washington, is co-founder of the "Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft" and author of the book "Tomorrow the World - The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy".
The U.S. Should No Longer Aim for Unipolar World Supremacy
At the latest after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was a mistake for the U.S. to want to remain the dominant power on the planet. "Many commentators and members of Congress have not yet accepted the fact that the days of the unipolar world are long gone," Wertheim says. The U.S. [and its military-industrial complex] would have to give up its claim to world dominance and take a compromise path, he says:
"That would allow it to focus on its own needs, repair its damaged democracy, and do more about climate change and future pandemics. These threats affect Americans more than any other state, China included."
He said the West must acknowledge that it will have to live and work with authoritarian rulers. China is not a military or other threat to the U.S. for a long time, Wertheim said in an interview just over a year ago. In the Tages-Anzeiger, he stated:
"The Chinese Communist Party still has huge demographic and economic challenges ahead of it. We should therefore not be so pessimistic about our own liberal democratic model, but show by our examples that it is attractive."
However, he said, democratic values have been discredited around the world and in the U.S. itself "because they have been associated with the hegemonic use of force by the U.S. and its allies." Democratic values should not be further undermined. Rather, he said, geopolitical conflicts must be defused and xenophobia minimized.
Creating a security architecture
An unwillingness to compromise with Russia [on the NATO issue] and even tougher sanctions would only lead to "Russia and China moving closer together." Europe should have no illusions about the U.S.'s loyalty to the alliance, he said:
"Russia and the U.S. are each other's nuclear equals, and a war would have significant consequences. I'm very worried whether the U.S. would really defend the Baltic states, for example, especially if China continues to rise and interfere more internationally."
Stephen Wertheim's conclusion:
We need to look forward and create a more equitable and durable European security architecture."
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I don't want Russia and China marching arm in arm
Matthias Platzeck in an interview with ARD's Ingo Zamperoni.
Matthias Platzeck, ex-Prime Minister of Brandenburg and Chairman of the German-Russian Forum calls for de-escalation.
[This interview published on 1/20/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, Ich will nicht, dass Russland und China Arm in Arm marschieren - infosperber.]
Red. As chairman of the German-Russian Forum, SPD politician Matthias Platzeck tries to cultivate and improve social, cultural and economic relations with Russian society. According to the NZZ, he is one of the German Social Democrats whose "attitude must be described as naive at best and irresponsible at worst." For this reason, too, we are publishing here an interview with Platzeck that ARD's Tagesthemen broadcast on January 17. The transcript was written by Rainer Simon.
Ingo Zaperoni: How likely do you think it is that there will be an open war between Ukraine and Russia?
Matthias Platzeck: The danger is real. But I believe and am also relatively sure that it is avoidable in the end. The Foreign Minister said today that this is the hour of diplomacy, and we really have to pull out all the stops. This is about nothing more and nothing less than securing peace on the continent, and in the long term - we should also take a step back and look at somewhat longer horizons, not just the moment - the aim must be to win Russia back as a partner bit by bit, because one sentence by Egon Bahr remains true: "Without or against Russia, there will simply be no peaceful future on this continent."
But so far, de-escalation has not really worked. What can the German foreign minister actually achieve during her visit to Moscow?
I think we have to be clear about what we want to prevent. And for me, at least, it's clear that we have to prevent Russia from being driven bit by bit more and more into China's arms, because I don't want to see the world's second-largest nuclear power - and that's the Russian Federation - and the world's soon-to-be largest economic power, which will be China, marching arm in arm, because the resulting conflicts won't take place in Siberia or in the U.S. Midwest, but here in densely populated Central Europe. And that's why I think if you want to be successful diplomatically, you have to - I know this is difficult for us - first of all say: Yes, your security needs, your security concerns are to be recognized, or we will deal with them. We haven't done that for 30 years, although the Russians haven't just started talking about it today.
Then, Mr. Zamperoni - I know that this is also a very difficult step - the Crimea issue would perhaps have to be temporarily removed from the negotiating canon for the time being. Because the Crimea issue cannot be resolved at the moment, and I emphasize: at the moment, in order to find a solution for eastern Ukraine, which will then make it easier to get out of the spiral of sanctions, so that we can then, bit by bit, overcome everything that has been lost in terms of trust on both sides. At the moment, we are living in a phase of high mistrust - so we need to build up trust bit by bit and then do something that I consider indispensable, namely create closer ties, more economic interdependence, more cooperation. We have to become more interdependent in the future than we are now, in order to make peace more secure and always to consider and weave in the future, the best possible future, for Ukraine as well. I think all of that is conceivable; it really is the fine art of diplomacy that is called for now in the next few years.
But for all the concerns you have, is it really reason enough for President Putin to keep turning the provocation screw, or is it the other way around: is it up to the West alone, as you say, to approach Russia and ensure de-escalation?
Of course, it's always a two-way street, and the Russians will also have to deliver, there's no question about that, Mr. Zamperoni. But we will not get around analyzing the past in order to shape the future, and this includes the fact that Putin asked a single question in the Bundestag back in 2001 - at that time in German and applauded by all the parliamentary groups represented in the Bundestag - and made a request: Build a security architecture that includes us, the Russians, on an equal footing.
By the way, he repeated that again in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference in a not-so-friendly tone. We applauded this wish and put it in the drawer, and today we are reaping the fruits of this failure to take it into account, and that is why we now have to set out on this difficult path, and to say once again: this is a two-way thing: the Russians will then also have things to contribute and some things to revise that they have done so far, but we will have to undergo this effort over the next four or five years.
I ask that because we are talking about a country that, according to a German court, is engaging in state terrorism, is annexing Crimea, and now you want to make even more concessions there, if I understand correctly. Is that the strategy?
I think if we don't take that step, indeed, almost paradoxically, if you will, there will be no such peacekeeping on our continent. We have allowed failures, we have been negligent, we have also been arrogant in parts over the past three decades. We have to see that clearly, draw conclusions from it and, if you like, make this and that concession. That is possible without impairing other states in their right to self-determination. There is a policy of finding, seeking and finding such a construction so that both sides are taken into account, but we also have to take into account the Russian need for security, Mr. Zamperoni, a very small comparison, when the Russians wanted to put missiles on Cuba in '62, Kennedy, who was certainly not a warmonger, said, that's not possible under any circumstances, we don't want to have such missiles so close to us, that affects our security needs. So, such wishes are not completely unusual among countries, between countries, and that has to be included in the models that have to be set up now. Probably in the end, in three, four, five years, we will have to organize another big conference for security and cooperation in this world, we will have to reorganize the world as far as the security architecture is concerned, it doesn't work the way it works now.
And there's also a project that's constantly playing a role, namely the Nordstream II gas pipeline, which the chancellor from your party still sees as a purely private-sector project. How do you assess that?
Mr. Zamperoni, that's exactly what I just said: It's a mutually beneficial project: The Russians need it because they need the revenues, we need it because we still need a stable and good gas supply for the next decades ...
There are two different positions within one government, the German government. How does that fit together?
So, everything I perceive, there are certain differences, that can't be any other way, but I'm very very sure that a wise decision will be made in the end, at the moment the Federal Network Agency is on it, then you should take the project as one that it is, namely it serves the closer integration, it serves the security of supply and in the end it can even stabilize the peace a bit further.
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"Russia has no intention of expansion in the Baltics and Poland"
by Rainer Simon
Andreas Zumach makes suggestions for a military and economic détente between NATO and Russia.
[This article published on 1/22/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, «Russland hat im Baltikum und in Polen keine Expansionsabsicht» - infosperber.]
Andreas Zumach macht Vorschläge für eine militärische und wirtschaftliche Entspannung zwischen der Nato und Russ...
Germany in particular should refrain from a propaganda war against Russia, says Andreas Zumach. The longtime correspondent at the UN in Geneva and specialist on geopolitical issues recalled in a series of lectures that Nazi Germany's campaign against Russia in World War II cost the lives of 27 million Russians. Tensions and wars between Berlin and Moscow had also consistently destabilized large parts of Eurasia in recent centuries. This gives Germans and Russians a special joint responsibility to ensure stability, peace and cooperation on the Eurasian continent. Finally, in the event of a military confrontation, Germany would be at the focal point of a potentially nuclear conflict.
The conflict has been systematically built up by the West since the 1990s
Zumach criticizes that the official narrative of most Western politicians and media about the deterioration of relations between NATO/EU member states mostly starts in 2014, with the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea in violation of international law. But the origins of the conflict go back to the early 1990s, he said, to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of the two German states. A narrative only from 2014 onward extremely distorts the perception and results in the fact that the essence of the conflict from the Russian perspective is no longer understood at all.
Military-political situation
NATO's eastward expansion in stages in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2017, 2020 has pushed NATO's presence threateningly close to the Russian border: Of Russia's western neighbors, only Belarus and Ukraine are not yet part of NATO.
NATO countries in 2021
NATO countries in Europe. As of 1.11.2021. Ukraine and Belarus (Belorussia) are missing from the border with Russia.
In parallel, the U.S. has canceled important arms limitation treaties or never ratified them, such as the CFE Treaty:
2002 the bilateral ABM Treaty between Washington and Moscow on limiting missile defense systems; 2019 the bilateral INF Treaty on the destruction of land-based intermediate-range missiles; 2020 the Open Sky Treaty agreed by CSCE member states in 1992 on defined overflight rights over foreign territories for observation purposes-designed as a confidence-building measure; 2004-2015 the CFE Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in 1990, entered into force in 1992 and was intended to set ceilings on the number of heavy weapons systems from the Atlantic to the Urals. Following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and NATO enlargement to date, the treaty was adapted in 1999 (A CFE) and ratified in 2004 by Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, but not by NATO countries. As a result, Russia suspended treaty implementation in 2007 and also stopped participating in the Consultative Group meetings since 2015, which was assessed as a de facto withdrawal.
Militarily, NATO is today vastly superior to Russia in the conventional field. This is even declared by NATO itself, although until now Russian superiority in conventional weapons was considered the main argument for the West's nuclear deterrence.
In the nuclear field, a comparison of strengths is naturally not so easy to make, because even a few nuclear bombs can decide the outcome of a conflict. According to the 2021 annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the nuclear situation is reasonably balanced, with 6255 warheads in Russia and 5550 in the U.S., and an upper limit on the number of delivery systems (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and long-range bombers) precisely defined by the START treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons.
In terms of military spending, Russia is significantly inferior to NATO countries. In 2021, Russia's military budget was the equivalent of 62 billion euros, only slightly higher than that of Germany (although the purchasing power of this sum is higher in Russia than in Germany). The U.S. spent about 0 billion, and the 30 NATO countries spent a total of ,103 billion (or 1.1 trillion).
Politically, in addition to its support for the Assad regime in Syria, Russia has been particularly negatively exposed by its annexation of Crimea in violation of international law and its support for insurgents in eastern Ukraine. According to Zumach, the annexation of Crimea was carried out out of a certain self-defense, whereby the manner was also illegal under international law in Zumach's view: "The icing on the cake," however, was "that after the fall of Yanukovych in February 2014, Ukraine terminated the lease agreement for the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet Sevastopol, which had just been extended until 2042, as of 2017. At the same time, Russian was banned as a second official language in Ukraine; even in schools and in the entire public sphere, Russian was and is no longer allowed to be spoken.
Zumach does not see any territorial expansionist intent in the support of the insurgents in eastern Ukraine - certainly not against the Baltic states or Poland. Zumach considers the insinuation that Russia has expansionist intentions in these countries "analytically complete nonsense."
In terms of domestic policy, Putin must stick to his Ukraine course because it is very popular in Russia. Therefore, a first step toward détente on Russia's part is not to be expected. For Zumach, Putin has achieved two soberly planned goals with his behavior in Ukraine:
Sevastopol was secured as the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet;
The latent unrest in eastern Ukraine ensures that neither NATO nor the EU will consider Ukraine's accession in the foreseeable future.
For Zumach, it follows from this starting position that "the first step must be taken by the strongest, i.e., NATO." For concessions on the part of Putin, whose Ukraine policy continues to enjoy great support among the Russian population, would mean a loss of face domestically.
Proposals for de-escalation in the military sphere
Zumach puts forward the following concrete proposals for a de-escalation of relations between Russia and the West in the military sphere for discussion:
Together: resumption of talks on revitalization and adaptation of the CFE disarmament treaty;
On the part of NATO: official withdrawal of the "ill-fated decision of the 2008 NATO summit to offer Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova an option to join NATO"; (Addendum by Zumach on Jan. 17. 2022: This step, which Zumach has repeatedly proposed in articles and lectures since 2015, has become much more difficult for NATO after Putin publicly demanded it in the form of a contractual assurance since mid-December 2021 and thus immediately met with strict rejection ("red lines") from U.S. President Joe Biden. Western governments are also afraid of a (perceived) loss of face.
Common: moderation of mutual maneuvers along the Russian border; Zumach does not see a serious threat of war in the maneuvers, but the maneuvers "could one day get out of control."
Two important first steps toward détente were agreed upon at the mid-June 2021 summit between Biden and Putin in Geneva, he said: First, a joint statement to begin bilateral talks on strategic stability. Second, a concrete measure regarding cybersecurity: a comprehensive catalog of critical civilian and military infrastructures that would be off-limits to all sides in the event of a possible conflict is to be drawn up.
Proposals for economic détente
Russia has been cornered not only militarily but also economically over the past twenty years. The EU enlargements in 2004, 2011, 2013 to almost all western states of the former Soviet Union, which took place in parallel with the NATO enlargement, and the economic sanctions of the USA and the EU (no UN sanctions!), which have been tightened since the annexation of Crimea, would have considerably damaged Russia's economy. But the sanctions clearly failed to achieve their declared goal of persuading Russia to give in on the Crimea issue.
The settlement of the conflict over Nordstream II could contribute to this. The rejection of this now completed project in the West is based on very different motivations. The rejection of the Greens in Germany, for example, is based on ecological arguments: The use of fossil fuels should be restricted because of the climate catastrophe and not further promoted. This argument, however, ignores the fact that Russia is dependent on exports of its gas and, because of this dependence, will not be able to make its contribution to saving the climate without help from abroad: Russia must gradually be made capable of freeing its economy from the dependence on raw material exports and building up other economic sectors that will make this possible.
Since Russia would not be able to survive today without its raw material exports and has not been able to develop its technological and industrial development to the same extent due to the sanctions, the easing of sanctions and other economic assistance are indicated.
Zumach proposes measures to ease tensions in the economic sphere:
On the part of Russia: official withdrawal of Russia's 2017 threat to Ukraine to raise gas prices by 80 percent. In addition, a binding commitment that a guaranteed gas quota will continue to flow through Ukrainian pipelines and secure transit fees for Ukraine. In addition, dismantling of economic sanctions against Western states (primarily their agriculture).
On the part of the West: Reduction instead of prolongation and tightening of economic sanctions of the USA and EU against Russia.
Together: Gradually use Nordstream II as a completed infrastructure project as an alternative, e.g. for hydrogen transport, whereby this could be produced in Russia initially from fossil fuels and later, with the help of Western technologies, in an environmentally friendly way ("green hydrogen"); studies have shown that necessary technical retrofitting would be feasible; ecological concerns should be countered by the fact that a transitional leap to ecologically produced energy is not possible anywhere in the world.
Proposals for a civil and cultural rapprochement with Russia
Zumach recalls that after World War II, various reconciliation efforts were made between Germany and Russia in the cultural sphere and at the level of civil society, which have been sharply scaled back again in the last twenty years amid rising tensions.
According to Zumach, one reason is that Putin's systematically cultivated negative image is increasingly being transferred to the Russian people. And in the subconscious, Zumach suspects that older people in particular still have memories of propaganda during World War II, which was declared a war of extermination against the Slavic subhumans.
Zumach's appeal is to revive the civil society level through contacts and exchange.