{"id":249865,"date":"2022-03-02T14:45:33","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T19:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=249865"},"modified":"2022-03-02T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T19:45:33","slug":"spirit-of-ostpolitik-or-disaster-at-the-gates-of-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/world\/europe\/spirit-of-ostpolitik-or-disaster-at-the-gates-of-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirit of Ostpolitik or disaster at the gates of Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when the clumsiness and underestimation towards Russia prevails in its regional security demands, and a conflict that threatens the use of nuclear weapons, the <\/span>Ostpolitik<\/span><\/i> (policy towards the East) promoted by German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the 1970s, recalls a certain dose of <\/span>realism<\/span><\/i> in international relations that is lacking today in transatlantic security designs. It is necessary today as never before, in the face of nuclear powers that are certain of <\/span>mutually assured destruction<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a policy that, in the midst of global designs and strategies of open confrontation between the West and the Eastern European socialist bloc during the cold war period (<\/span>domino theory, flexible response, mutually assured destruction…<\/span><\/i>), opted for normalization and negotiation with the countries on the other side of the iron curtain. It was a <\/span>realistic policy<\/span><\/i>, framed in a conception of international relations that understands European order and stability also by mutual recognition and by establishing mechanisms that guarantee the balance between powers.<\/span><\/p>\n

A war that stirs up today\u2019s convulsive world\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The European security scenario, which has led to this open and criminal aggression against Ukraine, is the product of an unprecedented mediocrity in finding necessary points of balance between the interests and challenges of collective security. Some miss a healthy dose of <\/span>realism<\/span><\/i> in international relations.<\/span>1<\/b><\/sup> And I don\u2019t think they are wrong. Nothing better, this \u201clogic between powers,\u201d than some advice from 2014, recently remembered, from a <\/span>realist<\/span><\/i> like Henry Kissinger for those who design security policies on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/span>2<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

The Ukraine crisis, it is not idle to remember, occurs in a period of recomposition of the international order. The world of today is not the world of yesterday. The crisis of globalization is accompanied by an unprecedented response to the alleged U.S. unilateralism. China and Russia are, without a doubt, the most important sources of concern in the disputes for hegemony in the face of the United States and the European bloc.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States is in a period of transition \u2014 many agree on that \u2014, and the intended return to the liberal idea in international relations, after Donald Trump\u2019s convulsive period, has not been accompanied by a coherent foreign policy towards many parts of the world. Latin America is perhaps an eloquent example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several internal open fronts (pandemic, political polarization, inflation, growing disbelief towards the political system, etc.) are combined with an inability to metabolize vertiginous changes in the international order, with resounding failures like Afghanistan in 2021. This leaves the feeling of a \u201czigzagging and weak policy\u201d \u2014 in U.S. terms \u2014 that perhaps recalls that atmosphere left by the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Europe, the security challenge with the aggression against Ukraine catches it at the beginning of a path for its \u201cstrategic autonomy,\u201d which also includes placing Europe\u2019s role in the world in terms of international security.<\/span>3<\/b><\/sup> It is an urgency in the face of the subordination of interests in this field to the foreign policy of the United States, the largest contributor to NATO. In the field of foreign policy, the European Union lacks its own line of conduct. The Ukrainian crisis has not ceased to show the secondary role assigned to the community bloc and the preponderant role of the United States in the problems that most directly affect this part of the world. The exclusion of the main authorities of the community bloc, in some of the most important negotiations between the United States and Russia on this recent crisis, confirmed this reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Ukrainian soldier walks through the rubble in Kiev \u2013 AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Absence of a <\/b>realistic policy<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The creation of the Soviet space, with Ukraine inside it, was a conflictive process that can also be traced in many phases of Russian history: the integration of peoples with dissimilar characteristics in a <\/span>national ideal<\/span><\/i>, which appealed to <\/span>socialist brotherhood<\/span><\/i>, to proletarian internationalism and to be understood as a \u201cbloc\u201d against the capitalist West. This process was accompanied by demographic movements that diluted or diversified in many cases racial and ethnic borders.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Brezhnev doctrine (limited sovereignty), according to which the borders between the socialist countries were no longer \u201cterritorial\u201d but \u201cideological,\u201d and where every problem in a socialist state was understood as a common problem for the socialist world, had a military translation in the <\/span>Warsaw Pact<\/span><\/i> in the face of NATO.<\/span><\/p>\n

In these, the Soviet republics and neighboring states became \u2014 it has been rightly said \u2014 mere \u201cmilitary theaters\u201d or \u201cstrategic directions\u201d in their military projections: that is, in the same way that it was understood as part of their western strategic direction for the \u201cGerman Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad, Belarus and Carpathian region,\u201d the southwestern direction was understood as \u201ca territorial extension composed of Soviet regions and other independent states: Kiev, Odessa, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.\u201d<\/span>4<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was accompanied by a military, political and economic decline on the international scene. But perhaps the territorial problem, the disintegration and independence of States that previously belonged to only one, is a trauma that the current leadership understands as its main challenge. The pain that Putin reminded Oliver Stone in his documentary <\/span>Interviews with Putin<\/span><\/i>, about the fact that, with \u201cthe collapse of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians were expelled from their country in a single night,\u201d which was equivalent \u201cto one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century,\u201d<\/span>5<\/b><\/sup> is indicative of the frustration for the Russian leadership of the scenario created since then and where sights are set.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this event, the demons were unleashed. The tension shifts to various scenarios: the expansionism of NATO, the full integration of former allies into the security and cooperation schemes of Western Europe, the flirtation of these former Soviet republics with the West, and the use by Russia of all the means to prevent it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some constants can be established among the actions most used by Russia to stop this rapprochement of the States that once belonged to the Soviet space: using armed force (Chechnya), encouraging unilateral declarations of independence (Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and now recently Lugansk and Donetsk), annexation (Crimea), among others. Nationalism in these areas flourished and disputed in many areas (ideological, symbolic, economic, etc.) the presence of its former \u201ccolonizer.\u201d For Russia, these movements are unsustainable and even more so if they are part of Western European security schemes, which constitute an intolerable threat.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is for this reason that the conflict in the former Soviet space is understood by Russia as a conflict between its borders. And the threats from States of the former socialist bloc, as a direct threat from their former allies. Stalin\u2019s obsession with not giving even a millimeter of his sphere of influence to states like Poland in the postwar period had practical and historical implications: several attacks on Russian soil have come through Polish territory, Stalin would recall Churchill while they debated and disputed the postwar world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The West, and especially Europe, have not wanted to understand Russia\u2019s security problems. The interests of the United States have prevailed, with its own logic of confrontation with Russia. American national and security interests have compromised the true interests of European security in the search for a solution to this problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

The end of the cold war unfolded an unprecedented scenario to make the interests of both coincide. Do not forget that the <\/span>Koziriev Doctrine<\/span><\/i>, promoted by the Russian leadership in foreign policy during the transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, sought to bring strategic positions closer to the United States, on an equal footing, to form an \u201calliance.\u201d Even the possibility of Russia joining NATO was on the table.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the bet was for marginalization and confrontation. This led Russia to the idea of \u200b\u200ban imminent threat and increasingly siege moves. Several events did not go unnoticed by the Russian leadership: the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, support for the recognition of Kosovo\u2019s independence, and the expansionism of the transatlantic organization that continues to this day: Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in 1999; Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania in 2004; Croatia and Albania in 2009; Montenegro in 2017; and North Macedonia in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s arrival in power in 1999 prioritized rearmament, economic growth, and positioning Russia once again as a major player on the international scene. Since then, attempts were made to build alliances and cooperation schemes to strengthen its \u201csphere of influence\u201d among its neighboring states: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001, the Eurasian Economic Union of 2014, to which is added the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which has a history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor can it be said that Putin\u2019s foreign policy was one of open confrontation with the West, and fundamentally towards the United States. The open aid to the United States and NATO after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Treaty for the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arsenals, the installation of the NATO-Russia Council in 2002, are proof of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several events even register the Russian proposals for the creation of a European defense architecture in Europe \u2014 only European \u2014, which only had the inconvenience (small inconvenience) of excluding the United States from the equation. These proposals, whose antecedents can be found in Mikhail Gorbachev\u2019s \u201cCommon European Home\u201d in 1987, tried to coincide around the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) the components of European security (proposal of Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov) or the entry into force of a European Security Treaty in 2008, at the time of Dimitri Medvedev.<\/span>6<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

However, these rapprochements clashed with the deployment of an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe in the harshest era of George W. Bush\u2019s unilateralism, and provocations in the states closest to Russia. Since then, struggles for geopolitical positions in Asia, Latin America and Africa have marked the course of Russia\u2019s relations with the West. Some author has considered that the conflict in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 marks a turning point in Russia\u2019s policy regarding NATO expansionism, between \u201cpassive discontent\u201d and \u201cactive revisionism.\u201d<\/span>7<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian conflict<\/b><\/p>\n

In an excellent work <\/span>published<\/span><\/a> on this same website, Julio C\u00e9sar Guanche addressed some more remote antecedents of this conflict in Ukraine: the events of 2014, the annexation of Crimea, the declaration of independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, the frustrated Minsk Agreements, Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s domestic and reactionary policy, Russia\u2019s suspicions about Ukraine, etc. I will concentrate, therefore, on highlighting a relevant point of recent months.<\/span><\/p>\n

U-kraine: to the limit<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n