How Russia has revived NATO

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S giant oval table in the Kremlin is as extreme as it is kitsch. Sitting far from foreign visitors may be his way of social distancing. But it also betokens the gulf that separated Russia’s leader from his guest, Emmanuel Macron of France. It may also illustrate what diplomats say is Mr Putin’s worrying isolation from the world. None can claim to read his mind as he masses some 130,000 troops on the borders around Ukraine. Is he about to launch the biggest war in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or is it all a big bluff?

On February 7th Mr Macron was the first heavyweight Western leader this year to visit Moscow to divine Mr Putin’s intentions. Before arriving the French president said he did not believe in “spontaneous miracles”. After five hours of talks, there was no clear outcome. Visiting Kyiv the next day, Mr Macron said Mr Putin had pledged that Russia “would not be the cause of an escalation” on the border. The Kremlin denied this, and brushed off the notion that Mr Macron could negotiate anything. “France is a NATO member, but Paris is not the leader there. A very different country runs this bloc,” said Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman. “So what deals can we talk about?” In sum, the only interlocutor that matters is America.

Mr Putin, for his part, launched into yet another blistering attack on NATO. And Ukraine, he said, must abide by the so-called Minsk protocols of 2014-15—or, rather, Russia’s interpretation of them. “Whether you like it or don’t like it, bear with it, my beauty,” the Russian leader said crudely, perhaps quoting the lyrics of an obscene song about rape and necrophilia. Mr Macron has long wanted warmer relations with Mr Putin. The danger, if his high-stakes diplomacy goes wrong, is that he will be seen as a dupe or, worse, as an accessory to Russia’s violation of Ukraine.

Yet there is little alternative to talking to Mr Putin. Russia has assembled the densest concentration of military firepower that Europe has seen in decades. Ukraine is surrounded on three sides. Russian amphibious assault-ships are gathering in the Black Sea. On February 5th America said Russia had deployed 70% of the force it would need to invade Ukraine: an attack could start “any day”. NATO worries that large military exercises in Belarus, starting this week, may provide cover for an assault, perhaps alongside a nuclear exercise. Nuclear-capable Russian bombers have flown patrols close to Poland.

NATO will not fight for Ukraine. Instead America and Europe have mustered a three-pronged response: deterrence, by arming Ukraine and threatening unprecedented economic sanctions if Russia attacks; reassurance of allies by deploying extra forces to central and eastern Europe; and diplomacy to stay Mr Putin’s hand.

Olaf Scholz, Germany’s new chancellor, will visit Kyiv and Moscow next week on the heels of Mr Macron. There has already been a meeting of the “Weimar triangle” (the leaders of France, Germany and Poland). The “Normandy” format (officials from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine) was set to confer on February 10th. If successful, this may be followed by a Normandy summit. As long as Russia keeps talking, the Europeans all hope, it will not start shooting.

Mr Macron has greater ambitions. With the departure of Angela Merkel, Germany’s veteran chancellor, he can claim to be Europe’s senior statesman. Beyond averting war, he wants to settle the status of Ukraine, shove Europe back onto the diplomatic stage and ultimately establish greater “European sovereignty” and a new security order on the continent.

On the military stand-off, Mr Macron warned of the risk of “incandescence”. But French and German diplomats have been warier of declaring that Russia’s build-up signalled an “imminent” invasion, as America and Britain have tended to argue.

European officials now espy a narrow path to avoid conflict. It passes through the Normandy format, the one forum where Russia and Ukraine can negotiate directly. For all of Mr Putin’s demands about halting NATO’s eastbound expansion and even rolling back its current military deployments, what most seems to vex him is Ukraine. The country has shifted towards the Western camp since 2014, when a revolt ousted its autocratic Moscow-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych. This prompted Mr Putin to annex Crimea and foment a separatist revolt in the eastern Donbas region.

At the barrel of a gun Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s next elected president, accepted the Minsk accords. These were deliberately vague. On the security side they mandated a ceasefire, a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, an exchange of prisoners and the removal of “foreign troops”, meaning Russians. On the political side Ukraine agreed to make constitutional changes to decentralise power, hold local elections and give Donbas a special status. Ukraine would then be allowed to regain control over its border.

How “special” that status would be was left undefined, as was the precise sequence of steps and the question of whether the 1.5m people of Donbas displaced by the conflict should have a say in its future. In effect, Ukrainian law would not apply there. Donbas would have its own local militias. In the eyes of Russia the purpose of Minsk was to create a Trojan horse to give it control of Ukraine.

Mr Poroshenko’s attempt in 2015 to push a mild version of the constitutional changes through the Rada (parliament) prompted fierce protests from nationalists, resulting in the death of several national guards. But defying expectations of its collapse, Ukraine muddled through, ducked and dodged, survived and consolidated. It stabilised its economy and built up and modernised its army. As the first line of its national anthem goes, “Ukraine is not yet dead.” Though he could not implement the Minsk accords, Mr Poroshenko could not ditch them either. As the Ukraine crisis flares again, European leaders are urging his successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, to re-engage with Minsk.

But implementing the accords has become a lot harder. Russia has tightened its grip over the separatist territories. It has built up a force estimated at 40,000 men, eliminated some of the unrulier commanders and installed its own leaders. It has distributed hundreds of thousands of passports to residents of Donbas, many of whom voted last year in Russia’s parliamentary elections.

Bringing Donbas back into Ukraine on Russia’s terms could spell the end of Ukraine as a sovereign state, or so many Ukrainians fear. One worry is that constitutional change leading to “federalisation” would give Donbas—and thus Russia—a veto on Ukraine’s West-leaning policy, notably its ability to join NATO. Another is that it will corrode the country from within, by giving Russia more ways to meddle in its affairs. As Zerkalo Nedeli, an online Ukrainian weekly, points out, forcing Ukraine to enact Minsk is “a slow and painful execution—not by shooting, but by injecting it with lethal poison”. With his own popularity rating dropping below 25%, an energy crisis looming and the cost of living rising, Mr Zelensky would face mass protests if Ukrainians see it as a sell-out.

Avoid the Finnish line

Yet some veteran Ukrainian politicians, including Arsen Avakov, a former interior minister, and Mr Poroshenko, believe that Ukraine is stronger than it may appear. They think Mr Putin would struggle to force Ukraine to surrender its sovereignty. After nearly eight years of war Ukraine’s army, one of the largest in Europe, is hardened. This, along with firmer backing from abroad, may explain why Ukraine’s elite is relatively calm. “My message is: don’t trust Putin and don’t be afraid of Putin,” says Mr Poroshenko. “Strength and resolve is the only language that works.”

Ukraine may be able to cope with a version of Minsk that falls short of Mr Putin’s demands. It could, for example, agree to negotiate with the newly appointed heads of Donbas, provided that Russia removed its proxy forces. Or it could agree to hold elections and dress up decentralisation, which has already taken place in the rest of Ukraine, as the “special status” for Donbas, as long as Ukrainian laws apply. In the meantime Mr Putin may calculate that waiting for Mr Zelensky to falter and for the economic crunch to take effect may be less dangerous than fighting. Russia would need at least 700,000 men to capture and occupy Ukraine, some analysts reckon.

A peculiarity of the crisis is that, even though no one in NATO thinks Ukraine is fit to join the alliance soon, if ever, the body cannot be seen to close its “open-door” policy in the face of Russian threats. Some European diplomats think the circle could be squared if Ukraine itself were to declare its neutrality, as Austria and Finland did after the second world war. Asked about “Finlandisation”, Mr Macron let slip that it was “one model on the table”, but insisted that creative negotiators would have to “invent something new”. Russian diplomats have said they might entertain the idea.

The trouble is, Ukraine has written into its constitution the ambition to join NATO. Moreover, Finland and Sweden are as close to NATO—and as interoperable with it—as it is possible to be without actually being members. Indeed, Russia’s brutish behaviour is kindling a debate within both countries about joining. What is more, Finland, Sweden and Austria are all members of the EU, which Mr Putin dislikes, too.

The Normandy process gives France and Germany a chance to claim a place at the talks with Russia, which have hitherto been dominated by America and NATO, if only because Russia submitted new treaties to those two entities. The French, although they are members of NATO, have unsurprisingly bristled at being merely “debriefed” by the Americans.

Two years ago Mr Macron had announced the “brain death” of NATO due to a double malady: under Donald Trump America was no longer willing to guarantee Europe’s security; and some members, such as Turkey, were acting unilaterally in Europe’s “neighbourhood” without consulting their allies.

Since then, however, NATO has revived admirably. Under President Joe Biden America sounded the alarm about Russia’s build-up and co-ordinated the Western response. “Putin has single-handedly given NATO a vitamin injection,” says Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, an annual transatlantic talkfest that begins on February 18th. NATO’s three decades of angst about its role after the end of the cold war has been dispelled. Having performed “out of area” operations in the Balkans and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, it is going back to basics: the territorial defence of allies. The theological rivalry between institutions in Brussels over whether the EU should have an autonomous defence capability has for the moment been stilled.

In this crisis the EU has been sidelined, perhaps inevitably. Ever since France blocked the idea of a European Defence Community with a pan-European army in 1954, European integration has been pursued mainly by economic means. Yet France now pushes hard for the EU to build it own military capacity.

The brain comes alive again

Atlanticists have long worried that the EU would at best duplicate already scarce military capabilities and at worst split America from the EU. The ensuing compromises have created an alphabet soup of European structures and initiatives but little extra military muscle. For instance, since 2007 the EU has had two battlegroups of about 1,500 soldiers each, supposedly ready to deploy at short notice. It has never used them, although it has mounted other ad hoc missions. In fending off Russia it is NATO members, individually and collectively, including France, that have taken up the cudgels to send troops to reinforce their eastern European allies.

“The European Union cannot defend Europe,” says Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, noting that “80% of NATO’s defence expenditure comes from non-EU members”. NATO’s military heft derives mainly from American muscle. But it is more than that, Mr Stoltenberg says. Britain, Iceland and Norway, which are not in the EU, are vital to securing Europe’s northern flank, along with Canada. Similarly, despite tensions with its NATO allies, Turkey supports Ukraine and anchors the alliance in the south-east. In return, NATO helps give America an unrivalled network of friends and allies. Europe and North America, Mr Stoltenberg says, must stand in “strategic solidarity”.

But for all of NATO’s primacy, it cannot solve the problem of Russia. To begin with, the alliance does not include Finland and Sweden. Though they are not covered by NATO’s Article 5, which states that an attack on one ally is an attack on all, they are nominally protected by the mutual-defence provision in article 42 (7) of the EU treaty. Moreover, it is the EU that co-ordinates and imposes economic sanctions. The EU is also vital in building a more resilient energy system, including an internal market that lets countries trade electricity and natural gas. In Ukraine the EU has provided billions of euros in aid to help reform the corruption-riddled economy.

Within both NATO and the EU there have been fewer disagreements than expected. No one questions the principle of “massive” sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine. After some reluctance, Mr Scholz accepts that Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, would be mothballed. All understand the danger of a belligerent Russia that seeks to redraw the international borders of Europe by force.

What if Russia embarks on a smaller action—something short of an invasion? And how to react to non-military “grey zone” actions, such as a cyber-attack and subversion? Mr Biden carelessly said that a “small incursion” might elicit a lesser response. But there has been little detailed discussion of such eventualities. Many allies fear that would expose divisions; a full-scale attack would probably not.

Mr Macron sees the Ukraine crisis as a chance once again to promote the idea of “European sovereignty”. Some people in Paris speak of a “refounding moment”. In a recent speech to the European Parliament he hailed the EU’s growing sovereignty, defining it broadly, from the collective European purchase of vaccines to the euro-zone’s monetary policy. But he also spoke of building “a new order of security and stability” in Europe—agreed on by Europeans, non-EU NATO allies and America—and then proposed to Russia.

What he means is hazy. Some suggest he is referring to such things as the need for a new arms-control regime in Europe after Mr Trump’s withdrawal in 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty and to the erosion of confidence-building measures, including advance notification of large military exercises. None of this is EU business. These points have anyway been included in America’s and NATO’s recent responses to Russia. What is more, the French government does not want to be drawn directly into nuclear arms-control talks with Russia, lest its own force de frappe is called into question.

America is back. For how long?

More than most of his predecessors, Mr Macron understands the suspicion and resentment that all this can cause. He has become more willing to consult other EU members than in the past. Jacques Chirac, who resented the EU’s enlargement to eastern and central Europe, once said that governments in that region would do better to “shut up”. Mr Macron, in contrast, says the “traumas” of countries that lived under Soviet rule should be understood.

Strikingly, the French are not alone in talking about European sovereignty. The idea pops up, for instance, in the coalition agreement of Mr Scholz’s government. Estonians have joined the French-led European Intervention Initiative, a forum for strategic thinking and planning. So has Britain. The idea that Europeans have to do more for themselves is strengthened not only by Russian brutishness, but also by doubts about America’s commitment.

Mr Trump may return to power in 2025. In any case, all recent American presidents have wanted to edge away from Europe and the Middle East to concentrate on the contest with China in Asia. Indeed, some see America’s new effort in Europe as a signal not only to Russia but also to China, to deter it from attacking Taiwan.

“Do we have a Plan B for what the EU will do if NATO were to lose its main partner?” asks Mr Ischinger. “I hope it will never happen but it’s a matter of serious responsibility to consider it.” Without the American hegemon, though, it is still hard to envisage the Europeans mustering a coherent response. Foreign- and security-policy decisions in the EU require unanimity. Different countries’ priorities diverge. Southerners want to focus on the Mediterranean and migration; easterners put Russia first.

Moreover, political and strategic instincts differ, too. France favours wielding military power but is wary of a NATO dominated by America; Germany embraces the alliance but for historical reasons is shy of using force. And Britain has left the EU entirely. “It is the European dilemma,” says a German diplomat. “European sovereignty is impossible. But it has never been more necessary.” ■

All of our recent coverage of the Ukraine crisis can be found here