The media has been full of stories on the crises in Ukraine.
There has been much speculation about many issues that come out of the crises - whether Russia will invade the country, Russian President Vladmir Putin’s aims beyond Ukraine, and what the crises means for the battle between authoritarianism and liberal democracy. Naturally, many want a way out of the crises that will prevent war. However, few have recommended that our country think big on the problem, except for writer Michael McFaul in his story “How to Make a Deal with Putin: Only a Comprehensive Pact Can Avoid War.”
Things are looking very gloomy right now. Putin has amassed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, and he has threatened military/technical issues if the United States continues to cooperate with Kyiv. Putin drafted two extraordinarily aggressive treaties in December designed to constrain the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. They contain demands that are such nonstarters—closing NATO’s open door to Ukraine and prohibiting organizational forces and weapons in nations that joined after May 1997. These are more like predicates for war rather than sincere moves for negotiations. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden attempted to start a dialog with Russia in January, and Moscow has not totally rejected negotiations.
If dialog should start, our country should go on the diplomatic offensive to secure peace in the European region. McFaul referred to it as “Helsinki 2.0.” This would refresh the Helsinki Accords which kept the Cold War from turning hot in the 1970’s, as U.S./Soviet Russia competition grew in other parts of the world. It would also mean the return of arms control agreements and a large framework for European security. Of course, this would give the authoritarian Putin a platform that he doesn’t deserve, but that shouldn’t stop our country, NATO, and European democracies from pursing their own interests.
The 1970’s were a volatile time in the Cold War. Some believed that Soviet power was rising, and U.S. power was declining; although there was reason to think that Soviet Russia was cracking apart even then, at least according to Central Intelligence Agency reports. An important lesson learned was the fact that U.S., European, Canadian, and Soviet diplomats worked together on issues of European security.
McFaul summarized the Russia/U.S. relationship since the 1970’s” “after several years of negotiations, they produced and signed the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which codified ambiguous issues left over from World War II. At the heart of the accords was a central compromise: Western states de facto recognized the borders that resulted from Soviet conquests after World War II, and in return, the Soviet Union agreed to ‘respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or beliefs, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion,’ and joined the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) tasked with implementing these obligations. The Soviet Union and the West also tacitly agreed to disagree on the precise definitions of government accountability, human rights, economic rights, and non-intervention in internal affairs. Ambiguity, they showed, is sometimes necessary for effective diplomacy.
In the first two decades after the accords were signed, Europe saw an explosion of new security agreements and treaties, particularly after Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. In 1987, he joined U.S. President Ronald Reagan to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, eliminating a whole class of highly destabilizing weapons. In 1990, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty came online, substantially reducing the size of conventional forces deployed on the continent. The 1990 Vienna Document, signed by Canada, the Soviet Union, the United States, and most of Europe and Central Asia, expanded transparency about weapons and military training exercises.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia and the West continued to make deals that helped keep Europe secure. The 1992 Open Skies Treaty allowed signatories to fly reconnaissance missions through one another’s territories to collect information on military activities. The 1990 Charter of Paris trumpeted that all European signatories would “build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government of our nations.” It declared prematurely that “the era of confrontation and division of Europe has ended.” The 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Ukraine sent Kyiv’s nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for promises that Moscow, the United Kingdom, and the United States would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
However, things have changed since the Bill Clinton Administration expanded NATO into eastern Europe in the late 1990’s. McFaul summarized the relationship between Russia and the West in the 1990’s: “Putin came to power in 2000, and he grew progressively more disappointed with the West as NATO further expanded in 2004; as Washington started a war in Iraq; and after the so-called color revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. The West, meanwhile, grew disenchanted with Moscow after Russia launched the second Chechen war; grew more autocratic; invaded Georgia and recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries in 2008; annexed Crimea in 2014; and then supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading to ongoing war and thousands of deaths. European security agreements from the previous two decades began to break down. Russia stopped implementing the CFE Treaty in 2007. Putin then violated virtually every European and international security agreement his Kremlin predecessors signed. The United States stopped meeting its CFE obligations in 2011, and under former President Donald Trump, pulled out of the INF and Open Skies treaties, as well. The Vienna Documents today do little to enhance transparency, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)—the successor to the CSCE—has become feckless in large measure because Moscow objects to its efforts to monitor elections and protect human rights.”
McFaul also presents ideas for a diplomatic reset in Europe. Let’s hope there’s still time to negotiate, although things are moving in the other direction, if one looks at recent news reports. Both sides in the fight must increase transparency to better keep tabs on each other’s actions. Russia, the U.S., and European countries have little information on the deployment of weapons systems and troops since the end of the Cold War. A new grand bargain on European security could commit all signatories to more frequent monitoring of troop deployments, weapons deployments, and military exercises. The United States and Russia have learned how to successfully implement an obtrusive inspections regime from the New START Treaty, which limits the number of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles each country can deploy. New START is one of the few U.S.-Russian deals that still operates, and a broader agreement could share the treaty’s obligations to short-notice inspections and close probing of weapon systems. Helsinki 2.0 could allow Russian inspectors to visit the sites of U.S. missile defenses in Poland and Romania, and NATO monitors could have similar access to Russia’s Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad.
Moscow and Washington could rejoin the Open Skies Treaty and the CFE. We should also revive the Vienna Documents, meaning Russia and every NATO country should offer specified notifications about training and impose new limits on the scale and locations of exercises, especially because exercise preparations can appear very similar to planning for an actual attack. Diplomats should dust off old ideas. Russia and the United States failed to implement a 2000 memorandum of agreement on sharing data about missile launches, known as the Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC), because of technicalities and mounting hostilities in U.S.-Russian relations. But an initiative of its kind between Moscow and NATO or among all OSCE members would enhance all of Europe’s security (including Russia’s) and could have better odds of succeeding.
We also need to turn to the issue of arms control. We can begin by addressing the most destabilizing forces: the troops and weapons stationed on or near the Russian border. On a reciprocal and verifiable basis, all sides should pull these back, beginning with the Russian army mobilized around Ukraine today. They should also pull back their rockets. This may seem like a hard ask of Moscow, but Putin has already proposed that signatories not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas where they can reach other signatories. Russian commentary has emphasized keeping all such weapons out of Ukraine. Their demand is reasonable if Moscow places similar restraints on short-range rockets that can hit Kyiv, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, or Warsaw.
The Biden Administration should support new limits on missiles in Europe. In addition, both Russia and the US should rejoin the INF Treaty, and we should also try to draw down the number of conventional weapons in Europe.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project.
