Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 2, April–May 2009, pp. 13–21
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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and five years after the establishment of the NATO–Russia Council, the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia sparked a crisis in NATO–Russia relations. NATO suspended normal cooperation through the council and Moscow responded by freezing military exchanges. The crisis exposed how dysfunctional cooperation had become. But rather than lament the failure of cooperation, NATO leaders should use the opportunity to fundamentally reassess the goals of and strategy for engagement with Russia and develop a new, pragmatic approach that stresses mutually beneficial problem-solving. The war between Russia and Georgia has reset NATO–Russia relations; it is high time to think about how to reboot them.
A troubled history
The history of NATO–Russia relations is one of problems, mistrust and misperceptions; the relationship could hardly be characterised as a true partnership even before August 2008. Moreover, the fabric of cooperation, including the NATO–Russia Council, has not produced meaningful strategic rapprochement in terms of overcoming the legacy of Cold War perceptions or developing a common assessment of threats and capabilities to deal with them. From Moscow’s perspective, relations during the 1990s and early 2000s involved a string of humiliating experiences in which NATO or significant member states exploited temporary Russian weakness: NATO enlargement in 1999 and again in 2004, the war in Kosovo, the non-ratification of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Western support for the ‘colour revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine, US plans for deploying missile defences in Europe. While Russian interpretations of some of these may be somewhat peculiar, others do support the claim that the West does not hesitate to ignore Russian positions when doing so carries little cost.
The Russia–Georgia war caught NATO completely unprepared. It was the EU, benefitting from the activism of the French presidency, which helped negotiate the ceasefire and deployed a civilian observer mission to monitor it, with the side effect that Russia has discovered the EU as a potential security actor. Together with the time-honoured Russian preference for bilateralism over engagement with multilateral institutions, currently reflected in an attempt to develop a new security dialogue with the new American administration, this has, for Moscow, put relations with NATO on the back burner. Russian leaders have accused NATO of breaking off relations and say it is now up to NATO to restore them. Moreover, senior Russian policymakers repeatedly assert, with thinly veiled reference to NATO operations in Afghanistan, that NATO needs Russia more than Russia needs NATO. But the argument over who needs whom more is pointless; nobody gains from not talking.
The problem of Russia–NATO relations involves Cold War legacies, differences in strategic culture, and a preoccupation with process over substance. Cold War legacies still shape mutual perceptions. Russians still view NATO as an anti-Russia organisation which remains a threat to their security, despite NATO’s clear statement that the Alliance is defensive and not directed against anyone. Russian policymakers...
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Oksana Antonenko is IISS Senior Fellow (Russia and Eurasia). Bastian Giegerich is IISS Research Fellow for European Security.
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