“Since 2014 the Russian authorities have significantly increased their economy’s ability to withstand a severe shock, especially the banking and financial sectors. The country’s central bank has drastically reduced its US dollar holdings and 87% of Russians now hold a Mir card that uses a national payment system. If the US carries out its threat to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT international payments system, as it did to Iran in 2012 and 2018, financial transactions between Russian banks and businesses can now be made via a homegrown financial messaging system. So Russia feels better equipped to face severe sanctions if it comes to a conflict.
On the other hand, the last mobilisation of the Russian army on the Ukrainian border, in spring 2021, prompted the revival of the Russian-US dialogue on strategic and cybersecurity issues. And this time, too, the Kremlin has clearly reckoned that upping the tension was the only way to get the West’s attention, and that the new US administration might be willing to be more accommodating to free it up to focus on its growing confrontation with China.
Beyond the circumstantial factors feeding into the current tensions, it’s worth noting that Russia is simply updating demands it has been making since the end of the cold war, without the West considering them acceptable or even legitimate.
The lack of understanding dates back to the collapse of the Communist bloc in 1991. Logically, the Warsaw Pact’s demise should have led to the dissolution of NATO, which was set up to deal with the ‘Soviet threat’. This moment offered an opportunity to create new structures to integrate this ‘other Europe’ which aspired to a closer relationship with the West. The timing seemed especially propitious as Russia’s elites, who had probably never been more pro-West, had accepted the break-up of their empire without a fight. But proposals to this effect, particularly from France, were buried under US pressure. Not wanting to be cheated of their ‘victory’ over the USSR, the US pushed for NATO’s eastward expansion to consolidate its supremacy in Europe. To do this, it had a strong ally in Germany, which wanted to re-establish primacy over ‘Mitteleuropa’.
George Kennan, considered the architect of the USSR containment policy, predicted this decision would inevitably have harmful consequences: ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking’
NATO … went to war against Yugoslavia, transforming the organisation from a defensive bloc into an offensive alliance, in clear violation of international law. The war against Yugoslavia was conducted without UN approval, which prevented Moscow from using one of its last remaining instruments of power, its Security Council veto.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 without UN approval was a further violation of international law, which was censured by France, Germany and Russia. This joint opposition by the three main powers on the European continent confirmed US fears of the potential threat to American hegemony from a Russian-European rapprochement.
In April 2008 the US put strong pressure on its European allies to back Georgia and Ukraine’s requests to join NATO, though most Ukrainians opposed it.
The Kremlin signalled its readiness to do all it could to prevent NATO’s further eastward enlargement. But by challenging Georgia’s territorial integrity, Russia was in turn violating international law.
According to researcher Isabelle Facon, Russia ‘consistently believes, with evident annoyance, that European countries are hopelessly incapable of strategic autonomy with regard to the US, and that they refuse to take responsibility for the deteriorating strategic and international situation’
Contrast this with the EU’s attitude towards its other powerful neighbour, Turkey: despite its military activity (occupation of Northern Cyprus and part of Syria, troops sent to Iraq, Libya and the Caucasus), the authoritarian regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is also an ally of Ukraine, has avoided any sanctions.”
–David Teurtrie, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2022
Comments