Putin recently proposed providing Europe, the majority of whose countries are part of NATO, with formal guarantees that it won’t attack. In connection with this, he also assessed that those who fearmonger about Russia are serving the interests of the military-industrial complex and/or trying to bolster their domestic image, which exposed their ulterior motives. In any case, his proposal could hypothetically lead to a NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact (NRNAP), but only if the political will exists on both sides.
One of Russia’s goals in the special operation is to reform the European security architecture, which the US is newly interested in too as suggested by some of the ideas in its draft Russian-Ukrainian peace deal framework. All of this follows the Pentagon’s drawdown from Romania, which might precede a larger pullback from Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), albeit one that wouldn’t be total nor lead to abandoning Article 5. Such a move could still alleviate the American aspect of the NATO-Russian security dilemma.
The greater the scale of the US” “Pivot (back) to (East) Asia”, especially if it leads to the redeployment of some forces from Europe, the less likely that NATO’s European members (except the UK) are to saber-rattle against Russia since they’d doubt that the US will rush to their aid if they provoke a conflict. Their newfound sense of relative vulnerability, which is derived from their pathological intertwined hatred and fear of Russia, could then soften them up to a US-mediated NRNAP that they’d otherwise not agree to.
Just as “The US Will Struggle To Get Europe To Abide By Putin’s Demand To Stop Arming Ukraine”, so too might it struggle to get them to abide by whatever it proposes with respect to the new security architecture in Europe that it envisages jointly creating with Russia after the Ukrainian Conflict ends. Nevertheless, the US’ presumably reduced military presence in CEE by that point could facilitate agreements on the status of NATO forces in the Arctic-Baltic, CEE, and the Black Sea-South Caucasus.
This vast region uncoincidentally overlaps with the “cordon sanitaire” that interwar Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski wanted to create via the complementary “Intermarium” (a Polish-led security-centric regional integration bloc) and “Prometheism” (“Balkanizing” the USSR) policies but ultimately failed to achieve. In today’s context, US support for the revival of Poland’s long-lost Great Power status could see Poland leading Russia’s containment there on the US’ behalf but within strictly agreed-upon confines.
Russian-NATO tensions can still be managed so long as the risk of war in CEE is reduced, which can be achieved by placing limits upon Poland’s militarization and hosting of foreign forces in exchange for Russia withdrawing some or all of its tactical nukes and Oreshniks from Belarus. A fair Polish-Belarusian deal could thus form the core of any NRNAP. Successful mutual de-escalation on this central front is expected to lead to agreements on the peripheral Arctic-Baltic and Black Sea-South Caucasus ones.
The devil is in the details, and some NATO members might either obstruct talks on a US-mediated NRNAP or subvert it afterwards, so nobody should get their hopes up. That said, Russia and the US should set their sights on the end goal of a NRNAP, which could parallel talks on modernizing the New START. This is the most effective way to reform the European security architecture and keep the peace, but a lot will depend on Poland, which plays the most decisive role among all of the US’ NATO allies.
Source: author’s blog
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