EUROPEAN SECURITYWho Can Guarantee Russian Security?
What Makes Putin Insecure? Putin’s insecurity might start with anxiety about his personal future, but he has extended this into a vision for Russia that involves a permanent struggle with the West and its liberalism. In the end the biggest threats to Russian security do not lie outside its borders but inside its capital.
President Macron’s observation early this month that once the war is over Russia will need to be offered security guarantees was greeted with incredulity. Russia is the country attempting to conquer another, not the other way round. It is the aggressor not the aggrieved. Because of past Macron statements, such as last June’s urging that Russia not be ‘humiliated’, he has fueled suspicions among the more hawkish NATO states, as well as Kyiv, that he is inclined to be far too conciliatory to Moscow. To be fair to Macron in the same speech he made it clear that he fully understands that Kyiv has to take the lead in any peace negotiations. On 13 December he again stated that ‘It is up to Ukraine, a victim of this aggression, to decide on the conditions for a just and lasting peace.’
There is an issue to be addressed about how relations with Russia are to be managed in the future. Macron is not alone in worrying that Russia is too large and powerful a country to be ignored. German Chancellor Scholz has also spoken of the need to restore cooperative relations, to go back to the prewar ‘peace order’ even though this may not be possible with Putin in charge. In the unlikely event that Putin renounces armed aggression and accepts that on the other side of its borders ‘there are open-minded societies, open societies, democracies’, then, suggests Scholz, ‘all questions of common security’ could be resolved. There are some big ‘ifs’ here.
Security Guarantees and Alliances
In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War great effort went into developing what was commonly described as a ‘security architecture’. It began in late 1990 with a big conference in Paris, and involved a number of institutional innovations. The loftiest principles of international order were reaffirmed along with the warmest aspirations for cordial and harmonious relations. Thereafter there was no shortage of opportunities to talk and resolve disputes.
