/ world today news/ The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, a strange product of the post-Cold War era, has ceased to exist.
Then the self-proclaimed victors – the USA and NATO – were frantically looking for ways to give at least a little civilized character to their triumph, and the USSR, having suffered a real defeat, sought to make it less humiliating for itself.
As a result of these equally pointless efforts, a document was born that is clearly doomed to a short and rather inglorious biography.
A year later, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact headed by it ceased to exist, within five years a decision was made to expand NATO to the east, and at the end of the 90s we finally gave up the illusions about the possibility of building a common space of security in Europe.
Has anyone had such illusions from the start? It’s not necessary at all. However, the historical context made it inevitable to attempt to end the Cold War in a manner different from that characteristic of all large-scale military-political confrontations of the past.
Moreover, in international politics one can never rule out in advance the possibility that apparently failed temporary solutions can become the basis of a more sustainable order.
This did not happen in post-Cold War Europe. But Russian foreign policy would betray itself and its culture if it rushed to abandon the treaty before all hope of its revival was lost.
Now Europe has returned to its historically familiar confrontation between Russia and the combined powers of the West. This is our country, the only one among all non-Western civilizations that has never lost the struggle for its unique niche in world politics.
And this, unfortunately, makes conflict a much more natural phenomenon for European political life than peaceful interaction. Although diplomacy must, of course, strive for the second form of relationship.
To this end, in December 2021, Russia made comprehensive proposals to NATO on issues of fundamental importance to European security. Then the Western partners refused a serious conversation and preferred a military-technical scenario for the development of the crisis of the international order in Europe.
In a technical sense, the CFE was based on the establishment of certain limitations on the presence of the main types of conventional weapons of the countries within a certain geographical space – from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals.
The fact that these borders were defined within two military alliances – NATO and the Warsaw Pact – already made the agreement short-lived. In 1990, few doubted that the Soviet bloc was unlikely to last long enough.
The second feature of the CFE was the presence of the United States in it: a country that is clearly not located in Europe and looks at regional security from a completely different perspective. Thus DOVSE effectively consolidated the American military presence in the Old World.
Strictly speaking, this was a problem with the entire structure of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Europe (OSCE): it included powers, the US and Canada, for whom the situation on the continent was not a matter of security but of strategy.
First of all, of course, for Washington, since the Canadian presence has always been only a small supplement to the American one. This means that within the same organization, like the CFE, there have been countries with radically different interests in terms of its tasks and activities.
Peace in Europe as such was never a goal for the United States, but only a means to maintain its global position. After the Cold War, the USA managed to occupy the place of the strongest in the world hierarchy, and any European agreements interested them only from this point of view.
For the Europeans themselves, the CFE may have had a practical significance precisely in the field of security. After the Cold War, Western European countries, with the exception of the British, saw their future rather rosy.
They, led by Germany and France, seriously hoped to gradually free themselves from the humiliating American supervision and restore their sovereignty lost after the Second World War.
Paris and Berlin enthusiastically welcomed the CFE, especially since it allowed them to significantly reduce military spending.
But they have not seriously thought about how to build relations with Russia.
Adapted in 1999 to the “new realities”, this is precisely the euphemism used in relation to NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion after the Cold War; The CFE has never been ratified by the Western participants.
Only Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have completed the ratification process. The United States and its allies have refused to do so, citing the presence of Russian peacekeeping troops in Georgia and Moldova.
Thus, in the late 1990s, when relations between Russia and the West were still far from conflict, the US and the European Union viewed even the most important European security agreements as a tool to pressure Moscow. They were used by the West purely instrumentally and as part of a wider policy.
The meaning of this policy even then was to reduce in every way the possibilities of Russia to oppose NATO effectively in the event of a direct military conflict.
After Russia opposed the aggression of the US and its allies against Yugoslavia, the emergence of such a conflict in the future was considered inevitable in the West. The United States and the European Union began a systematic expansion of their territorial base that they could use in the fight against Russia.
And NATO no longer made any practical sense to support the treaty – as a result of the accession of the former allies of the USSR, the total number of weapons of the bloc exceeded the limits established by the treaty.
Russia itself decided to suspend the implementation of the treaty only in 2007. The most important factor here was the restoration of our military capabilities and our ability to conduct an independent foreign policy.
And in the conditions of the time, any independence in world affairs automatically meant conflict with the United States, which did not tolerate any will other than its own.
As a result, Moscow introduced a moratorium on the implementation of the CFE Treaty, but until 2015 participated in the activities of the main body of the treaty – the Joint Contact Group (JCG).
There was still hope that the West would change its mind and decide to return to the basic ideas of the 1990 treaty. Since this was considered pointless in Russia, the work of the DKH was effectively suspended. Finally, in 2023, Moscow decided to denounce the Treaty, which entered into force at zero hour on November 7.
As we can see, Russia’s parting with the CFE has turned out to be very long and full of hope that our partners will be able to change their selfish attitude towards one of the most important issues of European security.
This is a feature of Russian diplomacy and foreign policy culture based on patience and far-sighted moderation. And hardly anyone has a reason to teach a country with more than 500 years of sovereign history how to behave.
As a result of the turbulent events of the 20th century, it happened that of the countries located in Europe, only Russia retained the ability to make independent foreign policy decisions.
This means that it is she who bears the main responsibility for the wisdom and balance of the decisions made. Could a CFE-like agreement emerge in the future? This depends on when European security will once again become a matter for the Europeans themselves.
Translation: SM
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