Mission report washington, D. C. And chicago, united states



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The Russian Challenge





  1. Russia represented another important topic of discussion during the delegation visit. John Herbst, the Director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasian Center, told the delegation that Russia’s policy of fomenting and sustaining frozen conflicts emerged very soon after the Berlin Wall came down and well before NATO enlargement was ever discussed or foreseen. This policy was put in place in the Nagorno Karabakh crisis, in Transnistria and in Southern Ossetia in Georgia and to some extent in Crimea. The West initially responded only to Crimea and eventually Boris Yeltsin backed away from supporting separatist elements in that peninsula.




  1. Russia’s concept of sovereignty differs from Western notions and President Putin continues to defend the Kremlin’s right to intervene in other countries, allegedly to defend the interest of Russian speakers and those who are ethnically Russian. Russia thus claims to have a sphere of interest where it can intervene, and it includes the territories of several NATO countries in this claim. This poses a real problem for the West and it is clear that for Russia, the Cold War started up again nine years ago. It is high time for the West to recognise the threat that Russian claims pose to peace and security in Europe and to ensure that its deterrence posture is robust and credible. Russia’s invasion of Crimea was planned over several years and it was not simply a reaction to the flight of President Yanukovych. Russia continues to violate the sovereignty of both Georgia and Ukraine, and it has engaged in hybrid war in the Baltics and sought to challenge the right of NATO ships to cruise in the international waters of the Black and Baltic seas. Reinforcing the Baltics will therefore need to be a top NATO priority. Russian belligerence is driving both Sweden and Finland into closer cooperation with NATO.




  1. It is also very important to maintain sanctions on Russia. These sanctions are paying dividends and inflict a real cost on Russia for its poor behaviour. President Putin has built his power on the success of Russia’s economy. But he has also structured a state that could only be financed when energy prices stood at $100/barrel. The medium-term outlook is for prices to be half that and this is undermining the entire crony-based rewards system that underpins the Kremlin’s political order. Putin can no longer point to his economic success to maintain public support and is now resorting to crude chauvinism. But it is not clear how long this tactic will work. Chauvinism does not pay the bills, and the prospect for some degree of political change should not be discounted.


  1. Structural Change and US Foreign Policy





  1. John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, offered a rather different view on the future of transatlantic relationship. He suggested that in the coming decades the United States would very likely focus most of its strategic attention on East Asia, while Europe would generate ever less US consideration. The United States will by necessity focus on the world’s great rising power - China - and will have neither the interest nor resources to commit itself to the European continent as it had in the wake of World War II. Mr Mearsheimer also suggested that the West was partly responsible for the deterioration in relations with Russia as NATO had unnecessarily provoked Russia. Noting that “superpowers tend to be paranoid about their security”, he warned that Moscow is now poised to “wreck Ukraine” rather than allow it to move into the Western orbit. Ukraine, he suggested, is seen as vital to Russia but not to the United States, and that asymmetry is partly informing the tension. The Germans and French understood this at the Bucharest Summit, but others, including the United States, wanted to push the notion of bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Mr Mearsheimer suggested that this was a major strategic blunder.




  1. Mr Mearsheimer noted that declining empires are particularly protective of their eroding privileges and tend to strike out violently when they feel those privileges are under threat. He offered that allied countries need to be mindful of the ebb and flow of global power and to understand better the implications of these broad structural changes. Mr Mearsheimer also noted that Europe is far less unified than its institutional structure would suggest, and that its own decline in global affairs is increasingly apparent. The immigration crisis has exposed these fissures, and he warned that those who have written off the possibility of war in Europe itself are guilty of hubris or naiveté. Europe is not as stable as is often assumed, he suggested, and its relative decline, reflected both in demographic and economic trends, is likely to deepen these contradictions. He described the US presence in Europe as that of a pacifier and its eventual departure from Europe would be bad news for the continent. He argued, however, that the United States has played the opposite role in the Middle East and that much of the instability in that region today can be linked to serious US miscalculations. Europe is among those paying the price as its southern littoral is now exposed to waves of refugees and other manifestations of this instability.




  1. Mr Mearsheimer is a noted structural analyst of international affairs and in his analysis suggests that the United States, the world’s predominant and still most vital superpower, will invariably direct its focus on a rising global power and not a declining one. Russia, he suggested was declining precipitously and Europe is also strategically, economically and demographically on a downward slope. The great long-term threat to the United States lies in Asia and not in Europe, Mearsheimer said, and the United States is already swinging forces and intellectual attention towards Asia. China, he said, should not be seen as a status quo power and is seeking to upend the current order in the Pacific. This is evident in their current actions in the South China Sea and this is a taste of what is to come. This trend will only accelerate over time, he suggested, and when you pivot to one region, you invariably pivot away from another. The foreign policy rhetoric of both the Trump and Sanders campaigns point to the direction the United States may ultimately take in its relations with Europe.




  1. Mr Mearsheimer indicated, however, that the Gulf region would remain an era of strategic attention as India and China will be increasingly dependent on its energy. China is likely to build a blue water naval capacity that will allow it to deploy to the Gulf. The signing of 17 commercial deals between China and Russia is an indication of this tightening relationship. China, however, poses no direct threat to Europe and this is likely to accelerate the drift between Europe and the United States. Europe will trade extensively with China, including dual-technology products. This will upset American officials more concerned with the military implications of this trade. Mr Mearsheimer did not discount the possibility of future US-Russia collaboration to contain a surging China as there is a potential shared interest in doing so. Needless to say, these ideas triggered an interesting discussion both about the future of the Europe, western policy towards Russia, and America’s evolving strategic priorities.




  1. Along these lines, Frances G. Burwell at the Atlantic Council briefed the delegation on an Atlantic Council forecasting project which seeks to identify the key factors that will shape Europe’s international and internal condition by 2020. The study looks at four scenarios for Europe based on megatrends that cannot be altered, like demographics and the long-term growth outlook. It also looked at ten key variables that might impact European unity and capacity to adapt. The study concluded by exploring four possible outcomes ranging from a barricaded and disunited Europe to a more open, confident and united Europe.


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