Russia

The EastWest Institute has just released Afghan Narcotrafficking: Post-2014 Scenarios, the second report out by its working group of Russian and U.S. experts. As Afghanistan now faces an uncertain political and security environment following the drawdown of ISAF troops at the end of 2014, the potential for a worsening narcotrafficking threat is great.

The report states that the potential for deterioration “underscores the imperative need for Russian and U.S. policymakers to find the political will to resume and perhaps even increase cooperation despite ongoing differences on other issues. Together with regional partners and international organizations, renewed Russian-U.S. cooperation presents the best hope for a brighter future.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein issued the same call for cooperation in a December 2014 report by the United States Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, in which she wrote: “The simple fact is that Afghan narcotics pose serious security and health threats to both the United States and Russia. We should find opportunities to jointly address this shared problem.”

The working group’s first report, Afghan Narcotrafficking: A Joint Threat Assessment, came out in 2013. Post-2014 Scenarios will be followed by three more reports in 2015 and 2016 offering specific policy suggestions on border security, alternative livelihood in Afghanistan and narco-financing, with a final report presenting a compendium of all recommendations.

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Download the Report

There is one very good reason why Europe and the United States should open negotiations with Russia on a new European Security Treaty. It is Kaliningrad.

The Ukraine crisis is another good reason, among several, but let’s focus on the detached Baltic province of Russia for this discussion.

The other Crimea

Kaliningrad is a piece of territory that the Soviet Union took as a war prize from Germany in 1945, sitting as an exclave of the Russian Federation between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.

On December 16 2014, Russia confirmed months’ old rumors that it had permanently deployed nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles with tactical range (400 km) in the province and that they had been there for “some time”, as long as 18 months according to one source.

Such a move was first threatened by Russia in 2008, but suspended 18 months later, in response to the once-planned and then deferred U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The official confirmation from Russia about the more recent Iskander deployment in Kaliningrad followed a statement from Moscow the day before that it had the right to deploy nuclear weapons in Crimea.

In Washington, on December 17, in reply to a question from a Belarus journalist on Russia’s “right” to deploy such weapons in newly occupied territory of Crimea, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Asian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, replied that “any effort to further militarize that region will be extremely dangerous and would not go unanswered”.

So Europe’s newest war now has a military nuclear dimension, and the territorial scope of this nuclear dimension now extends to the borders of Poland and the Baltic Sea.

Thank you Moscow! Thank you Washington!

The latest Kaliningrad gambit may yet prove to be a masterstroke of Russian diplomacy. (It was first conceived around 2008, the same time that Russia first began devising plans to threaten Ukraine’s future as a state if it aligned itself with NATO.)

Russia’s aim in its Kaliningrad gambit is to put on the table for Europe the risk of opening up the entire fabric of continental security, mostly de-nuclearized, that has been set in place since the end of the Cold War.

It reminds all parties of the wartime military occupation in 1945 and the tough post-war negotiations on territorial control of the Soviet Union and the Allies.

Kaliningrad had been Prussian or German territory since at least 1657 and was only surrendered on the battlefield in 1945 and in post war settlements.

The perfect plan?

Russian leaders believe that any military activity in or around Kaliningrad by them will be deeply disturbing to Europe’s most powerful and diplomatically conscious countries (Germany, Poland, France and Great Britain).

For Russia, the end point of the Kaliningrad gambit (and of the Novorossiya rebellion in Eastern Ukraine) is a new European Security Treaty which would wind the clock back to 2004, when NATO expanded eastwards to include Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along with four other East European states.

Not everything can go back of course, but Russia wants compensations. There are three main elements to Russia’s wish list:

1. Recognition of a common military strategic space that binds together Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, a concept that is explicitly enshrined in the Minsk Treaty of 1991 between these three countries that dissolved the Soviet Union.

2. An end to U.S. ABM development and deployment without Russian participation in it.

3. Russia wants to keep Crimea.

However unrealistic these demands have seemed, and still seem, to American and European diplomats, their governments now need to contemplate just how Russia will exploit Kaliningrad to increase pressure on them to come to terms with Moscow on a new European security order.

Kaliningrad is, like Crimea, not connected by land to mother Russia. Moscow will be keen to draw parallels between the two exclaves, which are somewhat anomalous in Europe.

For most people in Europe, there is no ideological or geopolitical contest over Russian sovereignty in Kaliningrad as there is over Russian sovereignty in Crimea.

Crimea 2.0

Russia may begin to create artificial crises around access to Kaliningrad to simulate the situation Crimea now faces, with its dependence on Ukraine for water, electric power, some telecommunications and road access for people and food.

The Russian armed forces already conducted a snap military drill in Kaliningrad from December 5-10. This involved bringing all military forces in the region (airborne, army, navy, air force and missile forces) to their highest level of alert.

Notably, it also included redeployment under exercise conditions of Iskander missiles from Russia within two days.

In October 2013, Russia Today gave wide play to a Lithuanian government threat to cut off supplies to Kaliningrad if Russia continued its bellicose diplomacy toward Ukrainian partnership with the European Union.

And in May 2014, Russia unilaterally suspended its 2001 agreement with Lithuania for joint notification and inspection of military deployments.

Russia may begin to push Europe to the point where it needs to trade peace and quiet around Kaliningrad and the Baltic region for peace and quiet around (Russian-held) Crimea.

As Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, noted on November 13: “It is an established fact that there has been no formal post-Cold War settlement … this constitutes a major flaw with far-reaching consequences.”

Russia wants such a final settlement. Kaliningrad may be its best card to achieve it.

To read the article at The Globalist, click here

As part of its Speaker Series, the EastWest Institute’s New York Center invited Robert Person, assistant professor of International Relations and Comparative Politics at the United States Military Academy and expert in post-Soviet politics, to offer an in-depth, historical perspective on the current conflict in Ukraine, on November 5, 2014

Speaking to a filled conference room and a number of dialed-in listeners, Person began by offering some historical perspective on Ukraine, providing insight into the forces fueling the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

 “The challenges are immense,” Person said.  “The odds are against Ukraine and Kiev. Unfortunately, I would predict we are in for a bumpy ride.”

Despite all of these seemingly insurmountable differences, he argued that the best course of action for Kiev is to rule from the center. He stressed the importance of the Ukrainian government to satisfy the needs of both Western and Eastern Ukraine, if it is to avoid a “frozen conflict,” a term popularly applied to post-Soviet conflicts used to describe the end of an active armed conflict without any substantive agreement or peace treaty.

Exploring Russia’s objective to keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence, a precedent established by Muscovy’s (a precursor to modern Russia) domain over the territories that would become Eastern Ukraine and Kiev’s significance in Slavic culture, Person helped elaborate on Moscow’s investment in the future of Crimea and other disputed eastern territories. He also offered explanations of some of the driving factors behind resistance to Putin and Russia, notably, the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism, a notion encouraged by the Vienna-based Habsburg Monarchy who saw a strong national identity in Ukraine as an important bulwark to Russian westward expansion. Ukrainian nationalism, Person explained, is a monumental aspect of both Kiev’s view of Russia as a foreign imposition and a major pillar of Ukrainian resistance to Russian control, exemplified by Ukrainian nationalist resistance to the Soviets during World War II and to Russia today in this conflict.  

After giving important historical perspective, Person then took into account the significance of the myriad of cultural, social and political differences between Kiev and Eastern Ukraine, notably the vastly different educational curriculums (Kiev emphasizing concepts of Ukrainian nationalism and Eastern Ukraine leaning towards Slavic and cultural brotherhood with Russia), the impact of linguistics (Ukrainian or Russian) and the demographic make-up of Eastern territories such as Crimea. These domestic issues, as he explained, are of great importance in understanding the current conflict.

Dr. Person warned that if Kiev doesn’t reassess its strategy, which necessitates both addressing serious domestic economic and political concerns and distancing itself from both the West and Russia, it has little hope of finding a solution for this conflict. In his examination of the conflict in Ukraine, Person sees the many challenges facing Kiev and Ukraine as a prediction of a long and tedious road to peace.

“The second big task for Kiev is governing from the center. This will require someone to walk a very fine line,” Person stressed.

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Watch full event here: 

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DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army (DA), Department of Defense (DOD), or the U.S. Government.

In just two weeks, Russia has returned to the news as a military cyber power in three separate reports: one about its superior stealth, a second about its nuclear missiles, and a third reporting a deeper cyber alliance with China. Meanwhile, as important as these issues are to international and individual security, diplomacy between Russia and the European Union (EU) on the issues is only weakly developed.

On 16 October, in Austin Texas, the Director of National Intelligence in the United States, James Clapper, said “I worry a lot more about the Russians” when it comes to U.S. defences in cyberspace, according to the Wall St Journal.   He observed that the Russians are more stealthy in their cyber operations than China, leaving fewer traces of their activity. One presumes he was talking more of cyber espionage, given that Russia has been named in public reports by the U.S. government, along with China (France and Israel) as the main source of cyber espionage threats to the United States. 

On the same day, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that its Strategic Missile Forces would be creating new cyber defence units as part of the transition by the armed forces to automated (computerized) command and control. These units would be assigned both to silo-based and mobile nuclear missiles. Affirming that the forces would be equipped with the most modern equipment, the associated photograph carries the image of a very clunky laptop. This image confirmed pictorially that the announcement by the Russian armed forces puts them a decade (or even decades) behind the United States in developing this particular capability. Such an imbalance in the cyber defence capability of the strategic missile forces of the two sides is highly dangerous. Some analyst believe that it invites the more powerful side (the United States) to consider preemptive use of cyber attacks against the strategic nuclear command control of the weaker side (Russia), thereby undermining strategic stability. On 21 October, the Russian newspaper, Kommersant,  reported that President Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, would sign a bilateral treaty on cyberspace issues during a visit by the Russian to Beijing on 10 November.  While the treaty itself may be largely symbolic, it will over time provide framework for the two countries to build a degree of interdependence between the IT sectors of the two countries. At the moment, such technology transfer is quite weak since China prefers, and has rather easy access to Western IT products. If anything, it will be Russia who may gain most in information technology transfer from China in the long run. Russia has niche capabilities in cyber military and surveillance technologies, but China is advancing on a broader front.

The treaty will likely focus most on the shared commitment of Russia and China to create international norms that privilege the state over the private citizen in control of the internet and constrain internet-based interventions in domestic politics by foreign activists or other states.

This is an important area of policy to monitor. Russia is, as James Clapper indicated, for now more powerful than China in military and surveillance technologies in cyberspace. In the 2014 rankings for the annual network readiness index of the World Economic Forum, Russia stood at 50th, up from 54th, the year before. In contrast, China was ranked in 2014 at 62nd, down from 61st in 2013.  In a major report on EU cyber diplomacy by two European think tanks published in June 2014, the lack of effective collaboration between the Union and Russia is a recurrent theme. Russia’s cyber power will only increase. We need to understand it better.   

Click here to read the article at New Europe.

The EastWest Institute’s Brussels Center hosted a roundtable discussion “Managing Conflict in Europe and its Neighborhood: Lessons Learnt and Future Prospects” on September 25, 2014. Selected policy makers, academic experts and NGO-representatives reflected on previous cases of conflict management in Europe, specifically the Balkans, with a focus on the ongoing crisis in Eastern Ukraine.

The first panel, “Ethnic and National Conflict in Europe: the Case of the Western Balkans,”,was chaired by Jonas Jonsson, Head of Division for Western Balkans, European External Action Service. The panelists focused on how ethnic and national tensions have been fueled over the years, what the status quo is today, and which conflict management tools have been used – or have remained unused - in the region and by the European Union.

The power of nationalism was a key aspect of the discussion. Because nationalism and populism continue to have the potential to lead to violent extremism, the need for working up joint approaches to historical accuracy on an educational and youth level was emphasized. While guns are silent and will hopefully remain silent in the western Balkans, there is no genuine peace and reconciliation between ethnic and national groups, which prevents movement beyond the conflict management phase.

The panelists also discussed the role the European Union plays in managing conflict through its Enlargement Policy and the prospect of European Union membership for several Balkan candidate countries.  As one participant put it, “The EU dangles the carrot of membership in front of accession candidates in the Balkans, and if they behave, they can become a member.” The obstacles placed by individual European member states were also mentioned; the absence of a common European position, on issues such as the independence of Kosovo, contributes to a merely managed status quo, without prospects for an ultimate conclusion. The Kosovo issue remains central to tensions in the Balkans, considered by Serbia as an integral part of its territory, and considered by Albanians as part of a the “greater Albania.”  Asking either side to relinquish the claim on Kosovo is synonymous to asking them to give up a part of their identity. Attendees emphasized that a successful integration of the Western Balkans into the European Union is also a matter of credibility; unless the EU can achieve a sustainable peace in the Western Balkans, the EU will hardly be successful in any other processes of stabilization in its neighborhood.

The second panel, “Prospects for Managing and Overcoming the Ukraine Crisis,” was chaired by Georgi Pirinski, Member of the European Parliament, Former Foreign Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria. The panel addressed three major aspects of the crisis in and around Ukraine and the prospects for eventually managing the conflict: the internal Ukrainian problems, the complex Ukraine-Russia relationship and the strategic dimension relating to Russia’s concerns towards an extension of the European Union and NATO.

The common perception that there are ‘two’ Ukraines divided by different loyalties towards Europe/”the West” and Russia/”the East”, respectively, was challenged. It was noted that only two provinces in Ukraine actually rebelled against Kiev, and it was argued that they could not have done so without significant external support. Different scenarios addressed how the situation with the two regions of Luhansk and Donezk could evolve, including: a federalization model;, a neutralization of Ukraine according to a Finland/Austria model; and a frozen conflict scenario as is the case with Georgia and the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, and with Moldova and Transnistria. While the latter scenario was discussed the most intensively, there were different views on whether Russia bears an interest in a frozen conflict scenario; the lack of clear borders to Donezk and Luhansk as opposed to Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia was also mentioned. .

The role of the European Union was discussed at length, with a specific focus on the European Eastern Partnership initiative. While the Eastern Partnership initiative has provided much needed assistance to Ukraine in many areas, such as trade relations, tariffs, and economic strategy, it has failed to address existing “hard-core” security issues of concern to Ukraine, and was consequently unprepared to deal with the unfolding security situation in the wake of the current crisis. The first step to building a stable state with a functioning economy is to ensure the security and territorial integrity of that state by securing a functioning police force, army, and independent intelligence service. Consequently, it was recommended to introduce a security and defense dimension to the Eastern Partnership framework.

The panel noted that the European Commission, represented by the newly established Support Group for Ukraine, is committed to assist Ukraine in implementing much needed reforms domestically; however, the Support Group will only be effective if the Ukrainian leadership makes a positive choice towards harmonization and integration, and sets up a credible strategy towards that aim instead of using the fighting in the east as an excuse to stall the reform process.

With regards to the Ukraine-Russia dimension, the heated debate illustrated how there is a complete lack of trust and confidence between the involved actors. The Russian strategy, in its western neighborhood and specifically with regards to Ukraine, was subject to different analyses. Russia sees the association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine as a threat to its existing trade relationship with Ukraine; the opposing argument is that Ukraine can have a free trade zone with both Russia and the European Union, as is the case with Serbia, without diminishing the existing Russian-Ukrainian trade relationship.

The session concluded with the prevalent view that, although the crisis in Ukraine is not yet at the conflict management stage, no time should be lost in preparing for reconciliation and trust- building efforts on all possible channels through constant dialogue and contact with all involved parties.

In the concluding session, the conference chairman Ambassador Martin Fleischer, EWI’s Vice President and Director of Regional Security, elaborated a number of conclusions and “lessons learnt”:

1. Building trust is often perceived as a challenge of post-conflict, peace-building; however, trust is also a main pre-condition for managing a conflict. Trust-building must be done through complementary channels. While these obviously include governments, international and regional organizations and civil society, too little use is made of parliamentary channels.
2. Extreme nationalism, fueled by its typically one-sided interpretations of history, remains a challenge for every peace settlement. But there are encouraging examples of joint initiatives by historians and also on an educational level to overcome national-centric and ethnocentric standpoints and work towards long-term reconciliation.
3. National governments continue to bear the major responsibility. They must actively take matters of reconciliation and trust-building into their own hands and not be allowed to rely on civil society and outside actors such as the European Union. 
4. Within the European Union, differing national interests of member states still impede a genuine common foreign and security policy and jeopardize the efficiency of the EU’s strongest instrument for conflict-settlement, i.e. its neighborhood policy and the membership perspective. The case of Cyprus exemplifies failure in this regard.
5. The Eastern Partnership initiative has thus far failed to address the defense and security needs of the Eastern Partnership states. Strengthening the defense and security dimension in the Eastern Partnership initiative would give the European Union added leverage in its goal to support the institutional development of target states.
6. In spite of these shortcomings, the EU must and can play a more result-oriented role in conflict management and conflict prevention.

•  For insurmountable border issues in the Balkans, there is no alternative to step-by-step integration into a unified Europe in which borders lose their importance.
• The case of Ukraine is different, as EU-membership is no immediate perspective, and westernization is probably no cure-all. History teaches us that lasting conflict solutions must respect the interests and at least be honorable and “face-saving” to all major stakeholders