Dire setbacks to international security were the subject of NATO Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow’s keynote address in Leangkollen, Oslo. In his statement before the Nobel Institute, Vershbow noted:
“After the watershed events of 2014, we face a new and more dangerous security environment, with threats pressing in on us from the East and from the South. We did not want this. We did not choose it. But it is the reality. And every successful strategy must be based on facts and realism, not simply on hope. To the East, Russia has torn up the international rule book. It has returned to a strategy of power politics. It threatens not just Ukraine, but European and global security more generally. And it is pursuing this strategy even as the costs to its own prosperity and reputation grow. To the South, violent extremism is spreading across North Africa and the Middle East. And we are seeing the consequences in the form of mass migration across the Mediterranean, foreign jihadist fighters traveling between Syria and Europe, and other terrorists, many of whom are inspired by a twisted interpretation of Islam, trying to bring bloodshed to our own streets.”
While Vershbow took a global look, his main concern, not surprisingly, was Russia, describing its aggression against Ukraine as a “game changer” in European security.
“Russia has used force to alter legally recognized borders and to actively subvert the government of a neighboring state. Although it claims to want de-escalation and to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, its actions tell a different story.
“The open, rules-based system that respects international borders, and the right of states to choose their own future, has been undermined. And yet Russia also signed up to these rules – and even helped write them – many times: in OSCE documents such as the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris, in the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and in many other international agreements. In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Russia explicitly guaranteed Ukraine’s international frontiers in exchange for the transfer of nuclear weapons from Ukraine to Russia.
“Our first reaction at NATO to Russia’s actions has been one of bitter disappointment. For over 20 years, we have tried actively and consistently to make Russia a strategic partner. We made it clear that our vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace included a prominent place for Russia. In the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997 we pledged not to regard each other as adversaries but to work together to create a “lasting and inclusive peace”.
“Yet what we have seen, especially since Putin’s return to the Presidency in 2012, is a Russia determined to go in the opposite direction: to detach itself from Europe, to assert itself in its own neighborhood, and to seek to build alternative mechanisms – such as the Eurasian Union and the BRICS group – whose raison d’être, at least in Moscow’s view, is defined by opposition to the West.
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“Even before the Ukraine crisis, Russia was backing away from the commitment it made at our Lisbon Summit in 2010 to develop a true strategic partnership with NATO and to cooperate in potentially important areas such as missile defense. Russia became less transparent about its own military activities, especially major exercises. It based these exercises on absurd scenarios of a direct threat, or even an attack from a NATO country. It stopped implementing the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, and other transparency initiatives such as the Open Skies Treaty. It showed no interest in our overtures to re-engage on nuclear and conventional arms control. Instead of more predictability and trust we now have less, even compared to the Soviet period.
“Indeed, with its frequent “snap exercises,” like the one now underway in the Kaliningrad region, Moscow seems determined to surprise, shock and intimidate rather than to build confidence and predictability as it pledged to do under the Vienna Document of 1999.
“And just a few weeks ago, Russia issued the latest revision of its Military Doctrine. It explicitly refers to NATO as destabilizing and a “danger” to Russia – without, I might add, giving any convincing rationale as to why or how NATO threatens Russia, or providing any justification for Russia’s aggressive behavior.”
“So what does explain Russia’s reorientation? I believe it is domestic considerations, more than anything else. Putin fears his own “color revolution”. The Maidan demonstrations, the aspiration for more democracy and for less corruption, are a threat to his own system of power in Russia – especially after he saw how the flawed Duma and Presidential elections in 2011 and 2012 triggered popular protests on the streets of Moscow…
“In this new environment, NATO’s security is not an optional extra, or a rain check for some future date. We must implement the Readiness Action Plan and the Defense Investment Pledge – in full and on time. Every Ally must assume its share of the collective responsibility. And I am glad that Norway is responding to the challenge.
With Germany and the Netherlands, Norway is in the lead in establishing the new Interim Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, the so-called ‘Spearhead Force’. This will allow NATO to respond in a matter of days to any attack on NATO territory, and lay the basis for the permanent Spearhead Force that we expect to declare operational at our Warsaw Summit next year…”