A mistaken mystery

The Russian demands include forever barring Ukraine and to a lesser extent Georgia, from NATO, a significant reduction of NATO deployments on Russia’s border, and “iron, legal obligations, not promises, but guarantees,” assuring Russia these two points will continue. NATO exercises and sorties the Kremlin say, have increased every year since 2019 in both scope and number. Nine alone are scheduled in Ukraine for this year, which is currently not a NATO member.

Deputy Sect. of State, Wendy Sherman, led the delegation for the US, and was not at all interested in these demands.

“We’re just at the beginning, and we don’t know where all of this is headed quite yet,” said Sherman. “We will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the NATO alliance”.

It’s likely she does know where all of this is headed. If anyone in the Biden Administration actually listened to what Russia’s concerns are, and placed the White House in the same position, they would find that what the Kremlin hopes to achieve in Geneva is an essential and quite standard-issue desire of states.

The historical record is now quite clear, despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comments to the contrary; in 1990 NATO promised a young Russian Federation that the alliance would not move eastward, but in three major steps added almost all of the former Warsaw Pact countries under the security umbrella of an increasingly hostile U.S.

Ukraine joining NATO is as intolerable to Russia’s national security as Mexico joining the Warsaw Pact, if it still existed. One can also draw parallels with Cuba and what a stir its allegiance with the Kremlin caused in the bowels of the Pentagon.

If American diplomats continue to consider Russia an irrational enigma, then the talks will get nowhere. But whether they recognize it or not the mere fact that Ryabkov and his delegation showed up is a sign that Moscow’s acceptance of her current relationship with the West is now at an end.

Analysis

Despite the fact that U.S. intelligence services predicted a swift invasion of Ukraine that never happened, it’s still the belief inside Washington even after 10,000 troops were removed from the border with Ukraine, exactly as one might expect for a training exercise.

“We believe the threat of invasion is real,” White House national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said on “NBC Nightly News” after the talks concluded.

Ukraine is without a doubt the most important talking point, as elements within NATO, including their former Secretary General, have said she should be admitted and given Article 5 status. However it’s noteworthy that during all three of the recent perceived aggressions by Russia, twice in Ukraine and once in Georgia, neither the U.S. nor NATO acted.

“This U.S. counter-proposal should contain two interlinked elements, founded on the idea of reciprocity: The first is a renewed U.S. commitment to guaranteed autonomy for a demilitarized Donbas region within Ukraine…” writes Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “The second U.S. proposal should be a Ukrainian treaty of neutrality, ruling out military alliance either with the United States and NATO or with Russia”.

Other tones in Washington are distinctly at odds with Lievan, with the Wall Street Journal quoting an unnamed “European diplomat at NATO” saying “if we give Putin concessions now, he’ll come back for more, and describing Russia as “a long-term threat with the political intent to weaken us”.

More talks, between Russia and NATO, and a second round with the U.S. will continue in January regarding arms control, are due in the following days. WaL