The writer is a lecturer at Stanford University, former deputy secretary-general of Nato and previously the US chief negotiator on New Start
Russia has been seized with an apocalyptic fever during the war in Ukraine. It started with Vladimir Putin’s musings that a world without Russia is not a world worth having. That led Russian media figures to urge nuclear incineration of London.
More recently, former president Dmitry Medvedev threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Europe, and Sergei Karaganov, of Moscow’s Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, urged the Kremlin “to hit a bunch of targets in a number of countries in order to bring those who have lost their mind to reason”. In short, the US and its Nato allies must back off support to Ukraine or be annihilated.
Joe Biden and other western leaders have been wise to face these wild threats with messages of calm deterrence and firm defence measures. China’s Xi Jinping, for his part, has done us all a service by warning Putin away from a nuclear strike; so has India’s Narendra Modi. Nevertheless, the notion that the Russian ruling class, including its top man, are unhinged about these devastating weapons is unnerving.
The fixation with nuclear apocalypse seems to be the symptom of a wider anxiety that the west is bent on Russian dismemberment because of its aspirations in Ukraine. The Kremlin argues that it only wanted to resume its ancestral right to a Slavic heartland, but that the US and Nato are seeking as punishment Russia’s full and complete destruction as a nation state.
This logic is ridiculous. Russia of course has national interests, but they cannot impinge on those of other countries. When they do, they must be reconciled without aggression. At this moment, with Russian troops perpetrating a bloody invasion of Ukraine, such a notion seems fanciful. Nevertheless, we can agree it is an ideal worth pursuing, and begin working on it.
As a first order of business, we can clarify that strategic defeat of Russia does not mean its dismemberment, but it does mean its exit from Ukraine, its willingness to atone for the invasion and the horrors that followed, and its readiness to repair the massive war damage. In those circumstances, we can co-operate with Russia to advance its interests, such as securing its borders and ensuring that its citizens live in peace and prosperity in a stable neighbourhood.
To bolster that message, we need to restore certain key principles of the post-cold war detente. One is that ready military forces should not deploy near borders without notifying their neighbours of the reason why. For Nato armies, such clarity is a no-brainer. Russia, having ignored this precept for many years, will have to be brought back to it. The more Moscow understands Nato intent and capabilities, the better it is for Russia — and vice versa.
We also need to work hard to restore nuclear co-operation. Putin suspended Russian participation in the New Start treaty out of the mistaken notion that the US would submit to his demands on Ukraine. America does not link nuclear arms limits to other issues: they are an existential necessity in their own right, and if Putin cannot recognise that, then it is to his own country’s detriment. His nuclear forces lose an important means to predict US behaviour just as America is embarking on a two-decade modernisation of its nuclear triad.
Finally, we need to figure out how to work with Russia. The waves of Kremlin misbehaviour culminating in the Ukraine invasion resulted in Nato allies shutting down contacts — diplomatic presence, military-to-military liaison and economic interactions. Moscow itself shut down cultural and educational exchanges. Now Russia is largely closed to us and we have scant opportunity to communicate directly, either into the government or to the public at large.
And yet the potential is there. For many years we worked closely with talented diplomats, defence officials, economists and nuclear experts, who have been at the heart of advancing Russia’s foreign and security policy on the world stage. It is incumbent on us to plan how to reconnect with them once the time is right. Some have sufficiently poisoned the well that it will not be possible, but others could become colleagues once again. Younger talent has begun to rise through governmental ranks, some of whom will be glad to see their options open again with Europe and the US.
The key is to start thinking now about both what we will require of Moscow after its defeat in Ukraine, and how we ensure our own future security. While Russia’s interests cannot come at the cost of any other country, we can acknowledge that they are valid. Making that clear may help break the nuclear fever: it is to everyone’s benefit that we make that happen.
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