RUSSIA AND NATO: TOWARD A COMMON SECURITY CULTURE?Назад
RUSSIA AND NATO: TOWARD A COMMON SECURITY CULTURE?
o Vladimir Baranovsky - Deputy Director, Institute of World Economy
and International Relations (IMEMO), Moscow
o
o The significance of the question mark in the title of this paper goes beyond stylistics. It is a substantive characteristic of the problem. To address this problem, it is not sufficient to analyse the current state of affairs between Russia and NATO and developing trends therein. The task consists in making this assessment against the background of "common culture", whatever this notion might mean.
OFFICIAL RAPPROCHEMENT
o Relations between Russia and NATO are excellent - this is the message one could get from the official rhetoric developed by the two sides. Moreover, this rhetoric is by no means deprived of real substance. Indeed, there are at least three reasons for such an assessment:
the interaction between Russia and NATO has shifted towards cooperativeness;
the examples of this more efficient interaction are becoming more numerous;
it affects many areas, takes diverse forms and appears at various levels in both sides.
o The experience of the Russia-NATO Council (RNC) is broadly considered to be a real success story. In Russia, its establishment in May 2002 was presented as a significant change in comparison with the previous practice . By replacing the "19+1" formula by "twenty", Russia seemed to get a comfortable political and psychological argument for considering itself an equal participant of a team rather than an isolated recipient of signals and an object of pressure generated by the opponents.
o There are other arguments for assessing RNC activities in a positive way. The Council is believed to focus upon concrete issues rather than to promote general discussions that are doomed to remain inconclusive. At the same time, its agenda is sufficiently broad and does not circumvent important problems, even when participants have diverging approaches to them. The twenty working groups that have been created in the framework of the RNC are considered to operate consistently. Last but not least, this body has a weighty political status - in particular, by providing a framework for regular meetings of defence and foreign affairs ministers, chiefs of general staffs and other top officials .
o After the dramatic events of September 11th, Russia and NATO have engaged in joint anti-terrorist activities. In December 2004, they adopted a comprehensive plan of common actions to this effect. Actually, a powerful impulse for cooperation pushed both sides to promote interactions that had been unconceivable in the past. One such new area is cooperation between intelligence structures (on which, however, open information is for obvious reasons very limited) . Another area is cooperative actions between the armed forces for resolving concrete tasks - like, for instance, the proposed participation of the Russian Navy in NATO patrolling efforts in the Mediterranean .
o Cooperative interaction of Russia and NATO has become possible in areas that until recently generated tensions between both sides. Thus, on the eve of the enlargement of both NATO and the EU to the Baltic states in 2004, various aspects of the future status of the Kaliningrad region after its "double encirclement" were a matter of serious nervousness for Moscow. Nowadays, the problem seems to be turned the other way round: in April 2005, Russia and NATO agreed on joint military exercise in the Kaliningrad region .
o Interestingly, Russia"s "rapprochement" with NATO sometimes seems to take place on the periphery of their functional would-be sphere of cooperation. In September 2005, Russia"s Ministry for Emergency Situations (dealing with natural disasters and man-made catastrophes) announced the establishment of its permanent representation to NATO (and to the EU). This is envisaged as a step in promoting Russia"s initiative to create a Euro-emergency service . Thus, NATO is considered to be a natural organizational framework for addressing such type of issues on a pan-European scale.
o However, the trend towards promoting cooperation between Russia and NATO is visible above all within a more traditional sphere. For instance, the session of the Russia-NATO Council that was held in Brussels on 9 June 2005 at the level of defence ministers had the following agenda :
cooperation in reforming the defence sector;
operational compatibility of forces;
theatre missile defence;
anti-terrorist activities;
current international security issues (including Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, the Balkans).
o Two items of this agenda are of special significance: theatre missile defence and operational compatibility. In practical terms, implementing each of them would be conceivable only on the basis of an alliance-type relationship. Furthermore, it is only possible within an effective and developed alliance-type pattern - since participants have to share sensitive information, to proceed with serious adjustments in their defence organization and armaments, and to delegate considerable authority to joint command structures. It is important to note that within NATO itself, such developments have always been far from unproblematic. Therefore, promoting such types of relations between those who used to be the most uncompromising adversaries until relatively recent times seems even more difficult. This might seem premature politically - and, in any case, one could hardly expect that practical results can be achieved in the short- or even medium-term perspective.
o Not surprisingly, when the idea of cooperation in the field of theatre missile defence appeared, it was commented by many observers with a lot of restraint. To a certain extent, the latter persists. However, at the same time, a certain development does take place in this sensitive area: the parties have engaged in elaborating conceptual aspects, conducted two joint computer command exercises , discussed eventual joint use of technologies and arms .
o At the same time, the very fact of setting ambitious goals may serve as a signal for outsiders and a symbolic commitment for Russia and NATO. They intend to move very far towards each other - that is the political message that they seem to formulate in connection with their joint agenda.
o Any agenda matters only in so far as it brings about concrete decisions. In Brussels, the participants adopted a document entitled "Political-Military Guidance towards Enhanced Interoperability between Forces of Russia and NATO Nations". It envisages concrete measures that would be applied to technical equipment, artillery systems, communication means, rear logistics .
o Promoting compatibility is officially reported to be an area where Russia and NATO have achieved the most significant progress . In particular, about 50 joint events were planned in this area for 2005 . They include 13 joint exercises, 7 actions for promoting compatibility of operational headquarters, 10 trainings of communication and information systems, 10 meetings on military education .
o In some other reports, however, the initial goal is defined in a relatively modest way - to check how similar systems are managed by Russia and NATO, and to assess whether interaction is possible if required. According to Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, it is important "to know in advance what could be compatible in case of a political decision - for instance, the decision on conducting a peacekeeping operation" .
o Thus, the aim of efforts to promote operational compatibility is defined in the context of eventual peace support operations conducted by Russia and NATO jointly or in cooperation with each other. When both sides had such experience in the Balkans, patterns of compatibility were a matter of improvisation rather than a persistent element of joint efforts. Nowadays, the logic of effectiveness requires that this problem is addressed consistently and in a more systematic way - if only because peace support (peacekeeping) is expected to be performed jointly (or in cooperation) on a regular basis rather than sporadically. Otherwise the requirement of operational compatibility would be excessive. Interestingly, Russia took the lead in 2004 in promoting the idea of joint peace support operations - in particular, by suggesting to create special brigades for this purpose. Moreover, in February 2005, Russia announced that it had formed its first special peacekeeping brigade . NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was reported to support this initiative as "a brilliant example" . Such optimistic assessments could also refer to the fact that Russia, alongside promoting the compatibility with NATO forces, was invited to take part in peace support operation in Sudan. Moscow was reported to express readiness to send there 50 liaison officers and a group of four heavy helicopters Mi-8MT with 120 personnel . This and other similar cases would make interoperability with NATO forces a practical issue (though on a very limited scale).
o Possible joint peacekeeping efforts and other interactions involving Russian and NATO military units require common legal and organizational framework. In April 2005, Russia joined the agreement between NATO member states and countries participating in the Partnership for Peace programme on the status of their forces on each other"s territory . Although the reaction to this event within the Russian political class and mass media was low-profile, a NATO official representative had sufficient reasons to call it "a historic step" . Indeed, two considerations seem important in this regard:
On the one hand, the agreement provides for a legal basis for transit and exercises involving foreign armed forces - something that comes to a formula "NATO troops on a Russian soil" and represents the highest sacrilege in the eyes of anti-Western fundamentalists;
On the other hand, by signing a standard agreement that had been concluded between NATO member states and dozens of their partners, Moscow showed that it was able to abandon what had looked as its painful obsession with obtaining a "special status".
o By and large, the assessment of various practical aspects of interaction between Russia and NATO may fluctuate within a certain spectrum - between enthusiastic praise and cautious scepticism . But the fact of on-going cooperation is hardly deniable. Moreover, there are sufficient reasons to expect an ascending trend in its development.
o But if we try to find out whether there is a correlation of this trend with "common security culture" - the answer will be far less unambiguous. Some logic in establishing such a correlation may appear obvious. Indeed, cooperation makes participants closer to each other and for this reason perhaps promotes a common culture. Also, a certain (minimal?) degree of commonality is necessary for cooperation, because the latter is unconceivable between those who are totally incompatible in terms of "cultural chemistry". A number of similar arguments could be easily added to this list. However, developing an alternative line of thinking might look an even more consistent exercise. Common culture does not necessarily require cooperation - the former may well exist without the latter. Countries with cultural similarities may be separated from each other by distances of thousands kilometres, which would make their security agendas absolutely different. The security challenges that culturally close countries face may be asymmetrical for other reasons as well. The policy priorities of these countries can then be diverging or, eventually, even competing.
o On the other hand, if security challenges are the same or similar, they may operate as a strong factor of rapprochement - even when considerable differences in cultural background are in place. Furthermore, converging policy considerations may outweigh not only "neutral" cultural differences but also those that generate mutual antagonism or antipathy.
o All these propositions are not hypotheses. They may be supported by so many references to real facts of life, both in history of international relations and in the contemporary world, that developing any theory on this basis would come to pure banalities. The most fundamental of them would state as follows: "cooperation" neither means "common security culture" nor necessarily leads to it. On the other hand, elements of such a common culture may appear outside the context of cooperation.
o In fact, obsession with methodological purity may lead to a deadlock. Is there a [the?] security culture of NATO - or are there various types of it, with diverging trends becoming increasingly pronounced in the recent past? Here the question is not only the traditional theme of the gap in political culture between Europe and the US, fostered by the post-Cold war realities; it is also about the new divide that seems to appear between "old Europe" and "new Europe". All the participants to this politico-intellectual interplay being members of NATO, the very notion of the latter"s strategic culture may appear doubtful.
o On Russia"s side, similar doubts may arise if one tries to identify the predominant parameters of the country"s strategic culture. Even if we assume that the latter is only "produced" at the level of official policy, it would hardly look homogeneous-since statements, documents, actions would very often look contradictory (and sometimes mutually exclusive). But when drawing the very notion of "strategic culture" from a broader background (that would also include, for instance, debates in professional literature and media, society"s historical memory, thought and behavioural patterns and so on)-we"ll get by far less coherent picture.
o This by no means makes the analysis of the very phenomenon of common security culture in the Russia-NATO relationship inappropriate. But it is important to keep in mind that we try to make a comparison according to one single parameter - whereas its applicability to each side is accompanied by reservations. The result will inevitably bring about a certain simplification.
o In the very general sense, elements of common security culture might be identified in three security-related areas: (i) in threat assessments, (ii) in ways and means of coping with risks and challenges, (iii) in organizational patterns of the interaction between the two sides. However, the differentiation between these three "sectors" is certainly relative. They overlap, and the border line between them may be evasive. Rather than trying to monitor them systematically, one could focus upon the emerging elements of "common culture", whenever this happens, or the continuation of old patterns. After all, what seems important here is to detect certain trends, to catch the dynamics of practical developments, rather than trying to build a perfectly persuasive theory. The observable dynamics here are contradictory and allow for different interpretations. There are issues on which Russia and NATO move closer to each other; on some others, they maintain different (although not necessarily mutually exclusive) thinking patterns; in some areas, their incompatibilities persist.
