Euro-Atlantic Security: One Vision, Three Paths

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Euro-Atlantic[1] security scene is characterized by a loss of mutual confidence, renewed tensions, and serious disagreements regarding not only practices but principles. Those trends, if not corrected, will produce negative strategic consequences for the security of Europe. New opportunities have emerged today for rethinking the security situation in the Euro-Atlantic region, for strengthening confidence, changing mutual relations, and, if need be, institutions. A basis for this can be found in the hopes for improved U.S.-Russian relations expressed by U.S. President Barack Obama, in the initiative by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on reforming the European security architecture, as well as in the process of elaboration of the new NATO strategic concept.

The EastWest Institute, responding to requests by American and Russian officials, assembled an Experts Group to discuss conceptual and practical recommendations that could facilitate a much needed «grand debate» over security issues in the Euro-Atlantic region. This report is the result of that process. As part of this process, the EastWest Institute will convene two seminars, one in Brussels in cooperation with the Egmont Institute, and one in Moscow, organized with the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), in order to provide an opportunity for external stakeholders to respond to the conclusions presented in our report and to lend additional insights. Because of differences of views among the group on a number of issues, the report is not a consensus document, but rather a presentation of possible courses of action designed to stimulate this debate.

All members of the group did agree that despite such differences of opinion, states of the Euro-Atlantic region should embrace a common strategic vision of security issues. It should be based, inter alia, on the following principles:

• recognition of the pluralism of decision-making centers in the security sphere and the need for them to cooperate;
• preparedness to negotiate from a position of respect for the declared security interests of all states;
• the right of each state to determine its own security arrangements;
• striving to convert conflicts in the Euro-Atlantic security sphere into win-win situations;
• a commitment to confidence-building, especially to policies that would facilitate collective action for preventing, containing, or reversing unfolding crises.

The report presents three possible paths (scenarios) towards strengthening security on a cooperative basis in the Euro-Atlantic region. These paths represent the three main strands of opinion among the experts and can be summarized as follows:

• Remedial Repair: institutional status quo; emphasis on removing mutual misperceptions and strengthening transparency and confidence; identifying and pursuing common interests in the Euro-Atlantic zone;
• Partial Reconstruction: identifying additional and creative political, legal, and military arrangements, possibly including overlapping security guarantees, that address potential security concerns of states in Central and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region; pursuing common interests beyond the Euro-Atlantic zone;
• Fundamental Transformation: reforming the overall architecture of Euro-Atlantic security by signing and bringing into force a European Security Treaty; placing common security challenges as a higher priority than differences in the Euro-Atlantic zone.

For each path, there is a set of concrete proposals for further consideration to advance the agreed overall vision. These proposals are not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor do they necessarily represent the view of the group as whole. Some of the more challenging proposals include:

1. Russia, the European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the United Nations (UN) should urgently negotiate coordinated measures to prevent another military crisis in or around Georgia.
2. Finding some “quick fix” measures that might promote mutual confidence (such as a political commitment to joint ballistic missile launch monitoring or to extend the geographical scope of the Cooperative Airspace Initiative).
3. NATO members and Russia should fully implement the Rome declaration of 2002 with its logic of joint decision-making on security matters of mutual concern. They need to make the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) a more productive forum by the time of the next NATO summit. All NRC participants should commit themselves to the principle that they will not block the functioning of its dialogue mechanisms during a crisis.
4. As an earnest display of shared commitment to indivisible security, leaders of the OSCE, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the EU, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) should convene a summit on Afghanistan/Pakistan to agree on a common set of policies to combat arms smuggling, drug trafficking, recruitment of militants and violent extremism, and to assist in addressing the socio-economic problems of the two countries.
5. The United States and Russia should accelerate bilateral consultations for solving problems related to implementation of the adapted CFE treaty. The format of the consultation should be extended to other interested countries.
6. NATO, the EU, and Russia can together or in parallel provide mutual and overlapping security guarantees to countries who that seek those guarantees (Georgia and Ukraine may be among them).
7. The leaders of Europe should convene a Group of Eminent Persons, composed of high ranking politicians, former diplomats, and military officials, to make recommendations on how to translate the new hopeful signs in United States-Russia relations to the Euro-Atlantic security scene, and to assess the Russian proposal for an EST and other similar initiatives.

In the coming months, before the next OSCE Ministerial Council (December 2009) and the next NATO summit, political leaders must aim for a roadmap to a strengthened security regime in the Euro-Atlantic region. Equal and indivisible security of all states should be translated from an attractive slogan into hard reality. Strategic reassurances at the rhetorical level without action and reform at the operational level are not just hollow. They may in the light of the last decade prove dangerous.

Foreword

The Experts Group set up in Brussels by the EastWest Institute to prepare recommendations on strengthening political-military security in the Euro-Atlantic region revealed a troubling paradox: increased global cooperation and interaction in one sphere (global finance) coupled with decreased cooperation and rising tension in the large political, security, and military space that encompasses the Euro-Atlantic states.

The global financial and economic crisis that broke out in the fall of 2008 became a powerful stimulus for developing unprecedented cooperation of leading states of the world, including those that belong to the Euro-Atlantic region. This cooperation in addressing reforms of the global financial architecture is moving forward both within the Group of 20 and through international financial institutions. The basis for such an interaction is the recognition of the fundamental fact of economic interdependence and to use this interdependence for promoting common interests.

This pattern of cooperation and widespread sense of urgency stand in stark contrast to the current disruption of the fundamental confidence and rollback in dialogue on security issues in the Euro-Atlantic area, primarily between Russia and NATO members. Despite the imperative for ever closer cooperation for solving a multitude of problems (such as energy security, the economic crisis, illegal migration and transnational crime), an unhealthy geopolitical competition remains, local conflicts persist, and numerous multilateral mechanisms created to prevent or resolve such crises fail to function.

As a result, strategic stability in the Euro-Atlantic region continues to erode. Any deepening of the geopolitical rivalry and mutual mistrust between Euro-Atlantic states may well derail the drive for economic interdependence, making economic power an instrument of blackmail and pressure by stronger states against weaker ones. The Euro-Atlantic region would then turn into an international problem zone, and its real contribution to finding solutions to global problems would be considerably less than the sum total of its potential.

This report and the process that produced it were a response to several circumstances: Russia’s proposal for a new Euro-Atlantic security treaty; the preparations for a new NATO security concept; and the coming into office of the Obama administration. This report is meant to be a serious response to these opportunities. It looks seriously at President Medvedev’s treaty proposal and presents it as a policy option for serious discussion. Realizing that the proposal is not without its critics—including some within the group of experts that EWI convened—the report also lays out two additional options. The end solution may well be some sort of combination of two or more of these policy options.

This report should help clarify the debate into a focused set of choices for the Euro-Atlantic community. Presidents Medvedev and Obama have embarked on a heady campaign to deal quickly with some of the fundamental roadblocks in the bilateral relationship, such as a START follow-on treaty and ballistic missile defense. Progress in these negotiations will create a new sense of confidence as to what is possible. The EastWest Institute is proud to contribute this report as a basis to ground the conversation. The opportunity is ripe.

The EastWest Institute wishes to express its appreciation to all members of the Experts Group who gave their time so willingly. A number of other specialists and officials provided comment on various drafts or contributed ideas. This report is planned to be the first in a series of publications that will emerge from this process as we work towards achieving a consensus on building a common strategic vision for Euro-Atlantic security.

John Edwin Mroz
Founder and CEO
EastWest Institute

STATE OF PLAY

The Euro-Atlantic security scene is characterized by a loss of mutual confidence, renewed tensions, and serious disagreements regarding not only practices but also principles. We see a troubling revival of the old East-West divide in strategic thinking. Those tensions are visible in the ongoing debate over NATO enlargement to countries in the post-Soviet space, the CFE Treaty crisis, the political conflict over possible deployment in Central Europe of elements of U.S. national anti-ballistic missile defense, and over the Georgian conflict and Russian support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The acute political crisis that erupted in August 2008 in relations between Russia on the one side and NATO and the European Union on the other showed in concentrated form the dangers of a continued erosion of mutual trust and respect for each other’s security interests. Numerous multilateral institutions that were created to prevent and resolve such crises – the UN Security Council, the OSCE, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) – failed to function. Moreover, this stalemate has not been overcome less than one year after the war in the Caucasus.

These trends have:

• undermined the functioning of pan-European institutions;
• discredited the notion of cooperation across the old East-West divide;
• fuelled a growth in geopolitical rivalry

If not corrected, those trends will produce negative strategic consequences for the future stability of Europe as a whole. This may be playing out in Ukraine, which is experiencing high levels of internal political tension at a time of a profound economic crisis. The situation in the southern Caucasus is fraught with the danger of another military conflict. We see a growing desire in some quarters to punish or retaliate rather than to solve problems. In the meantime, new hard and soft security threats or challenges for the Euro-Atlantic region are emerging from areas like the Middle East, Central Asia, and northeast Asia: terrorism, cybercrime, sea piracy, organized crime, drug trafficking, and arms trafficking. Most of them cannot be dealt with unless the major powers in the Euro-Atlantic zone cooperate.

New opportunities have emerged today for rethinking the security situation in the Euro-Atlantic region, for strengthening confidence, changing mutual relations, and, if need be, institutions. A basis for this can be found in the hopes for Russian-American relations expressed by U.S. President Barack Obama, in the initiative by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on reforming the European security architecture, as well as in the process of elaboration of the new NATO strategic concept.

The EastWest Institute, responding to requests by American and Russian officials, assembled an Experts Group to discuss conceptual and practical recommendations that could facilitate a much-needed «grand debate» over security issues in the Euro-Atlantic region. This report is the result of their discussions. Because of differences of views among the group on a number of issues, we agreed that the report would not be a consensus document but rather one to stimulate debate.

SHARED VISION

All members of the group did agree that despite such differences, states of the Euro-Atlantic region should make a renewed commitment to a common strategic vision of security based on established OSCE principles, but going much further in implementing the principles. It should be based, inter alia, on the following:

• Recognition of the pluralism of decision-making centers in the security sphere and the need for them to cooperate;
• Preparedness to negotiate from a position of respect for the declared security interests of all states;
• The right of each state to determine its own security arrangements.
• Striving to convert conflicts in the Euro-Atlantic security sphere into win-win situations;
• Commitment to confidence building, especially to policies that would facilitate collective action for preventing, containing, or reversing unfolding crises.

Standards and Styles of Diplomacy

In practical terms, we should:

• Hold states and political leaders accountable for more efficient and predictable forms of problem solving than we have seen;
• Turn away from the growing tendency to see retaliation as a legitimate first response without even entering into serious negotiations;
• Give priority to practical measures that are likely to restore confidence over hollow rhetorical reassurances of mutual trust. Many of the practical pillars of European security architecture were developed at a time when distrust was the rule. The lesson from this is that we need to build on the idea of common security through practical measures of cooperation and problem-solving;
• Provide for more shared decision-making across the old East-West divide as foreshadowed in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act;
• Insist on reciprocal obligations for all parties. We need to ensure that we are simultaneously improving everyone’s security, not decreasing it. This must include the human dimension of security and a clear emphasis on values, not just classic inter-state and hard security concerns;
• Avoid three mistakes: benign neglect (“does this really matter”); a return to old mentalities, old solutions (“let’s go back to bloc-to-bloc logic”); going back to vassal geopolitics based on spheres of influence and the use of force;
• Not expect rapid change in political attitudes but work patiently towards such change. Set clear expectations on each side but not adopt take-it-or-leave-it positions; look forward, not back. We need to address any differences of values with a lot of patience (a long term perspective) because they will not change easily.

Clarifying Security Concepts

NATO and Russia have declared that they are no longer enemies. They need to agree just what that means in terms of a number of important military/political issues. The heated debates over NATO expansion and the political uncertainty about the terms of the adapted Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) provide the proof that the two sides have not yet made that fundamental settlement.

Common security between Russia and NATO and Russia and the United States can be defined on the basis of these shared understandings:

• Collective (cooperative) action is required to effectively meet non-traditional security threats as well as to deal collectively with the protracted conflicts or potential sources of instability in Europe;
• Risk-sharing means shared responsibility, or the acceptance of a measure of interdependence;
• Attention to the sub-regional dimension of security as well as integration of this dimension into the overall relationship is a constitutive part of the global cooperative framework;
• Security is a comprehensive concept. It includes military, economic, and human dimensions and presupposes responsible behavior by each actor in these three domains.

Policymakers would benefit from recalling some basic principles of strategic stability – a quality of relations that would prevent the renewal of an arms race, facilitate collective action for preventing conflicts, and help contain and reverse unfolding crises.

Strategic stability cannot be the goal in itself. The Euro-Atlantic region is in dynamic evolution, as is the global security environment. In this situation, strategically stable relations in the hard security sphere lay the ground for more mutually beneficial economic and social development among Euro-Atlantic states. This consideration – finding the balance between strategic stability and dynamic evolution – highlights the need to have a highly versatile system of dispute resolution and adaptable institutions.

THREE POSSIBLE PATHS

The Experts Group identified three broad paths. Each contains elements that might be relevant to the others. The broad approaches have been labeled as follows:

• Remedial Repair: institutional status quo; an emphasis on removing mutual misperceptions and strengthening transparency and confidence; identifying and pursuing common interests in the Euro-Atlantic zone.
• Partial Reconstruction: identifying additional and creative political, legal, and military arrangements, possibly including overlapping security guarantees, that address potential security concerns of states in Central and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region; pursuing common interests beyond the Euro-Atlantic zone.
• Fundamental Transformation: reforming the overall architecture of Euro-Atlantic security by signing and bringing into force a European Security Treaty; placing common security challenges as a higher priority than differences in the Euro-Atlantic zone.

REMEDIAL REPAIR

This first path (option) presumes that current problems can be resolved in existing institutions, primarily by political and diplomatic means that are designed to strengthen confidence, increase transparency of actions in the security sphere, bridge mutual misperceptions, and identify and promote common interests. The first option sees the main issues of security as those that lie primarily inside OSCE Eurasia (including Russia and its OSCE neighbors).

Arguments for this approach: apparent absence of the threat of large-scale military conflict or of an arms race in Europe; existence of multiple institutions and mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation in the security sphere (the OSCE, NATO-Russia Council, EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council, as well as the UN Security Council). NATO is the dominant reality of European collective security. Several NATO countries, particularly in Central Europe, are not currently willing to take any other approach. Some countries consider the current Russian desire to reform security institutions to be out of step with their own wish to modernize in closest possible cooperation with the EU and NATO, including possible membership in the future, however distant.

Proposed concrete measures could include:

• Finding some “quick fix” measures that might promote new confidence (such as a political commitment to joint ballistic missile launch monitoring or to extend the geographical scope of the Cooperative Airspace Initiative);[2]
• Adopting a mutual obligation by OSCE member states and by NATO-Russia Council members that they will under no circumstances block the functioning of dialogue mechanisms in the security sphere (NRC, OSCE Forum for Security Cooperation), but, on the contrary, make their work more active in the periods of crises for exploring ways for their settlement;
• Resetting the NATO-Russia Council modus operandi by, where possible, moving beyond the “28 vs. one” model; focusing discussion in the Council on significant issues of European security such as the future of the CFE Treaty;
• Ratifying and bringing into force the Adapted CFE Treaty followed by negotiations on its further adaptation to a substantially changed security environment;
• Discussing in the NATO-Russia Council the security situations in the Black Sea and southern Caucasus, and considering joint security measures aimed at reassuring both NATO members and Russia, with full cooperation of countries of respective regions;
• Find a formula to resolve competing approaches to the recognition of territories that have declared themselves independent (such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia), especially by strengthening ideas of regional cooperation and integration, along with international assistance;
• Increase transparency and consultation in working out strategic concepts and military doctrines, primarily those of the United States, NATO, Russia, and CSTO;
• As an earnest display of shared commitment to indivisible security, leaders of the OSCE, NATO, the EU, and the CSTO should convene a summit on Afghanistan/Pakistan to agree on a common set of policies to combat arms smuggling, drug trafficking, recruitment of militants and violent extremism, and to assist in addressing the socio-economic problems of the two countries;
• Continue the current review of the cost-effectiveness and political repercussions of planned national ballistic missile defense deployments in Poland and Czech Republic; consider possible joint missile threat monitoring and, if the need arises, joint missile defense. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons leading to further weapon proliferation in the Middle East, the OSCE countries will probably be united in seeing this as a common threat justifying joint ballistic defense;
• OSCE states should elevate current national initiatives on cyber and energy security to a multi-national level, spurring far more cooperative ventures in both fields.

PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION

This second option focuses on the mutual concerns of Russia, NATO, and EU member states, plus states of the respective sub-regions, regarding probable instability in the security sphere and a perceived deficit of reliable guarantees of national security. It holds that the situation in the southern Caucasus and Black Sea regions requires measured yet immediate attention, while a number of crises throughout Eurasia demand more urgent and more concerted action.

Arguments for this approach: The status quo in Europe and unilateral attempts at changing it are generating tensions. Current policies are not sufficient to guarantee peace in the long term. Some multilateral institutions will need to be reformed in order for them to deal more effectively with controversy between Russia and NATO over possible further plans to enlarge the alliance, or strengthening security in the southern Caucasus after the August 2008 war. Here, the United States, NATO, the EU, and Russia need to partially reform existing institutions in order to establish real forms of power sharing and measures of “cooperative-collective security” in a great region stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus.

Proposed concrete measures could include:

• Practical steps that will defuse the tensions in the southern Caucasus that have not dissipated after the August 2008 war. With all the profound differences of positions concerning the international status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia, the EU, the OSCE, and the UN — working with the countries concerned — should take immediate measures to conclude legally binding agreements on non-use of force between sides of the conflict; to exclude provocative military actions, and to resolve on a compromise basis the problem of monitoring the security and military situation;
• Further reduction of conventional forces in Europe;
• Joint security measures aimed at enhancing anti-terrorist protection of energy transit through the territory of interested countries;
• Press for immediate U.S.-Russian-European cooperation throughout Eurasia on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and terrorism. Formation of a Contact Group to deal with the Afghanistan/ Pakistan crisis that would include Afghanistan, Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as Russia, the United States, NATO, and the UN;
• Joint U.S.-European-Russian cooperation on BMD defenses as a precaution against potential threats coming from outside the Euro-Atlantic region. Following a detailed examination of deployment options for its different components in various locations (Poland, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Russia), a joint U.S.-EU-Russian ballistic missile defense coordination center could be set up;
• In the context of the START treaty, U.S. and Russian weaponry needs to be taken off hair trigger alert;
• The development of a system of cooperative collective security through sub-regional security communities and new variable military consultative structures would represent a win-win situation — as opposed to trying to define spheres of influence between the United States/NATO and Russia/CSTO within the Black Sea and Caucasus regions;
• NATO, the EU, and Russia can together or in parallel provide mutual and overlapping security guarantees to countries that seek those guarantees (Georgia and Ukraine may be among them). Such guarantees might make it easier, at least for the foreseeable future, to defer consideration of the extremely sensitive issue of NATO membership of the aforementioned states. At the same time, an agreement on such overlapping guarantees could help create a basis for NATO and Russian constructive cooperation in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions;
• One way to accomplish this may be to establish operational measures in which various parties would collaborate. (Many forms of collective measures are possible, one model — with modifications — might be the joint U.S.-Russian-NATO peacekeeping command system set up in Bosnia after the Dayton accords in 1995.)

Much will depend upon U.S. and Russian policy— whether leaders of both countries will agree to engage wholeheartedly in a reform of the status quo. Even if the political will exists to undertake such reform, the two countries will need to do so without undermining well-established institutions, such as NATO, and without ignoring new structures, such as the CSTO.

FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION

This approach envisages the conclusion of a new European Security Treaty (EST) that would create a set of binding rules for a comprehensive system of collective security in the OSCE area on the basis of principles of inclusion, polycentrism, and common (indivisible) security.

Arguments for this approach: The existing legal framework of security relations in Europe does not meet the requirements of the 21st century, as evidenced by recent crises, by sharp divergences in interpretation of commitments in the security sphere, and by the absence of sufficient guarantees for safeguarding the equal and indivisible security of states of the Euro-Atlantic region, irrespective of their military-political status. The Treaty should translate political commitments in the security sphere taken by OSCE members at different times into legal obligations. The treaty should also provide mechanisms ensuring universal application of this principle. A variegated architecture must be found that can incorporate the interests of all states in the Euro-Atlantic and throughout Eurasia.

Not only states but also organizations such as the OSCE, NATO, CSTO, and the EU must be involved in the elaboration of this new architecture of Euro-Atlantic security.

Proposed Concrete Measures:

• It is necessary to lay down in the treaty appropriate procedures and mechanisms for the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the UN Charter in order not to endanger international peace, security, and justice: not to ensure one’s own security at the expense of security of others; not to commit any actions (within the frameworks of any military alliances and coalitions) that undermine the integrity of the common security area, including use of one’s own territory to undermine the security of other states, or the peace and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area as a whole; not to allow evolution of military alliances to the detriment of security of other parties to the treaty;
• Respect the right of any state to maintain neutrality or choose its own security arrangements;
• The treaty should envisage the development of coordinating mechanisms on the political and operational levels aimed at the prevention and settlement of conflicts in the Euro-Atlantic area, at assistance in the resolution of international problems, and at the development of friendly relations and cooperation between states;
• The treaty cannot under any circumstances replace the СSСЕ Final Act and the Paris Charter for a New Europe, and other relevant OSCE documents. It should, rather, propose a system of principles, standards, and guarantees of their implementation in the military-political sphere, ensuing from the UN Charter, the “decalogue” of principles of the СSCЕ Final Act, the Charter for a New Europe, as well as from documents jointly adopted by NATO and Russia (the Founding Act of 1997, the Rome Declaration of 2002).

There already exist precedents of such implementation of general political principles and mutual obligations. The Energy Charter has separated out energy security from the whole body of interstate relations in Europe. There are also precedents for the development of regulatory documents establishing a number of principles for relations in the military security field in the OSCE area as well as in relations between Russia and NATO (the Code of Conduct on Politico-military Aspects of Security, the Russia-NATO Founding Act, the Rome Declaration).

The principle of equal and indivisible security should occupy an important place in any future security system in the Euro-Atlantic area. However, members of the group diverged in their opinions as to the feasibility of finding a consensual, legally binding definition of this principle. This is a conceptual and diplomatic challenge that brings forward the following key questions:

• What would constitute concrete guarantees of equal and indivisible security of states?
• How to ensure equal and indivisible security of states having different military-political status (NATO and CSTO member states, neutral states, European Union member states not belonging to NATO but participating in the EU’s security and defense policy)?
• How to reconcile indivisible security with NATO’s “open doors” policy as well as the NATO declaration that Ukraine and Georgia might become members in the future?
• How to combine guarantees and obligations which can be taken by the states within the framework of such an international legal document, with their already existing obligations as to collective and individual self-defense (in accordance with the UN Charter, the Washington Treaty, the Collective Security Treaty)?
• How to define of notion of «equal and indivisible security» versus the concept of “overlapping security guarantees?”

The viability of the idea of the EST itself greatly depends upon the nature of answers to the above questions. The following general approach to the principle of equal and indivisible security could be used as a starting point for discussion.

In the Euro-Atlantic area, equal and indivisible security can be brought about by preventing a renewed arms race through arms control and disarmament measures, by establishing mechanisms for conflict and crisis prevention, and by reinforcing collective peacekeeping capacity.

Equal and indivisible security of all countries in the area can be ensured by the following major institutional and legal guarantees:

• The adapted CFE Treaty, to be succeeded in the future by a new CFE Treaty;
• NATO-Russia agreement on cooperation in the field of peacekeeping (based on the concept of joint peacekeeping elaborated in the framework of the NRC). Such an agreement is to provide a basis for an ad hoc center for planning and executing peacekeeping operations;
• Joint control center/system of centers for European airspace (with a view to prevention/suppression of acts of air piracy and terrorism);
• Joint NATO-Russia counter-terrorist center;
• Improved «Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security» that would specify politico-military guarantees of equal and indivisible security.

Some members of the Experts’ Group are of the opinion that the idea of establishing a “steering committee” in the OSCE composed of Russia, the United States, and the EU (on the basis of collective representation) deserves attention. The task of such a committee could be to discuss key issues of security in Europe at high-level meetings held approximately twice a year.

Another proposal would be the formation of a Trans-Atlantic or Euro-Atlantic Security Council designed to better coordinate both U.S./NATO and EU geostrategic and political economic relations in global terms as well as relations between the U.S./NATO, the EU, and Russia, focusing on Eurasia. Such a Transatlantic Security Council would work in close connection with the OSCE. It would consist of a Trans-Atlantic executive council of leaders that would convene on a regular basis and then meet with Russian leaders.

An intensive intellectual and diplomatic effort is required to assess the viability and «added value» of the Russian proposal for an EST. Governments of the Euro-Atlantic area could consider the idea of holding, in a realistic timeframe, an OSCE summit meeting for discussion of conclusions and recommendations from this effort.

Leaders of Europe should convene a Group of Eminent Persons, composed of high ranking politicians, former diplomats, and military officials, to make recommendations on how to translate the new hopeful signs in United States-Russia relations to the Euro-Atlantic security scene, and to assess the Russian proposal for an EST and other similar initiatives that may come up. The Russian proposal to elaborate an EST should be thoroughly examined and discussed at relevant forums – OSCE, NRC, EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council.

Nuclear aspect of European security: Security in the Euro-Atlantic area is inseparable from trends in strategic relations between the leading nuclear powers, taking into account the fact that countries of this region possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal.

The progress of the Russian-American talks over a new strategic nuclear armaments treaty will play a determining role in establishing mutual trust in the military and political sphere in the Euro-Atlantic area. International experts urge the Russian and American side to conduct intensive negotiations on this issue in order to ensure strategic stability at diminishing levels of nuclear armaments (under conditions that will not lead to a substitution of the strategic nuclear threat by a strategic conventional threat capable of destabilizing security relationship between the major powers). The problem of the objective link between offensive and defensive strategic armaments deserves thorough consideration, including its repercussions for security on the European continent.

States and regional security organizations should consider the following specific measures:

• Conclusion of a treaty on reducing and finally eliminating tactical nuclear weapons in Europe;
• Conclusion of a treaty on cooperation in the field of anti-missile defense in the Euro-Atlantic area;
• Establishment of joint missile threat monitoring and analysis centers on the basis of such a treaty, including possible use of the Russian radars in Ghabala and Armavir.

Qualitative strengthening of the nuclear nonproliferation regime meets the common interests of the countries of the Euro-Atlantic area. Russia and its Western partners should use the NRC and EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council in order to bring as close together as possible positions on the eve of the NPT review conference in 2010.

Eurasian dimension of security of the Euro-Atlantic area: Taking into account the number of threats and challenges for countries of the Euro-Atlantic area originating in the Near and Middle East and considering the growing role of the leading Asian states in regional and international security, it is proposed to hold a meeting of NATO, OSCE, EU, CSTO, and SCO secretaries general, as well as of speakers of the respective parliamentary assemblies. The purposes of the meeting could be to identify similar functions of the said structures in the spheres of hard and soft security and to discuss possible opportunities for cooperating in spheres and regions of common interest.

Some of the Group’s experts view as a long-term objective the elaboration of a security concept that would identify and link up converging security interests of states in the Euro-Atlantic region and in Eurasia. To these ends, it is proposed to start an expert level exploratory dialogue between NATO, EU, SCO, and CSTO.

It should be stressed that the majority of practical measures to strengthen confidence and security suggested in this report can be realized independently from any chosen specific security model for the Euro-Atlantic area.

TRANSCENDING THE RECENT DIPLOMATIC RECORD: WHAT IS OUR BEACON?

Looking forward, the principal requirement for Europe and for the world as a whole is to assure the productive performance of the global economy and sustainability of the human ecosystem that cannot be managed from within any sovereign jurisdiction. Security priorities derive from that central requirement. Civil violence generated by endemic austerity may be a greater threat to more societies than the classic forms of aggression, though the latter do remain prominent concerns. In the long term, the process of global warming may generate potential threats more substantial than any form of conventional warfare. Such threats create imperatives of adjustment that will necessitate far more substantial coordination among governments than has been their historical habit. In this emerging context, residual antagonisms and the policies of confrontation they inspire will have to be subordinated to the pursuit of common interest. Mutual reassurance will have to become the dominant operating principle of security policy.

In Europe, there will be no reversal of the deteriorating trends in security relationships unless political leaders finding a way to move decisively toward the joint decision-making and joint problem-solving in this sphere that are foreshadowed in the NATO-Russia Founding Act. This will help to release the potentials of our societies to address the continental and global challenges that threaten all states of the Euro-Atlantic region.

Attachment A: Discussion Note on the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe

The current stalemate over implementation of the adapted Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) exacerbates tensions between Russia and Western participants in the Treaty. The treaty, however, remains a useful instrument for strengthening confidence in Europe. It is vitally necessary and beneficial to all parties involved to preserve the benefits of the CFE treaty. States will need to develop a road map for bringing the adapted CFE treaty into force. This will involve agreements on the sub-regional dimension of arms control regimes in Europe. For this concrete steps are needed, first to reduce residual tensions left from the Cold War era and second to create a military foundation to support political solutions to existing conflicts.

Russia and the United States have been working for more than a year on a project of a «package deal» for solving problems related to revival of conventional arms control regime in Europe. This process should be radically accelerated. It may be useful to expand the ongoing Russian-American dialogue on the CFE treaty to include other member states of the Treaty.

We lay out here two broad packages of action regarding the CFE treaty. The suggestions laid out are not mutually exclusive. The best way forward would likely include proposals from each. These views do not necessarily represent the views of the group as a whole. Indeed some of them are quite controversial. But they represent a useful tool to jumpstart discussions on the CFE.

Some experts recommend a package solution providing reciprocal and sequenced moves on problems related to the treaty. Elements of such a package could include the following:

• Reaching an agreement on provisional application of the adapted CFE Treaty. An argument in favor of such a move is the fact that ratification belongs to the competence of parliaments/legislatures, and the executive authorities cannot guarantee this ratification in all member states of the CFE treaty;
• A stage-by-stage scheme could be applied; here. Initially member states could assume a political obligation to act in conformity with subject and purposes of the adapted CFE treaty, respecting its upper limits. After that, in six to twelve months, if the agreement on adaptation of the treaty does not enter into force, the treaty should be applied on a provisional basis. The Russian side will have to lift its moratorium on implementation of the treaty either from the moment of entering into force of the adaptation agreement or from the moment of its provisional application, as provided in the package deal;
• Lifting territorial sub-limits for the Russian Federation. They cannot be justified in the situation when several countries of the flank region joined NATO; such sub-limits impede the fight against terrorism. The possibility of introducing additional confidence measures on a reciprocal basis should be explored in the context of lifting sub-limits;
• Negotiating reduced levels of armaments for NATO members. Such levels should be applied since the moment of provisional application of the adapted Treaty, with respective parameters becoming a formal enclosure to the package;
• By the same token the package deal should describe specific conditions for new NATO members (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia) to adhere to the treaty;
• Within the package, a decision should be passed that immediately after enforcement of the adapted treaty, member states will start negotiations on its further modernization;
• The package should include a draft decision supporting continuation of the current peacekeeping cooperation in Transnistria in conformity with the Russian-Moldovan agreement of 1992. The argument for such a political decision lies in the fact that in the absence of progress in talks between Cisinau and Tiraspol on the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeeping forces will destabilize the situation.

This draft could then be presented by member states of the treaty for approval by the OSCE permanent council. The package deal could be approved at a new extraordinary conference of member states of the treaty as its concluding document.

Other group members recommended a package of parallel actions, the point of departure being proposals put forward by NATO countries at the Bucharest summit (2008). This plan, which is seen by some as offering significant concessions to Russia by NATO states, lifts direct conditionality between ratification of the treaty by NATO members and the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Transnistra and Abkhazia. However, the plan would retain indirect linkage between these two processes.

NATO attaches, without doubt, great significance to preservation and modernization of the Treaty, but not at the expense of a de jure rejection of its free right to expand the alliance. NATO is also not ready to accept a condition of non-deployment of military forces on the territory of new member states as this would be tantamount to their unequal status in the alliance. States would free to take a political decision not to deploy combat forces on the territories of other states (as was the case in Denmark, Norway, and France).

In this case the Russian side and NATO should without any delay agree on a definition of “significant combat forces” that may be a source of concern for either side. All countries involved must be included in discussions since they treat very sensitively the issue of security guarantees that they have as members of the NATO.

Other measures could include the following.

• NATO states must agree to ratify the adapted CFE within a reasonable timeframe of Russia completing its troop withdrawals—but both processes must begin in tandem. Additionally, given the length of time that both complete troop withdrawals and working CFE ratification through parliaments/legislatures will entail, there should be periodic review of progress on both fronts to ensure that all parties are confident that each side is working in good faith to meet their commitments;
• Secure commitments by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia to join the adapted CFE Treaty as soon as all the original signatories have ratified it. All four states have repeatedly signaled their willingness to join the adapted CFE when they are permitted to do so;
• To eliminate Russian concerns about their obligated troop withdrawals leading to further destabilization in Transnistra and Abkhazia and to further delink the conditionality between signing the adapted CFE and the withdrawal of Russian forces, provide a transition period for Russian forces to be replaced by joint OSCE-Russian peacekeepers or international peacekeepers under an OSCE mandate, in pressing Cisinau and Tiraspol for an agreement under OSCE auspices;
• This should be in the context of creating a larger “regional security community” for the Caucasus in particular, but also for Transnistra-Moldova, involving overlapping security guarantees that would in effect bring Transnistra and Abkhazia into political economic cooperation with both Moldova and Georgia respectively;
• Elevate counterterrorism as an area of cooperative efforts in the NRC and other appropriate bodies to address Russia’s concerns about CFE limits impeding its counter-terrorism efforts. In addition to achieving Russian compliance in its southern flank region, this could become a useful confidence-building tool with tangible security benefits throughout the CFE area;
• Additional efforts should be made to increase security and confidence building measures by, for example, engaging in joint peacekeeping operations and, as proposed above, anti-terrorist efforts;
• It is unlikely that NATO will accept specific conditions on the adhesion of new members, but NATO can establish an overall accord with Russia that would place verifiable limits on both sides.

A third view sees that the CFE Treaty has outlived its usefulness and cannot be revived. This view necessarily downplays the positive role that CFE’s inspection regime in particular has had in confidence-building. In this option, a way forward for European security is that CFE Treaty member states, as well as members of the Russia-NATO council, would concentrate on modernization of the Vienna document on confidence building measures (1999) as well as on elaboration of bilateral arrangements on regimes of transparency and restraint. It would remain to be seen how such a minimalist version of an arms control and transparency regime in Europe could contribute to allaying both Russia’s and NATO’s concerns and pave the way towards a healthy and stable relationship in the sphere of hard security.

ATTACHMENT B: PARTICIPANTS IN THE EXPERTS GROUP

In memoriam: Ambassador Pierre-Etienne Champenois

Distinguished diplomat of Europe and Belgium

Dr. Vladimir Baranovsky, Deputy Director, Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). He also worked as Project Leader at the Stockholm International peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (1992-1997) and lectures at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University) (since 1998). While holding degrees of doctor on history (1985) and professor (2002); he was elected in 2003 Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He participates in various professional associations—International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), European Security Forum (Brussels), Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Moscow), Russian Academy of Military Sciences. He writes extensively on Soviet/Russian foreign policy, international security, European integration, and arms control.

Dr. Evgeny P. Buzhinsky, Lieutenant General, head of the International Treaties Department of Ministry of Defense of Russian Federation; deputy head of Russian delegation of arms control negotiations in Vienna since 1996. His areas of experience include strategic and conventional arms control issues, non-proliferation, global and regional stability.

Prof. Malcolm Chalmers, Professorial Fellow, Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. Chalmers is Professor of International Politics at the University of Bradford, and was recently Special Adviser to Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw MP and Margaret Beckett MP. He has previously been a visiting researcher at Stanford University and IISS, and chair of SaferWorld. He has written widely on UK security policy, international burdensharing, arms control, and conflict prevention.

Prof. Dr. Rik Coolsaet, Senior Associate Fellow at the Egmont Institute. Professor Coolsaet is a Professor of International Relations and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Ghent University (Belgium), as well as a European Commission Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation. He has held the position of deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Belgian Minister of Defence (1988–1992) and deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs (1992–1995).

Mr. William Drozdiak, President, American Council on Germany in New York City. Previously, Mr. Drozdiak was executive director of the Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He worked for more than twenty years as an editor and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. As chief European correspondent until 2001, he was responsible for coverage of major political, economic, and security issues in Europe, with special emphasis on NATO and the European Union. From 1990 to 2000, he served as the Post’s bureau chief in Paris and Berlin. He has worked as State Department correspondent for Time magazine.

Prof. Hall Gardner, Professor of Political Science, International and Comparative Politics Department, The American University of Paris. Professor Gardner is a geostrategist with a comparative historical orientation. His focus is on the origins of war, yet more specifically on deliberating the phenomenon of war’s eruption and its regional and global ramifications, with an eye toward conflict resolution. His research blends a historical and theoretical approach with contemporary international affairs, concentrating on questions involving NATO and European Union enlargement, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its impact upon China and Eurasia in general, as well as the global ramifications of the “war on terrorism.”

Mr. Camille Grand, Director, Fondation pour la recherche stratégique. Mr. Camille Grand was the deputy director for disarmament and multilateral affairs in the directorate for strategic, security and disarmament affairs of the French ministry of foreign affairs (2006-08). In charge of conventional arms control, small arms and light weapons, land mines and cluster munitions, OSCE and Council of Europe affairs, he has been directly involved in several arms control negotiations and was previously the deputy diplomatic adviser to the French Minister of Defence.

H.E. Ambassador Ortwin Hennig, Vice President, Head of the Conflict Prevention Program, EastWest Institute. Ambassador Hennig is a distinguished alumnus of the Free University of Berlin and the London School of Economics where he concentrated on Political Science. As an alumnus of the NATO Defense College in Rome, he specialized in arms control and security policy matters. He held diplomatic posts in Afghanistan and Russia, and with the German Representation to the European Commission and the OSCE in Vienna. Ambassador Hennig served the Office of the German Federal President as a foreign policy advisor. He had been appointed as Commissioner for Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Peace Building for the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. Ambassador Hennig has published extensively on the subjects of arms control, the OSCE and conflict prevention

Dr. Vladimir Ivanov, Senior Associate, and Director of the Moscow Center, EastWest Institute. Dr Ivanov is involved in all EWI projects with a ‘Russia dimension,’ particularly Protection and Counter-terrorism and the U.S.-Russia Constructive Agenda Initiative. He was responsible for overseeing and managing EWI’s Fiscal Transparency Program. He was also responsible for EWI’s project on reforming regional finances in the Kaliningrad Region, as well as research and development activities in the area of public finance in Russia with a focus on its relationship with the developing private sector. He received a B.A. in International Journalism and a PhD in History from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).

Dr. Yevgeniy M. Kozhokin, Director, Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia. He is a Doctor of Sciences (History) and once was former Deputy Chairman of the State Committee on Nationalities and Federation Issues; former Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Security and Intelligence of the Committee of Defense and Security Issues; as well as a former member of the Permanent Delegation of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation in the North Atlantic Assembly. His areas of expertise include history of Western Europe, international conflicts, the economic and political relations between Russia and EU-countries, Russia and India, Russia and China.

Ambassador Vadim Lukov, Russian Ambassador to Belgium. He graduated from the International Relations Institute (MGIMO) of Moscow in 1975, and holds a PhD in History. In 1979, he started in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR (since 1992 the MFA of the Russian Federation). Between 1995-1997, he was the head of the Russian Foreign Policy Planning Department. It was in the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho that he started his function of Russian Ambassador. In 2001-2004, he served as Russian Sous-Sherpa in the G8. In 2001 he became Ambassador-at-large at the G8 summit and in 2004 took up his current post in Belgium. Ambassador Lukov is fluent in English, French, Dutch, and Swahili. He is the author of numerous books regarding international issues, including Russia in the Leaders’ Club (Moscow, 2002) and The G-8 (Moscow, 2004).

Stefan Maschinski, PhD-candidate, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin. His research interests include the interaction between international regimes and local peace activists and its impact on domestic politics. Also, he provides a strong background in European foreign and security policies in the former CIS countries and the South Caucasus. Stefan Maschinski holds a MA in ‘International Conflict Analysis’ from the University of Kent in Brussels.

Jacqueline McLaren Miller, Senior Associate, EastWest Institute. Previously, she served as Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington programs. An expert in Russia and the post-Soviet states, her main area of interest is Russia’s relations with its periphery. Jacqueline was assistant director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and assistant director of the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS). She has also served as an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University.

Mr. Andrew Nagorski, Vice President and Director of Public Policy, EastWest Institute. Nagorski served as Newsweek’s bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw and Berlin. He also helped to launch several new magazines: Newsweek Arabic; Newsweek Polska; Newsweek Russia; and Newsweek Argentina.

Dr. Koen J. L. Schoors, Professor, Centre for Russian International Socio-Political and Economic Studies (CERISE), Ghent University. Dr. Schoors’ areas of expertise include financial systems, banking and financial markets, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Eugeniusz Smolar, foreign policy analyst, Center for International Relations, Warsaw. In August of 1968 he was imprisoned for organizing prodemocracy protests and against the Warsaw Pact armies invasion of Czechoslovakia. Following his release from jail, in 1970 he emigrated to Sweden. In 1975, he joined the BBC World Service as a journalist working in the Polish Section, then in 1982 became its Deputy Director, and its Director (1988–97). Following his return to Poland, in 1997 he became Deputy Chairman of Polskie Radio S.A. with responsibility for programming, and later its Program Director. He previously served as president of the Center for International Relations before taking his current position there.

Prof. John D. Steinbruner, Director, Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland. His work has focused on issues of international security and related problems of international policy. Steinbruner was Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1978-1996. Prior to joining Brookings, he was an Associate Professor in the School of Organization and Management and in the Department of Political Science at Yale University from 1976 to 1978. From 1973 to 1976, he served as Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Expertise: International security policy issues.

Dmitry V. Suslov, Researcher, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences; Deputy Director of Research programs of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Graduated in 2001 from St. Petersburg State University. In 1998 he defended his candidate (Ph.D.) dissertation at the Institute of the United States and Canada. In 2002-2004 he worked as an international correspondent for Nezavisimaya Gazeta, published over 300 articles, comments, and interviews. Between 2003 and 2004 he was Russia-U.S. program coordinator at the Institute of Foreign and Defense Policy. Since 2004 he has worked as a deputy director of research of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Since 2006 he has also served as a researcher at the Institute of Europe and deputy head of the Center of applied research (Russia-EU) of the Institute of Europe.

Dr. Wolfgang Zellner, Head of the Centre for OSCE Research (CORE), Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy. Dr. Zellner is an expert in European Security Issues, OSCE, conventional arms control in Europe, ethnopolitical conflicts as well as transnational threats and risks.

Dr. Greg Austin, Vice President, Program Development, East West Institute. Dr. Austin has a thirty year career in international affairs, including senior posts in academia and government. He has also held senior posts at the International Crisis Group and the Foreign Policy Centre London. He is the Founding Chair of the Asian Century Institute in London. In 2003-04, he led a major review for the United Kingdom Cabinet Office on UK conflict prevention policies. He has several post-graduate qualifications in international relations, including a Ph.D.

OTHER PARTICIPATING EWI STAFF

Mr. Danila Bochkarev, Associate and Project Manager for the energy security project

Mr. Matthew King, Associate, Preventive Diplomacy Initiative

Ms. Liza Kurukulasuriya, Project Coordinator, Worldwide Security Initiative

Mr. Egan Reich, Research Assistant, Worldwide Security Initiative

BRUSSELS – MOSCOW – NEW YORK

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