If you’ve taken a basic international relations class in college and didn’t learn about this concept, you may want to contact your registrar and ask for a refund. Yet given its simplicity and its importance, I’m frequently struck by how often the people charged with handling foreign and national security policy seem to be unaware of it—not just in the United States, but in lots of other countries too.

Consider this recent propaganda video tweeted out from NATO headquarters, responding to assorted Russian “myths” about the alliance. The video points out that NATO is a purely defensive alliance and says it harbors no aggressive designs against Russia. These assurances might be factually correct, but the security dilemma explains why Russia isn’t likely to take them at face value and might have valid reasons to regard NATO’s eastward expansion as threatening.

NATO officials might regard Russia’s fears as fanciful or as “myths,” but that hardly means that they are completely absurd or that Russians don’t genuinely believe them.

Adding new members to NATO may have made some of these states more secure (which is why they wanted to join), but it should be obvious why Russia might not see it this way and that it might do various objectionable things in response (like seizing Crimea or invading Ukraine). NATO officials might regard Russia’s fears as fanciful or as “myths,” but that hardly means that they are completely absurd or that Russians don’t genuinely believe them. Remarkably, plenty of smart, well-educated Westerners—including some prominent former diplomats—cannot seem to grasp that their benevolent intentions are not transparently obvious to others.

Or consider the deeply suspicious and highly conflictual relationship among Iran, the United States, and the United States’ most important Middle East clients. U.S. officials presumably believe that imposing harsh sanctions on Iran, threatening it with regime change, conducting cyberattacks against its nuclear infrastructure, and helping organize regional coalitions against it will make the United States and its local partners more secure. For its part, Israel thinks assassinating Iranian scientists enhances its security, and Saudi Arabia thinks intervening in Yemen makes Riyadh safer.

Not surprisingly, according to basic IR theory, Iran sees these various actions as threatening and responds in its own fashion: backing Hezbollah, supporting the Houthis in Yemen, conducting attacks on oil facilities and shipments, and—most important of all—developing the latent capacity to build its own nuclear deterrent. But these predictable responses just reinforce its neighbors’ fears and make them feel less secure all over again, tightening the spiral further and heightening the risk of war.

The same dynamic is operating in Asia. Not surprisingly, China regards America’s long position of regional influence—and especially its network of military bases and its naval and air presence—as a potential threat. As it has grown wealthier, Beijing has quite understandably used some of that wealth to build military forces that can challenge the U.S. position. (Ironically, the George W. Bush administration once tried to tell China that pursuing greater military strength was an “outdated path” that would “hamper its own pursuit of national greatness,” even as Washington’s own military spending soared.)

In recent years, China has sought to alter the existing status quo in several areas. As should surprise no one, these actions have made some of China’s neighbors less secure, and they have responded by moving closer together politically, renewing ties with the United States, and building up their own military forces, leading Beijing to accuse Washington of a well-orchestrated effort to “contain” it and of trying keep China permanently vulnerable.

In all these cases, each side’s efforts to deal with what it regards as a potential security problem merely reinforced the other side’s own security fears, thereby triggering a response that strengthened the former’s original concerns. Each side sees what it is doing as purely defensive reaction to the other side’s behavior, and identifying “who started it” soon becomes effectively impossible.

The key insight is that aggressive behavior—such as the use of force—does not necessarily arise from evil or aggressive motivations (i.e., the pure desire for wealth, glory, or power for its own sake). Yet when leaders believe their own motives are purely defensive and that this fact should be obvious to others (as the NATO video described above suggests), they will tend to see an opponent’s hostile reaction as evidence of greed, innate belligerence, or an evil foreign leader’s malicious and unappeasable ambitions. Empathy goes out the window, and diplomacy soon becomes a competition in name-calling.

To be sure, a few world leaders have understood this problem and pursued policies that tried to mitigate the security dilemma’s pernicious effects. After the Cuban missile crisis, for example, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a serious and successful effort to reduce the risk of future confrontations by installing the famous hotline and beginning a serious effort at nuclear arms control.

The Obama administration did something similar when it negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, which it saw as a first step that that blocked Iran’s path to the bomb and opened up the possibility of improving relations over time. The first part of the deal worked, and the Trump administration’s subsequent decision to abandon it was a massive blunder that left all the parties worse off. As the former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo has observed, Israel’s extensive efforts to convince then-U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal was “one of the most serious strategic mistakes since the establishment of the state.”

As the writer Robert Wright recently pointed out, then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to not to send arms to Ukraine after the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 showed a similar appreciation of security dilemma logic. In Wright’s telling, Obama understood that sending Ukraine offensive weapons might exacerbate Russian fears and encourage the Ukrainians to think they could reverse Russia’s earlier gains, thereby provoking an even wider war.

Tragically, this is pretty much what happened after the Trump and Biden administrations ramped up the flow of Western weaponry to Kyiv: The fear that Ukraine was slipping rapidly into the Western orbit heightened Russian fears and led Putin to launch an illegal, costly, and now protracted preventive war. Even if it made good sense to help Ukraine improve its ability to defend itself, doing so without doing very much to reassure Moscow made war more likely.

So, does the logic of the security dilemma prescribe policies of accommodation instead? Alas, no. As its name implies, the security dilemma really is a dilemma, insofar as states cannot guarantee their security by unilaterally disarming or making repeated concessions to an opponent. Even if mutual insecurity lies at the core of most adversarial relationships, concessions that tipped the balance in one side’s favor might lead it to act aggressively, in the hopes of gaining an insurmountable advantage and securing itself in perpetuity. Regrettably, there are no quick, easy, or 100 percent reliable solutions to the vulnerabilities inherent in anarchy.

Instead, governments must try to manage these problems through statecraft, empathy, and intelligent military policies. As Jervis explained in his seminal 1978 World Politics article, in some circumstances the dilemma can be eased by developing defensive military postures, especially in the nuclear realm. From this perspective, second-strike retaliatory forces are stabilizing because they protect the state via deterrence but do not threaten the other side’s own second-strike deterrent capability.

Governments must try to manage these problems through statecraft, empathy, and intelligent military policies.

For example, ballistic missile submarines are stabilizing because they provide more reliable second-strike forces but do not threaten each other. By contrast, counterforce weapons, strategic anti-submarine warfare capabilities, and/or missile defenses are destabilizing because they threaten the other side’s deterrent capacity and thus exacerbate its security fears. (As critics have noted, the offense-versus-defense distinction is much harder to draw when dealing with conventional forces.)

The existence of the security dilemma also suggests that states should look for areas where they can build trust without leaving themselves vulnerable. One approach is to create institutions to monitor each other’s behavior and reveal when an adversary is cheating on a prior agreement. It also suggests that states interested in stability are usually wise to respect the status quo and adhere to prior agreements. Blatant violations erode trust, and trust once lost is hard to regain.

Lastly, the logic of the security dilemma (and much of the related literature on misperception) suggests that states should work overtime to explain, explain, and once again explain their real concerns and why they are acting as they are. Most people (and governments) tend to think their actions are easier for others to understand than they really are, and they are not very good at explaining their conduct in language that the other side is likely to appreciate, understand, and believe. This problem is especially prevalent at present in relations between Russia and the West, where both sides seem to be talking past each other and have been surprised repeatedly by what the other side has done.

Adversaries will assume the worst about what you are doing (and why you are doing it) and you must therefore go to enormous lengths to persuade them their suspicions are mistaken.

Giving bogus reasons for what one is doing is especially harmful, because others will sensibly conclude that one’s words cannot be taken seriously. A good rule of thumb is that adversaries will assume the worst about what you are doing (and why you are doing it) and that you must therefore go to enormous lengths to persuade them that their suspicions are mistaken. If nothing else, this approach encourages governments to empathize—i.e., to think about how the problem looks from their opponent’s perspective—which is always desirable even when the opponent’s view is off-base.

Unfortunately, none of these measures can fully eliminate the uncertainties that bedevil global politics or render the security dilemma irrelevant. It would be a more secure and peaceful world if more leaders considered whether a policy they believed was benign was unintentionally making others nervous, then considered whether the action in question could be modified in ways that alleviated (some of) those fears. This approach won’t always work, but it should be tried a more often than it is.

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. 

Brooke Singman of Fox News reported on Friday:

“Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.

“Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.”

The current case hinges on whether Mr. Sussmann, then at the Perkins Coie law firm, was honest about his work for the Clinton campaign. But the other alleged abuses described by the special counsel in Friday’s filing appear to be far worse. Mr. Durham’s story of the extreme lengths that Clinton allies allegedly went to gather information and then misrepresent it to harm Mr. Trump will leave many readers asking how any of this could possibly have been legal.

Jerry Dunleavy at the Washington Examiner posts a copy of the Durham filing, which lays out the alleged effort by Mr. Sussmann and others to tie Mr. Trump to the Russian Alfa Bank by harvesting internet data from Trump Tower and even the White House and then selectively disclosing it to government officials:

As set forth in the Indictment, on Sept. 19, 2016 – less than two months before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election – the defendant… met with the FBI General Counsel at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The defendant provided the FBI General Counsel with purported data and “white papers” that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank…

Mr. Durham’s filing alleges that a technology executive enlisted the help of various corporate and university researchers to assemble a sort of digital dossier:

“In connection with these efforts, Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data. Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract. Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish “an inference” and “narrative” tying then-candidate Trump to Russia. In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain “VIPs,” referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton Campaign.”

As a tiny baby step toward accountability, can taxpayers at least be assured that the characters who participated in this outrage will never again receive any federal contracts? Wait, the story from Mr. Durham gets worse:

“The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (“DNS”) Internet traffic pertaining to (i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”). (Tech Executive-1’s employer, Internet Company-1, had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP. Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.)”

As if it wasn’t bad enough that an executive at a technology company was allegedly abusing the company’s relationship with the White House to run a hostile data-collection program, the data were then allegedly misrepresented to suggest a routine occurrence was evidence of some nefarious Trump plot. The special counsel’s filing describes another meeting between Mr. Sussmann and an official of a federal agency in which the lawyer allegedly described the data from the Trump offices:

“…the defendant provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (“IP”) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider (“Russian Phone Provider-1”). The defendant further claimed that these lookups demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations. The Special Counsel’s Office has identified no support for these allegations. Indeed, more complete DNS data that the Special Counsel’s Office obtained from a company that assisted Tech Executive-1 in assembling these allegations reflects that such DNS lookups were far from rare in the United States. For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered – but did not provide to [the government agency] – reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses. Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower. In addition, the more complete data assembled by Tech Executive-1 and his associates reflected that DNS lookups involving the EOP and Russian Phone Provider-1 began at least as early 2014 (i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office) – another fact which the allegations omitted.

To sum up the special counsel’s argument in this case, an appalling abuse of private and public resources to gather dirt on Donald Trump did not turn up any dirt. So the alleged perpetrators just pretended they had found something significant and tried to persuade federal agencies that Mr. Trump had disturbing connections to Russians. Mr. Sussmann maintains that he is not guilty and deserves the presumption of innocence just like everybody else.”

As for the political campaign that was paying the bills, was there anything that Hillary Clinton would not do to her 2016 opponent?

When Putin replaced Yeltsin, he held out hope for friendly relations with the West. He was the first foreign leader to reach out to President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. He lent support to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. But his friendship was not reciprocated when the U.S. abrogated the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and invaded Iraq the following year despite fierce opposition from Russia and others. NATO expansion to include seven more former Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics in 2004 poured fuel on the fire. 

Putin publicly unleashed his growing outrage against U.S. and NATO expansion and aggression in his February 10, 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference that threw down the gauntlet against further Western encroachment against Russia’s national security interests. Putin decried the fact that “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders,” seeing it as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust” and asking, “against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

Putin went further. He denounced U.S. unipolarity–a term that neocon theorist Charles Krauthammer made famous when he declared in 1990 that with the collapse of the Soviet Union this was America’s “unipolar moment” that might last three or four decades and then amended that formulation in 2002, contending that it was actually America’s “unipolar era” that would last indefinitely. Putin repudiated the idea that there was “one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making….a world in which there is one master, one sovereign.” He went further to reject America’s unbridled militarism in this presumably unipolar world, stating, “Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force–military force–in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.”  The result was an “extremely dangerous” world rife with  “wars and local and regional conflicts” in which “no one feels safe.” He accused the U.S. of being disdainful of the principles of international law, thereby provoking an arms race as frightened countries sought nuclear weapons to protect themselves. He also indicted the U.S. for placing destabilizing missile defense systems in Europe and for the militarization of space.

Such an American hegemonic policy, he noted, has “nothing in common with democracy,” which must respect “the interests and opinions of the minority.” He deplored the fact that Russians “are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.”

Judging by the questions he was asked, listeners were taken aback by the confrontational tone of Putin’s speech. U.S. press coverage was also hostile. But U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who followed Putin to the podium the following day, recounts in his memoirs that he reported to President Bush that “from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and then in the dissolution of the Soviet Union….The arrogance, after the collapse, of American government officials, academicians, businessmen and politicians in telling the Russians how to conduct their domestic and international affairs…had led to deep and long-term resentment and bitterness.” Gates admitted that he felt but did not mention that the U.S. had “badly mismanaged” relations with Russia after George H.W. Bush left office in 1993. The rapid expansion of NATO, he understood, was a serious “mistake.” The agreement to rotate NATO troops into Romania and Bulgaria was a “needless provocation.” And subsequent attempts to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was “truly overreaching.”

Gates was correct in this assessment. Bush recklessly plowed ahead the following year with his foolhardy announcement at the NATO summit that he “strongly supported” Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. Others understood Bush’s folly and have thus far prevented that from happening. Then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, who currently directs the CIA, wrote an urgent memo back to the White House headlined “Nyet Means Nyet,” telling U.S. leaders not to cross Russia’s red lines. Burns cabled, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players… I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

In 2007 and 2008, Russia was not in a position yet to do anything about the lopsided security situation in Europe. Today that equation and the balance of forces have changed. But NATO’s provocative policies do not reflect those changes as reflected in its disastrous overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, 20 year war in Afghanistan, and new enmity toward China. Western insistence that the door remains open for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO on top of other alliance initiatives that have backed Russia into a corner and Russia’s own dangerous and provocative responses have created the most frightening global crisis that the world has seen in 60 years. If rational leaders don’t prevail on ALL sides and find diplomatic solutions that guarantee the security of ALL parties, including Russia, I fear for ALL of our futures.

Mr. Macron went to Moscow to see Mr. Putin with a simple 4-stage plan in mind. 1. Clinch a wide-ranging deal with Putin on Ukraine, thus stopping  “Russian aggression”. 2. Bask in the glow as the West’s Peacemaker. 3. Raise the EU’s tawdry profile, as he’s the current president of the EU Council. 4. Collect all the spoils then bag the April presidential election in France.

Considering he all but begged for an audience in a flurry of phone calls, Macron was received by Putin with no special honors. Comic relief was provided by French mainstream media hysterics, “military strategists” included, evoking the “French castle” sketch in Monty Python’s Holy Grail while reaffirming every stereotype available about  “cowardly frogs”. Their “analysis”: Putin is “isolated” and wants “the military option”. Their top intel source: Bezos-owned CIA rag The Washington Post.

Still, it was fascinating to watch – oh, that loooooong table in the Kremlin: the only EU leader who took the trouble to actually listen to Putin was the one who, months ago, pronounced NATO as “brain-dead”. So the ghosts of Charles de Gaulle and Talleyrand did seem to have engaged in a lively chat, framed by raw economics, finally imprinting on the “Jupiterian” that the imperial obsession on preventing Europe by all means from profiting from wider trade with Eurasia is a losing game.

After a strenuous six hours of discussions Putin, predictably, monopolized the eminently quotable department, starting with one

that will be reverberating all across the Global South for a long time: “Citizens of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia have seen how peaceful is NATO.”

There’s more. The already iconic  Do you want a war between Russia and NATO? – followed by the ominous  “there will be no winners”. Or take this one, on Maidan: “Since February 2014, Russia has considered a coup d’état to be the source of power in Ukraine. This is a bad sandbox, we don’t like this kind of game.”

On the Minsk agreements, the message was blunt: “The President of Ukraine has said that he does not like any of the clauses of the Minsk agreements. Like it, or not – be patient, my beauty. They must be fulfilled.”

The “real issue behind the present crisis”

Macron for his part stressed, “new mechanisms are needed to ensure stability in Europe, but not by revising existing agreements, perhaps new security solutions would be innovative.” So nothing that Moscow had not stressed before. He added, “France and Russia have agreed to work together on security guarantees.” The operative term is “France”. Not the non-agreement capable United States government.

Anglo-American spin insisted that Putin had agreed not to launch new “military initiatives” – while keeping mum on what Macron promised in return. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm any agreement. He only said that the Kremlin will engage with Macron’s dialogue proposals, “provided that the United States also agrees with them.” And for that, as everyone knows, there’s no guarantee.

The Kremlin has been stressing for months that Russia has no interest whatsoever in invading de facto black hole Ukraine. And Russian troops will return to their bases after exercises are over. None of this has anything to do with “concessions” by Putin.

And then came the bombshell: French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire – the inspiration for one of the main characters in Michel Houellebecq’s cracking new book, Anéantir – said that the launch of Nord Stream 2 “is one of the main components of de-escalating tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian border.” Gallic flair formulated out loud what no German had the balls to say.

In Kiev, after his stint in Moscow, it looks like Macron properly told Zelensky which way the wind blows now. Zelensky hastily confirmed Ukraine is ready to implement the Minsk agreements; it never was, for seven long years. He also said he expects to hold a summit in the Normandy format – Kiev, the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Germany and France – “in the near future”. A meeting of Normandy format political advisers will happen in Berlin on Thursday.

Way back in August 2020, I was already pointing to which way we were heading in the master chessboard. A few sharp minds in the Beltway, emailing their networks, did notice in my column how “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history, switching world power in favor of these three great powers against Anglo-Saxon sea power.”

Now, a very high-level Deep State intel source, retired, comes down to the nitty gritty, pointing out how “the secret negotiations between Russia and the US center around missiles going into Eastern Europe, as the US frantically drives for completing its development of hypersonic missiles.”

The main point is that if the US places such hypersonic missiles in Romania and Poland, as planned, the time for them to reach Moscow would be 1/10 the time of a Tomahawk. It’s even worse for Russia if they are placed in the Baltics. The source notes, “the US plan is to neutralize the more advanced defensive missile systems that seal Russia’s airspace. This is why the US has offered to allow Russia to inspect these missile sites in the future, to prove that there are no hypersonic nuclear missiles. Yet that’s not a solution, as the Raytheon missile launchers can handle both offensive and defensive missiles, so it’s possible to sneak in the offensive missiles at night. Thus everything requires continuous observation.”

The bottom line is stark: “This is the real issue behind the present crisis. The only solution is no missile sites allowed in Eastern Europe.” That happens to be an essential part of Russia’s demands for security guarantees.

Sailing to Byzantium

Alastair Crooke has demonstrated how “the West slowly is discovering that that it has no pressure point versus Russia (its economy being relatively sanctions-proof), and its military is no match for that of Russia’s.”

In parallel, Michael Hudson has conclusively shown how “the threat to US dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.”

Quite a few of us, independent analysts from both the Global North and South, have been stressing non-stop for years that the pop Gotterdammerung in progress hinges on the end of American geopolitical control over Eurasia. Occupied Germany and Japan enforcing the strategic submission of Eurasia from the west down to the east; the ever-expanding NATO; the ever de-multiplied Empire of Bases, all the lineaments of the 75-year-plus free lunch are collapsing.

The new groove is set to the tune of the New Silk Roads, or BRI; Russia’s unmatched hypersonic power – and now the non-negotiable demands for security guarantees; the advent of RCEP – the largest free trade deal on the planet uniting East Asia; the Empire all but expelled from Central Asia after the Afghan humiliation; and sooner rather than later its expulsion from the first island chain in the Western Pacific, complete with a starring role for the Chinese DF-21D “carrier killer” missiles.

The Ray McGovern-coined MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) was not capable to muster the collective IQ to even begin to understand the terms of the Russia-China joint statement issued on an already historic February 4, 2022. Some in Europe actually did – arguably located in the Elysée Palace.

This enlightened unpacking focuses on the interconnection of some key formulations, such as “relations between Russia and China superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era” and “friendship which shows no limits”: the strategic partnership, for all its challenges ahead, is way more complex than a mere “treaty” or “agreement”. Without deeper understanding of Chinese and Russian civilizations, and their way of thinking, Westerners simply are not equipped to get it.

In the end, if we manage to escape so much Western doom and gloom, we might end up navigating a warped remix of Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium. We may always dream of the best and the brightest in Europe finally sailing away from the iron grip of tawdry imperial Exceptionalistan:

“Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enameling / To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; / Or set upon a golden bough to sing /To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world—in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992—have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Vladimir Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise, and the status quo will be restored.

Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.

The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a budget of $3 billion, and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.

Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.

And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds east and west together in the tenuous OSCE.

Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine, or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.

Presently there are no arms control negotiations between east and west. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a decade ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further behind since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.

So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps some time soon.

So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement, or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe.

What we need is Helsinki 2.0.

The Origins of Helsinki 1.0

In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.

“Betrayal!” said one of them.

“Appeasement!” said another.

Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.

As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, Soviet Union, and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region—the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia—and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.

Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proven otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And ultimately it would be human rights—rather than war or economic sanctions—that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague, and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.

After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.

But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars, and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first East European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security—my first contribution to FPIF back in 1996 was a critique of expansion—but logic took a backseat to appetite.

The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.

Which brings us to the current impasse. the OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a Special Monitoring Mission to assess the ceasefire there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.

The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?

Toward Helsinki 2.0

The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise.

That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.

As I argue in a new article in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”

The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis—or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in a melting Arctic—the Putin administration changed its tune last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy—as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.

What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.

Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in U.S.-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.

As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage—through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile attitude toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.

The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.

The strategy has its fans, but some national security veterans wonder if the administration is taking it too far.

U.S. officials say the disclosures are carefully vetted and represent only a small amount of the information America and its allies have gathered as Russian leader Vladimir Putin amasses troops along Ukraine’s border. The goals, they say, include preemptively exposing — and thus derailing — Russian lies that could lead to a war while also putting America and its European allies on the same page.

“We believe … that the best antidote to disinformation is information,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday during an appearance before reporters. It’s an approach that could prove a blueprint going forward as countries increasingly rely on manipulating the information space to further their geopolitical aims.

Among supporters of the effort is Michael Hayden, a former director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency, who said being more public-leaning on intelligence is something he’s advocated for years given the changing threat landscape. “It’s very different now — the Information Age is very important,” Hayden said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said approvingly that “leaning in” on intelligence disclosures has given the Russians “fair warning.” “I think that’s, again, put the Russians back a little bit,” he said.

But there have been so many revelations that some national security hands wish administration officials would just shut up. And many, even those who support the disclosures, wonder if President Joe Biden and his aides are being overly alarmist due to past strategic and intelligence failures in places like Ukraine and, more recently, Afghanistan.

“I am concerned about the long-term credibility of our intelligence with all of these select declassifications,” a former CIA officer with expertise on Russia told POLITICO. “If it turns out to be wrong, or partially wrong, it undermines how much our partners trust the info we give them, or, frankly, how much the public trusts it.”

Such views may be in the minority, for now, but across Washington quiet conversations are getting louder about the administration’s unusual openness about intelligence in the face-off with Moscow.

“Traditional warfare has always been about grinding down your adversaries’ will,” said Gavin Wilde, a former U.S. intelligence official with expertise on Russia and information warfare. “We used to be entirely reliant on hard power to do that, and now it’s a whole lot easier to do with the information tools available to us.”

‘A common baseline’

The Biden administration has used an array of tactics to publicly share information and analyses about Russia’s military build-up and intentions.

They include authorized leaks to select news organizations as well as public statements. The administration also consults outside analysts and lawmakers, some of whom then talk about the material with reporters. (Of course, some of the articles published aren’t based on authorized leaks but instead are the work of well-sourced journalists.)

The reports, which have appeared since last fall, have covered everything from U.S. suspicions that Russia could deploy as many as 175,000 troops for a Ukraine invasion to allegations that the Kremlin planned to create a propaganda video about a fake attack by Ukraine that could offer Moscow a pretext for war.

Russia denies it has plans to invade Ukraine. Putin, however, insists that the United States and its European allies must address concerns he has about the expansion of the NATO military alliance, which he views as a threat to his country.

On numerous occasions, Biden administration officials have said a Russian invasion of Ukraine could occur at any moment, citing details about Moscow’s troop deployments in places including the Kremlin-allied country of Belarus.

A former National Security Council official who dealt with Russia argued that the more intelligence the administration releases, the more likely that the Kremlin’s operatives can trace the sources and methods used to obtain it, endangering American assets, including human ones.

“How many freaking times do they need to warn that anything may be imminent?” the former official asked. “Next time we won’t know what the plans are because the Russians won’t use those channels they know we collect on.”

The former official said unveiling Russia’s gray zone tactics makes sense now and then, but “it’s the volume of specific stuff that creates a problem, not any one piece of information per se.”

A senior Biden administration official and a senior U.S. intelligence official, however, said the risks are carefully weighed very step of the way.

“The cost-benefit analysis has so far weighed in favor of sharing as much as feasible given what’s at stake,” the senior intelligence official said. “Also, given European skepticism [about Russia’s motives] in some quarters, there’s a sense that we need to do everything we can to establish a common baseline understanding of the threat.”

While there are lingering questions about some European governments’ willingness to crack down hard on Russia using economic sanctions and military aid to Ukraine, the senior administration official stressed that the intelligence-sharing between America and its European allies has been robust amid the crisis. Last month, the British government made public its suspicions that Moscow was considering installing a puppet regime in Kyiv as part of an effort to control the country.

There’s been no official pushback from U.S. intelligence agencies about how or when the information they’ve gleaned and analyzed is made public, the senior administration official added, implying that a good deal of intelligence remains private. “What we have made public is a small amount of declassified intel that’s been very carefully reviewed for any potential compromise to sources and methods,” the official said.

The release of intelligence about a foe has precedent. Most famously, the George W. Bush administration selectively leaked allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify its 2003 invasion of that country. The claims turned out to be false, but were a precursor to war.

Amid the Ukraine crisis, the sheer amount of information the Biden team is releasing, as well as how frequently and quickly it is doing so, is unusual.

“It’s almost real time,” said Calder Walton, an intelligence historian at Harvard. “It’s the world that we’re in now.”

Walton added, however, that such an approach is “high-risk,” especially if the information is later proven wrong. Iraq is an obvious example, but there are other cases that have eroded U.S. credibility.

In 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines civilian passenger plane carrying 269 people. The U.S. almost immediately asserted it was a deliberate act and that the Soviets had to know the nature of the target. President Ronald Reagan called it “barbaric” and a “terrorist act,” and Secretary of State George Shultz held a press conference detailing what American intelligence had picked up about Soviet communications on the incident.

But the United States later had to backtrack as more evidence suggested the Soviets had not known the aircraft was carrying civilians and shot it down thinking it was a U.S. spy plane. “The result was that the Reagan administration undermined its criticism of the Soviet government by overstating its case,” Walton said.

The shadow of Afghanistan

The administration’s decision to go public with its findings likely is rooted in part in lessons U.S. officials have learned from dealing with Russia’s interference in American elections. One of those lessons was that it’s important to alert the U.S. public about Russian disinformation tactics sooner rather than later, so-called pre-bunking.

Many people in the Biden administration — including the president — also were in government the last time Russia invaded Ukraine, in 2014. That invasion involved more surreptitious methods than what Moscow is using now, and in many ways it startled the world. For instance, Putin deployed Russian forces with no insignia on their uniforms to take over the Crimean peninsula. The troops came to be called “little green men.”

Other recent U.S. fumbles may also be influencing the Biden administration’s intense diplomatic as well as intelligence strategies on Russia and Ukraine.

Most recently, the administration has faced opprobrium for its handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, including intelligence assessments that failed to foresee how quickly Kabul would fall to the Taliban. Critics of the administration’s Afghan policy said its rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops as well as contractors doomed the Afghan army and the country by pulling out critical support functions.

This time, with Ukraine, “they know that they have to be seen to be a dependable ally,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official said of the Biden team.

U.S. officials downplay if not outright dismiss the Afghanistan factor. Still, it troubles those wary of the possibility of escalating conflict with Russia. Despite Biden’s promises that U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine if Russia invades, some fear mission creep is inevitable. They question if the intelligence community’s off-the-mark assessments of what would happen in Afghanistan is leading the spy agencies to overcorrect with unduly pessimistic assessments about Ukraine.

“I also wonder if the Afghanistan withdrawal experience might have made the administration more sensitive to criticism from hawks and thus more susceptible to bad hawkish advice,” a senior Democratic congressional aide said.

Despite Russia’s aggressive deployment of some 100,000 troops along the border with Ukraine, it’s entirely possible that the crisis freezes for weeks, if not months, and that eventually Putin pulls all his forces back.

If the public warnings sounded by the Biden administration don’t turn into real moves by Russia, could that hurt the U.S. intelligence community’s credibility?

“I can see that if it becomes a repeated pattern that doesn’t bear out, but it seems to me they had high confidence in [the intelligence] reporting this time,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. “Given the stakes involved those costs seem manageable.”

Besides, as Kendall-Taylor put it, if the intelligence suggesting that Putin will invade turns out to be wrong, “we should all be happy about that.”

A lot has been written about Russia’s call for security guarantees. They have been described as anything from a basis for a new, just security order in Europe to imperialist blackmail. The polarization is understandable. Moscow has proposed sweeping changes and supported its statement by military deployments and promises of “military-technical reciprocal measures” if its concerns were not addressed.

But a lot of the discussion of the Russian proposals has focused on second guessing their meaning, their timing, or how far Moscow could go in pursuing them. And with very scant evidence to go on, oftentimes the experts have just fallen back on whatever position they previously held. So instead of doing another round of crystal ball gazing to try to divine what the security guarantees really are, it might make more sense to describe what Russian proposals are not, or even what they should not be.

Namely, Moscow’s proposals should not have been a surprise to people who have been following the issue; they should not necessarily be taken literally as described in the two draft agreements Russia has proposed; and they should not become a substitute for strategic arms control discussions.

No new thing under the sun. The remarkable thing about the Russian proposals on the security guarantees—which come in the form of two draft treaties, one with NATO and one with the United States—was that almost nothing in them was new. William Alberque, director of strategy, technology, and arms Control at the IISS research institute, was the first to notice that the draft documents drew heavily from the 2009 Russian proposal of the Agreement on Basic Principles Governing Relations among NATO-Russia Council Member States in Security Sphere. The 2009 draft European Security Treaty was probably also an inspiration.

As to the specific issues, Russia’s demand that NATO guarantee that it would not expand further east toward Russia restates a concern that Moscow has had going as far back as German unification in 1990. Ensuing Georgian and Ukrainian quests for NATO membership—including the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, which said that Ukraine and Georgia would be welcomed into the alliance—only magnified the concern. Russia became vocal in complaining about US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe in the early 2010s. And the moratorium on the deployments of intermediate-range nuclear force systems (even though tweaked in the latest documents) has been on the table since 2019. Mention that military exercises near Russia’s borders must not exceed the brigade level were probably a nod to the “substantial combat forces” never specified in NATO-Russia Founding Act.

Even the section in the draft treaties about a rollback of the NATO military infrastructure to 1997 levels had its precedent in the 2016 law suspending Russia’s participation in the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (though the law only referred to the United States and talked about withdrawing to 2000 levels).

The new part of the demand for security guarantees was Russia’s decision to put all its concerns into two documents, asking them to be legally binding, and making sure the demand got the attention of the West in one way or the other. As President Putin said in a 2018 speech announcing a series of weapons systems designed to respond to Western military capabilities that Russia had criticized to no avail: “Nobody wanted to listen to us. So listen now.”

Seriously but not literally? The point of not taking Russian proposals literally is seemingly at odds with what the officials in Moscow have been saying—that the proposals are not a menu from which one can choose, and that Russia did all the hard work drafting the texts so the West might as well just sign them.

But even if the proposals are not taken literally, they do provide the West with a significant takeaway: Moscow views the current security architecture in Europe as inadequate and the security situation as not sustainable. Again, there are no surprises here, but the proposed security guarantees add urgency to the situation. If the West shares the view that the current state of affairs is unsustainable (and the recurring security crises in this part of the world strongly support the hypothesis), this could be a good starting point for conversation.

As for the documents themselves, they are not infallible; they have internal inconsistencies and can be re-drafted if necessary. But they do describe responses to the specific security dilemmas Moscow finds itself in. Separating underlying concerns from specific responses and hammering out solutions that could work for both sides would be a challenging task for Russian and Western diplomats to take on. But it is definitely worth trying.

In a broader sense, a new trend has emerged in the nuclear sphere and beyond over the last couple of years. More emphasis has been put on why countries do the things they do and what can be done to change their calculus for doing them. From the nuclear weapon states consultations in the P5 format to the whole new intergovernmental process of Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament launched by the Trump administration, threat perceptions and security concerns have reigned supreme.

If you look at the situation from this perspective, Russia was the first of the nuclear weapon states to lay out how it sees its security environment and what can be done to decrease the chances of war that could escalate to the nuclear level. Moscow even found a way to answer the perennial question “what could the non-nuclear weapon states do to contribute” (withdraw military infrastructure from the Russian borders, do not host land-based intermediate-range nuclear systems, etc.).

A lot of people in the West did not like what they saw in Russia’s position, but however wrong or even irrational someone’s concerns might look, it does not make them any less real or consequential if the country in question is ready to act on them. And there is also a flip side. What would addressing those concerns change about Russian behavior? Would an increased sense of security translate to a more peaceful neighborhood? Would the changes be enough to pave the way for nuclear and conventional disarmament? Not at least examining those questions would constitute diplomatic malpractice.

Two is better than one. Finally, there is the strategic arms control angle of the story. In the media note on Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s trip to Europe, the State Department stated that the “Deputy Secretary will lead the U.S. delegation’s participation in an extraordinary session of the U.S.-Russia bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue (SSD).” If that is what the US side believed was happening, it is a reason for concern.

Just to recap, the Strategic Stability Dialogue was re-established after the summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden in June. Before it was buried under the avalanche of the latest news and shifting priorities, the format held two in-person meetings and established two working groups for in-depth discussions. The agenda of the dialogue was impressively broad: from missile defense and space security to a successor treaty limiting strategic offensive arms of the two countries.

There is a certain logic to Washington mentally merging the Strategic Stability Dialogue with the discussion of security guarantees Putin has demanded. After all, the issues of the US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and intermediate-range forces do feature in both the strategic stability agenda and in the latest Russian proposals. Moscow even suggested that one of the subgroups of the stability talks could be used for discussing the guarantees. But fully combining the two issues would be wrong.

First, the agendas do not fit nicely, and adding non-enlargement of NATO, deployment of troops in Europe, and restraints on military exercises to the already crowded Strategic Stability Dialogue agenda would overload it. And if Washington believes that it can use this strategy to ignore some parts of Russian proposal and only talk about missiles, it was clearly not paying attention to what Moscow was saying.

Second, both European security and strategic stability are important for Russia and the United States. Both issues will be extremely difficult to deal with. Separating them into two distinct (though connected) dialogues means that slow progress or an outright failure of one would not automatically jeopardize the other. If the dialogue on security guarantees stalls, the importance of the arms control talks would only grow.

So, the parties should call the Geneva meeting what it is—a discussion on security guarantees. And then, finally set the date for the next Strategic Stability Dialogue meeting.

Whatever one thinks about the Russian proposal on security guarantees, it is here to stay. The fact that the West was quick to respond and engaged in a dialogue is encouraging, because too much was at stake to ignore Putin’s proposal. Now comes the hard part—figuring out how Moscow’s request could be reconciled with existing diplomatic formats and the security interests of the other parties involved. As Article 1 of both proposed Russian agreements says, “The Parties shall cooperate on the basis of principles of indivisible, equal and undiminished security.” And that is a tall order.

Meanwhile, Russia insists that it is an “absolute imperative” that Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics such as Georgia are not admitted to NATO. And Moscow wants a legal treaty stating this exclusion.

A quick reality-check amusingly reminds us that Moscow has precedent on its side of the argument. The talks between U.S., NATO and Russian officials this week are being conducted in Geneva and Vienna, the cities of two European countries, Switzerland and Austria, that are obliged to remain neutral from any military alliance.

That non-aligned status is part of the Swiss and Austrian constitutions. But part of the neutrality also stems from international consensus based on the sensitive geopolitical position of both countries in the aftermath of wars in Europe.

It is therefore not unprecedented that Russia is asking for a legal assurance that Ukraine, Georgia, or other neighboring states remain outside of the NATO military bloc.

However, the way the U.S. and NATO officials present things, it sounds as if Russia’s demands are an outrageous ultimatum that violates sovereignty and freedom. Wendy Sherman, the American Deputy Secretary of State who met with Russian counterpart Sergei Ryabkov in Geneva on Monday said Moscow’s demands were “a non-starter”.

“We will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s open-door policy, which has always been central to the alliance. We will not forgo bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States,” Sherman told reporters following her 7-hour meeting with Ryabkov.

Similar self-righteous statements were issued by NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg who claimed the prerogative for the alliance to include any nation to its by-now 30-member ranks. Over half of those members were added since the end of the Cold War.

Such a high-handed view is hopelessly naive or historically ignorant. American and Western European officials may be deluded in their pretense of NATO’s “peaceful” purpose. They seem ignorant of how the alliance was set up in 1949 as a military opponent of the Soviet Union and for the projection of American imperial power.

Since the supposed end of the Cold War in 1991, the warmongering record of NATO is a vividly bloodstained one of destroying nations. For NATO officials to profess peaceful credentials in the aftermath of Afghanistan’s 20-year destruction is a shocking example of their cognitive dissonance.

Ukraine is a classic case for why NATO expansion must be halted. A change of regime in Kiev in 2014 brought to power a Neo-Nazi cabal whose hatred for Russia knows no bounds. To permit such a regime to join NATO is tantamount to allowing a dagger to be pointed at Russia’s throat.

How is Moscow expected to believe peaceful declarations whenever Washington and NATO have plied the Kiev regime with over $2.5 billion in lethal weaponry over the past eight years? The Biden administration is planning to increase the military support, even further emboldening the Ukrainian armed forces to push the civil war in that country on Russia’s doorstep.

The tumultuous events in Kazakhstan also show how regime change can be fomented by external forces in a country sharing a border with Russia. The attempt to destabilize Kazakhstan seems to have failed on this occasion. But who is to say a very different result could not happen in the future, as in the case of Ukraine where a rabid Russophobic regime was installed with the help of the CIA in 2014?

Russia is right to insist on a neutral zone of countries on its border which are excluded from NATO membership. This is not about Russia stamping on others’ sovereignty or setting up a “sphere of influence”. It is about respecting vital security interests. The non-NATO status of Austria and Switzerland are important and obvious precedents.

It is rather disconcerting that American and NATO officials have become so arrogant in their presumptions. Their lack of historical awareness and recognition of Russia’s legitimate concerns are also deeply troubling.

The cynicism shown by America’s so-called top diplomats is breathtaking. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his deputy Wendy Sherman have mooted that Moscow is not serious about diplomacy. They contend that Russia wants talks to fail so that it can proceed with an alleged invasion plan for Ukraine. That is in spite of repeated assurances from Moscow that it has no intention of attacking anyone or that troops on its soil are not a subject for “de-escalation”.

It is virtually impossible to dialogue with such contorted thinking shown by U.S. and NATO officials. American diplomacy, it seems, is finally dead, having succumbed to arrogance, cynicism and irrational Russophobia as well as the outright denial of basic reality.

Moscow insists that its demand for halting NATO expansionism is inviolable. Washington insists on rejecting that. The gap in diplomacy is becoming a dangerous abyss.

Washington would do well to become far more selective about which nations it includes in its roster of allies, and U.S. leaders should stop elevating security dependents to the status of allies. When U.S. officials described the regimes that Washington installed through military force in Afghanistan and Iraq as allies, it became clear that they had lost even minimal understanding of the concept. That point became abundantly evident when their Afghan client collapsed almost overnight in the face of the Taliban military offensive. It’s time for U.S. policymakers to do better.

TROUBLING PROMISCUITY about acquiring weak U.S. security partners was evident even during the Cold War, and the tendency has become even more pronounced in the post-Cold War era. As the fiasco in Afghanistan (and its ugly predecessor in South Vietnam) confirmed, that problem with U.S. foreign policy has existed in multiple regions. However, the defect has become most acute with respect to Washington’s campaign to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. administrations have worked to add a menagerie of new NATO members, and it has done so with even less selectivity and good judgment than some people use to acquire Facebook friends.

Many of those new members have very little to offer to the United States as security partners. Indeed, some are mini-states, bordering on being micro-states. Such lightly armed Lilliputians would add little or nothing to Washington’s own capabilities—especially in a showdown with another major power.

As economic assets, their importance is decidedly limited, and militarily, they are even less valuable. It’s hard to see how new NATO allies such as Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia enhance America’s power and security. That point should be apparent based on size of population alone. Albania’s 2.87 million, North Macedonia’s 2.1 million, and Slovenia’s 2.07 million people put those countries squarely in the mini-state category, while Montenegro’s 628,000 barely deserves even that label. It doesn’t get much better with respect to either annual gross domestic product or size of military forces. Even Slovenia’s $52.8 billion GDP puts that country only eighty-sixth in the global rankings. Albania’s $15.2 billion (125th), North Macedonia’s $12.26 billion (135th) and Montenegro’s $4.78 billion (159th) are even less impressive.

The military forces that our new NATO allies can field are not likely to strike fear into Russia or any other would-be aggressor. Albania’s armed forces consist of 8,500 active-duty personnel, Slovenia’s consist of 8,500, and North Macedonia has 9,000 available. Montenegro’s active-duty force totals 2,400. In comparison, the Austin, Texas, police department has 2,422 people in its ranks.

Granted, the Cold War edition of NATO also had some mini-states as members, most notably Luxembourg and Iceland. However, those members were located within a stable, democratic Western Europe. Their defense also was geographically inseparable from Washington’s mission of protecting important military and economic players, such as West Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain, from what appeared to be a totalitarian superpower with expansionist ambitions. That situation was qualitatively different from Washington’s gratuitous post-Cold War decision to manage the security of quarrelsome mini-states in the chronically volatile Balkans. Since the mid-1990s, the United States has entangled itself in the region’s parochial spats, but giving some of the countries NATO membership intensified America’s exposure to needless risks and burdens.

THE RISK-BENEFIT calculation is even worse with respect to some of the other small nations that have joined NATO in the post-Cold War era. Those partners are not merely irrelevant from the standpoint of U.S. security; they are potentially dangerous tripwires that could trigger a conflict between the United States and a nuclear-armed Russia.

That point underscores one very important difference between individuals casually amassing Facebook friends and the United States promiscuously adding new security mendicants. Facebook friends do not have the ability to entangle anyone in armed conflicts; irresponsible security dependents definitely can do so. Indeed, there are multiple examples throughout history of such clients snaring their patrons into devastating, unnecessary wars. One notable example was how Tsarist Russia’s fateful decision to give strong backing to Serbia in the latter’s escalating quarrel with Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand helped ignite World War I—and caused the utter ruin of the Russian empire.

The United States is flirting with a similar danger today regarding its small clients in Eastern Europe. President George W. Bush’s decision to support the NATO membership bids of the three Baltic republics was—and remains—highly provocative to Russia. One crucial way to reduce the danger of armed clashes between great powers is to show mutual respect for respective spheres of influence. Washington has repeatedly violated that principle by pushing NATO to expand right up to Russia’s border.

The addition of the Baltic republics in 2004 was the most dangerous step in that process. As in the case of the subsequent addition of the small Balkan nations to NATO, the three Baltic countries have little to offer in terms of military capabilities. Estonia’s 6,700 troops, Latvia’s 5,500, and even Lithuania’s 20,500 wouldn’t be much of a factor if war broke out between NATO and Russia.

However, the drawbacks of making the Baltic republics U.S. security dependents go far beyond their irrelevance as military players. Those three countries were once part of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, and substantial ethnic Russian minorities still live in both Estonia and Latvia. The Kremlin has complained on numerous occasions since the Baltic republics became independent at the end of 1991 that the Russian population suffers discrimination and other mistreatment. Indeed, that allegation emerged long before Russian president Vladimir Putin became Russia’s leader. Relations between the Kremlin and its former territories remain tense because of that issue.

Perhaps even more troubling, Washington’s Baltic allies now are feuding with Moscow’s principal client in the region, Belarus. In the summer and autumn of 2021, Latvia and Lithuania (along with the European Union) accused Belarus of trying to use a flood of Middle East refugees as a form of “hybrid warfare.” The Lithuanian government even told its border guards to use force if necessary to prevent the continued entry of the migrants. A short time later, Latvia imposed a state of emergency to deal with the same issue. A few weeks earlier, Lithuania had augmented its border barrier by erecting a fence with razor wire. Latvia soon followed suit. A new round of large-scale, Russia-Belarus military exercises (held every four years) in September made tensions even more acute.

By virtue of both size and location, the Baltic republics are not credible strategic assets for the United States. Indeed, they would be virtually helpless if Russia made a military move against them. A 2016 RAND Corporation study concluded that a Russian offensive would overrun their defenses in approximately three days. Such countries are not U.S. “allies” in any meaningful sense; they are vulnerable dependents that could trigger a war between NATO (primarily the United States) and Russia.

Washington’s patron-client relationship with the Baltic republics is risky, and U.S. leaders were unwise to push for their inclusion in NATO. However, beginning with George W. Bush’s administration, officials have engaged in even more reckless conduct regarding possible alliance membership for two other countries, Georgia and Ukraine. They have done so despite repeated warnings from the Kremlin that making either country (especially Ukraine) a NATO member would cross a red line that Moscow cannot tolerate.

BUSH CONDUCTED a veritable geopolitical love affair with both Georgia and Ukraine, portraying them as models for emerging democracies and repeatedly referring to them as U.S. allies in the most glowing terms. Only firm French and German opposition thwarted Bush’s lobbying effort to get NATO to grant Tbilisi and Kiev membership. Berlin and Paris were troubled by evidence of endemic political and economic corruption in both countries, but they were even more worried that further NATO expansion would create a crisis with Moscow. Their continued opposition has thus far prevented the addition of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO’s ranks, even as the alliance added multiple Balkan mini-states.

However, U.S. actions have increasingly made the issue of formal membership a distinction without a difference, and the outcomes indicate that even unwise informal security relations with client states can cause serious trouble. Bush encouraged Georgia to take a firmer stance against the continued presence of Russian “peacekeeping troops” in two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In addition, the United States was busily equipping and training Georgian military forces. Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, apparently read too much into Washington’s expressions of support. In August 2008, his forces launched an attack on Russian units in South Ossetia, and Moscow responded with a full-scale offensive that soon overran much of Georgia. When Saakashvili begged for U.S. and NATO help to repel the Russian “aggression,” Bush expressed firm support for Georgia’s sovereignty, but he also indicated that U.S. troops would not be coming to Tbilisi’s rescue. A U.S. client had tried to create a military confrontation between NATO and Russia for its own parochial goals, but it had misread Washington’s signals. Clumsy U.S. policy, though, was at least partly responsible for that dangerous episode.

Unfortunately, the actions of subsequent foreign policy teams with respect to Georgia, and even more so with respect to Ukraine, indicate that U.S. leaders learned nothing from the mistakes in 2008. Officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations have treated Kiev as a de facto NATO member and a crucial U.S. military ally. Trump’s administration approved multiple weapons shipments to Kiev, sales that included Javelin anti-tank missiles that Russia considers especially destabilizing. Such transactions have continued since Joe Biden entered the White House.

Worse, Washington’s security relationship with Kiev goes far beyond arms sales. Over the past five years, U.S. forces have conducted multiple joint exercises (war games) with Ukrainian units. Washington also has successfully pressed NATO to include Ukraine in the alliance’s war games. Indeed, Ukraine hosted and led the latest version, Rapid Trident 21. It is no secret that such exercises are directed against Russia. In early April 2021, Biden assured Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Washington’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression.”

Such a pledge places the United States in a very dangerous situation. Kiev seeks to regain Crimea, which Russia annexed following U.S. and European Union backing for demonstrators who overthrew Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian president in 2014. Indeed, Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have expressed that intention repeatedly and in diverse settings. Kiev’s behavior also has become disturbingly bellicose. In early April 2021, both the Zelenskyy government and NATO complained loudly when Russia moved some 80,000 troops and heavy weaponry closer to Crimea and other areas along the border with Ukraine. What they did not mention, and most Western press accounts also ignored, was that Kiev had previously executed its own military buildup, amid statements of a determination to regain Crimea. In any case, an extremely tense confrontation between NATO and Russia ensued, which was not resolved until Russia pulled back its forces in late April.

Given the size of its territory and population, Ukraine is not in the same category as the Balkan and Baltic mini-states or Georgia. However, it has an even greater potential to entangle the United States and the rest of NATO in a perilous war. The April 2021 episode was a classic case of a security client behaving in ways that could trigger an armed conflict. For all of Kiev’s boasts about regaining Crimea, the outcome of a military clash between Russia and Ukraine would be a foregone conclusion. Ukraine would have no chance of prevailing without massive outside assistance. Even disregarding the crucial difference that Russia possesses a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal, while Ukraine does not, Russia’s advantages in conventional forces are massive. Legislation that the Ukrainian parliament approved in July 2021 will increase Kiev’s armed forces to 261,000, but Russia fields more than 1 million active-duty personnel. Moreover, although U.S. aid has improved the quality of the hardware available to Ukraine, Russia’s troops are equipped with some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world.

U.S. leaders should be deeply concerned when a security dependent suffering from such quantitative and qualitative disadvantages makes empty boasts about retaking lost territory. It is even more worrisome when that client engages in provocative military gestures toward its powerful neighbor. That is precisely the way that a rogue dependent can entangle its great power protector in a disastrous war. U.S. leaders should want no part of such a risky patron-client relationship.

THE TEST of whether a specific country is a worthwhile U.S. ally or a useless, perhaps dangerous, dependent should not be terribly difficult. A key question that must be asked is: Does that country substantially add to America’s own economic and military capabilities without creating significant new dangers or vulnerabilities? Only if that question can be answered with an unequivocal “yes,” should the country be considered a beneficial ally. Otherwise, it is either a useless or (even worse) a dangerous security client. U.S. leaders badly need to learn the difference. As a result of NATO’s expanded membership and mission, the United States has acquired a worrisome number of both types.

I do not believe that there exists a better explanation on how we came to where we are today. Vladimir Putin is a manifestation, Russia’s answer to the arrogance of the West that believed it was done dealing with a superpower. Policy towards Moscow was driven by the – justified but not dispassionate – agendas of the European countries that had been under Soviet rule. Today, Moscow is once again a global geopolitical player.

Could history have unfolded differently? Obviously, if the United States and even Europe had handled the collapse of the Soviet Union more wisely and graciously. Former president George H.W. Bush applied this in practice when he refused to publicly celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall to avoid any international incidents. He knew that strategic hubris can come to haunt you. Clinton was from a different generation. He had a cerebral relationship with history; he had not lived through it.

I will always remember one Greek prime minister who spoke of how badly he felt during a summit of Western leaders to which Yeltsin had been invited. Earlier in the day, Clinton had joked that “tonight, we’re going to have fun” and proceeded to laugh at an inebriated Yeltsin eating caviar with his hands. What we are seeing today can obviously be explained by what took place 20-25 years ago. These events do not make the dilemmas facing the West any easier, but they are good to think about.