Europe is fast becoming a security twilight zone. On one side, its lofty rhetoric hearkens back to the self-contentment of the post-Cold War decade: “whole and free and at peace.” On the other side is the emerging neo-Yalta future of power politics and spheres of influence—a world wrought by Vladimir Putin’s irredentist vision. Institutional responses to Russian aggression along Europe’s eastern flank have been little more than rhetorical fusillades. Europe has offered only half-measures when it comes to the fundamentals of hard security reassurance: just look at the sum total of European military deployments in the Baltics and Central Europe. As Russia advances along Europe’s flank from the northeast to the Black Sea, the European Union’s Common Security and Defense Policy has been glaringly AWOL. While more promising, the NATO summit in Wales came and went, yielding only partial measures, the subtext of which is that Europe’s relations with Russia will be framed by the extent to which Putin’s wishes can be accommodated without a wholesale loss of face.
Today the arithmetic of European security rests on two implicit “no’s”: “no” to any action that Moscow could read as an escalation, and “no” to an unequivocal affirmation of allied solidarity when it comes to hard security. These are the boundaries of Europe’s self-deterrence when it comes to its response to Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial project. Nearly a quarter century after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Europe has yet to grasp the simple reality that political maneuverings without hard power to back them up will in the end amount to naught. Since Europe’s leaders have repeatedly asserted that the “new allies” are in no different category than Germany, France, or the United Kingdom, they had better be ready to put their missiles, planes, and tanks where their mouths are. Offering guarantees to others and looking the other way when they try to redeem those offers ultimately puts the institutional viability of the entire security system at risk. And sometimes, avoiding an escalation invites further escalation in turn.
As Europe’s leaders continue to bounce around their bizarre, post-political twilight zone, Russia continues to up the ante. The EU’s decision to delay for one-year the implementation of the DCFTA with Ukraine has reportedly gone through with support from Chancellor Angela Merkel. Now the trade deal will not go through until December 31, 2015—an eternity for a country at war. Meanwhile, Ukraine is desperately struggling to ward off a renewed Russian offensive in Donetsk, to keep control of the Sea of Azov area, to prepare parliamentary elections, and to train and equip its army. Delaying the DCFTA right after the ceasefire, brokered by Germany, means that Berlin has signaled unequivocally to Moscow its readiness for an accommodation, notwithstanding its continued condemnations of Russian aggression and acquiescence to EU sanctions. This is not, as some claim, Germany’s clever two-track policy to pressure Russia in order to reach a resolution. If consummated, Berlin’s policy will have laid the foundation for a “new deal” in Eastern Europe, over which Russia will be able to claim a special prerogative. This will in turn change how Central Europe and Europe as a whole deal with Putin’s Russia.
The Russian-Ukrainian war has become the defining moment for German foreign policy. Berlin’s response has to be seen in the larger context of the country’s overall policy. The image of Germany as a “reluctant power,” only gradually adapting to security challenges, has been the dominant narrative in the post-Cold War era. Over time Berlin has abandoned non-engagement, moving from non-participation in the first Gulf War, through the Kosovo German military out-of-area, to ISAF, where it provided the third largest contingent after the United States and the United Kingdom, to the decision to arm the Kurds. Whether one accepts that Germany’s growing engagement in the Middle East is due to U.S. pressure or to a sincere change within the German elite, Berlin clearly has assumed a more permissive, even proactive, position on military power. It is this transformation of Germany’s view of hard power that makes its position on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine so much more poignant.
Russian military modernization offers us a simple reminder of the dilemmas facing Europe in the coming years. The Russian Federation has systematically increased the number and scale of its exercises, running them almost without interruption since February 2013; these have accelerated along Europe’s periphery and in the Arctic, plus the most recent “Vostok 2014” exercise commenced on September 19—in scope all approaching Soviet-era scale. Russia also continues to increase military spending despite its sluggish economy. It spent 3.5 percent of GDP on defense this year, and it is targeting 4 percent for 2015, with projections approaching $85 billion per year, coupled with re-investment in the defense industry and re-equipment. In contrast, combined defense spending for Europe has gone down from 2.3 percent of GDP only four years ago to 1.5 percent today; a number of European countries are unable to meet their basic training and maintenance requirements.
Europe’s response to Russia’s rearmament has been to seek political accommodation in ways that border on appeasement. Germany has been the bellwether. Since Russia began to escalate its war against Ukraine, Germany has shifted faster than at any time since the end of the Cold War to set the tone for how Europe as a whole will interact with Putin’s Russia. Berlin has moved vigorously to bring about a ceasefire in the east, and to oppose the positioning of any permanent NATO bases into Poland and the Baltic States—both of which are priorities for Moscow. Throughout, Germany has assumed that a modus vivendi with Russia is attainable, provided concessions can be made on the margins—hence Berlin’s reference to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act at the last NATO summit in Wales.
Germany’s drive to de-escalate the Ukraine-Russia war has framed the EU’s response to Russian aggression in the east: Where the most powerful European state leads, others will follow, even if some of them will grumble and look to the U.S. for help in the process. Berlin has laid the foundations for a new “special relationship” with Moscow and seems less and less mindful of what such a relationship would mean for its intra-EU relationships. While clearly committed to remaining institutionally moored to the European Union, Germany has nonetheless prioritized the areas and countries where EU binds constrain more, less, or not at all. For Germany, trying to appease Russia has meant walking back Ukraine’s expectations for its relationship with the EU. This has already imposed a measurable cost in terms of Berlin’s relations with countries along NATO’s eastern flank. Germany’s post-Cold War “second grand reconciliation” in Central Europe—to follow the post-1945 Franco-German reconciliation in the West—is being increasingly replaced with a “grand suspicion” that, when it comes to Berlin’s geostrategic priorities, old habits die hard.
Perhaps in the final analysis there is but a small risk that intra-European relations will change radically in the wake of Berlin’s Russia policy. France continues to hold on to the hope of rejiggering its commercial ties with Moscow (the French Mistral sale to Russia has been suspended, though not scrapped), the British would not be adverse to more commercial relations with the Russian Federation, while other countries in Europe share similar sentiments and will likely re-engage with Russia once the Ukraine crisis is over. Those on Europe’s eastern flank who see the current policy as detrimental to their security interests have clear limits as to how far they can influence Germany’s choices; this is true even for Poland, which has recently enjoyed close cooperation with Germany. It is true that in terms of their security needs the Baltics, Central Europe, and the Black Sea states see the United States increasingly as the only game in town—provided Washington can muster enough attention and resources as the Middle East melts down and China continues to power up.
Once more the old adage that the fat and self-contented cannot outrun the lean and hungry is playing itself out. The uncertainty created by Russia’s most rudimentary exercise of power politics is now spreading over the Baltic and Black seas, where Putin’s annexation of Crimea has changed the security environment, dramatically increasingly the operational flexibility of the Russian fleet.
Today the EU’s Russia policy as framed in Berlin willfully overlooks the changed fundamentals in Europe’s security landscape. Instead, it clings to the hope that a “deal” with Russia can substitute for a reinvestment in defense and a sound containment strategy. A new fault line emerging in the east, though pushed farther out along the Baltic frontier and the Bug River, carries with it continued Russian pressure and aggression. But there is one important difference between European security in the Cold War era and now: the declining scope of the U.S. presence in Europe, with America busy putting out fires in MENA and maintaining the balance of power in Asia. The competition for the new “middle” in Central Europe will grow more unpredictable by the day. When it comes to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the rule is that there are no rules. But that’s just what you ought to expect when you enter the Twilight Zone.