An Introduction by Ambassador Goodby
As Robert Legvold’s dramatic commentary below from the first days of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine foreshadows, relations between Russia and the West are likely to remain strained for several years even after a settlement of the issues arising from that war—and a genuine settlement of the war may be a long time off.
Legvold is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. His comments were offered essentially impromptu at a prescheduled February 25, 2022, roundtable on Ukraine and arms control, part of the Hoover Institution–American Academy of Arts and Sciences nuclear security dialogues. They help to memorialize the status efforts at de-escalation and stabilization—both immediate and longer term—that were ongoing in the run-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion. And they carry with them the rawness of the shock felt even then at the brutal way in which the invasion was conducted, which will not permit the kinds of diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation between Russia and the West that could have been possible even after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
In short, the international security structure that seemed feasible and desirable before February 24, 2022, is no longer a practical goal in the near term. That vision was based on a strengthening of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in which Russia would have a platform to redress the deficiencies in its security relations with the West, in a forum that also included Central Asian nations. Russia, a central member, rejected that framework.
It could be years before the West’s relations with Russia will allow negotiations between the sides in a manner conducive to achieving, for example, a follow-on agreement to New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). Fortunately, presidents Biden and Putin extended New START by five years soon after Biden became president in January 2021. But if slow motion in arms control is likely to be the case, especially with Russia, then the United States and its friends should be considering now what could be achieved through diplomacy under these conditions that would make the world more secure and safer from nuclear disaster.
Could institutional arrangements already in place—or that might be put into place at a time of Ukraine’s choosing to monitor an armistice agreement—become the bone structure of an international order that could persist for generations?
The case of the 1950–53 Korean War illustrates one way in which that could happen. The Armistice Agreement that ended the shooting was supposed to be followed by a peace treaty. That treaty has yet to happen, so the order created by the international developments that came about as a result of the war became the order that has existed with little change ever since.
That order included—and still includes—a strong military, economic, and political presence of the United States in Korea and in Northeast Asia more generally. It featured military alliances between the United States and Japan and between the United States and South Korea. The latter is especially noteworthy, because not long before the North Korean attack on the South, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had publicly all but ruled out the possibility that the United States would fight a war on the mainland of Asia.
The international order that is shaping up as a result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is still a work in progress, but the following five features seem likely to become more prominent and to persist for some time. These are likely to be part of the international order for years into the future.
- Reduced reliance on Russia for energy by nations of Europe
- Permanent NATO military presence on or near Russia’s borders in Europe
- Long-term exclusion of or reduced role for Russia in international financial institutions and at the UN
- Enhanced role of China in European affairs through Russia’s increased dependence on China in trade and financial matters
- Growing Russian political and economic ties with nations of the Southern Hemisphere because of a mutual interest in alternatives to perceived US dominance
These five elements of an international order resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will present serious new challenges to the United States and its allies. The most basic will be whether common interests among them will remain strong enough to encourage an agreement on a united response—a grand strategy—to manage the new geopolitical situation, which is not altogether favorable for the West or for world peace.
Notably, China’s rise is not being managed as well as it will have to be managed in order to deal effectively with a Russia-China relationship of the type described in the February 2022 statement signed by Presidents Putin and Xi in Beijing. The actual relationship is apt to be one of an unequal partnership, with Beijing dominating Moscow, and to the extent that President Xi can succeed in manipulating a weakened President Putin, this could spell trouble of different kinds. In particular, it is likely to create more instability than might be expected from a chastened President Putin trying to re-establish his position in Europe. Conceivably, President Xi may use his influence to induce more rationality into President Putin’s decisions, and this might be a positive thing—the West should try to seek such an outcome from their interactions.
In either case, the Western coalition will need to consider how to build a peaceful and productive relationship with a coalition operating with China and Russia at its core. This will require cooperation among democratic nations akin to the solidarity shown by so many of the world’s democracies in responding to Putin’s flagrant violations of norms enshrined in the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords.
If that understanding can be achieved, it should be possible to organize channels that could begin the process of designing a modus vivendi among interested nations. This might include a document that spells out norms and expectations for the behavior of nations of the Euro-Atlantic/Eurasian system of nations.
This is a tall order. And for that reason, something else that is difficult, but perhaps more realizable in the short term, should also be on the agenda of the West: this would be to resume the diplomacy of building a Europe whole, free, and at peace. Putin has shown no interest in a Western-oriented policy built around the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, but the West should nonetheless stress policies of inclusion rather than wall building. Putin’s successors may be more receptive to the norms that define the West, and if that happens the door should be open to them.
Thus, the priorities for US policy should be to strengthen the Western coalition so as to engage in the very complex diplomacy of creating a peaceful relationship between the Western coalition and an Asian coalition dominated by China and Russia—while holding open the possibility of including a new Russia in a Europe whole, free, and at peace.
Robert Legvold’s February 2022 commentary reminds us how we got here.
– Amb. James Goodby, November 2022
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Putin Invades Ukraine, February 25, 2022
Over the last seventy-two hours, the world has changed dramatically.
This session of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Hoover Institution’s nuclear security dialogues was originally intended to focus on the implications of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis for arms control. And to launch that discussion, we were going to discuss the potential arms control agenda emerging from the diplomatic exchanges around the two treaties Russia had proposed to—indeed, demanded from—the United States on the one hand, NATO on the other last December of 2021.
Now, at best, in the wreckage, the most that can be discussed is “what might have been,” and then turn our attention to what now.
The bits and pieces of potential arms control measures that figured in the December 17, 2021, Russia-proposed treaties, the January 26, 2022, US and NATO written responses, and the February 17, 2022, Russian written response to these figure in the context of a broader three-part arms control agenda. In Europe, that mutually reinforcing triad is formed by:
- the adapted Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE, still in force among 28 European countries, with US adherence, despite Russia’s ultimate March 2015 withdrawal);
- the 2011 revised Vienna Document (applied to the 57 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE]); and
- the Open Skies Treaty (in force with 32 parties; the United States withdrew in 2020, and Russia followed in 2021).
Over their lives, the three agreements have achieved much. More than fifty thousand pieces of equipment in applicable categories of tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, and combat aircraft specified under the CFE Treaty were destroyed or put out of service. OSCE countries conducted thousands of visits to inspect and verify military units under the terms of the Vienna Document. By 2019, more than fifteen hundred observation flights had been conducted by the parties to the Open Skies Treaty. And for more than two decades, the Joint Consultative Group under the CFE has met weekly, OSCE members meet weekly in Vienna to monitor the Vienna Document, and the Open Skies Consultative Commission has met regularly at the OSCE.
At the other end of this agenda is US-Russian strategic nuclear arms control, and linking the two are efforts to deal with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and substrategic nuclear weapons in Europe.
Elements of the December-to-February diplomatic exchanges touched on all three parts of this agenda, but with a major catch: the Russian side insisted that whatever might be done in at least the first and third categories be part of a larger package—no Ukraine in NATO and no NATO in Ukraine and a removal of armaments in the new NATO members back to levels in 1997 before the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act. With the United States in the lead, the Western side meanwhile tried to delink the arms control proposals from the larger package by vaguely suggesting they were prepared to discuss each side’s wider European security concerns.
Russia’s December 2021 opening bids were modest and badly skewed: no heavy bombers or surface ships with nuclear or non-nuclear weapons patrolling within ranges capable of striking the other country; no nuclear weapons deployed outside national territories (i.e., outside the United States); no training of civilian or military personnel from non-nuclear countries in the use of nuclear weapons; and no NATO military activity in Ukraine. They did however mention proposals of no land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas capable of reaching territory of other parties, in addition to hotlines with NATO countries and agreements on preventing dangerous incidents.
The United States’ January 26, 2022, written response became more specific: refrain from deploying offensive ground-launched missile systems and permanent forces with combat missions in Ukraine; adopt steps to strengthen the Vienna Document’s requirements and proposed mechanisms for enhanced transparency; implement additional measures to prevent incidents at sea and in the air; reaffirm the promise not to deploy nuclear weapons or “additional stationing of substantial combat forces” in new NATO members; and hold reciprocal briefings in the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) on Russia’s and NATO’s nuclear policies and steps to promote transparency and risk reduction.
The concurrent NATO written response proposed, in addition: under the Vienna Document, lower notification and observation thresholds for exercises and snap exercises; consultations on ways to reduce threats to space systems, including refraining from antisatellite tests; resumption of Russia’s participation in the CFE, including in the Joint Consultative Group; and full implementation of the Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons Conventions.
Perhaps most significantly, the United States further indicated its readiness to discuss a transparency mechanism to confirm the absence of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland if the Russians reciprocated with two Russian ground-launched missile bases of US choosing. It conveyed a willingness to discuss, within the Strategic Stability Dialogue, arms control for ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. And on strategic nuclear weapons, the United States indicated its support for the goal of sustaining the limits on intercontinental-range delivery weapons currently subject to New START, but that any follow-on agreement include new kinds of nuclear-armed intercontinental-range nonstrategic nuclear weapons, as well as nondeployed nuclear warheads.
One month later, on February 17, 2022, Russia responded. Russia rejected the US and NATO proposals to enhance the implementation of the Vienna Document with new transparency mechanisms employing radiographic technology (but endorsed the Vienna Document in its current form). It embraced both parts of the US proposal for dealing with Aegis Ashore issue. And it reaffirmed its proposed moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and shorter-range systems in Europe.
Meanwhile, on bilateral US-Russia deliberations over nuclear weapons, the Russian side reprised what continued to separate the two sides in the Strategic Stability Dialogue, rejecting a US approach focused “exclusively on nuclear weapons.” In standard fashion, the Russians argued that such a focus disregarded capability of these and other weapons to directly threaten the national territory of the other side and that it contradicted the understanding reached at the June 2021 summit in Geneva “regarding the comprehensive nature of the strategic dialogue” as a necessary foundation for future arms control. Russia urged an “integrated approach to strategic issues” and drafting together a “new security equation,” saying that it has informed the US side of the “components” of a new Russian concept.
All this of course, was followed by Russia’s open invasion of Ukraine one week later. It’s fair to say that any possible progress on the issues concerning the triad of European arms control, transparency, and confidence building measures (CBMs) agreements, plus any progress on nuclear weapons in Europe, is now off the table.
This situation comes when such mechanisms will unfortunately be most needed. If one assumes, as I do, that the Russian military objective in Ukraine is now to replace the Ukrainian government with one of its choice, as well as to seize all of eastern Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia, Russian forces will now be cheek-to-jowl with NATO along a long line from the Arctic to the Black Sea. This will be a new Russian force posture that will almost certainly have a sizable Belarusian component, including the likely deployment of dual-capable Iskander missiles and aircraft to Belarus.
What the prospects will be for managing the bilateral US-Russian strategic nuclear relationship in a vast hardening of a Cold War that has steadily deepened over the last eight years is yet more difficult to judge.
However this war turns out, even if it is a long-term indeterminate slog, at some point the sides, I believe, will have to refocus on ways of managing what will be a more intensely militarized confrontation between Russia and NATO and between Russia and the United States. But I think we are a long way from that. In the near term it seems evident that the readiness to engage on agreed constraints or on CBMs, let alone on arms control, either in Europe or in the US-Russian relationship, has disappeared. The US-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue and its two working groups are suspended, and I doubt this effort will be resumed until Russian aggression in Ukraine has ended. I do not believe any of the arms control measures being explored in the diplomatic exchanges before the war will figure in at least the first stages of any potential negotiated settlement.
I can envisage a role for arms constraints at three levels in what probably would be three different time frames:
- First, should Kyiv and Moscow reach a point where each is ready to call it quits, whatever the military outcome might be at that point, in order to build in a necessary level of security, they might want a mini-CFE, limiting exercises and maneuvers and types of weapons forward deployed.
- At the second level—again, however the war turns out—a more robust and heavily armed NATO, focused on the Russian threat, will be facing heavily damaged but still formidable Russian military forces now cheek-by-jowl on the Belarus and Baltic frontiers. Surely, good sense will suggest that the situation makes any effort to stabilize the situation and rebuild guardrails more urgent than before we launched the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) effort, the CBMs effort that we know so well, and eventually the CFE treaty.
- Meanwhile on the third level, Russian and US nuclear programs are going forward—and along with them all the threats to anything that might approximate strategic stability, including threats from new technologies, from new war fronts (cyber in particular), and from new strategies for the limited use of nuclear weapons. And that situation meets with a US-Russian relationship at a level of tension unmatched since the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. Logic, for what it may be worth, suggests the two sides will have to try to resume the effort to manage their nuclear relationship—this time, however, with a critical China dimension. And, if there is a silver lining in the current crisis, I would not be surprised if it facilitates a more serious US-China strategic dialogue and some movement toward a US-China arms control process, perhaps with a multilateral dimension.
