Reinhard Krumm

Head of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation Moscow Office

The first decade of the 21st century can be characterized as the end of certainty. This is a rather bleak prospect, much gloomier than Fukuyama's optimistic "end of history". The challenges we are facing are plentiful. Clearly there is the financial crisis, which did not spare any of the 192 member states of the United Nations. Connected with that is the dreadful poverty of millions of people, which will only be exacerbated by the downturn in the global economy. And thirdly, there is the looming specter of terrorism, which can strike at anytime, anywhere.

The chief global threat today is the uncertainty of the global security system. In the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin wall, the world has not become a safer place. This is a major disappointment, because the European and American wisdom held that the end of the cold war would bring everlasting world peace. Also gone is the supremacy of the United States of America in the world. Yes, the White House is still a very important player, but the US president needs the cooperation of other major countries.

One of these is the Russian Federation, which is, after all, the largest country in the world and still in possession of a huge atomic war arsenal. But whereas Western countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union were asking Moscow to behave and act like the new Russia they themselves behaved as if Russia were still the same old Soviet Union. Very little trust has been built, for many reasons – on the one hand, the aggressive Bush administration, on the other hand the inferiority complex of the Russian elite under the Putin administration.

Times have changed, and they have changed quickly. New administrations are in power in both countries, and both presidents are young and reform-oriented: Dmitry Medvedev is 44, Barack Obama 48 years of age. And both have put forward proposals that should be seen as steps towards cooperation. Mr. Medvedev has proposed a new European security architecture, which, according to Russian foreign policy observer Fyodor Lukyanov is “Moscow’s first attempt in 20 years to formulate a coherent foreign-policy vision”.

And Barack Obama very recently decided not to proceed with the stationing of an anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Both initiatives, though one is already a year old, can be interpreted as trust-building measures. Let’s take both seriously and talk about the creation of a common security architecture from Vancouver to Vladivostok, which was once the dream of Mikhail Gorbachev.

The new Secretary General of NATO, Andres Fogh Rasmussen, thinks that cooperation with Russia “is not a question of choice but of necessity”. So what? Many initiatives start this way. And the necessity goes for both sides. The important thing is not to get bogged down in the organizational jungle; after all, NATO is only one acronym out of an alphabetical soup of multilateral security organizations. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the EU all need to be taken into account.

The architecture of Euro-Atlantic security was analyzed by the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Development this year, which noted pointedly that it “would require consistent and longer-term oriented efforts”. Not only to find common solutions for the known threats of terrorism, narco-business, religious extremism and failing states, but also to define goals for a common security policy, for example the solution of threats coming from Afghanistan and Iran.

The countries within the new security framework should understand that the goal is neither to achieve a short-term advantage, nor to exact revenge. The new security policy should instead seek to balance competing interests and support sustainable development: dialogue instead of military conflict. Looking back at the wars in Iraq and Georgia, this might seem naïve. But precisely because of the very doubtful outcome of all three conflicts and the uncertain outlook for the three regions, the need is clear for a different security approach than the one we have seen since 1989.

The answer would be the cooperation of the USA and the EU with Russia, minimizing the nationalistic reflex for each to solve problems alone. The backlash from a unilateral approach is too severe, as the above-mentioned conflicts demonstrate. Future generations will bear the costs if we do not seize the moment and integrate Russia into a European Security Model. The alternative is uncertainty and that should be avoided at all costs.