Medvedev and the new European security architecture By Bobo Lo ★ Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a ‘new European security architecture’ is largely devoid of substance, and reiterates principles already enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and the UN Charter. ★ Moscow strongly opposes a Euro-Atlantic security environment dominated by NATO and the US. But it has done little thinking about what might emerge in its place. ★ There are signs that the Medvedev initiative is losing momentum, as Moscow turns its attention to more important priorities, such as renewed engagement with the US and strategic arms control. ★ Europe’s response to the Russian proposals has been sensible so far. It is important that it resist attempts to minimise NATO and undermine the OSCE. President Dmitry Medvedev’s call for a new European security architecture is the most active initiative undertaken by Russian diplomacy in recent years. Not since Vladimir Putin’s endorsement of the American military deployment in Central Asia after September 11th has there been a move of comparable profile. And yet opinion remains strongly divided on its merits. Critics dismiss it as a try-on containing virtually no substance, a transparent attempt to split the West. More sympathetic analysts, however, view the Kremlin project as a genuine effort to articulate a security vision for the 21st century, one all the more necessary given recent tensions on the European continent.
Breaking the mould? The Medvedev initiative is a significant departure from the normal course of post-Soviet foreign policy in at least three respects. First, Moscow has put forward a set of ideas that go beyond the purely reactive. While the original proposals in June 2008 were prompted by Russia’s negative perceptions of security trends in Europe, they were more than 1 Medvedev’s speech to simply a gut reaction to NATO German political, enlargement, missile defence parliamentary and civic th and American unilateralism.1 leaders, Berlin, June 5 2008.
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Instead of the ad hoc approach that had characterised much of Russian foreign policy under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, the Medvedev project was an attempt to introduce Russia’s own vision of European – and Euro-Atlantic – security. Second, and consequently, the notion of a new security architecture challenges the assumption that Russia’s international influence is almost entirely preventative, far better suited to obstructing the interests of others than to advancing a positive agenda of its own. It is as if the leadership has realised that Russia cannot live on ‘anti-policy’ alone, but must offer an alternative, no matter how nascent and illdefined. In a very real sense, it 2 The term, ‘responsible reflects Russia’s desire to play stakeholder’, was used most a leading role as a ‘responsible famously by Bob Zoellick in stakeholder’ in regional and 2005 in relation to China. global affairs.2 Third, when Medvedev first introduced the idea of a revised European security architecture, it indicated a new self-belief. For much of the Yeltsin (1991-99) and Putin presidencies (2000-08), Russian foreign policy was a hotchpotch of allergic reactions, grudging compliance and mounting frustration. At times, Russia appeared on the verge of reassuming a major
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