Buch lesen: «NATO’s Enlargement and Russia», Seite 5

46 Putin, Vladimir. 2018. “Presidential address to the Federal Assembly,” March 1, 2018. Accessed January 20, 2021. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957.

47 Kremlin.ru. 2016. “Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” October 27, 2016. Accessed November 30, 2020. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53151.

48 At least, this pertains to the author as a participant of those negotiations.

49 Putin, Vladimir (approved). n.d. “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation” (in Russian). Accessed November 30, 2020. http://news.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d527556bec8deb3530.pdf.

50 It is true, however, that the United States and China have made some progress: they have begun to compile a dictionary of strategic words and concepts.

51 More on this in: Karaganov, Sergey. 2017. “On the New Nuclear World: How to Strengthen Deterrence and Maintain Peace.” Russia in Global Politics 2, 65–86; Kortunov, Andrey. 2018. “The End of the Bilateral Era. How the U.S. Withdrawal From the INF Treaty Changes the World Order.” Carnegie Moscow Center (in Russian), October 23, 2018. https://carnegie.ru/commentary/77551.

52 United Nations General Assembly. 2017. “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.” United Nations: undocs.org. Accessed November 30, 2020. http://undocs.org/en/A/CONF.229/2017/8.

53 Arbatov, Alexey. 2018. “The Danger of Withdrawing From the INF Treaty: Hybrid War: Russia vs. the West.” Carnegie Moscow Center, October 26, 2018. https://carnegie.ru/commentary/77589.

50 Years Ago: Kennedy, Brandt, Nixon
A Model for 21st Century Statecraft?

John Kornblum

Not since the Viet Nam war has a new American Administration been confronted with so much disarray, and such urgent demands on its diplomacy as that of Joe Biden. Joe Biden will be the first President since 1970 confronted with the need to define a radically new paradigm for American foreign and security policy. And since, as Richard Holbrooke suggested in 1995, America is also a European power, the directions chosen by Joe Biden will define the future of the entire Western world. Some lessons from a similar era of the past might offer useful guidance for the future. Especially the era of East-West detente which began fifty years ago in the divided city of Berlin.

Erosion of the Cold War Coalition

Joe Biden has so far promised to restore the civility and mutual respect for partners and opponents which were substantially dismembered by his predecessor. So far, so good. But what comes next? Should he seek to revitalize the postwar multilateral order, or should he break out for something new?

Fact is, he really does not have much of a choice. The foundations for the post-World War II order began weakening at the moment the Cold War ended. They are rapidly being replaced something quite different.

A more integrated world will be based on rapidly proliferating global information and transportation networks which diversify the balance of power. The internet in one example of this new reality. But so is COVID-19.

Problem is we have yet no workable understanding of how to deal with this new balance of power. We do not in fact even have a vocabulary with which to describe what is going on.

Donald Trump profited from the fact that the United States and the West had ignored the resulting sense of impotence resulting from these radical upheavals. Soon national security and domestic tranquility were jumbled together almost beyond recognition.

That is why definition of a new Atlantic paradigm will be fundamental to the future of a digital era. Will there be one global digital order with a democratic operating system, or will the digital potential fall into disarray among the competition between competing visions of a global future?

Joe Biden’s most immediate task will be to explain what is going on. He will need to define a convincing new diplomatic narrative which in straightforward language can make clear to Western publics why working with Allies to defend liberal democratic values abroad remains the essential value proposition for democracy and prosperity at home.

Unfortunately, as Biden takes over the reins, he will find his diplomatic toolbox to be almost bare. It lacks even a vocabulary to help him define how foreign policy can better meet the negative effects on the American population.

Back to the Future?

The good news is that the aggressive behavior of authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China has caught our attention in a manner similar to the way Donald Trump has disrupted existing narratives at home. Enlargement of NATO and the European Union were essential steps towards creating a trans-Atlantic democratic community. We can use this foundation to work actively to defend Western values. But the remaining task is the most difficult: to devise a new 21st century form of statecraft which can activate our societies to integrate these pressing new needs.

Statecraft as defined by the late Professor Morton Kaplan, is “the construction of strategies for securing the national interest in the international arena.” In other words, needed today is serious practical diplomacy rather than the overblown competing visions of the last three American presidents, or the archaic “peace project” still favored by most European governments.

Joe Biden will not be the first President confronted with rebuilding a shattered American diplomacy. Those who were most successful understood the practice of statecraft as being more pragmatic than visionary; Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 or Harry Truman’s brilliant reinvention after World War II. Each combined vision with the skilled practice of practical diplomacy.

And there is also Richard Nixon. Yes, Nixon, the scoundrel of Watergate notoriety. Nixon’s legacy is of course mixed. But he deserves more credit than he receives for using pragmatic statecraft to build a post-Viet Nam foreign policy consensus at home, and to stabilize an American world role stymied by the frozen conflicts of the Cold War and the war in Viet Nam. Ironically, as in 1948, Nixon’s new narrative was also launched in divided Berlin.

A Model for Today?

Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger built on foundations laid by John F. Kennedy with his initiative for a nuclear test ban treaty, and incorporated similar efforts by German Chancellor Willy Brandt to build a radically new American diplomatic narrative which substituted dialogue and negotiation for the regime change mentality of the 1950’s.

Nixon assumed office with the world in crisis not dissimilar from that facing Joe Biden today. He and Henry Kissinger, appeared on the scene with one important insight. That the confrontational approach had to be replaced by more pragmatic diplomacy, which avoided such missteps as the war in Viet Nam.

Nixon and Kissinger were two very different characters. But they somehow formed what Kissinger has called a “fortuitous combination,” which was able to steer what amounted to a redefinition of America’s global diplomacy. The result was a more pragmatic strategy which guided Western diplomacy over the next two decades and ultimately helped end the Cold War.

Rebuilding Alliances

An accompanying advantage of the Nixon/Kissinger approach was its contribution to rebuilding an Atlantic Alliance which had fallen deeply into crisis during the Viet Nam war.

Early in 1970, Nixon was presented with an opportunity by the new German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, who was determined to extract West Germany from Konrad Adenauer’s straitjacket of strict rejection of ties with Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union.

By aligning his goals with the desires for East-West detente which had been growing in Europe for several years, Nixon was able to define a positive future for NATO, while at the same time exerting even more influence on China and the Soviet empire.

With Brandt’s proposal to use the tense situation in divided Berlin as a test case of Soviet readiness to reduce tensions, Nixon was able to add a practical element to his strategy which focused on reinvigorating the Democratic West.

In other words, a situation that was similar to the one today. Even before Trump’s onslaught on their self-respect, America’s European allies were withdrawing steadily into themselves. Early signs from Brussels suggest that they hope mostly that an improved climate of Atlantic relations will allow them to continue hiding from responsibility without facing the anger of Donald Trump.

One of Biden’s most difficult tasks will be to find the right mixture of carrot and stick which moves Europe away from its hapless fixation with the internal dynamics of EU Europe and put the European engine back in gear.

We are in dire need of a modernized, humanistic definition of the digital world agreed within the Atlantic world through which Artificial Intelligence and increasingly autonomous value chains are given meaning by the values of civil society which are imbedded in their operating systems.

In fact, it is important to note that the detente era Nixon and Kissinger set in motion was not as devoid of values as many argued. They also produced the Helsinki Final Act and today’s organization for Security and cooperation in Europe. The OSCE, as it is now called, provides an essential value-based foundation for a new narrative for the 21st century.

Helsinki established the first internationally agreed linkage between national security and civil society and human rights, which a post-Communist Russian Foreign Minister later credited with being the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its principles and structures remain today as a unique tool based on Western liberal democracy.

The Helsinki process is based not on common interest, but on the assumption of disagreement among its signatories. In other words, an excellent basis for proceeding with confrontations with today’s Russian and Chinese leaders.

Agreeing a new narrative for the 21st century, which renews the practical value created by Western political and social values, is a task as important as were the visons which led to victory in the Cold War.

An Opportunity for Europe

When viewed from the other side of the Atlantic, the experiences of the 1970’s also offer a model for restoration of European initiative in the 21st century.

The situation 50 years ago was very similar to the confusion we are experiencing today. But with one big difference. With the United States distracted in Viet Nam, European NATO Allies took the initiative to lay the groundwork for a new diplomatic narrative which offered practical steps forward.

While much of the initiative lay with the two Super Powers, several pillars of this new strategic order were the product of European initiatives, worked out together with the United States in NATO.

As far back as 1967, a European initiative to study NATO’s strategic future resulted in the so-called Harmel Report, which had advocated the adoption of a dual-track policy for NATO: deterrence and détente, i.e., maintaining adequate defense while promoting political détente.

Henry Kissinger later admitted that he had gone along with the European initiative for a European Security Conference, which ultimately produced the Helsinki Final Act only because it was important to the European Allies. He now agrees that the idea of a democratic codex which is enshrined in today’s OSCE was a historic breakthrough which changed the practice of diplomacy.

The Importance of a European Return to NATO

But there are also today important differences which Europeans must take seriously. In 1970, Europe was the strategic center of a dangerous East-West military conflict. Today, the conflicts are worldwide ones, conducted mostly through networks of supply chains European no longer has a political or geographic advantage.

Secondly, for the first time in modern history, Europe is no longer a center of economic and technological innovation. It will not be enough to restore a positive atmosphere with the United States.

Europe is fighting to maintain its role as a global power. It cannot achieve this goal without close cooperation with the United States. But this cooperation will not merge into the 21st century unless Europeans can restore the strategic consensus with the United States which eroded after the end of the Cold War.

The most important question for the future will be what the Europeans can bring to the table to convince new generations of Americans who cannot remember the Cold War that continued engagement as a European power with Atlantic allies serves American interests. Currently, that value proposition does not exist.

Most important in 1970, was that all detente initiatives were worked out together with the United States in NATO, where Europeans can send ideas directly to an American ally. And where Americans could gain a better understanding of European needs.

Since 1990, European fixation with the EU had led them to abandon NATO as a place of dialogue and joint action. The result was the loss of a common strategic vision. Europeans began looking inward, while the US concentrated increasingly on the globalized world.

Towards a Global Atlantic

The key for Europe will be to recognize that evolution of a globally integrated world and the role played by authoritarian states is as much a challenge to Western security as was the Soviet threat in the Cold War. Strategy for this dramatic era should not be left to the Competition Commissioner of the EU. NATO and not anti-trust actions is the place to discuss the joint Western future.

The key fact here is that except for joint security and values, the Europeans have very little to bring to the table. They are falling behind everywhere. Without the strategic advantage offered by the Cold War, defining the digital future as a question of regulatory policy is a fool’s errand.

Unless Europeans once again rise to the challenge and use NATO as a platform for renewing the strategic consensus with the United States, and stimulate a new and creative era of “detente” similar to the one which began in Berlin, their futures as a relevant global player will dissolve in debates over data protection regulations.

And this at a time, when the Atlantic perspective has a taken on much more important meaning than reducing tensions in Europe. If detente clarified Europe’s postwar structure, and helped forge American cooperation with China and Russia, globalization and digitization are challenging the primacy of Western culture and liberal democracy as the “operating system” for the new global digital world.

For the first time, the future health of Western democracy depends on the ability of the Atlantic Nations—Europe and North America—to define a common global definition of goals and strategy which transcend the existing Atlantic geography. A new global Atlantic is essential.

Thus, it is also likely that the digital age will mark the end of a “European Europe,” and will severely undermine existing Western concepts of leadership. Germany, for example, is growing rapidly into Europe’s most important power. But the Federal Republic will never embody the traditional concepts of leadership which its allies are increasingly calling for.

Instead, while on the one hand bowing to the Mantra of European unity, Germany will continue, as it has over the past five decades, single-mindedly to rebuild Europe and the Atlantic in its own image.

Germany’s traditional strengths in logistics and system integration, combined with its central geographic position, excellent transportation and communications networks will increasingly establish the Federal Republic as the Eurasian hub of new generations of global information and trade networks.

Thus the “QA” as we called the Berlin negotiations turned out to be much more than an agreement about Berlin. By restoring a common Atlantic approach to the future of Europe, the QA confirmed that cooperation based on Western values was the operating system of the Cold War era.

The success of the negotiations which resulted two years after the first “soundings” in Berlin provided much of the guidance for the future chapters of what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine, and is still relevant today. In his memoires on the White House years, Henry Kissinger noted: “Berlin became the key to the whole puzzle.”

But as I have already suggested, it became the cornerstone for East-West detente and ultimately the end of the Cold War primarily because its negotiators focused on practical tasks which established common interests.

The Berlin negotiators quietly expanded the envelope of their mandate to reactivate the Four Power rights and responsibilities of the victors in World War II and thus provide an unshakable foundation for all that lay ahead.

Signaling Biden that Europeans are ready to go beyond their focus on building an EU Europe they wish once again to work out common approaches in NATO, would be an important first step towards this new Atlantic narrative.

The agreement reached during 18 months of negotiation in Berlin was the first step towards a major reordering of global-geopolitics, and 18 years later, the end of the Cold War, which was sealed with the fall of the hated wall which had divided Berlin for more than 28 years.

The era of negotiation kicked off in Berlin was christened “detente,” or in German “Entspannung,” reduction of tension, an unassuming beginning for the grand designs which followed.

An Agreement with No Name

I was a member of the American delegation which began the negotiations in Berlin in March, 1970 and later became one of the State Department’s main actors in the events which ultimately led to the end of the Cold War.

The following personal narrative describes how detente was born in Berlin, details the methods which made Berlin “the key to the whole puzzle,” and suggests how a policy similar to detente could replace MAGA with a practical method for sorting out the confusing world of the 21st century.

Echoing Kissinger’s sentiments, the Berlin experiment succeeded primarily because it was based on modest expectations, limited subject matter and impressive restraint on both sides. The negotiators who gathered in an old Berlin court room on a dull March day were in no mood to savor the history of the moment. There was no talk of good feelings or of a new “spirit of Berlin.”

They were confronted with a daunting task—and they knew it. Failure to reach a peaceful settlement following 1945, had kept Europe and Germany tense and divided. Tensions had in fact been so high, that the four former allies had not met formally for sixteen years.

Pending a long-delayed peace treaty, the ultimate sovereignty over a country of 80 million people resided with these four Powers. Thus, it was the Ambassadors of France, the United Kingdom the Soviet Union and the United States who showed up on March 26, 1970. No German officials were present.

For the Soviets, even showing up had been a compromise of sorts. In 1960, the Soviet Union claimed to have dissolved the wartime alliance by transferring its share of rights for Germany and Berlin to the puppet East German state (GDR).

This “transfer” had been a desperate Soviet ploy to shore up a collapsing GDR. In 1961, the ugly Berlin Wall was thrown up as a last-ditch effort to avoid the disintegration of East Germany. Similar to the post Crimea sanctions, the West had broken off dialogue after a full scale Warsaw Pact military invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Russians were desperate for relief.

With hindsight, we can map the path which began in Berlin and led, 18 years later, to the end of the Cold War. But for those of us in the room at the first negotiating session, it was difficult to be optimistic. Opening remarks by the Soviet Ambassador were peppered with accusations of Western aggression.

In fact, as the negotiations neared success after 18 months of tough debate, differences of principle remained so great, that the two sides could not even agree how to describe the divided former German capital in the text of the agreement.

The word Berlin never once appeared, either in the title or in the text of arrangements, which focused solely on its interests. The city was described merely as “the relevant area.”

Decades later, the bizarre story of this “relevant area,” remains alive. Each year millions of mostly young people make a pilgrimage to the corner of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße in Berlin to seek out Berlin’s last remaining Cold War relic, a replica of the Allied Check Point Charlie at the crossing to East Berlin, which was featured in a recent Tom Hanks movie about a 1961 exchange of spies.

They mostly do not know what they are looking for, but a visit to this shabby corner of Berlin seems for many to be an almost spiritual experience, an encounter with a “Game of Thrones” type of heroism whose attraction is as powerful today as it was 50 years ago. One sign of the emotions invested here is Berlin’s inability to agree how to rebuild this empty corner thirty years after the Checkpoint officially closed.