Director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre Keir Giles is a leading British expert on Russia. The sphere of his interest is the issues of Russia’s defense and security, Moscow’s relations with NATO, as well as with its neighbors in Northern Europe, and also human factors that affect decision-making process in Russia. As an expert he participated in the First Ukraine-NATO-Russia Forum “Cooperation with NATO: Benefits for Ukraine and Russia,” held recently in Kyiv. Mr. Giles kindly agreed to give an interview during one of the forum breaks.
You are an expert in the sphere of Russian security. What do you think is the basis of this distrust which exists between the NATO and Russia in many spheres?
“What we have been discussing at the conference this morning, is some of the sources of that distrust. And I would go back to the number of times when a strategic partnership has been declared between Russia and NATO and then has remained unfulfilled because of the basic differences between terminology, ideology, values, approach between these two sides which are certainly never reconciled, they are never even properly understood by the two sides. Because of a difficulty in translating between the two, which is partly compounded by the fact that both sides are talking about the same issues and principles of security using the same words but they have deeply, deeply different interpretations. It just makes mutual understanding worse, it makes frustration worse. It makes it appear to both sides that the other is not acting in good faith and so the whole cycle begins again.”
The indivisibility of security is mentioned by the Russian side. In your opinion, is this arguement true, does it have some ground, or not?
“It depends. Do you mean Russian indivisibility of security or NATO indivisibility of security, because they are very, very different things? In the Russian context this is what this looks like. The security agencies within Europe providing for security quest in Europe and not for other countries, not for Ukraine, not for Russia, because that doesn’t come within the NATO, which in the Russian terminology is a division, not security, different classes of security. Which is something very different from the NATO definition of the same term, which is the same for everybody, but it’s indivisible between hard, soft, economic, energy, ecological, etc.”
“So it is a concept that goes across all aspects of security. And this is why, when the two sides are talking about this one and the same term (and both sides use it pretty often), they just frustrate each other because they cannot understand what the context, or what the sense of what the other is saying is. And this, again, just makes things worse.”
But anyway, in your opinion, has NATO made something that it did not fulfill its definition indeed, so the Russians think otherwise? I mean, there should be some grounds to say that NATO is a threat, or something like that. This military doctrine in Russia is mechanical. Why is NATO a threat?
“Well, it is a little bit more subtle than that, in the latest fashion of the 2012 military doctrine, it very carefully avoids saying NATO is a threat. It says, NATO is a military danger in a sense of expansion of military infrastructure, moving towards Russia. How exactly you move infrastucture is questionable altogether. But the formulation there is quite sublte, the underlying assumptions are the complicated part. Because it was hard to imagine how exactly it could be considered in Moscow that NATO is an actual threat, until the events in Libya. There is a lot more excuse now for considering NATO as a potential threat. On the other hand, operations in Libya have shown how insignificant that threat really is, and how limited NATO’s possibilities are.”
What do you think of the Medvedev-Putin initiative 2008? I mean nuclear security, or is there another initiative, the Atlantic security system, which Ischinger, Nunn, and it seems to me, Sergei Ivanov initiated? What do you think about those, too?
“I think it’s all the same, I think they are the same as the initiatives that we have seen over years, over decades, going back well into the Soviet past. The basic themes remain absolutely the same, it’s just occasionally repackaged. And the problem is that when it is repackaged, like into the form of the European security treaty, it takes people in the West by surprise, that’s the difficult part. And then, of course, everybody gets very excited about it all over again and forgets that we’ve done that, we did it at the CSCE in Helsinki [Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. – Ed.], we got the Helsinki Final Act, which addressed all of those issues, so why is it coming around again?”
According to one of our experts Hryhorii Perepelytsia, this is an attempt to keep the sphere of influence. So this new Medvedev’s initiative boils down to keeping the sphere of influence. Do you agree? That Russia just attempts to keep its shpere of influence?
“I might have been interpreted as that at some point. I wonder if just recently the conversation has moved on a little bit, and Russia is no longer being quite so dogmatic about that particular issue. Partly, perhaps, as a result of a realization that the believers, in order to make that happen, are pretty much non-existent. It has come as a bit of a surprise to some people in Moscow just how little influence Moscow has over, for example, the deployment of the ballistic missile defence. At each stage Russia gave ultimatums, half-ultimatums, but they were been ignored. So this, I would imagine, would cause a certain amount of both alarm and recalibration of what is called achievable.”
What do you see in perspective: do you see the Russians demanding to build, jointly with NATO, this anti-missile defence system, or NATO and the US are against this and do not give any judicial guarantees? How may this situation develop, is Russia in some way going to give this up and maybe agree with NATO and America’s point of view?
“But the one thing that does consistently emerge in this whole conversation of the ballistic self-defense is that Russia makes a suggestion which is impractical, impossible or just plain fantastic, and insists on it, in spite of all the obvious technical difficulties. And then, when it is ignored, eventually gives it up and doesn’t mention it again. I have in mind, for example, the Qabala radiolocation station. I also have in mind sectoral approach to division of responsibility between Russia or NATO missile defence which was never going to work because of simple unfortunate facts of geography, like there isn’t a nice, straight line running between Russia and NATO. So, you have to have responsibility of one part, of one partner given to the other for coverage. And if Russia is never going to agree to NATO covering its territory for missile defence, why on earth should NATO consider Russia, which with its for the time being much inferior technology won’t give it to do so for NATO? Why would that happen? It makes no sense. So it is a great relief that that proposal has now quietly disappeared after it was ignored in Sochi and thereafter.”
Anyway, you know there were some proposals in Stalin’s time or later, maybe under Khrushchev, to invite Russia into NATO. There have also been some suggestions from Russia concerning its joining NATO. How do you see it, can NATO make some offers to Russia in the future? That was the question Medvedev was asked while he was talking to journalists. How do you see it, what kind of policy should NATO carry out to involve Russia more and more?
“How does the saying go? ‘NATO does not invite, you have to ask for membership.’ So it is not really for NATO to do anything more for Russia than for anybody else and make the opportunity available. Now it’s one thing that if Russia were to consider NATO membership, they wouldn’t get past Chapter 1 Part 1 of the Membership Action Plan… But there would be so many advantages to Russia becoming if not an actual member, then at least a close partner of NATO. It would remove at a stroke so many of the Russian objections to what the NATO does. In fact, it would be so much a positive thing. I talked, not so long ago, with Dmitry Rogozin. I was just giving him one of the justifications for why Russia would not join NATO, it is so well then we would no longer have any grounds to objecting to Ukraine and Georgia, which is such a ridiculously circular argument that just proves the point that the sense of all things to do is to join in and get on board.”
Indeed, you are right. Maybe you know, two years ago Poland’s ex-President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that Russia and Ukraine would join NATO. Who knows… But what do you think about Ukraine now as a non-bloc country? Is it a positive role, being a non-bloc member?
“It depends on how you identify ‘non-bloc.’ If it means not getting involved in any, this is very very bad news. If it means playing one side against the other, then we go down the Lukashenka road, and that’s not very good news either. It is possible to be non-bloc in a positive manner, but it’s not an easy job. It takes fine management and fine tuning of your external political sensitivity. It has to be said that we haven’t seen much of that in Ukraine lately.”
Does Ukraine in your opinion play a positive role as a non-bloc country or not?
“It could, but for the moment it’s the opposite.”
