Can Russia’s Quest for the New International Order Succeed? February 20, 2018 By Mamuka Tsereteli Mamuka Tsereteli is a Senior Research Fellow of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at American Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. His expertise includes international relations, economic and energy security, and political risk analysis in the Black Sea-Caspian Region. Abstract: A genesis and development of the conflict in Ukraine demonstrated fragility of the international security system and its inability to guard sovereignty of the smaller or weaker nations. By creating and then manipulating conflicts, Russia is gaining leverage over the decision making on political and economic development, governance issues, and the external alliances of those countries. By challenging sovereignty of smaller states, and forcibly changing their borders, Russia is challenging existing international order and the basic principles of Helsinki Final Act on Security and Co- operation in Europe of 1975, to which the Soviet Union, and its successor state, Russian Federation, are signatories. For the interests of global stability, it is a priority to bring Russia back to the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) without any concessions on principles of sovereignty for all OSCE member states. t the core of the conflict between the West and Russia is the fundamental disagreement of the current Russian leadership with the post-Cold War European order. Russia is changing realities on the ground to create A conditions that will lead to negotiations on a new security architecture for Europe and the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Russian idea of this new system of security is to limit the sovereignty of the countries in its neighborhood and prevent the penetration of Western hard and soft power, as well as its system of values and governance, in the former Soviet space, an area that Russia considers as its sphere of strategic interest. Russian leadership has on several occasions communicated this message to the international community.1 President Vladimir Putin, in his widely publicized 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, expressed Russia’s dissatisfaction with the existing “unipolar” character of the world order. He followed with a harsh criticism of the Organization 1 “The Draft of the European Security Treaty,” Official Internet Resource of the President of Russia, Kremlin, Nov. 29, 2009, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/6152. © 2018 Published for the Foreign Policy Research Institute by Elsevier Ltd. SpringSpring 20182018 || 204204 doi: 10.1016/j.orbis.2018.02.003 Can Russia’s Quest for the New International OrderTSERETELI Succeed? for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Western countries in general. He had already criticized the West’s push to fulfill all the conditions of the 1999 revised treaty on Conventional Arm Forces in Europe (CFE), including the removal of all Russian forces from Georgia and Moldova. But most importantly, he stated that “we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”2 While the speech was publicized widely, world leaders did not take Putin’s statement seriously enough. The Russian leader had a plan that could lead to new realities, forcing others to pay more attention to Russian statements and actions. Implementation of that plan continues to this day. The Russian Federation took the first significant step to shake the existing European status quo in 2007 when Russia officially suspended its participation in the CFE treaty. This move was followed by the events in Georgia in 2008 when the Russian military invaded the territory of the sovereign country and maintained its military presence there after active conflict ended. Russia simultaneously recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions of Georgia, as independent states. All of these actions were publicized as a Russian response to recognizing Kosovo’s independence against the will of Serbia. The same argument was used in 2014. Russian leadership considered NATO’s commitment to Georgia and Ukraine at the 2008 Bucharest summit as a threat to Russia’s security interests. The immediate objective of the Russian Federation was to stop the Eastward expansion of European security and economic institutions. Its long-term goal was to push for a new security arrangement with NATO, the EU, and United States which would recognize Russian supremacy over the sovereign rights of the countries in Russia’s neighborhood. Under the premise of protecting its own sovereignty vis-à- vis supra-national organizations and “universal” values,3 the Russian Federation has sought arrangements with Western powers designed to limit the sovereignty of neighboring states. Russia considers this process a legitimate method of ensuring its own security. Sovereignty in this context is understood as the supreme authority within a territory which is exercised in both internal development and external relations.4 The current international relations system is based on the sovereign rights of nation states, both internally and externally sovereign, to ally, trade, conclude agreements, open borders, etc., as well as on the Westphalian premise that interfering in other states’ governing prerogatives is illegitimate.5 The Russian Federation is using military force, coercion, and economic and energy supply disruptions to limit the sovereignty of 2 Vladimir Putin, Putin’s Prepared Remarks at 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Munich, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/ AR2007021200555.html. 3 Alexander Dugin, Counter-Currents, July 2012, https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/07/ interview-with-alexander-dugin/. 4 Dan Philpott, “Sovereignty,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/sovereignty/. 5 Alan James, “The Practice of Sovereign Statehood in Contemporary International Society,” Political Studies, vol. 47, no. 3 (1999), pp. 457–473. Spring 2018 | 205 CanTSERETELI Russia’s Quest for the New International Order Succeed? other countries to prevent their integration into Western led institutions. Russia’s status as the prevailing military power is an essential element of Russian strategy. For Russia, asymmetry in power is a source of asymmetry in sovereignty. Experience of Russian policies vis-à-vis its neighbors, as well as military invasions in Ukraine and Georgia, demonstrates that today’s Russia aggressively pursues power politics to restore control over former Soviet Union space. The West needs a clear strategy to bring Russia back into the system of international norms, and rules and power politics should be part of it. Matching Russian military power in the Black Sea region will send a message that Moscow will understand. Ultimately, various sides need to come back to the basics of the Helsinki process, and the sovereignty of the nation states should remain as a fundamental principle of the stability in Europe. The Anatomy of Conflict in Ukraine The trigger for the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 was the earlier decision of the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych to reverse his own policy of being associated with the European Union through a so-called Association Agreement (AA). The AA is an agreement about introducing a rule of law-based political and economic system to countries willing to improve their system of governance and to trade with the European Union. The AA is neither a membership agreement nor an agreement on military or security cooperation. By November 2013, before the planned date for signing the Association Agreement, Ukraine already had committed itself to a nonaligned status and had accepted a long-term agreement with Russia on the status of naval bases in the Black Sea port Sebastopol. The agreement allowed Russian control of the base until 2035. These were significant concessions that Ukraine made under Russian pressure, and the international system, including international organizations such as the UN, OSCE, and NATO, did not oppose this pressure for the sake of “stability” in the region. Russia, however, did not view those decisions as concessions, but rather as entitlements. The sequence of events in Ukraine unfolded in the following manner: a Russia-oriented leader of Ukraine, former President Yanukovych, wanted to sign the Association Agreement with Europe while Russia, the Russian Federation, and President Putin personally did not allow this to happen. This lack of agreement led to internal turmoil which pushed Yanukovych out of power. This action, in turn, led to more aggressive Russian actions—the military invasion and annexation of Crimea, and then the Russian supported proxy war in Eastern Ukraine. In addition to violating the UN charter, Russia’s actions violated the four-party Budapest Agreement of 1994, where Ukraine gave up its significant nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of security and territorial integrity affirmed by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Russian Federation. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is a logical continuation of its violation of international obligations in an effort to change the security status quo in Europe. 206 | Orbis Can Russia’s Quest for the New International OrderTSERETELI Succeed? Viktor Yanukovych Paradoxically, some experts and diplomats attempted to link the escalating situation in Ukraine to the Western “attempt to force” Ukraine into the European institutions, which led to the Maidan movement and the forced change of the government of Ukraine. In reality, the escalation started when Russia forced Ukraine to reverse its decision to sign the Association Agreement with the EU on the eve of the Vilnius Summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership in November 2013. The great majority of the Ukrainians found this development surprising, and they resisted it. In this context, the question is whether sovereign nations have the right both to security and for the rule of law based on a political and economic system designed to raise living standards and grant more political and economic freedoms.