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Western policymakers remain as vague about Russia’s geopolitical intentions today as their Cold War counterparts were forty years ago.
Is the Kremlin preparing to intervene in the territory of its neighbor Ukraine, which increasingly sees itself as part of the West, if the comprehensive security guarantees demanded by Russia are rejected?
Or is the gathering of Russian troops along Ukraine’s borders a way to show strength, a maneuver by President Vladimir Putin to secure as many concessions as possible from the United States and its European allies at the negotiating table?
These questions could begin to be answered starting Monday, which marked the start of talks between senior US and Russian officials in Geneva, which will discuss the Kremlin’s demands that NATO withdraw its military presence from the former Soviet European countries. Central, as well as ways to reduce tensions over Ukraine.
Even about eight decades ago, Western policymakers were trying to decipher the intentions of then-Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin, whose legacy President Putin sought to rehabilitate in Russia.
Guy Liddell, a senior British intelligence official, wrote in his diary in February 1948 how difficult it was to understand whether Soviet Russia was planning any military aggression.
Although the Kremlin had insisted that its intentions were peaceful and said Moscow’s maneuvers were “for strategic defense”, Mr Liddell commented in his diary that Russian actions – from military training to propaganda campaigns, from interventions to “disruptive efforts” – they seemed like a “planned policy of aggression” and the western powers had no choice but to prepare for the worst case scenario and stay vigilant.
Just two weeks later the Kremlin-led Communists took final control of the Czechoslovak government. The overthrow of the last remaining democracy in Eastern Europe completed the partition of Europe, freezing the two halves of the continent in a four-decade Cold War.
Policy makers are now divided over President Putin’s intentions to mobilize more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders and the question of whether military consolidation is driven by any whim or sense of insecurity, whether justified or no.
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Some Western diplomats fear that the Russian president’s intention may be for the talks to fail, in order to use it as a pretext to penetrate deeper into Ukraine, a repeat of the 2014 scenario when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and occupied part of large part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
They are also weighing in on what options are available to prevent Mr. Putin from making any dramatic military moves in Ukraine.
And although all NATO members, and some non-NATO European countries, have joined the United States in warning of dire consequences and punitive economic sanctions in the event of a Russian intervention in Ukraine, Allied positions have some important differences in their tone. Some Western leaders have spoken out more harshly than others.
New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has requested a meeting with Russian leader Putin later this month, has spoken of re-establishing relations with Moscow and trying to “make a fresh start”, although he also warned of the consequences of severe in the event of another Russian attack on Ukraine.
The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, has been much harsher in his public comments, reiterating his country’s right to join NATO if the Finns decide to do so, and throwing categorically down Russian demands that NATO not admit new members.
Sweden, which is not a NATO member but has intensified military co-operation with the alliance, is also reacting harshly to Moscow’s demands for no further NATO enlargement. Foreign Minister Ann Linde has stressed that Moscow has no right to dictate which countries can join the transatlantic military alliance.
“It should not depend on Russia whether or not we join NATO,” she said on Friday.
NATO officials have rejected Russian security demands, saying they were impossible to meet. The demands include stopping further NATO enlargement and withdrawing any alliance military presence in seven of the eight former Soviet Central European states that have joined the Western alliance since 1999. The Kremlin has also demanded the withdrawal of weapons. American nuclear tactics from Europe, but has offered no reciprocal restrictions on its tactical missile arsenal.
The US-Russian bilateral talks in Geneva, which are being led by senior State Department officials on the US side, will be followed this week by Russia-NATO council negotiations in Brussels and an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Vienna meeting in Vienna. Europe, including Russia, Ukraine and all NATO countries.
They are part of a week of intense diplomacy of such magnitude not seen since the Cold War. President Putin seems determined to turn the talks into a discussion of Europe’s entire security architecture, while Western powers seem to want to limit the discussions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned against “endless discussions.” President Putin has also said he does not want the talks to drag on for decades.
Some Western diplomats suspect Putin is trying to rush because his challenges could weaken Western resolve and undermine his unity.
But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Sunday that Putin’s goal could be to “return to the sphere of Russian influence countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.”
He added: “We can not go back to a world of spheres of influence. “It was a formula for instability, for conflict, a formula that caused the world war.”
Andrew Marshall of the Atlantic Council says geopolitical developments could bring about historic change.
“The result of this dispute could rewrite the security situation on the European continent for a whole generation – as the decisions of the 1990s after the end of the Cold War did,” he said in a recent analysis.
Western tactics appear to be an attempt to divert Putin from his goals and persuade him to discuss security deals of mutual interest.
Other analysts believe Putin is focused on Ukraine and its return to Russian orbit, and that broader demands on the European security architecture are a case in point for what former US diplomat Henry Kissinger once described as a Russian tendency to ” kicked all the doors to see which of them collapsed.
Russian analyst Vladimir Frolov believes Putin is determined to ensure that Ukraine accepts “the determination of its relations with Russia on Russian terms.”
But he thinks even the most modest progress in the talks is impossible.
“Escalation remains possible, due to unrealistic demands presented with artificially limited deadlines,” he says.
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