No region in the world has a security system like the European one, endowed with a complex network of treaties, rules and institutions. However, the sophistication of the European security system cannot lead us to conclude that it is a finished work, but one that is constantly being revised.
Security in Europe has been gradually built up over several decades. The foundations of the European security system were laid with the Yalta Conference of 1945, where the North American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Soviet leader Josef Stalin divided Europe into spheres of influence, guaranteeing the European concert a some stability and predictability. Three decades later, in 1975, the Helsinki Conference laid the foundations for a period of detente in the Cold War, and in the 1990s, the Conference became institutionalized with the founding of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE). These agreements were of great importance for security in Europe, but they would not exempt it from future challenges.
With the fall of the Soviet bloc at the end of the last century, European security faltered. The last president of the Soviet Union (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev, was aware of the changes that Russia was facing: “We live in a new world”, he declared in the speech that officially dissolved the USSR on the night of 25 December 1991. Between 1989 and 1991, Moscow would lose control over an area larger than the European Union.
In this new world that Gorbachev spoke of, Ukraine would continue to be, for many Russian leaders, a fundamental part of the Russian national identity. The then Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, with whom I negotiated, as Secretary General of NATO, the agreement that allowed the first enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance after the end of the Cold War, and whose wife was Ukrainian, often told me : “Ukraine is in my heart”. After the signing of the Founding Act between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance in 1997, the NATO Summit took place in Madrid. At this same summit, in which three countries (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic) were invited to join the Alliance, the first NATO-Ukraine meeting would take place, which formalized the differentiated relationship with Ukraine through the signing of the Special Relationship Letter. The former Soviet republic would not become part of NATO, but it was positioned as a privileged interlocutor with the West. Ukraine is also key to security in Europe. On the day of the September 11, 2001 attack, I was in Crimea at a European Union summit with then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. With that tragic news, Europe and the world turned in solidarity with New York, but we would continue to look to Ukraine.
At the beginning of the century, new threats arose, the United States alone led a new world order, and Russia did not feel comfortable in that new order. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin expressed this discontent clearly: “The unipolar world is not only unacceptable, but unsustainable.”
The readjustment of the post-Soviet space was especially traumatic for Russian foreign policy, due to its conception of power based on territoriality. Russia feels cornered by the progressive reduction of its security space, and Ukraine is its red line, as we have seen with the recent massive shipment of Russian troops to the Ukrainian border. However, the goal is not to annex Ukraine, but to prevent it from leaving the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.
The European security order is based on basic principles, including the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of States, which is clearly violated with the 2014 illegal referendum in Crimea and its subsequent annexation by Russia. Unfortunately, the current situation of tension along the border with Ukraine puts stability in this country and therefore security in Europe at risk.
In this regard, the various initiatives that have been launched to resolve the situation in Ukraine are of great urgency. Bilateral meetings between the United States and Russia, the NATO-Russia meeting, and meetings within the OSCE have taken place in recent weeks, but the situation remains deadlocked. For its part, the European Union must continue to support all those diplomatic formats for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, such as the Normandy Quartet, which brings together France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in an informal contact group. Also of great importance is the Trilateral Contact Group, made up of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, which gave rise to the Minsk Protocol. In addition to supporting these formats, the European Union must remain united, and make itself heard. In order to reach a negotiated solution, the European Union must be effectively represented in the negotiations. As the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has recalled, the European Union cannot be a “neutral spectator” in those matters that directly affect its own security. Furthermore, this position is not exclusively European, but is part of a transatlantic consensus. In the words of United States President Joe Biden, “nothing about you, without you”.
The inclusion of the European Union in the continent’s security architecture is also a practical matter, given that the European Union is no longer the community of countries that existed at the end of the Cold War. In the last thirty years, the European Union has grown from 12 members to 27, making up the largest trading bloc in the world. Furthermore, the common European foreign and security policy has nothing to do with the instruments that it had 30 years ago, which already has all the elements of an effective foreign policy. What the European Union has to achieve now is to execute it, and to continue developing its response capabilities together with its closest partners, including in non-conventional conflict spaces such as cyberspace, building resilience against cyber attacks and disinformation.
Gorbachev warned the Russians in 1991 that the world had changed. Europe has also changed, and by virtue of the rejection of war and the desire to build peace as the essential basis of its political project, the European security architecture must reflect this new reality.
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