Europe is at war and challenged to stand on its own feet. A new European Security arrangement is of the essence. Alarmists urge fastest possible realization of armament programs. Olga Oliker, Program Director for Europe and Central Asia with the International Crisis Group says that solutions are only imaginable after the war in Ukraine is coming to an end, and the end of this war will only begin once Russia does not talk to US, but to Europe, about it.
There are people that say we are two or three years away from a military confrontation between Russia and NATO. How dangerous is the security situation in Europe?
There is a hot war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the center of Europe. That’s pretty darn serious, right? And it’s quite bad because that hot war is viewed by most of the countries in Europe as one that is crucial to their continued sovereignty and existence, in different ways for different countries. It’s not just an existential war for Ukraine; it’s also a war that is defining European security for years to come.
How does Russia view the situation?
The Russians also think this is existential. When I say it’s existential for countries in Europe, I include Russia. So, Russia will describe its war on Ukraine as being driven by its own very deep security needs, that for Russia to continue as Russia, it needs to win this war. I would disagree with that assessment of the situation, but you have to recognize that is the Russian position. They see this war as crucial to the future of Europe. They just want a different future for Europe.
What does Russia want? Is the Russian idea not that there is no Ukraine at all, that Ukraine is part of Greater Russia?
No, Ukraine is not part of Greater Russia. I think the Russian view is that Ukraine is naturally a vassal state for Russia. They want a Ukraine that is on paper independent, but that practically does what the Russians say. This is the vision of how Moscow historically has seen the relationship between the United States and the European NATO members, that they will do what they’re told. That’s what it wants from Ukraine. It’s what the Soviet Union had with Warsaw Pact members.
Are there different stages of escalation in the existential conflict you are talking about? Are we on the path of escalation? We hear of incidents on the eastern border of NATO.
Violations of airspace have been going on since long before the Ukraine war began in 2014. There certainly was an uptick in them after 2014. It’s this weird part of trying to enforce deterrence that has been NATO member states and Russia overflying one another’s airspace. What the full-scale war brings is drone overflight. Drones, that are on their way from Ukraine to Russia or from Russia to Ukraine, overflying or getting sent off course. That is going to continue to happen as long as the war continues.
So, these incidents are more or less collateral to the warfare in Ukraine. But what about the explosive-equipped drone that was found at the airport in Leipzig?
In terms of Russian non-military operations on NATO member soil, Germany believes that included this intentional use of a drone. We’ve had variations on this theme since the start of the war and really since before. We’ve seen assassinations on other countries’ territories. It is meant to make it harder for those countries to support Ukraine or to coerce them into ending their support.
At what point does this cross the line and become an act of war, forcing a country and its allies to respond?
Until now, we’ve seen both Russia and the NATO states that have backed Ukraine being very careful to stay short of something that would bring them into direct conflict because they don’t want the direct conflict. It has these huge escalation risks which the Russians don’t want, which NATO doesn’t want. But Russia also very much wants these countries to stop supporting Ukraine because to them, they see this war as very important. So, they’re looking for ways to do that without causing a direct war. And of course, the danger is, in that process, they could cause that direct war.
If you look at what they say in Moscow, you get the impression that we are indeed on a trajectory of escalation. The former Russian president Medwedew occasionally threatens nuclear warfare. Is it just rhetoric?
I think what Moscow is trying to do with various sorts of reminders of the escalation risks and the risks of nuclear war if there is escalation to a direct conflict between Russia and NATO, is remind the NATO members that they, like Russia, should be worried about this. And it’s hoping this causes them to stand down.
Does it work?
The political science literature will tell you that it’s much more effective if you’re threatening somebody to keep them from doing something than it is to threaten people with action if they keep doing it. People tend to discount that second category of threats. And Russia has been very frustrated by that reality. It hasn’t succeeded in using its threats to get these countries that have started supporting Ukraine from the beginning, to stop supporting Ukraine.
So, is there no risk of nuclear escalation?
Of course, the risk is there. We’ve been living the risk of nuclear war in Europe for decades. Sometimes that risk is higher, sometimes it’s lower.
Is there a possibility of war between Russia and NATO?
Yes, there is. I don’t think it is that high, quite simply because nobody wants it. But I don’t think it’s zero because unintended spiraling could happen, particularly if you’re already in a crisis. If you’re expecting your adversary to do something dangerous, you’re going to interpret things that way. But there is, and there has been, a tremendous effort to avoid this, to keep the situation short of it. So, I would say be nervous, but there’s no need to move to Australia quite yet.
What does this mean in regard to the European efforts to rearm? We are urged to close the political ranks and rally behind the armament programs.
There are two factors here, one is that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 led these countries in the EU and the European members of NATO to view Russia as a threat to them. The fact that Russia launched a war that didn’t make a ton of sense, which was going to cause a tremendous pain and suffering, made these countries feel that they can’t exclude Russia doing something crazy, such as launching a war against a NATO member. So, you want to be very certain that Russia understands that it’s going to fail in any military attempt on these countries. And this is happening at the same time as the United States has for quite a while been sending signals that it wants to do a bit less in Europe. Then in comes Donald Trump, and he says actually, you might not get very much United States help at all, which means that you need a lot more capabilities in the European countries of NATO.
Is Donald Trump right in pushing Europe in that direction?
He’s stating a US policy which is confusing in a lot of ways. The United States has had historically a really difficult time staying out of European security and European wars. So, if I were to assess how likely it is that if things continue to go wrong on the European continent, the United States can stay out of it, I would say the likelihood of that is low. Donald Trump thinks that the United States can stay out and that the countries of Europe should be able to sort it out for themselves. On the other hand, if you really pay attention to what the White House says, what they’d like to do is somehow reduce their conventional commitment. but keep their nuclear commitment because they don’t seem to want a stronger nuclear deterrent in Europe, which is odd. Because I’m not sure why either allies or adversaries would expect a country that isn’t willing to fight for allies conventionally to then risk nuclear war on their behalf.
The US policy has accelerated the process of rearmament among European governments.
And in Russia, you also have this process of rearmament, which has been announced. They are saying they’re going to build up huge military forces, they’re going to reorganize. And at least on paper, all of this looks like they’re preparing for a war against European NATO. For the time being, most of their forces are tied up in Ukraine and it’s impossible. But you look at the plans they have on paper, and if you think that they could implement them, you think that they will implement them eventually. Then you have a lot of reasons to put a lot of resources into defense.
How far along are the European efforts? How much of it is cooperation? There is a lot of talk about cooperation.
It’s a process, and different aspects of it are more coordinated than others. You have a coalition of countries that are working together to try to coordinate their policies as they develop long-range precision strike capabilities, for example, but it is difficult because every country is sovereign and every country is responsible for its own defense. You have the EU that’s facilitating some of the financing and making sure that the funds get spent, which I think does help drive the capacity to do all of this. But still each country has to make its own spending decisions. A lot of the defense industries are very multinational, so they involve several countries and their firms, and they build for several countries. So, it’s this weird combination where countries are responsible for their own defense and they buy things themselves. They are talking amongst themselves as they do it. The firms that are producing weapons are often, to varying degrees, multinational firms, and they’re also cooperating with other firms when they’re actually building the weapons. This is something that’ s really difficult to do fast because defense industry in Europe, like defense industry in the United States, has developed into a peacetime defense industry, which means that you get your orders years and years and years in advance, then you spend years and years and years building the thing, and then you run over time and over budget. And if you’re really trying to do this quickly, if you’re trying to do some of it in time to help Ukraine, that system is not going to work real well. I think this is a major gap: how do you think that through and how do you speed up a process that actually by design is quite slow.
What kind of weapons should be built?
The other question is, are you building the right things? What does the war actually look like? Is it going to look like the war in Ukraine? One of the things that we see both in Ukraine and in the war in Iran is that kind of cheap mass of weapons which don’t cost very much, you can produce quickly, and that you can have a lot of, can do an awful lot, including against these very expensive weapons that took ages to build. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need any of the very expensive weapons. Ukraine is now short of Patriot interceptors which are defensive missiles, and that means that a lot more Russian missiles are getting through and doing damage and killing people in Ukraine. So, you somehow need to find a balance to do both. It’s also worth asking, at what point do you think this war turns nuclear? If you think it turns nuclear in about a week, you’re not going to need all that many of those weapons, are you? But if you want your adversary to be sure they don’t even want to try, you still need all of those weapons. It is kind of a complicated thought exercise, deterrence.
Should Europe as Europe have nuclear weapons, meaning in some ways to europeanize the French and British arsenals?
Nuclear weapons states haven’t actually used nuclear weapons since the United States did so in Japan at the end of World War II. They have gone to war with non-nuclear weapons states and very rarely between nuclear weapons states in these decades since then. So, countries as a whole take the idea of using nuclear weapons very seriously. States without nuclear weapons have done a lot of harm to nuclear weapon states that have attacked them over the course of the last decades. You can look at the Soviets in Afghanistan, the United States in Afghanistan, the United States in Iraq, Russia in Ukraine, and you can see how much damage a non-nuclear weapon state can do to a nuclear weapon state. I mean, nuclear weapons don’t solve that problem, because if your only alternative is to destroy the country you’re fighting with entirely and then do a lot of harm probably to yourself and to everybody and have the entire world turn against you and so on and so forth, it’s not a risk countries are willing to take. I think very few people are willing to count on that as being adequate. If you are Russia, you probably take the French and the British arsenal and their commitment to use it seriously. I also think if you’re Russia, you look at history and you remember that the United States always ends up coming back into Europe, even if it’s trying to get away. So, you can’t really rule out the possibility that if you do something irrational in Europe, the Americans will come in because historically the Americans do come in. So, the US arsenal stays in the shadow, even if the US leaves NATO, which I sincerely hope they will not. And for now, the US is saying that US deterrent, nuclear deterrence is still there, and the US is still in NATO. So, I think in all of that, you’ve got a pretty decent chance of deterrence continuing to hold, but it’s a different balance than the one that we thought we had two years ago. And I think that that’s going to make people nervous. It should make people nervous.
How urgent is this armament process? Some say we are two or three years away from a hot war between Russia and NATO.
I think you have to ask what you’re preparing for, what you’re nervous about, and how you see the threats. As we have written in the crisis group, there’s a disconnect between what European members of NATO are afraid of and what Russia is afraid of. They’re both broadly afraid of a direct conflict with the other, but they have very different visions for how that starts. In the NATO universe, the fear is that Russia will do something small with the intention of testing the alliance, demonstrating that it doesn’t hold together, and potentially threatening nuclear use or something just to make sure that’s true. That does not appear to be at all how Russia is thinking about it, because Russia thinks that the war starts maybe with a blockade of Kaliningrad. And then that is followed very early in the war by NATO attacks, substantial NATO attacks into Russia to destroy its capacity to use its nuclear weapons and its command and control. So, they have very different visions for what they’re frightened of and what they think as likely. And it’s based on the worst-case scenario planning in each case. So, you’ve got these two parties that are thinking, where do I think I’m vulnerable? And obviously that’s what my adversary will do. But that’s not how the adversary is thinking, because the adversary is thinking, where am I vulnerable? And how will my adversary take advantage of that?
That sounds very theoretical.
The challenge you have is if you show up in a country that borders Russia and say, hey, don’t worry about it, the Russians aren’t even thinking about it, their response is, okay, well the Russians said they weren’t thinking about invading Ukraine, but then they went to invade Ukraine. So, you still want a certain amount of insurance, especially if you’re one of those countries. So, you still want that capacity to deter and to defend yourself and to be able to defeat. This is a very complicated dance where you can do your assessment of what’s most likely, but you also have to prepare for what’s not that likely because A it’s possible, and B, if it’s what your allies are afraid of, you need to reassure them.
What you say calls for both sides to start talking to each other.
A number of NATO member states have tried to reach Moscow. Moscow seems to want to talk to the Americans, although the last few years and especially the last year and a half plus of this war have demonstrated that these European NATO members and the EU members are independent states. They don’t do what Washington tells them. They are supporting Ukraine of their own free will and therefore are actual adversaries to Russia because they are doing Russia damage, both indirectly by supporting Ukraine and through sanctions, and so forth. So, on the one hand, Moscow is starting to come around to that. But I think at core, it still wants its deal with Washington. It thinks if it has a deal with Washington, Washington will enforce it on its allies, which again, I’m not sure that’s true under current conditions. I don’t think these countries will act against what they see as their own national security interests.
Whatever talks there are on Ukraine did not go far up to now. Why?
Moscow wants to make its deal with Washington. And Washington wouldn’t mind a deal, but it doesn’t seem to be that interested in European security or understanding it. That’s why the efforts that have been made between Moscow and Washington have tended to fall apart. At some point, if the Russians really want a more stable Europe, they are going to need to talk to the other countries in Europe.
Who will speak for Europe?
I think it depends on the issue, frankly. If you want to negotiate economic issues or trade, you have to talk to the EU. If you want to negotiate an end to the war, you’re going to talk to the countries that are involved in the coalition of the willing…
… that’s the countries who support Ukraine with arms and are ready to deploy forces once a ceasefire is reached…
… They are the ones who are going to be most engaged, and they’re the ones that you have to get to adapt their policies, and they’re the ones who are going to be able to say what they need from Moscow. If you want to define weapons limitations around the Baltic Sea region, then you’ve got to talk to the countries of the Baltic Sea region. If you want something like that in the Black Sea region, then you need to talk to the countries of the Black Sea region. And I think putting all of that together at some wonderful future point, you may have a broad European sort of deal. But you can’t go in and negotiate a broad European sort of deal because the issues are, they’re specific to different sectors, they’re specific to different regions, they’re specific to different issues.
Do you see any progress on any of these issues?
I don’t. think we’re in a place where we can have these conversations right now. Once you’ve got some progress made towards peace in Ukraine, you start having these conversations, then there’s ways of basically cutting down on what everyone has to build and develop by constraining, by making deals that limit what the Russians can do and what other countries can do. But we’re very far away from that.
Could the OSCE be a platform for such negotiations?
At present, the OSCE has lost a lot of credibility with many of the key participating states that need to be involved. Having said that, once you start having discussions about European security, I think it would make a lot of sense to use the infrastructure of the OSCE for that sort of thing, but the OSCE has to survive until then. I mean, the OSCE is based on the idea that states want to cooperate, and they want to make things more stable, and they want to prevent conflict. And I don’t know that you can make that assumption when one of the participating states has launched a full-scale invasion of another.
We are Swiss and make a big deal of our neutrality. Many of our countrymen think neutrality is a great model for everyone else. What is the place of a neutral in a European security arrangement?
If you’re neutral, you still have a right to defend yourself. So, I think the question for a neutral country in the middle of Europe is what sort of threat is posed to it by what is going on, right? So, if Germany sees the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine as a threat to Germany and to German security and to German sovereignty, in the longer term, then does Switzerland also see it that way? I think this is a really important question because neutrality means you stay out of other people’s wars. But what if they’re actually your wars?