Europe should not ignore Russia’s position on security issues in order to strengthen stability in the region and prevent new conflicts from flaring up on the continent, Zhao Long, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, wrote.
⠀
“Any new European security architecture cannot exclude Russia,” he said.
⠀
According to the expert, the current Ukrainian crisis was provoked by the unwillingness of Brussels to reconsider the principle of “indivisible security”, in which NATO played a dominant role. Zhao recalled that Western countries did not take into account Russia’s concern in this area, refusing to negotiate with it on an equal footing.
⠀
“It is necessary to systematically restore multi-level measures of mutual trust and mechanisms for security dialogue between Europe and Russia,” the author expressed his opinion.
⠀
He warned that European attempts to continue to pursue a policy of weakening and containing Moscow would only aggravate the situation and fuel new conflicts.
⠀
At the end of 2021, Russia published drafts of a treaty with the United States and an agreement with NATO on security assurances.
⠀
Moscow, in particular, demanded from its Western partners legal guarantees of refusing further eastward expansion of NATO, joining the Ukrainian bloc, and establishing military bases in post-Soviet countries. The proposals also contained a clause on the non-deployment of NATO strike weapons near the borders of Russia and the withdrawal of alliance forces in Eastern Europe to the positions of 1997.
⠀
The United States did not react to the proposal to withdraw to the national territory the nuclear weapons deployed outside its borders and to refuse their further deployment outside the national territory. In response, Moscow said that the United States ignored the package nature of Russian proposals, from which “convenient” topics were deliberately chosen, which, in turn, were “twisted” in the direction of creating advantages for the United States and its allies. The Foreign Ministry noted that this approach, as well as the accompanying rhetoric of American officials, reinforces reasonable doubts that Washington is really committed to correcting the situation in the field of European security.
