Specialists believe that the Eurasian giant has two options against the United States and NATO.
According to Russian experts, Russia has two options after the “no” it received from the United States and NATO to the security guarantees it requires to stop the expansion of the Atlantic Alliance and the deployment of offensive weapons near its borders: downgrade tension or increase it. Most likely, he will choose to double down on the challenge.
“Russia will resort to firm military measures to show toughness and show the United States and NATO that it is serious” in terms of its demand for the non-expansion of the Alliance and of the military infrastructure towards its borders, said the deputy director of the Center for Studies Europeans and Internationals, Dmitri Suslov.
After an intense week of international negotiations with the United States, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Russia has seen its demands to fundamentally change the security architecture in Europe rejected.
Neither the United States nor NATO is willing to make concessions on Russia’s insistence on NATO not expanding, renouncing all military activity in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, or withdrawing US nuclear weapons from Europe.
predictable response
According to Suslov, at the same time, the United States has been “flexible” when dealing with Moscow on the control of conventional and unconventional weapons or the non-deployment of missiles.
“What they offer Russia is a kind of Founding Act 2.0 (between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance of 1997), a hypothetical agreement on technical-military issues, but without changing the fundamental principles that guide the United States and NATO in Europe” , he indicated.
The arms control talks are already taking place within the framework of the strategic dialogue that Russia and the United States resumed after the first summit last year between the presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.
For this reason, negotiating only possible concessions in the technical-military section does not make sense for the Kremlin, which demands a “closed door” policy from NATO regarding the accession of new members, especially Ukraine, adds the expert.
Russia, which has made it clear that its demands are not a “menu” but a package, expects a written response from the United States to its demands next week.
All this while challenging the West with some 100,000 soldiers near the border with Ukraine and plans -according to the United States- to attack the neighboring country this winter.
Possible new escalation?
Washington and Brussels have demanded that Moscow lower the tension around Ukraine, but far from paying attention to them, after the consultations in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna, the rhetoric has increased in tone to maintain the pressure.
Moscow has said that in the event of a resounding “no” in writing from the United States and NATO, it could resort to a military-technical response.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov clarified that it would be “weaponry deployment,” but the answer will depend on what military experts recommend to Putin.
“The gap in perception (between the parties) is so great that a new and quite dangerous escalation may be necessary or may occur to force the parties to resort to their imagination, to really look for original formats of agreements,” he wrote in a statement. comment the head of the Council for Foreign Policy and Defense, Fyodor Lukyanov.
“A further escalation in the military area is quite likely,” agrees Suslov, who nevertheless considers that it “would not focus on Ukraine.”
“A full (military) response against Ukraine is quite unlikely,” he opined. “It would be useless and counterproductive,” he added, since a war with Ukraine “would not change that country” to implement the Minsk Peace Accords for Donbas, nor would it solve Russia’s fundamental problem of security in Europe.
Raise the cost for the US and NATO
“The United States and NATO would only proclaim the closed door policy if the cost of open doors becomes too expensive for them,” he maintains. “They have to suffer and not Ukraine,” he argues.
In his opinion, this means for Russia to seek “ways to undermine the security of the United States and NATO,” perhaps through more robust military exercises, the deployment of missiles, more frequent flights and navigations of strategic bombers and nuclear submarines, and, above all, above all, greater cooperation with China in the political-military and military-technical sphere.
Neither one nor the other, adds Suslov, are interested in looking vulnerable. The United States, for example, would have to divert resources from strategically more important locations amid its policy of containing China, he says.
“If the consequences of NATO expansion are a war, including a nuclear war, (an agreement) is very feasible,” he says. (I)
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