Como lidar com o imperialismo expansionista russo-putinesco na Europa? - Sven Biscop (Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations_

 The phrase above applies to the European (and Belgian) elections, but also to the EU and its candidate countries. If the EU is not ready to do for Georgia and Moldova what it is doing for Ukraine, if necessary, it should not have invited them in. This is the argument of my new Egmont Commentary, which I hope will be of interest.

Best wishes,

 

Sven 

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop   Director – Europe in the World Programme, Egmont Professor – Ghent University  Associate Member – Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences    Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations Rue des Petits Carmes 15, B-1000 Brussels + 32 473 31 68 23   s.biscop@egmontinstitute.be

 

If Russia “Protects” Transnistria, Will the EU Defend Moldova? And Georgia?

https://www.egmontinstitute.be/if-russia-protects-transnistria-will-the-eu-defend-moldova-and-georgia/

If Russia “Protects” Transnistria, Will the EU Defend Moldova? And Georgia?

By Sven Biscop

 (5 March 2024) 

In

 

• Commentaries

• EU and strategic partners,
 
• EU strategy and foreign policy,
 
• Europe in the world,
 
• European defence / NATO

 

On 28 February 2024, the day before Putin’s annual speech in parliament, Transnistria asked Russia for protection against Moldova, the state from which the region has broken away. Fabricating a threat against a kindred people as a pretext for invasion: the playbook is well known. That is how Russia has justified its wars against Georgia and Ukraine, and how it threatens the Baltic States. But the playbook is much older: in 1938-9, the purported plight of the Sudeten Germans was Hitler’s pretext for dismembering Czechoslovakia. There are parallels – but they do not run in Russia’s favour.

 

Minsk Is Not Munich

There are differences too. Russia already is in Transnistria, with some 1500 troops that have been there since 1992. And the EU already is in Moldova, with an EU Partnership Mission (EUPM) of up to 40 security officials, launched in April 2023 to assist with building resilience against hybrid actions. The West is not abandoning anybody, therefore. Indeed, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands have only just opened an embassy in Chisinau, and Greece and Spain will follow shortly.

Perhaps Putin had understood the Minsk Agreements that France and Germany mediated between Ukraine and Russia in 2014-5 as a Munich moment: the first step towards the West letting Ukraine go. But then he overlooked another accord: the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, also signed in 2014, by which (wittingly or unwittingly) Europe committed itself to the survival of Ukraine, whatever the future might bring. Putin should have remembered that when Nazi Germany violated the Munich Agreement, Britain and France could indeed not prevent the destruction of Czechoslovakia – but they did then offer a security guarantee to Poland and went to War when Hitler invaded it. In a similar vein, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine provoked the EU and the US into non-belligerent yet massive and indeed vital support for Kyiv. In June 2022, the EU accepted both Ukraine and Moldova as candidates for membership, cementing its commitment.

 

But the War Might Yet Expand

Putin did not actually mention Moldova in his speech. Perhaps the Transnistrian call for help is a sign of desperation more than anything else, as things have been going bad for the leadership ever since Ukraine closed the border when war started. Transnistria being where it is, Russia can difficultly reinforce or supply its troops there, and Russia has of course failed to link it up with the territory that it occupies in Ukraine. Nevertheless, if Putin felt it necessary to create a diversion, the troops currently in Transnistria could cause havoc. And already today Russia is engaged in a massive subversion campaign in Moldova. The call for protection is itself an example of that. Is the EUPM sufficient to bolster the country?

The EU also has to worry about Georgia, which in December 2023 became a candidate for membership as well. There too, Russian troops shore up breakaway regions: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Those border on Russia, however; it is Georgia that is isolated, in a military sense. The Montreux Convention limits access via the Black Sea, and while the country does border on fellow EU candidate Turkey, the latter (though a NATO Ally) has its own special relationship with Russia. In case of renewed hostilities, how would the EU (and the US) get military support to Georgia? And in Georgia too, massive Russian influence operations are underway.

Even Armenia now appears to be hoping for some sort of security support from Europe. Armenia was gravely disappointed with Russia’s lack of support when in September 2023 Azerbaijan in a swift war took control of Nagorno-Karabakh. in February 2024, Armenia suspended its membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), its military alliance with Russia. Azerbaijan, at the same time, is a key partner of the EU’s Global Gateway. The EU need not choose sides between them; it needs a strategy for regional stability.

 

Defend Your Candidate!

Accepting a country as a candidate creates obligations towards it, and it alters the geopolitical position of the EU, almost as much as actual enlargement.

Enlargement always was a geopolitical project, but never before has it been actively contested by another great power. In the past, the EU has accepted as candidates countries that came out of war, on the Balkans, but never a country currently at war, like Ukraine, or facing a great risk of war, like Georgia and Moldova. In geopolitical terms, these were three buffer states in between the EU and Russia. Ukraine and Moldova have now become border states – they are the frontier of the West; Georgia, however, is a geopolitical outpost. The security guarantee contained in Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union does not yet apply, of course. But the EU can also not just stand idly by when a candidate is threatened or aggressed, in a military or a hybrid way – not without greatly damaging its credibility. And if the EU is not seen to stand up for its candidates, other powers might begin to doubt even the strength of solidarity between current Member States, to the detriment of deterrence.

By accepting new candidates, the EU has de facto altered its geopolitical situation. That must now be reflected in an updated strategy. At the very least, the EU should prepare contingency plans for non-belligerent support to Georgia and Moldova, up to the same massive scale as for Ukraine if necessary. That will require courage and resources. But if the EU is not willing to defend them, it should not have accorded candidate status to countries facing such a high risk of conflict. Geopolitics and strategy is not a game for the meek or the miserly.

 

Sven Biscop cannot help seeing historical analogies – he has just read too many books.

 

 

Military Offensives, Hybrid Attacks – And No Peace in Sight - Sven Biscop (Egmont)

Military Offensives, Hybrid Attacks – And No Peace in Sight

Sven Biscop

Egmont: Royal Institute for International Relations, 30 September 2022

https://www.egmontinstitute.be/military-offensives-hybrid-attacks-and-no-peace-in-sight/

Military Offensives, Hybrid Attacks – And No Peace in Sight

“In war everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. Those difficulties add up and cause friction, which nobody can really imagine who has not witnessed war”. Thus Clausewitz.  An effective plan of attack is based on a simple idea, for a plan that is too complex to explain to one’s own commanders, will not be executed. But the best plans go awry, first of all because, naturally, the opponent also has a plan. This renders war very unpredictable per definition, as Vladimir Putin has experienced – as well as the many military and academic analysts in the West.

The Self-Defeating Offensive 

I had expected active fighting to have fizzled out long before the summer. After a few weeks, it was clear for all to see that Russia could not achieve its initial objectives of regime change in Kyiv and occupying (at least) half of the country to the Dnepr river. My assessment was that Russia would halt offensive operations once it had conquered the land bridge between the Crimea and the Donbass, and dig in there.

With hindsight, that would have been smarter on their part. At that time, the Ukrainian armed forces were not yet capable of launching a powerful counterattack. Russia could have consolidated its control over occupied territory, making a counteroffensive at a later stage even more difficult. Undoubtedly, some in the West would have been tempted to probably still adopt sanctions, but to basically accept the fait accompli on the ground.

By keeping on the offensive tough, Russia paradoxically weakened itself more than Ukraine. Russia did conquer more territory, but only by overstretching its (unexpectedly low) military power. At the same time it fortified unity and resolve in the West to fully support Ukraine and to punish Russia. The brutal war crimes of the Russian army further strengthened that dynamic. Thanks to its own strong will to fight and with Western support, Ukraine not only blocked the Russian advance, but in some sectors of the front even succeeded in driving it back.

Hybrid Attacks 

What we see now – nuclear bluff, fake referenda and sabotage of the Nordstream 1 and 2 gas pipelines – are signs of Russian weakness and frustration with defeat on the battlefield. The actual impact on the war may be limited. Putin’s tale of Western aggression, against which ultimately nuclear weapons can be deployed, must veil Russia’s failure from his own public. For how to explain that a supposedly inexistent Ukrainian nation fights so hard that mobilisation must be decreed, if not by a Western conspiracy? The referenda and illegal annexation of more lands will not stop Ukraine from continuing its efforts to liberate its entire national territory.

Sabotaging the pipelines in the short term ratchets up energy prices again, which hurts Europe, but in the long term it will hurt Russia more. They are their pipelines. Before the war I wrote that the EU should signal to Russia: if ever you cut off the gas, it will never be reconnected again. That has now become very certain indeed.

Nevertheless, these acts of sabotage (a form of “hybrid attack”) do represent an escalation. We, the EU and NATO countries, are not at war with Russia, and the unspoken understanding remains that direct war between nuclear powers must be avoided. Such hybrid attacks, which remain below the threshold of military violence and as long as they don’t cause loss of life, the West will not quickly consider to be an act of war. (Although at its summit last June NATO did explicitly decide, for the first time, that the option to do so exists). But we must react when sabotage, or other far-reaching hybrid attacks, happen on our territory.

For now, we attempt to deter hybrid attacks by building up strong defences. But we ought also to deter by threatening retaliation. Whoever paralyses a port through a cyber attack or blows up a pipeline in any EU or NATO country, ought to know that the EU or NATO as a whole will launch a counterstrike against their infrastructure. The West should develop a doctrine along those lines, but that debate had only just started before the war.

For my country, Belgium, in particular, this is of crucial importance, for as the host nation for EU and NATO headquarters, it is a primary target for hybrid attacks, and the Belgian state holds the primary responsibility for averting them. That is a core message of the country’s first ever National Security Strategy, adopted in December 2021.

No End in Sight 

Meanwhile, let us not forget that militarily, Russia is far from finished. We see the ongoing protests, but the regime (which is much more than just Putin) is firmly established. We see how many try to escape mobilisation, but tens of thousands have now joined the ranks and will shortly reinforce Russian positions in the occupied areas. That will not enable Russia to seize large parts of territory again, but it may allow it to stabilise the front. Sadly, it is far from certain, therefore, that Ukraine will be able to liberate all of the sizeable territory that Russia still holds.

As stated above, war is especially unpredictable. At this point in time, the most likely outcome still seems that both sides will eventually fight each other to a standstill, and that large active operations will cease at least temporarily – hopefully when the front has moved as much as possible to the east. Winter conditions may contribute to this, though one should not forget that in 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, major battle continued well into December.

If there were indeed a (temporary) lull in the fighting, would this create conditions for tentative talks, or would the war just flare up again next spring, with more firepower deployed on both sides? Or might Putin, faced with the defeat of his ambitions, be tempted to opt for massive escalation and use the nuclear weapon against Ukraine, in spite of the risk of an escalatory spiral? For that might in turn invite a direct intervention by the United States and its European allies. Nobody can know anything for certain.

The West must in any case prepare to support Ukraine on a structural basis, economically and militarily, and to render its economy structurally independent from Russia. A peace agreement remains the ideal outcome, but is impossible as long as Russia is not prepared to make major concessions. We better adjust therefore, if the hot war ever ends, to a long-term frozen conflict, with an ever present risk of renewed escalation.

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop (Egmont Institute & Ghent University) struggles to see a likely positive scenario.

This article was first published in Dutch in Knack

Russia Invades Ukraine: The Dangerous Weakness of a Military Superpower - Sven Biscop (Egmont Institute)

Russia Invades Ukraine: The Dangerous Weakness of a Military Superpower

By  Sven Biscop

Egmont Institute, 25 February 2022

https://www.egmontinstitute.be/russia-invades-ukraine-the-dangerous-weakness-of-a-military-superpower/

What is an extra slice of Ukrainian territory to Russia? A war of aggression no longer fits in our European logic, but it does in that of President Putin. He seeks to permanently position Russia as a great power to be taken into account, and to restore a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union.

Russia Invades Ukraine: The Dangerous Weakness of a Military Superpower 

What is an extra slice of Ukrainian territory to Russia? A war of aggression no longer fits in our European logic, but it does in that of President Putin. He seeks to permanently position Russia as a great power to be taken into account, and to restore a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. For Putin, the greatest threat is not potential NATO membership of Ukraine, but the country’s gradual westernisation through its close association with the European Union. For if that succeeds in one large former Soviet republic, then who knows where else the public might turn against its authoritarian leaders…

It is precisely because the new regime in Ukraine was about to conclude a far-reaching free trade agreement with the EU, that Putin attacked the first time, in 2014. Perhaps most determining of his actions today, is that in fact that first invasion was a failure. Russia annexed the Crimea, but against its expectations the rest of the country totally turned against it. Only in a small region in the east could Russia instrumentalise limited numbers of armed separatists. Putin, therefore, is trying to undo his own failure.

And we just stand aside and watch? “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”, Thucydides wrote already. Sadly, all too often that still is the hard reality of international politics today. When a great power decides upon war against another country, there is little the other powers can do to prevent it. Unless they are prepared to go to war themselves, but a direct confrontation between nuclear powers is so incredibly dangerous that all refrain from it unless their own territory is directly under threat. Once Putin had decided, therefore, the renewed invasion of Ukraine could no longer be stopped (just like in 2003 nobody could halt the US once it had made up its mind to invade Iraq).

That does not mean it was a mistake to enter into negotiations with Russia – attempting to prevent bloodshed is never wrong. Today, however, we can assume that actually Putin decided early on in the current crisis to revert to military action anyhow (but perhaps not at which scale). Maybe he had even set his eyes on this years ago, and was just waiting for what he considered the right moment. This is not a failure of diplomacy. When two sides want to talk yet part ways without an agreement, that is a failure. But when one side is not willing to concede anything, and uses diplomacy only to mask its true intentions (and thus to lie to its interlocutors), real negotiations have never actually started.

Now that Putin has opted for war, there is little space left for diplomacy. At some point regular combat will come to a halt and a new demarcation line will emerge (if Russia does not occupy all of Ukraine). The EU and the US cannot in any way legitimise the result of this war of aggression. There will be no peace conference drawing new borders. At most we will see a ceasefire between Russia and what remains of Ukraine.

What will the future bring then? Tough sanctions from the EU and the US, and a freezing of relations with Russia for probably many years to come. That will not immediately help Ukraine: sanctions will not make Russia retreat, and will hurt us too. Yet they are absolutely necessary to send a signal to the entire world: one cannot violate the core rules of the world order without paying a price. Otherwise the rules would be hollowed out and no order would eventually remain. Reducing relations with Russia will hit the EU hardest in the energy domain, but it can be done – one more argument to accelerate the green transition. Russia has built up great reserves and can do without the revenue of gas export to Europe for now, but cannot sell that gas to anyone else; those fields are connected to us alone.

Is Putin really winning, therefore, or is he trying not to lose? War with Ukraine will not solve Russia’s domestic problems; instead, it will worsen its economic prospects. The sphere of influence that Putin says he is defending he already has to share with China, a major economic presence in all former Soviet republics. In that sense, conquering Ukraine is a sign of weakness: Russia does not have any positive project that can attract other countries of their own accord. The same applies to Russian interventions in Africa and the Middle East: sufficient to disrupt our plans (as in Mali, where the military regime kicked us out), but not to construct their ow project. Indirectly Russian military adventurism also undermines China’s, mostly economic strategy. That is why today China does not really pronounce itself: it will not openly go against Russia, but will not openly support it either.

Nonetheless, a declining great power that remains a military superpower can be very dangerous. The EU will have to seriously reassess its strategy, therefore. First of all, we must enhance our territorial defence. In previous decades, most European armed forces have focused on expeditionary operations. Those remain necessary, but at the same time we must reinforce our conventional deterrence. Today, the US fully assumes its leadership role within NATO, but what if there were a major crisis in Asia at the same time, or if Trump were in the White House? A dimension of our defence that demands urgent reinforcement, is deterrence of hybrid actions. Russia will undoubtedly intensify those: cyber-attacks, disinformation, sabotage, coercion etc. As the host of NATO and the EU, Belgium is a primary target, as its National Security Strategy adopted last December emphasises. We must dare to retaliate against hybrid actions, including with our own offensive cyber operations. The EU must also elaborate an entirely new strategy for North Africa, in order not to lose all influence.

This is not the end of the European security architecture. Russia cannot bring down the EU or NATO. Only our own antidemocratic extremists can do that, who often act as useful idiots in the service of Russia. But relations with Russia will become very cold again, and we will be forced to invest more in defence. At the same time, we must continue to invest in our own positive project, the EU, and in multilateral cooperation with all states, authoritarian regimes included, whenever interests coincide. Cooperate when you can, push back when you must. Keeping the world together in one order to which all states subscribe: that is the challenge for international politics in the 21^st century. Russia has now put itself outside that order for some time to come, but it does not have the power to overturn it. China could, but so far has opted for an assertive economic rather than military strategy. The US hopefully realises that in addition to its military contribution, for which Europe must be grateful, it ought to propose a positive project for the world as well. No country can safeguard its way of life alone, and with military means alone – not even a great power.

Finally, those with a knowledge of military history recognise all the names. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa: those were the sites of large-scale murderous battles where Soviet soldiers and citizens fought against the Nazi invaders. Today that is where Vladimir Putin attacks Ukraine.

***

Every year, Sven Biscop lectures at the National Defence University in Kyiv. Today, his thoughts are with the Ukrainian military in the field. 

Grand Strategy in 10 Words: A Guide to Great Power Politics in the 21st Century, book by Sven Biscop

 

World politics in 2021: Infected by rivalry

If China is rising, it must be seeking world domination. If Russia is declining, it must be plotting revenge. The United States, in turn, will surely not refrain from anything to maintain its dominance. And the European Union? A mere puppet of the US. Or worse, a cynical free-rider on American military might which, behind a façade of lofty rhetoric on values, pursues only its own economic advantage. That is what a world that has been infected by rivalry looks like. But is this picture correct?

Those four great powers, the players whose grand strategies have global impact, are surely engaged in intense competition. That is simply what international politics are about: as states pursue their interests, they compete for markets, natural resources, partners and influence. But not every clash of interests leads to rivalry. The distinction is important. Competition is natural and inevitable. Rivalry is a conscious choice to work not only for one’s own interests but against the other: subverting his sovereignty, coercing him to limit his choices or even aggressing him with military force.

Every state has legitimate interests and the right to pursue them in legitimate ways. If China, for example, is successful in securing a contract or in filling a senior position in the United Nations, Europeans and Americans need not rejoice – but as long as China plays by the rules, they cannot condemn it for playing the game. The right answer is to improve their own game. It is only when Beijing breaks the rules that active countermeasures against it are appropriate.

Otherwise, if even actions that the US and the EU undertake themselves are rejected when China or Russia do the same, that will lead to a rivalry without end. For that hard line will only be satisfied when China and Russia abandon all global ambitions or when they crumble – and either scenario is very unlikely. Instead, the world will break up in two rival blocs again, and gradually sever the many economic, academic and cultural links that bind them. Such a divided world will be incapable of tackling the climate crisis, the COVID-19 crisis, and their multiple consequences the world over.

This is also why an alliance of democracies is not the solution. Getting democracies on board is the easy part. But all great powers must be involved in the running of the world order, or it will not be effective. The real challenge is to create thematic coalitions that include the non-democracies to advance multilateral cooperation on specific issues.

China and Russia are indeed authoritarian states, but that does not mean that world politics is about the democrats versus the dictators. Neither China nor Russia is seeking to export its political system. Ideology (to the extent that they have one) plays little or no part in their grand strategies. World politics is about states pursuing their interests, and nearly all states work pragmatically with other states when interests coincide, quite regardless of their domestic politics.

That does not mean that the democracies must not care: they have a moral duty to speak up for human rights everywhere. Yet the EU and the US must also be aware of how limited their leverage is. Since China and Russia are authoritarian states, there will be endless grounds for human rights sanctions. But no sanctions, no matter how tough, will bring a great power to compromise on what it sees as a vital interest – such as the power of the Chinese Communist Party and its absolute control over the Uighur people in Xinjiang province. Rather than setting in motion an endless spiral of sanctions and countersanctions, Brussels and Washington must continue to criticise the human rights situation in every interaction with Beijing and Moscow, in order to uphold the norm. Even though effect on the ground will be limited; in the spirit of William the Silent, one need not hope to undertake nor succeed to persevere.

When China or Russia cross the line in their foreign policy, however, and illegal or illegitimate actions directly affect European or American interests or threaten international peace and security, then effective sanctions are imperative. Cyberattacks, harassing or even murdering people on other states’ territory, the annexation of the Crimea by Russia and the de facto annexation of most of the South China Sea by China: this is where red lines must be drawn.

Also, the EU and the US need not open their markets in areas in which China and Russia shield them off, nor must they make space for them in the multilateral institutions unless they abide by their rules. Reciprocity in applying the rules of the game is a precondition for cooperation.

Cooperate when you can, but push back when you must: this principle allows the great powers to pursue their grand strategies while reducing the risk of escalation. Everything depends, of course, on the grand strategies of the great powers. Thwarting each other must not become an objective in its own right. The EU and the US must not see devious schemes where none exist. But China and Russia must pursue their interests without coercing other states. The more aggressive a turn their strategies take, the more they will push the EU and the US into adopting a confrontational mode. The Russian regime may feel so spurned already that it sees no harm in provoking further isolation. But the Chinese regime has a lot more interest in gaining more influence in the existing world order than in breaking it up.

Maintaining one world, in which all states can freely trade and invest, and cooperate to address global problems: this is the challenge for world politics in the first half of the 21st century. A huge challenge, obviously, but it remains possible. Predicting (cold) war is easy. One does not predict peace, though – one builds it.

Sven Biscop is Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont–Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels and Professor at Ghent University. He is an Honorary Fellow of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC), and an Officer in the Order of the Crown of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Grand Strategy in 10 Words: A Guide to Great Power Politics in the 21st Century 

by Sven Biscop is available to order on the Bristol University Press website for £17.59.

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European Union Strategic Choices for the 2020 - Sven Biscop

Um grande scholar, belga flamengo, do Royal Institute for International Relations, em Bruxelas, Sven Biscop, acaba de me enviar seu mais recente paper, que acredito tenha interesse para todos os estudiosos de relações internacionais.

Neste link: http://www.egmontinstitute.be/content/uploads/2020/02/SPB122.pdf?type=pdf

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Dear colleague,

I have the pleasure of sending you my first policy brief of 2020, in which I ambitiously look at the entire decade ahead: Strategic Choices for the 2020s.

These past few years, the European Union (EU) has taken various decisions which, when taken together, amount to a careful repositioning in international politics. Let us be bold and call it the inkling of a Grand Strategy: an idea of the Union’s shifting place in the great power relations that determine international politics.

Yet that nascent Grand Strategy is not equally shared by all EU Member States or even by all EU institutions, nor has it yet been incorporated into all relevant strands of EU policy. If the implications are not fully thought through and the repositioning stops here, the EU as well as the Member States risk ending up in a permanently ambivalent position: more than a satellite of the US, but not a really independent power either. Such a half-hearted stance would alienate their allies and partners while tempting their adversaries. For now, the EU has done enough to irritate the US but not to obtain the benefits sought: to further the European interest and to play a stabilising role in great power relations.

Will 2020 see the EU and the Member States muster the courage to fully implement the choices that they have already started to make?

I hope this may be of interest! 

Best wishes,

Sven

En excerpt: 

"But whoever wins the White House in November of this year: China will be seen as the adversary to be contained or reduced in power; there will be a more transactional approach to multilateralism, including NATO; Europe will continue to be seen in a more instrumental way, as a source of allies to be mobilised against America’s adversaries; and the EU’s economic and energy interests as such will never be a priority for the US. Nor will they be for China or Russia, obviously."