Dear YATA group members,
I would like to brought your attention to the recently published working paper by Tomas Valasek "NATO, Russia and European security" (November 2009)
Countries in Europe's east and north worry that Moscow is blundering into a confrontation with NATO. They have begun demanding that the alliance start preparing for a possible conflict. But are they right to be concerned? Would military preparations not make Russia more suspicious of NATO? And should the alliance not focus on the war in Afghanistan? Tomas Valasek argues that allies in Central and Northern Europe have good reasons to worry. And he cautions that unless NATO takes measures to reassure the government concerned about Russia, the alliance will have trouble 'resetting' relations with Moscow and maintaining public support for the war in Afghanistan.
As additional information to the topic, we recommend you to listen to the following panel discussions (video) of the Riga Conference 2009, held on October 23-24 in Riga.
1. Transatlantic agenda 2010 – A Baltic Vision
Three presidents of the Baltic States discuss the future of the transatlantic relations from a Baltic perspective, highlighting also the security related issues as well as NATO NSC. During her speech President of Lithuania Dalia Gribauskaite made it clear that Baltic States ask NATO for a contingency defense plan. As she stressed, "we are fulfilling all our obligations, which we promised to be as the members of providing security. The same we wait from the all Alliance to respectfully return."
2. Milestones for the new Strategic Concept of NATO
The speech made by Minister of Defence of Latvia gives you an excellent insight into the position of Latvia on the NSC.
3. Providing Strategic Reassurance in Northern Europe
A very interesting discussion between LV, EE, LUX Foreign Ministers reveals the difference of how these countries perceive Russia's recent behaviour and how both the EU and NATO should deal with Russia. And as usually Ron Asmus from the GMF gives you an excellent analysis on the present situation noth in Northern Europea and CEE, explaining also the nature of security concerns and lack of reassurance:
"But with the very brief focus on the Western side, and I can be self-critical as an American, there are all sorts of things we have intended to do, planned to do and pledged to do with Central and Eastern Europe that we did not do. Again, if we take Poland, when Poland joined NATO in the first wave of enlargement, not the second, which included the Baltic States, we pledged to Poland that we would have a NATO core size reinforcement capability that would exercise, we’ve built the infrastructure and exercise annually that capability. All of it is fine under the Russia-NATO Founding Act. We did not build it, we did not create it, we did not build the infrastructure, we did not do any of this. So, a lot of the doubts that are coming out from Central and Eastern Europe about Article 5, about credibility, about strategic reassurance aren’t always linked to Russia, it is about the things we did not do."
(...)
"It is interesting that in the run-up to the Strasbourg-Kehl summit, when President [Barack] Obama was briefed on the fact that some nations do not have contingency planning, his first order was: “This is unacceptable. Make it happen.” President of the United States! So, SACER now has been tasked and America’s military task is to make sure every NATO country has contingency planning. So, let’s wait and see how this debate evolves."
All the speeches are also available on the Riga Conference webpage - www.rigaconference.lv
Irina Ivaskina
Latvian Transatlantic organisation www.cer.org.uk
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