Valdai Club

Many name disunity of the West as the main source of global instability, implying that the solution lies in strengthening transatlantic alliance. However, would that be enough to fix the world?

Over the weekend, Munich Security Conference 2016 gathered Western leaders and few representatives from non-West to discuss the matters of security at hand. Seeing numbers of top foreign leaders from Eurasia, Middle East and Africa present at the MSC, it is clear that the West still provides platform for global dialogue. However, the task of fixing the world for the first time collides with the goal of building global liberal order. While the West tries to find institutional arrangements to uphold rules-based global society, it lacks intellectual curiosity needed to construct inclusive strategic framework.

At MSC, this manifested itself in an overly and self-absorbed Western-centric view of world order. Organizers conceptualized this year’s challenges in a following formula - “overwhelmed, helpless guardians faced with boundless crises and empowered, reckless spoilers”. In this metaphor, traditional guardians of a liberal international order – i.e. leading Western powers – are disillusioned with their ability to shape events and watch the order further destabilizing and fragmenting. Many name disunity of the West as the main source of global instability, implying that the solution lies in strengthening transatlantic alliance. However, would that be enough to fix the world?

In reality, most positive developments of recent events – Syria chemical weapons disarmament, Paris climate talk and Iran nuclear deal – were achieved in a much broader setting where Western powers were among other important players. At the same time, Western-centric approach ignores or provides false answers to most acute international dilemmas of our time – stability vs. revolution, security gap in Eastern Europe, regional balances of power, international terrorism, collapsing states, and migration crisis. Are there any lessons learned in recent years? Doubtful, since the MSC report states that military intervention should have happened in Syria in 2011.

It is striking, that the real talk on security issues at MSC excluded not only major non-Western powers, but also newly integrated or recently weakened parts of the West. The US allies in Eastern and Southern Europe, Turkey, and Gulf countries had a chance to speak up, but only to manifest their views – not to decide. Sidelined in recent years, this time Russia was vividly present – Dmitry Medvedev took part in a prime minister debate, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov provided his own remarks, and Russian ambassador to NATO Aleksandr Grushko took part in a panel on the future of war. Alongside with Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Brazil’s External Affairs minister Mauro Vieira and China’s NPC Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Fu Ying – those were the only independent voices in what has become a chorus of disillusioned Western leaders.

However, Russia’s call to form inclusive strategic framework that would achieve peace through balance and justice through restraint was not taken into account. Most panels at MSC exemplified vivid imbalances. Talk on fighting DAESH did not include a Russian representative and was exclusively focused on the EU countries concerns. Panel on the new Middle Eastern balance featured Gulf States, the EU, Syrian opposition and above all John McCain – never Iran or Syria. Too much attention was given to further Euro-Atlantic integration in the Balkans and Georgia, while another panel featuring Eastern European presidents provided platform to ill-thought anti-Russian agenda. Future of NATO was discussed instead of bridging security gap with Russia in Eastern Europe. Inclusive global setting was sacrificed to transatlantic unity, and a talk on TTIP replaced concerns over sustaining WTO framework. China was accused of building “parallel structures of international governance, which it can shape according to its own preferences” instead of becoming a “responsible stakeholder” in the liberal international order. To conclude, MSC could have looked much better would it be aimed at discussing real security issues in depth.

New NATO approaches toward European security also do not spread optimism. Jens Stoltenberg’s “more defense and more dialogue” formula still leaves Russia and the West in the same collision of block approach toward security in Europe. In the end, NATO continues to resolve crises that were triggered by its existence and enlargement. What Stoltenberg called “the biggest strengthening of our collective defense in decades” is essentially a good old deterrence strategy with a nuclear component.

In a sign of transatlantic solidarity, the United States has set out plans to significantly increase their military presence in Europe and level up spending on this matter four times from $790 million to $3.4 billion. These developments will no doubt lead to a scenario Brussels and Washington try to avoid - the emergence of a new Iron Curtain at the NATO-Russian border and a cordon of few contested countries “in between”.

Atmosphere of this discussion was so toxic, that Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev stated “we are rapidly rolling into a period of a new cold war”. Medvedev vocally asked the audience at MSC: “Russia has been presented as well-nigh the biggest threat to NATO, or to Europe, America and other countries. They show frightening films about Russians starting a nuclear war. I am sometimes confused: is this 2016 or 1962?”.

On a more positive note, Jens Stoltenberg proposed to “stop talking past each other, and start talking with each other”. As a first step, he offered to explore ways for reestablishing NATO-Russia Council meetings. Alongside with the US-Russia agreement to establish task force on Syrian crisis, which would observe ceasefire and humanitarian aid, this constitute the most positive outcomes of the MSC. The problem is that they are tactical and do not touch the base of structural problems between Russia and the West.

Two decades ago, the West has outsourced security problems to its Eastern and Southern members. The 2003 EU Security Strategy had argued. “Our task is to promote a ring of well governed countries to the East of the European Union and on the borders of the Mediterranean”. Instead of this, 2016 has become a year when “turmoil and uncertainty stemming from both the east and the south”, according to Stoltenberg. Dealing with a turmoil at hand means abandoning black-and-white approach and forming a truly inclusive dialogue on the contemporary challenges.