The main cause of the European crisis is the selfish behaviour of the Western countries, which forced Russia to switch to a revolutionary method of solving the problem of its security in the western direction, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev.
A year ago, a series of negotiations between Russia and the West on the international order in Europe, based on Moscow’s December 2021 proposals for mutual security guarantees, ended without any results. Despite the fact that these proposals formally dealt only with the military and political sphere, their hypothetical consequence could be the creation of a new international order. However, the Russian proposals did not prompt any readiness for serious discussion on the part of the United States and its allies, and a month later, the solution of the most important issues moved, according to the definition of one high-ranking Russian diplomat, to the military-technical sphere.
By early 2023, the parties were already able to do enough to ensure that their conflict acquired a large-scale character and, thus, consolidated a new split in Europe, the boundaries of which are still indefinite. At the same time, the United States quite consistently reproduces the logic and mechanisms of confrontation characteristic of the late stage of the Cold War of 1949-1990, when virtually any form or scale of confrontation at the local level was accompanied by measures to prevent escalation directly between the great powers themselves.