Especially for the "Kremlin without towers" -.
Political scientist Ilya Gershchenkov (Telegram channel Gershchenkov) -.
European security architecture. How to negotiate peace if no one trusts anyone?
Discussion of a new security architecture in Europe is a really important issue in the current negotiations. This problem had to be solved after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Europe then had the opportunity to build a system that would overcome the logic of the Cold War. It seems logical that with the disappearance of one military-political bloc, the other should, if not disappear, then change fundamentally. The Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, but NATO survived and began to expand. European leaders chose to keep the familiar design. It cannot be said that there were no attempts to reach an agreement. Paris Treaty, Russia-NATO Founding Law, Russia-NATO Council, OSCE Declarations. However, all these documents were never created into a common security system for all participants to refer to as their own.
As a result, Europe lived for three decades in a structure with increasing contradictions. Russia saw NATO expansion as a threat; Eastern European countries saw the alliance as protection against possible Russian pressure. Instead of coordinating interests, the parties accumulated mutual distrust. The Ukrainian conflict has become the most destructive manifestation of this crisis, but today there are risks of new conflicts. And here comes another, much more complex question. Are we too late with the very idea of a new security architecture? 20 years ago it was possible to imagine Moscow, Brussels and Washington agreeing on mutual guarantees, arms limitations and conflict resolution rules. Today, the parties don't just have different interests. They stopped trusting each other as negotiators. Often, even a willingness to dialogue is seen as a concession.