On the failures of western-Russia policies and what to do about them
Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, the venue for the Helsinki Accords conference, 1975. Wikicommons/Finlandia-talo. Some rights reserved.
The analyses of international relations need to understand cause and
effect between as well as within countries. Out of the political polarization
and looming chaos of current domestic politics in the US and in some European
countries grows a dangerous distortion of foreign policy. Western-Russia policy
now primarily revolves around western, especially US, domestic politics, not a
tough look at security and what it actually takes to become more secure. The
consequence is deteriorating security for all states. How is this so and how could
it change?
The following analysis I base on conversations with researchers and
officials from Russia, but also Iran, Turkey Saudi Arabia, Israel and other
countries – people whose voices rarely reach the ear of western policy makers. For
their protection, I apply Chatham House rules. What they say may be quoted, but
their identity not revealed. I therefore offer no more details.
Their voices are important not because they are right. In my view, they
are mostly not. They are important for the obvious reason that they offer us
insight into how “the other side” sees the world. This we need to understand,
because Russia and other states follow their own set of assumptions, their
mental model of the world, not ours.[1]
In our domestic politics, their views may not matter much, but in the complex
reality of international relations that affects our security, their views are
decisive.
To understand how we can affect our future by our current choices, the
past is all we have got. In the words
of the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, “life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards”.
This insight by the vintage Danish existentialist philosopher came to
mind when, on the plane returning form a seminar at the university in Minsk,
Belarus, I realized what the matter with current western policy is. The West is ‘sleepwalking’, the term denoting a failure of policies similar to
the situation prior to World War 1.
Christopher Clark coined this phrase and made it the title of his book
on how all powers stumbled inadvertently into World War 1, through a series of
mutually reinforcing misjudgments and misunderstandings. One source of
misunderstanding, Clark points out, was precisely that apparent foreign policy
statements were actually a domestic discourse,[2]
as is the case today.
Avoiding
‘sleepwalking’ in the Cuban Missile Crisis
In other words, their real problem was not the adversaries’ intentions
and political projects, but that all states lost control over events. This
realization was to bear decisively on preventing nuclear war forty-eight years
later. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy read the
bestseller, Barbara Tuchman’s book[3]
on the same topic as Clark’s. She made him a lot more cautious in the dangerous
brinksmanship of the US strategy to contain Soviet advances in the western hemisphere.[4]
Her point was that as the European political crisis escalated in 1914, military
strategies took precedence over diplomatic efforts to prevent war. The fears of
war therefore became self-fulfilling.
Problem Russia
The confrontation now emerging over Syria, and Iraq, after the
territorial elimination of the IS Caliphate is serious cause for concern for
much the same reasons. The current situation bears some ominous resemblance to
the Europe described by Clark and Tuchman.
Then as now, Russian moves set events in motion. In 1914, the
ill-advised and internally disputed Russian mobilization, intended as a
response to perceived threats, ignited a chain reaction among other states’
mobilization plans that inexorably led to all-out war. These plans all had the
purpose to deter and if need be defeat attack; in other words, they were defensive. Then, as now in the current confrontation, the
risk is being overlooked that fear of war can lead to war through just two wholly
defensive measures: preemptive strike, destroying a threat
before it can destroy you,[5]
and strategic depth, if you have to
fight, you do it on somebody else’s territory to spare your own.[6]
In the Middle East now, the effects of the current Russian military
posture are contradictory. On the one hand, Russia has combined its military
support of Assad’s regime with a regional diplomacy to establish working
relationships with all the regional powers now in volatile confrontation over Syria.[7]
In this sense, Russia’s policies in the Middle East stand in stark contrast to
the confrontational policies in Europe.
In stark contrast to the European scenario, in the Middle East Russia is
now the power in the best position to broker a new regional political order. On
the other hand, by teaming up with Iran to prop up a universally despised
dictator in defiance of all the western and regional powers, Russia isolates
itself while its military power projection entails serious risks, with Russian
and western forces operating on different sides in a chaotic war. In the
absence of a climate of political dialogue[8]
over crisis management, violent incidents in Syria could conceivably escalate
into Europe, exposing to grave danger people caught in the middle. Could the
current political fault line in Europe turn into a front line?
My friends in Belarus come to mind. They now watch how Russia’s political
confrontation with the west affects them by limiting their space for cooperative
relations with the rest of Europe, thanks to EU reactions the Belarusians find
unjustified. They even fear what further aggravation of tensions could bring. With
their soil drenched in the blood of millions of victims of war and political
violence, they formed part of what Timothy Snyder has termed the killing fields of the 1930s and
’40s.[9]
With about 27 % of their territory affected by radioactive fall-out from the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986, they are involuntary experts on
the unacceptable risks of any nuclear arms strategy, now brought ominously
close by new short-range Russian missiles presumably under the control of
frontline commanders.[10]
‘Sleepwalking’ West
In response to these Russian policies, the west is ‘sleepwalking’. Western
policy goals are invariably regional political arrangements accommodating western
security interests and ideas of democracy and human rights. So far, this has invariably
failed; hence, western strategy should change. Political decisions are applied
analyses. Therefore, when decisions fail to produce the intended result, the
reason is that the analyses are wrong, or at least inadequate.
To explain Russia’s seemingly expansive foreign policy in the Ukraine
and Syria, there are two predominant western narratives about Russia’s military
projection, one now largely forgotten:
- – Putin needs the west, and especially
NATO, as an external enemy to deflect the seething rage of his constituents
suffering the dire effects of his domestic political failures. - – Putin is obsessed by rivalry with
the United States to heal the blows to Russian identity after the humiliations
following the end of the Cold War. He now even wants to overtake both in
overall military posture, in the ability to affect domestic political processes
in other countries, and in the regional conflicts.
These
narratives now drive western policies of rhetorical confrontation, sanctions
and budding rearmament. Since its inherent disposition drives Russian policies,
there is no room for political engagement through dialogue. In fact, any western
attempt to show good will may make matters worse by feeding Russian illusions
that their power projection works. In these narratives, Putin is a sinister
figure. In the KGB during the Cold War, he honed his skills as a cunning
manipulator of gullible westerners, like me, who now find political dialogue
more important than ever.
There are
two serious problems with these now predominant narratives. First, they offer
no solution to either side, at best a tenuous balance via a stalemate. Second,
the last time similar narratives led to almost identical responses, after the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, they proved extremely dangerous, in
1983 unwittingly bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war through
misunderstanding and misjudgment.[11]
The alternative narrative regarding Russia
The third western narrative about Russian polices is that their current
anti-western strategies are a predictable response to western policy
misjudgments, especially the expansion of NATO in blatant contravention of
assurances to the contrary. This expansion of NATO, in the Russian perception,
is aggravated by US and NATO persistence in pursuing ballistic missile defense
in defiance of Russian concerns about the implications for nuclear deterrence,[12]and
their abhorrence of the western idea of forced regime change because of the
ensuing chaos in Iraq and Libya, a trajectory they intervened in to prevent in
Syria.[13]
This is the
narrative of a shrinking pool of professionals, like myself, whose formative
experience was the unexpected end of the Cold War and its sadly mismanaged
aftermath. Former US Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, in his book My Journey on the Nuclear Brink, sets
out a thorough argument for this view, analyzing his own experiences in various
policy-making capacities.[14]
In this
narrative, Russian military projection may appear more understandable, but
certainly no less dangerous. The smart response, however, is to engage in a
political dialogue. The goal of this dialogue is political partnership, a
return to the immediate post-Cold War sense of joint interest, a promising
development derailed by political misjudgment. The most pressing issue for such
a political dialogue is now over a post-conflict political order in the Middle
East, especially to prevent possible inadvertent clashes in Syria from spilling
over to Europe. The last significant case of Russian US partnership was the
cooperation in 2013 to remove Syrian chemical arms, which President Obama rightly
claims as a major foreign policy achievement. The last
significant case of Russian US partnership was the cooperation in 2013 to
remove Syrian chemical arms, which President Obama rightly claims as a major
foreign policy achievement.
Europe must disengage from dangerous US policy
Unfortunately,
current western strategy, as set out most authoritatively and exhaustively in
the Posture
Statement by the US Central Command, if taken at face value, seems to
accept the risk of new military confrontations. This strategy foresees changing
by projecting military force the policies of three other major powers, not only
Russia but also Iran and Turkey.
In this
strategy, local allies, for all practical purposes Kurds, shall muster the
necessary military force. Pursuant to this strategy, the NATO ally Turkey
becomes an adversary imperative to contain in its deeply rooted threat
perception of the current US main ally in military operations. The source of
this Turkish animosity is of course the internal rifts with the Kurds in Turkey
that Turkish authorities have gravely mismanaged. To make matters worse seen
from the Turkish perspective, the Kurdish forces that the Posture Statement
sees as allies are aligned with the Syrian offspring of the vintage militant
resistance movement against Turkish rule over Kurds, the PKK. Turkey argues
that up until the point US strategy found their Syrian branch useful, the PKK was
universally considered a terrorist organization, albeit with a recent record of
political dialogue with President Erdogan until he broke it off.[15]
Iran, the
Posture Statement portrays as the omnipresent adversary necessary to contain by
force to solve the regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. This description
ignores the complex internal factionalized power struggle in Iran in which the
faction behind Iran’s operations in regional conflicts, the Revolutionary
Guard’s arm for foreign operations, the Quds force, is but one among several.
As a case in point, the Revolutionary Guard supported a different candidate for
President than the incumbent.
A relevant
analogy to understand how an internal factionalized power struggle affects the
foreign policy of a state like Iran is Ian Kershaw’s analyses of Japan on the
eve of World War II. He designates the political system of Japan a factionalized authoritarianism.[16]
The leadership was unable to overcome strong internal pressure groups, which
led to fateful policy mistakes to counter crippling sanctions that had the
unintended consequences of precipitating territorial expansion for alternative
sources of supply, and preemptive attack on US forces in Pearl Harbor. In Iran,
the Revolutionary Guard has a similar role as the nationalistic officers in an Imperial
Japan.
A rule of
thumb is that confrontation strengthens the internal position of such forces
while dialogue and cooperation increases the internal advantage of their
domestic rivals more amenable to cooperation across fault lines in joint
interest. By implication, a more effective US strategy than the confrontational
approach set out in the Posture Statement would be to deliver on the Iranian
expectations. They thought their compromise in the agreement to eliminate the
option of nuclear arms in their nuclear program should ease trade and foreign
investment.
The Posture
Statement also ignores the complexities of Iranian motives. Their foreign
operations may not be a revolutionary project as much as self-defense against
anti-Shia Sunni extremism and terrorism as well as a fear of the imposed regime
change they most recently saw in Libya.
The “Shia Crescent” from Iraq to Lebanon can also be a “strategic depth”
to keep imagined and real enemies away from their borders.[17]
This is a misjudgment, of course, and self-defeating, a course of action that
by provoking fear precipitates countermoves that in their turn Iranians
perceive as a threat. By way of example, the Posture Statement is, for all its
misjudgments and distortions, a serious problem for Iranians, regardless of
faction.
However,
whatever the Posture Statement’s reservations about Turkey and Iran, a regional
political solution, including Kurdish polities in Syria and Iraq, is not
feasible without their cooperation. Put differently, under the constraints
imposed by the current circumstances, the regional political solution that is
the goal of the Posture Statement is what Turkey and Iran can agree, Saudi
Arabia and Israel can accept, and Russia can facilitate. The regional political solution that is the goal of the
Posture Statement is what Turkey and Iran can agree, Saudi Arabia and Israel
can accept, and Russia can facilitate.
Projected binaries. With us or against us.
As of now,
US and western strategy in the Middle East, as set out in the Posture
Statement, is far from this realism. Its upbeat tenor cannot change the fact
that it that it undermines the only feasible option, to invite dialogue across the
faultlines with the goal of partnership in spite of differences.
To the
contrary, the Posture Statement simplifies and distorts complex and dynamic
political conflicts to maintain a clear-cut division of friend and adversary,
right or wrong. This works well as domestic political discourse, but invites
disaster as a foreign policy strategy. For these reasons, the Posture Statement,
taken at face value, is both unrealistic and dangerous. With Clark’s and
Tuchman’s analyses of the ‘sleepwalking’ prelude to World War 1 in mind, it
reminds me of the infamous strategies and entanglements of European countries
that worked only until implemented, when they failed their purpose and instead
produced a disaster.
Therefore, a
pressing European agenda is to disengage from the US Middle East policy as set
out in the Posture Statement and initiate a much more effective political process
towards a post-conflict political order in the Middle East with Russia, along
with the regional powers now engaged in proxy wars, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey
and Israel.
Idealism, realism, optimism
Such an
engagement with Russia will not be easy, as relationships have evolved away
from the nascent partnership. It takes a rare combination of idealism, realism
and optimism. The German statesman and Social Democratic leader Willy Brandt
comes to mind. The combination of idealism, realism and optimism was a hallmark
of his personality. His most recent biographer, the veteran German journalist
Peter Merseberger, tells the story of his dramatic, at times dangerous life and
herculean political effort that only succeeded after years of persistent effort.[18]
He fled Nazi Germany as a leftist revolutionary for Norway and then Sweden, an
experience that turned him into a modern Social Democrat. With his close
advisor and operative Egon Bahr he managed to change first the unrealistic
irredentist German foreign policy and then Soviet foreign policy to make Europe
a more secure place and people’s lives easier.
Their persistent long-term
strategy led eventually to the Helsinki Summit in 1975. There all European
states with the Soviet Union, the US and Canada agreed on principles that may
be summed up, in the words of the Palme Commission in 1982, in which Egon Bahr
was a member, as common
security in the sense that, for all its shortcomings and imperfections,
all states felt more secure thanks to the agreement.
Chancellor Willy Brandt talks to Egon Bahr, in June, 1972.SVEN SIMON/Press Association. All rights reserved.This was not
to last. Only four years after the Helsinki Summit in 1975, the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan in 1979 provoked the west to resort to much the same reactions
as today against Russia’s irredentist policies in the Ukraine. Not only are
these cases of Russian territorial expansion unacceptable by universally agreed
standards for state behavior: they are grave policy mistakes for their
unintended consequences. The costs of confrontation with the west, sanctions, boycotts,
and countervailing rearmament, come on top of the strong resentment generated
by the appearance of scheming, interference, manipulation of social media,
conniving with European anti-democratic populists, and overt violence in
Eastern Ukraine. As a result of such Russian blunders, domestic political
discourse in western countries too easily taints with suspicion any attempt,
such as mine here, to enter into a dialogue in the current climate. As a result of such Russian blunders, domestic political
discourse in western countries too easily taints with suspicion any attempt to enter into a dialogue in the current climate.
The full
implication of this Russian error is now evident in northern Norway, in the
border region to Russia, Finmark. A strong local affinity for their Russian
neighbors after the Red Army liberated them from Nazi Rule and then withdrew, has
been reinforced by current cross-border contacts and cooperation. As a result,
politicians in the region now pressure the Norwegian Government to maintain friendly
relations and defy calls for political confrontation. They have invited
Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and Russia’s President Putin to join them in their
celebration of the anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation during World War
II. Had Russia conducted a policy in the Ukraine, the Baltic countries and
Georgia that produced similar pressure groups for good neighborly relations in
the regions bordering Russia, both Russia and the rest of Europe would have
been much better off. Unfortunately, this is not so.
The question
is what to do about the current escalating political and military tensions? All
parties now need a way out. A rule of thumb is that overt coercion is counterproductive
because it makes compromises less feasible. Put differently, the only thing
Putin cannot do about sanctions is to give in to them. He can appear
conciliatory and reasonable, but not weak. On the other hand, unacceptable
policies must not appear to succeed for lack of reaction, thus reinforcing a
dysfunctional pattern. Neither confrontation nor accommodation work for us with
Russia. With the obvious options unfeasible, for the third option we should
revisit Willy Brandt’s and Egon Bahr’s successful policies for common security
in the early 1970s. They followed certain superintendent policies that would
work today with Russia:
* Dialogue with Russia is not an
alternative to a strong alliance between western democracies. It is the other
way around. Dialogue will not work without the alliance, and the alliance will
not provide security unless we balance force with political dialogue.[19]
* Proposals will only work if all
parties see they enhance their own security.[20]
- * In discussing security, stick
strictly to the issues. Do not raise other issues to try to persuade the other
side that you are right and they are wrong.[21]
Many will
reject these principles out hand for being either unrealistic in their optimism
or naïve in expecting that they will not make the political climate more
oppressive. The recent historical record does not bear these reservations out.
While the
recent confrontations may lead to a new round of nuclear rearmament, the
climate of cooperation that persisted for some time following the end of the
Cold War enabled the removal of Soviet nuclear arms from the new independent
states, among them Belarus and, most significantly, the Ukraine.[22]
It is also doubtful if confrontations as in 1979 and today are the most
effective strategy to reverse the effects of unacceptable territorial expansion.
To the contrary, with lower political tensions, the border issues may become
more resolvable. The principle I have heard argued by a representative of the
EU is that if borders are undisputed they can become permeable and thus lose
their significance.
The 1975 Helsinki Summit
For the
political process to become more effective than currently in the Middle East by
competing western and Russian conveners, European conveners should model a
comprehensive political initiative on the 1975 Helsinki Summit, the Conference
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, comprising all concerned states. Now as
then the political process should have interconnected sub-agendas of common
security, economic cooperation and human rights. In fact, the older President
Bush in the Middle East in the window-of-opportunity after the end of the Cold
War initiated a multilateral process modelled on the European conference.[23]
The reason this process soon foundered was that parties did not follow Willy
Brandt’s and Egon Bahr’s principle of only putting forth proposals that all
parties would see enhanced their security. Instead, the process became a lever
for the parties to the conflicts to force the other side to accept their view.
This does not work.
Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker, Gerald Ford and Bruno Kreisky at the Helsinki Summit, 1975. Wikicommons/ Horst Sturm, German federal Archives. Some rights reserved.
Instead,
the process became a lever for the parties to the conflicts to force the other
side to accept their view. This does not work.
Realistic political process
A political
process is realistic if based on the principles of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr.
Fortunately, the two predominant western narratives of Russia’s intentions,
deflection of internal failure and superpower rivalry, is not born out by a
recent joint report by a Russian and an Iranian think tank.[24]
Quite the contrary.
In this report, Russia and Iran share the western perception of the main
threats: political chaos, extremism and terrorism. Even if they hold the US and
the West responsible for the current threats, by expansion of military force
and regime change, they agree that Washington is a necessary partner in
establishing the new political order. They see the US as weakened, but still
the most powerful state in the world.
Significantly, the report also explicitly addresses the issues where
Russia and Iran diverge. Specifically, Russia wants good relations with Iran’s
defined enemies in the region: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.
In Syria Russia wants a secular state accommodating all religions and groups,
not the current minority regime of Alevites supported by Iran. This shows that
Russia positions itself as a broker of regional political agreements.
The imperative, but
difficult human rights agenda
Unfortunately, in the Russian Iranian report the human rights agenda is missing,
in particular the protection of the individual. In the polarization generated by
conflict, confrontation and war, women and minorities have become especially
vulnerable. We urgently need to develop a human rights discourse that will have
as its effect to improve the protection of individuals. This takes some
critical reconsidering of predominant assumptions.
In the predominant post-Cold War narrative, the west managed to
undermine its Eastern adversaries by imposing human rights on them. This
narrative would, if applied to the current Middle East, effectively block an
all-embracing political process. By contrast, the tenet of Willy Brandt and
Egon Bahr not to challenge adversaries led to the actual improvement of human
rights, if incrementally and gradually.
In his analyses of European ethnic removal and genocide under Hitler and
Stalin, Timothy Snyder shows that the most dangerous circumstances were caused
by state destruction in areas in which Nazi and Soviet rule alternated in the
course of conflict and war.[25]
Snyder maintains that it was in areas where state authority disappeared that most
people were forcefully removed or killed. He calls these especially vulnerable
areas the killing fields.[26]
Therefore, from these observations he infers that the state with the
inherent individual status of citizenship
provided the most effective protection for the individual against the risk of
ethnic removal and genocide. Citizenship he defines as a relationship
between an individual and a sheltering polity.[27]
He argues that even literally murderous dictatorships, such as Hitler’s
Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, were better for the individual when the
alternative was destruction of the state.
Today, a critical look at some of the states that need to inform the
political process that I now discuss shows that they all offer individuals a
varying degree of protection as citizens. This protection, for all its obvious
and very serious shortcomings, still by far exceeds the level of protection
that Snyder found saved lives in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet regime.
Therefore, the protection of individuals as citizens by the various regimes
should form the basis for the regional human rights agenda with the purpose to
improve the actual situations towards democracy and human rights.
Vintage conference diplomacy the solution
This Russian-Iranian report shows that the west can engage adversarial
states in a vintage process of negotiation to agree on a post-conflict
political order, a tradition starting with the Westphalian Peace following the
Thirty Years War,[28]
to the Congress of Vienna following the Napoleonic Wars[29] to
the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the Cold War.[30]
The discourse of such negotiations persuades on two levels: the specific
denotation of the words we employ,
and their subtext of connotation,
tapping into cultural, relational and emotional contexts, which construct
identity.
Conclusion
Unrealistic, this is the predictable argument
against substituting military power for a vintage conference diplomacy. However, holding a policy to be unrealistic
is a self-fulfilling assumption because it blocks the first step in making a
course of action feasible, the effort to make it possible. In fact, their
European political project of transformation appeared no less impossible in the
initial phase when Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr defied seemingly overwhelming
resistance.
None of the current western policies is more realistic as strategy than
a conference diplomacy. The conference discourse is complementary to a more
feasible military strategy than currently set out by the US Central Command by combining
deterrence with limited security enforcement; in fact, such a military strategy
may prove an indispensable backing.
Bibliography
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Verlag, 2013.
—. "Ostwärts Und Nichts Vergessen!
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List, Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH. Berlin, 2013 (1989).
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Fischer, Benjamin B. "A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War
Scare." CIA.
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Intelligence, 1999.
Kaye, D.D. Beyond the
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2011.
Kershaw, I. Fateful Choices:
Ten Decisions That Changed the World 1940-1941. Penguin Books, Limited,
2008.
Kissinger, H. A World
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Houghton Mifflin, 1973.
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Christian-Peter Hanelt, Bertelsmann Stiftung. "A Gulf Conference for
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Lyttelton, Adrian. "Mad Men?". Survival 53, no. 1 (February-March 2011 2011): 153-66.
Merseburger, P. Willy Brandt:
1913-1992. Visionär Und Realist. Pantheon, 2013.
Perry, W. My Journey at the
Nuclear Brink. Stanford University Press, 2015.
Snyder, T. Black Earth: The
Holocaust as History and Warning. Random House Incorporated, 2015.
—. Bloodlands: Europe
between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2013.
Talbott, S. The Russia Hand: A
Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy. Random House Publishing Group, 2007.
Tuchman, B.W. The Guns of
August: The Outbreak of World War I; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series.
Random House Publishing Group, 2009 (1962).
[1] For an analysis of how mental
models affect decisions R.J. Heuer and
C.S. Intelligence, Psychology of
Intelligence Analysis (Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1999).
[2] C.M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in
1914 (Allen Lane, 2012). P. 226 – 235
[3] B.W. Tuchman, The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World
War I; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series (Random House Publishing
Group, 2009 (1962)).
[4] R.F. Kennedy and
A.M. Schlesinger, Thirteen Days: A Memoir
of the Cuban Missile Crisis (W. W. Norton, 2011). Kindle loc. 126
[5] This was the dangerous logic behind the crisis
in 1983 Benjamin B.
Fischer, "A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare," (CIA). Most succinctly, this logic was
presented to Egon Bahr by the Soviet nuclear arms negotiator Kwizinski: You can
have as many Pershing missiles as you want (new controversial nuclear missile),
we are prepared to circumvent them. Whoever pushes the button
first has an advantage. E. Bahr, »Das Musst Du Erzählen«: Erinnerungen an Willy
Brandt (Propyläen Verlag, 2013). P. 187. The Soviet War Scare of 1983 has also
been confirmed to me in conversations with a staff member of the US National
Security Council under President Reagan and a close advisor to the German
Federal Chancellor Helmuth Kohl
[6] This is the assumed goal of offensive Soviet
and then Russian strategies. In the Middle East, I have heard the same argument
by both Iranian and Israeli representatives.
[7] http://russiancouncil.ru/common/upload/RIAC-IRAS-Russia-Iran-Report29-en.pdf
Conversations
with Russian and Iranian researchers.
[8] Current US military operations have an
operational coordination with Russian forces
http://www.centcom.mil/ABOUT-US/POSTURE-STATEMENT/
[9] T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin
(Basic Books, 2013).
[10] Conversations in Minsk, 2018
[11] Fischer.
[12] W. Perry, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
(Stanford University Press, 2015). Kindle Loc. 2936
[13] Conversations with Russian researchers.
[14] Perry. Chapter 20. See also the memoirs of
President Clinton’s close Russia advisor, Strobe Talbott S. Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential
Diplomacy (Random House Publishing Group, 2007).
[15] Conversation with Turkish
researchers
[16] I. Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed
the World 1940-1941 (Penguin Books, Limited, 2008). P. 302. For a brief presentation of Kershaw’s
argument see Adrian Lyttleton’s review Adrian
Lyttelton, "Mad Men?," Survival
53, no. 1 (2011).
[17] Conversations in Teheran
[18] P. Merseburger, Willy Brandt: 1913-1992. Visionär Und
Realist (Pantheon, 2013).
[19] W. Brandt, Erinnerungen, 1 ed. (Berlin: List,
Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH. Berlin, 2013 (1989)). P. 187
E. Bahr, "Ostwärts
Und Nichts Vergessen! Kooperation Statt Konfrontation," (Hamburg: VSA:
Verlag Hamburg, 2012). P. 88-90
[20] Close advisor to Egon Bahr
[21] Close advisor to Egon Bahr
[22] Perry. Chapter 13
[23] D.D. Kaye, Beyond the Handshake: Multilateral
Cooperation in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, 1991-1996 (Columbia
University Press, 2012). On the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe as model p. 86
[24] http://russiancouncil.ru/common/upload/RIAC-IRAS-Russia-Iran-Report29-en.pdf
[25] T. Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and
Warning (Random House Incorporated, 2015). Kindle location 3623 For a short
version, this interview in Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/timothy-snyder-ueber-babi-jar-und-den-holocaust-interview-a-1113924.html
[26] Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Kindle location 96, 129, 232
[27] Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Kindle Location 3788
[28] M. Axworthy and P. Milton, "A Westphalian
Peace for the Middle East. Why an Old Framework Could Work," Foreign
Affairs, no. Oct. (2016).
[29] H. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh,
and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (Houghton Mifflin, 1973).
[30] Christian Koch,
Gulf Research Center Foundation and Christian-Peter Hanelt, Bertelsmann
Stiftung, "A Gulf Conference for Security and Cooperation Could Bring
Peace and Greater Security to the Middle
East," in Gulf Paper (Gulf
Research Center, 2015)