Russia and NATO: Threats worse than the Cold War legacy

[Casper]

The issue of creating a system of European security dates back several centuries. The latest, most stable iteration of this process was a bipolar system of international relations. Some experts believe that the Warsaw Pact, which disbanded 20 years ago, was a key element of the European subsystem. The counterweight in this difficult equilibrium was NATO. However, I think that military stability in Europe and beyond was guaranteed by the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Warsaw Pact was a Soviet instrument whose only purpose was to maintain order among its allies. This was proved by détente, because the two military-political blocs began a constructive dialogue only after the superpowers began one.

The end of détente was brought about by the inability of the Soviet Union (not the Warsaw Pact) to continue counteracting the growing influence of the United States, not NATO. The Soviet Union had either to switch to a posture of aggressive confrontation or give it up altogether, and this is what happened in the late 1980s. The Warsaw Pact’s disintegration became part of this process. Therefore, the recent proposal to expand dialogue between the military-political blocs with the participation of Russia and the United States – i.e. between the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and NATO – should not be viewed as an end in itself.

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