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46 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation comprehensive clarification of the former Soviet space’s collocation within the European security order, giving NATO- Russia relations a schizophrenic character. Although the descent into a new Cold War is not a foregone conclusion, the current crisis proves that, without a solution to this fundamental issue, the alliance and Moscow might continue to drift apart. While the European Union appears unable to play any meaningful role in the current strategic setting, the alliance retains a powerful incentive to rediscover the mantra of the 1967 Harmel Report and to engage Moscow in comprehensive negotiations about a shattered post- Cold War security architecture. The roots of NATO-Russia grievances (1989-1991) Relations between NATO and Russia plummeted in the aftermath of the 2013 Euromaidan revolution in Kiev with the Russian Federation rapidly securing control of Crimea and a violent armed conflict between Russian-backed separatists and the new Ukrainian government erupting in the mineral-rich Donbass region. Although after the collapse of the first Minsk protocol of September 2014, the second Minsk agreement of February 2015 temporarily succeeded in bringing hostilities in Eastern Ukraine to an end, Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and increasing support for separatist forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics during the spring and the summer confirmed that the former Soviet space’s collocation in the European political order has become a fundamental source of contention between the alliance and the Kremlin to enforce conflicting strategic visions on issues that were left unresolved after the demise of the East-West division. More specifically, these events are the latest manifestations of an underlying tension which first erupted in the early 2000s, when a wave of protests in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, together with Washington’s calls for NATO’s ongoing enlargement to the former Soviet space, were viewed in Moscow as a betrayal of commitments that the West had undertaken in 1989-1990.
After Maidan: Re-Starting NATO-Russia Relations 47 Then, as the Federal Republic of Germany pressed with American support for a fast-track towards unification – following chancellor Helmut Kohl’s abrupt announcement at the end of November 1989 of a ten-point programme towards the creation of confederative structures in Germany – Soviet leaders called for the establishment of new European institutions from the Atlantic to the Urals and for the creation of a “common European home” that would overcome the continent’s division, while containing a reunited German state 1 . While striking a chord with Britain and France and with part of the West German government, particularly Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, the Kremlin’s proposals were rejected by the United States, which perceived a pan- European institution as too preponderant for securing a multilateral governance of Germany and the preservation of the transatlantic link. By contrast, Washington, with the Federal government’s support, demanded Moscow’s consent to a united Germany’s unrestricted membership in NATO, while providing the Kremlin with vague assurances that the alliance’s jurisdiction would not be shifted eastward from its present position 2 . As 1 On Moscow’s common European vision see N. Malcolm, “The ‘Common European Home’ and Soviet European Policy”, International Affairs, vol. 65, no. 4, Autumn 1989, pp. 659-676. See also H. Adomeit, “East Germany: NATO’s First Eastward Enlargement”, in A. Bebler (ed.), NATO at 60: The Post-Cold War Enlargement and the Alliance’s Future, Fairfax, IOS Press, 2010, p. 17; R.T. Gray, S. Wilke (eds.), German Unification and Its Discontents: Documents from the Peaceful Revolution, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1996, p. xlvii. 2 M.E. Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 107-111, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/ opinion/30sarotte.html?pagewanted=all. Of the same author see also “Not One Inch Eastward? Bush, Baker, Kohl, Genscher, Gorbachev, and the Origin of Russian Resentment toward NATO Enlargement in February 1990”, Diplomatic History, vol. 34, no. 1, January 2010, pp. 119-140; “A Broken Promise? What the West Told Moscow About NATO Expansion in 1990”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 5, September/October 2014, pp. 90-97; and “Enlarging NATO, Expanding Confusion”, The New York Times, 30 November 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/30sarotte.html?pagewanted=all. For a similar account see J.M. Goldgeier, Not Whether But when: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1999, p. 15. See also P.K. Hämäläinen, Uniting Germany: Actions and Reactions, Boulder, Co., Westview Press, 1994, pp. 114-116. See also G.H.W. Bush, B. Scowcroft, A World Transformed, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, pp. 240-242.
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