"Munich calumny": Elena Panina on the results of the Euro-Atlantic security conference

МОСКВА, 22 февраля 2022, Институт РУССТРАТ.   The course of discussions at the main Euro-Atlantic security conference confirmed that whipping up panic over the fictional "invasion of Ukraine" remains the main strategy of the collective West in the confrontation with the Russian Federation on global stability. What has been said, what has not been said, and what tasks are they trying to solve in this way? Read more in the column of Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute. The start of the 58th Munich Security Conference coincided with the wailing of sirens warning about the shelling of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donetsk and Lugansk, and the second day of discussions ended together with the exercises of strategic deterrence, which were held under the personal supervision of the Presidents of Russia and Belarus. The events do not seem formally connected, but the contrast impressed. While the "one point of view club" tells itself about Russia, it has to look for answers to real security challenges on the continent. For analysts who know how to understand the meanings and read between the lines, Moscow's "strategic silence" about the anti-Russian rhetoric parade in Munich is no less eloquent than Vladimir Putin's speech 15 years ago. In it, the President of Russia outlined the main threats of the emerging unipolar world, which now has to be countered. Judging by how many times the outgoing chairman of the forum, Wolfgang Ischinger, complained that Russia was absent from the conference this year for the first time in two decades at the official level, he himself understands this well. Three days of debates in Munich recorded the obvious: security in Europe is understood differently by everyone. And no analytics can hide this. Dialogue with sanctions in the bosom The very content of the conference, almost entirely devoted to Ukraine, was expected to be reduced to a repetition of what has passed: the latest dates of the "invasion of Ukraine" and sanctions against Moscow were discussed. The final formula was also edited in advance - to conduct dialogue with Russia, while preparing "the most serious sanctions" against it. This was repeated by the US Vice President Kamala Harris, who debuted at the forum, the G7 foreign ministers who gathered during the conference, the NATO Secretary General, the President of the European Commission. It doesn't make sense to retell the details, we hear them from every corner. Even calling it a new "Munich conspiracy" is difficult - they have been conspiring for a long time, rather it was a "Munich calumny". Well-known animators worked as the opening act, and it was informative in the sense that it became clear what they would do in the near future. Thus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for whom activity in Ukraine is a chance to wash himself clean for carousing during COVID quarantine and to establish relations with the EU after Brexit, promised to close the attraction of capital in London's financial markets for companies from the Russian Federation and reveal, as he put it, "Russian companies' nesting dolls to find the final beneficiary”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is ready to set new dates for the "invasion of Ukraine" in order to maintain the "panic nerve" when it begins to subside. He called the explosions in Donbass "part of the scenario of Russia's false provocations that could lead to aggression against Ukraine”, and made it clear that he would not change his tone before meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Well, everyone was impressed, even patrons, by the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, who spoke about the steps to prepare for the revision of the country's nuclear-free status. It is not for nothing that the authors of the report on the state of security in the world, presented before the forum, talked about "learned helplessness" (the term itself was introduced by psychologists, experimenting on animals). Forum analysts urged modern leaders to abandon this type of behaviour. They say, "every month a new crisis dominates the news, creating the feeling that a wave of these crises is about to overwhelm us”, which is why it is so important to "reverse the situation - to abandon helplessness." It does not seem, however, that the call has been heard. The US intelligence services promise new horrors like the millions of refugees who are about to pour into Poland, and politicians convince: panic tactics are a weapon, and it works well. As one of the senior representatives recently told CNN in an interview, the administration of US President Joseph Biden believes that "some of our revelations have already caught the Russians by surprise and forced them to reconsider their plans." What are the plans? Where did the information come from? Intelligence sources, interception of negotiations, in general - from where it is necessary… Those rare analysts and journalists who still dare to analyse the meanings and goals of the panic that has ruled the world for the second month, in turn, operate with the term "alarmism". It is also from the field of psychology - it is used to denote an anxious or panicked emotional state that has become a systemic reaction to what is happening or may happen. In general, something like a side effect of using panic as a weapon. Where to look for compromises? With the help of such forums as the one that went on for three days in Munich, you will not find them. This panic tactic, built on unannounced intelligence (the American version), or “highly likely” (the British version), such meetings are turned into a strategy. There is no alternative, they say. Nevertheless, fresh ideas were very much expected - at least from those who tried to find compromise options before the conference. Alas, real compromises are ill-suited: the conference has been and remains an act of transatlantic cohesion, at which reports are heard and exams for obedience are sat. Moreover, the main European negotiator with the Kremlin, French President Emmanuel Macron, did not come. And his cautious ally, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, preferred not to take risks in such a friendly environment. Nevertheless, it is worth naming ideas around which a compromise can be built. It is not known to what extent they were discussed on the sidelines of Munich, but in a number of reputable publications on the eve of the forum on European security they were uttered. From this we can conclude that the comprehension of Russian concerns among professionals is still going on. In particular, Pierre Lellouche, the former head of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, in his column in the French Figaro describes a possible way out of the current geopolitical impasse in Europe. Firstly, a moratorium on NATO expansion is being announced, and for a long time, for 20 years, in order to remove Russian concerns, while the principle of open doors itself is not canceled. Secondly, Russia is withdrawing troops from the borders of Ukraine, while a new system of treaties limiting the deployment of nuclear and conventional weapons in Europe is being discussed instead of the old one, which has completely collapsed. Thirdly: in the territories where conflicts are frozen, elections are held under international control. Fourthly: a return to the Helsinki agreements of 1975 with their modernisation, which opens the way to cooperation in the political, economic and public spheres. Of course, this whole system of measures will require additional guarantees for Russia, and literally on every point, already due to the fact that the threshold of distrust is too high today. Moscow is well aware of what the Alliance's "open door policy" translates into. And the fact that such "international control over elections" in regions opposed to Kiev will have to be discussed in detail. This is not to mention that there is no response from the West to the Russian request for security guarantees yet. But, in any case, this is the path of diplomacy, and this is fundamental. There are still a number of fundamental things that were not included in the official discussions of the conference, but were actively discussed on the eve of the forum. First of all, we are talking about the neutral status of Ukraine, which can become an acceptable solution to the situation. It probably shouldn't be called "Finlandisation", I think it's worth working on the term. They are not born neutral — every country that received such a status went its own way. Even about Switzerland, the reference in this sense, Yves Rossier, the ex-ambassador of this country to Russia, in a discussion before Munich noted that they also did not choose neutrality, they were given it in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, following the results of the Napoleonic Wars. In a word, neutrality is a product of non-resistance of the parties. Professor of international history from the Geneva Institute of International Studies, Finnish analyst Jussi Hanhimäki, put it this way in an interview with the Swiss press: Finland's neutrality after World War II worked because the USSR and the United States agreed to it with NATO. This has become a consensus for Finnish society for a long time. Ukraine has its own situation: Russia and the West, perhaps, could agree, but the Ukrainian leadership rejects this option. Perhaps that is why Kiev is reacting to it so acutely: the desire to revise the Budapest Memorandum and revive the nuclear status is very similar to attempts to prevent such an option. There are other basic issues that will need to be discussed in order to outline a way out of the confrontation. As the director of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) Thomas Gomart notes, Russia and the West have different assessments of the period after 1990. For Europe, this is the end of the Cold war, the division of the continent and, in general, victory; for Russia, this is the time when the West took advantage of its weakening and began to expand NATO and the EU. To find a new balance, to outline the contours of a "new detente" is a serious challenge, both strategic and conceptual, the director of IFRI believes. However, here again we will have to agree on concepts: detente in the style of "a la Gorbachev" for Russia resulted in unilateral concessions to the West, which, among other things, led to the current crisis. The challenge, in fact, is to understand: there will be no return to the realities of the 90s. Ukraine became the core of a new crisis, but it was brewing without it. Without conflicts, not only with Russia, but also with other countries, as well as within the Alliance itself: NATO has nowhere further to expand. To start talking about all this out loud is also a challenge. Another challenge is the question of how to exercise the right to alliances and sovereignty in a world whose globalisation could not be stopped even by a pandemic. In short, to clear up the rubble that was piled up after the Cold War, to get out of a new confrontation is not a job for one conference. Another thing is that in the "very first detente", Brezhnev’s, most of the work before the start of the process was done behind the scenes. As for conferences, they are unlikely to be effective as long as diplomacy is replaced by manipulative work with public opinion. What are the implications here? This is an attempt to convince oneself of infallibility. When an idea, instead of seizing the masses, seizes the apparatus bosses, discussions are replaced by reports on the work done and the ostentatious unity that grows stronger as we move into nowhere. Elena Panina, Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute