14 January 2022 The Guardian WeeklySpotlight 17
So high have the stakes
been set by Russia over
the future security
architecture of Europe,
so imminent is the threat of war in
Ukraine, that the three meetings due
between Russia and the west this
week have drawn comparison with
great west-Russia exchanges of the
past : Yalta in 1945, Paris in 1960 –
over Berlin – and Reykjavík in 1986.
Vladimir Putin would probably
revel in these comparisons. Indeed,
the very scheduling of the bilateral
security meeting with the US on
Monday, a rare meeting of the Nato-
Russian Council on Wednesday
and an Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
meeting on Ukraine on Thursday,
have been seen by some as a mistake.
Joe Biden has clearly taken the
view that the risks of being seen to
be rewarding Putin are outweighed
by the need for dialogue. Not to
talk would be to feed the Russian
narrative that the west is not
prepared even to listen.
The meeting agenda s were subtly
Reagan’s successor, George HW
Bush, promised no more chaotic
Reykjavíks, but in Malta in 1989,
after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he
too was captured by Gorbachev’s
sense of history unfolding. The
latter was betrayed the next evening
in Brussels when Bush gave Helmut
Kohl the green light for German
unifi cation, opening the argument
about Nato’s expansion eastwards.
Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin
met 18 times, leading Yeltsin to
describe a cold peace. Barack Obama
signed a new strategic arms control
treaty, Start, in 2010 with Dmitry
Medvedev, but Putin’s return in 2012
as premier saw the reset fi zzle out.
In essence, the dispute about the
wisdom of dialogue comes down to
whether Russia is seen to be driven
by insecurity or expansionism.
With the Biden administration,
the expectation was that this week’s
discussions would be far more
structured, predictable and scripted.
US messaging, bolstered by the
UK, has been carefully framed,
and seems well coordinated
with Europe: expansion of Nato
was inherent in the Nato-Russia
Founding Act signed by Yeltsin in- No country can determine
another country’s foreign alliances,
as Russia agreed in the Helsinki
Final Act 1975, and again in the
Budapest memorandum in 1994.
The test, according to Evelyn
Farkas, a former US deputy assistant
secretary of defence, will be
whether Putin saw this week’s talks
as political theatre, a moment to
issue an ultimatum, or whether he
sanction ed Russia getting into the
weeds, and start ed to negotiate.
Few were holding out much hope
for the latter.
PATRICK WINTOUR IS THE GUARDIAN’S
DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
ANALYSIS
RUSSIA
Ukraine talks
Can history help
fi nd a path to
rapprochement
with Putin?
By Patrick Wintour
diff erent. While the west wanted to
focus on the sovereignty of Ukraine,
and missile placement, Russia
expected a response to its threefold
demands: withdrawal of US nuclear
weapons from Europe; removal of
Nato forces close to Russian borders;
the legal permanent renunciation of
Nato membership for Ukraine and
Georgia, to curb its enlargement.
Some western offi cials feared they
had been packaged to be rejected.
In Ukraine there has been concern
that dialogue with Russia on the
future security architecture of
Europe will be taken as vindication
by Putin. From Putin’s perspective,
he has made progress, and can make
more. It is the bread and butter
of diplomacy to judge whether to
“parley” – as Churchill put it – with
an adversary, or to sit tight and wait.
Never is that judgment more acute
than in the case of Russia.
The cold war US diplomat George
Kennan said Moscow saw security
“only in [a] patient but deadly
struggle for total destruction of [the]
rival power, never in compacts and
compromises with it”. The solution
was patience and containment.
Henry Kissinger argued that
Russia probed for weaknesses,
“kicking all the doors and seeing
which fell off their hinges”.
Most politicians’ instinct is
often to trust personal charm.
Churchill once said the world’s
problems could be solved if he
could meet Joseph Stalin once a
week. John F Kennedy argued it
was better to “meet at the summit
than at the brink”, something the
US tried more regularly after the
Cuban missile crisis. At the 1986
Reykjavík conference, a rapport
between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev led them to the brink of
abandoning nuclear weapons.▲ Putin , left , shakes hands with Biden
in Geneva, Switzerland, 2021
▲ Gorbachev , left , with Reagan at the
Reykjavik summit in 1986▲ Churchill , left , with Roosevelt,
centre , and Stalin at Yalta in 1945Europe
Some
western
offi cials
feared
Russia had
packaged
its threefold
demands to
be rejected