With Putin, the West Needs To Go Back to the Rules of the Cold War

Russian President Vladimir Putin is provoking Europe and the U.S. with his movement of troops along the border with Ukraine. The West needs to act, with deterrence but also with gestures toward deescalation. That worked quite well for many decades.

Russia is building up troops on the border with Ukraine. Are they part of a maneuver, as the Kremlin is claiming? Is another escalation imminent? In any case, they are a provocation par excellence — and a test. Moscow is testing the West under the new president, Joe Biden.

There is only one right answer: decisiveness. If the West, in general, and the U.S., in particular, make clear that they will not just sit back and watch any further encroachment, the gents in the Kremlin will finally understand that the costs of seizing more territory from Ukraine would far outweigh the benefits. What Winston Churchill once said may still be true, that Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But even in the case of this big question mark, it remains true a war would not be in Russia’s interests. At least not right now.

This realization cannot lead the West — especially not Europe — to just let things run their course. Russia will continue to try to instigate unrest in Ukraine, the eastern NATO countries, the Baltics, and maybe in Poland. As it did during the Cold War, the West should respond simultaneously with deterrence and signs of willingness to deescalate.

Deterrence could look something like the following: Washington threatens Moscow with additional weapon transports to Kyiv if Russian soldiers remain on the border. At the same time, NATO should announce an increase in the number of Rapid Deployable Corps. They are intended to be able to be deployed on NATO’s eastern front within days. Currently, their numbers are limited to 5,000 people — too few to protect a NATO member from a Russian attack.

The flexing of muscle should be followed by an attempt to revive the old “Normandy Format.” In 2014, Angela Merkel, France’s then President François Hollande, and the Russian and Ukrainian presidents met to deescalate the situation in Ukraine. The U.S. has to spearhead this format today.

The goal would be an initial deescalation of the current situation to, in a second step, reduce the explosive potential of the conflict as a whole. That is possible if Russians and Ukrainians, but also Americans and Europeans, account for the others’ interdependent needs — and are open to compromise.

The status quo can only be changed when it is recognized. That, too, was a rule during the Cold War and the era of détente. And it wasn’t the worst one, either.