As Putin threatens, desperation and hedging at the Munich conference
As the leaders of the West gathered in Munich over the past three days, President Vladimir V. Putin had a message for them: Nothing they have done so far – sanctions, condemnation, attempts at containment – would undermine the intentions of today's world. disrupt, can change. order.
Russia scored its first major victory in Ukraine in almost a year, taking the destroyed city of Avdiivka, at a huge human cost to both sides. The bodies strewn along the roads may have been a warning of a new direction in the two-year-old country. war. The suspicious death of Aleksei Navalny in a remote Arctic prison made it increasingly clear that Putin will not tolerate dissent as the election approaches.
And the US discovery, revealed in recent days, that Mr Putin may be planning to deploy a nuclear weapon in space – a bomb designed to wipe out the connective tissue of global communications if Mr Putin goes too far driven – was a powerful reminder of his ability to hit back at his opponents with the asymmetrical weapons that remain a major source of his power.
In Munich, the mood was both apprehensive and apprehensive, as leaders faced confrontations they had not expected. Warnings about Putin's possible next steps have been accompanied by growing concerns from Europe that the country could soon be abandoned by the United States, the single power that has been at the heart of its defense strategy for 75 years.
Barely an hour went by at the Munich Security Conference where the conversation was not about whether Congress would fail to find a way to finance new weapons for Ukraine, and if so, how long the Ukrainians would hold out. can persevere. And while Donald Trump's name was rarely mentioned, the prospect of whether he would make good on his threats to withdraw from NATO and let Russia “do whatever they want” with allies hung over much of the dialogue the hand.
Yet European leaders also seemed to sense how slowly they had responded to the new reality. European plans to rebuild their own armed forces for a new era of confrontation were moving in the right direction, leader after leader insisted, but they added that it would take five years or more – time they may not have if Russia Ukraine and overwhelms Mr. Trump. undermines the alliance.
The somber mood was in stark contrast to that of a year ago, when many of the same participants — intelligence chiefs and diplomats, oligarchs and analysts — believed Russia could be on the brink of strategic defeat in Ukraine. There was talk of how many months it would take to push the Russians back to the borders that existed before their invasion on February 24, 2022. Now that optimism seemed premature at best, somewhat delusional at worst.
Nikolai Denkov, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, argued that Europeans should learn three lessons from the cascade of problems. The war in Ukraine was not just about the gray areas between Europe and Russia, he argued, but “whether the democratic world that we value can be defeated, and that is now well understood in Europe.”
Second, European countries have realized that they must join forces in military, and not just economic, efforts to build their own deterrence, he said. And third, they had to separate Ukraine's urgent needs for munitions and air defense from longer-term strategic objectives.
But given the imperialist rhetoric of Russia's leaders, Mr. Denkov said, “the long term in this case means three to five and a maximum of 10 years — it is really urgent.”
U.S. officials obtained trusted assurances that Washington's leadership and commitment remained unchanged. But they were unable to outline an action plan for Ukraine when Congress was still budgeting for weapons, and they struggled to explain how to achieve lasting peace after the war in Gaza.
At the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, the conference stage where Mr. Putin warned in 2007 that NATO's eastern expansion posed a threat to Russia, Navalny's widow made an emotional appearance on Thursday, hours after her husband's death, reminding those gathered that Putin would “bear responsibility” for that.
But there was little discussion about what the West might do — almost every available sanction has been imposed, and it was unclear whether the United States and Europeans would be prompted to seize the roughly $300 billion in assets that Russia unwisely invested in had left abroad before the invasion. When a senior US official was asked how the United States would fulfill Mr Biden's 2021 promise of “devastating consequences” for Russia if Mr Navalny were to die in prison – a statement made in the presence of Mr Putin at a meeting in Geneva – official shrugged.
Some attendees found the pledges of the leaders who showed up uninspiring, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Italian Institute for International Affairs. “Kamala Harris empty, Scholz mushy, Zelensky tired,” she said of the US vice president, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky. “Many words, no concrete commitments.”
“I feel disappointed and somewhat let down” by the debate here, said Steven E. Sokol, president of the American Council on Germany. “There was a lack of urgency and uncertainty about the way forward, and I did not see a strong show of European solidarity.” He and others noted that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was not present.
What was most striking about the talks on Russia was the widespread recognition that Europe's military modernization plans, first announced nearly two decades ago, were moving far too slowly to meet the threat Russia now poses.
“European defense used to be a possibility, but now it is a necessity,” said Claudio Graziano, a retired general from Italy and former president of the European Union Military Committee. But saying the right words is not the same as doing what they demand.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary general, along with a range of defense and intelligence officials, repeatedly referred to recent intelligence conclusions that in three to five years Mr. Putin could try to test NATO's credibility by using one of the to attack countries on Russia's borders. , most likely a small Baltic nation.
But the warning did not seem to lead to a very urgent discussion about how to prepare for that eventuality. The conference celebrated the fact that two-thirds of alliance members have now achieved the target of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense – an increase from just a handful of countries a decade ago. But some recognized that this goal is now seriously outdated, and they immediately spoke about the political barriers to spending more.
Even Mr. Stoltenberg warned that Europe remained dependent on the United States and its nuclear umbrella, and that other NATO countries would be unable to close the gap if the United States continued to withhold military aid from Ukraine.
But the prospect of less American involvement in NATO as the United States focused on other challenges from China or in the Middle East focused minds.
“We must achieve more” in Europe, Boris Pistorius, Germany's defense minister, said at the conference. But when asked whether his country's military spending should be closer to 4 percent of Germany's economic output, he hesitated to commit, as this is the first year in decades that Berlin has met NATO's target of 2 percent will spend on the army.
“Maybe we will reach 3 percent or maybe even 3.5 percent,” he said finally. “It depends on what's happening in the world.” When his boss, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, took the stage, he said that “Europeans must do much more for our security, now and in the future,” but steered clear of details. He said he was “urgently campaigning” in other European capitals to boost military spending.
But the fundamental divide was still visible: when Europeans thought Russia would integrate into European institutions, they stopped planning and spending because they might be wrong. And when Russia's attitude changed, they underreacted.
Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, said Europe must strengthen its defenses “because what really provokes an aggressor is weakness.” Then Mr Putin could risk attacking a country like hers in an attempt to break NATO. “But if we do more for our defense, it will have a deterrent effect. People around Putin would say you can't win. Don't wear this.”
What was important for Europeans to remember was that this hot war in Ukraine was close and could spread quickly, Ms. Kallas said. “So if you think you're far away, you're not far away. It can happen very, very quickly.”
Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister of embattled Ukraine, was more blunt. “I think our friends and partners were late in waking up their own defense industries,” he said. “And we will have to pay for this with our lives in 2024 to give your defense industry time to ramp up production.”