Expert: the European Security Architecture Restructuring Will Directly Affect the Interests of Moldova

Sergiu CEBAN  The geostrategic situation on the continent is rapidly losing its predictability, exposing European countries to high risks and depriving them of the ability to effectively cope with the pressing challenges of our time. We are currently witnessing a powerful strategic confrontation between influential international players building the so-called centers of power around themselves. Endless sanctions confrontations and active trade wars are becoming more intense, escalating the struggle for energy and raw materials, as well as for influence in various regions of the world. Experts believe that the US and Russia’s withdrawal from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles brought the destruction process of the arms control system in Europe to the finish line. Thus, the strategic stability on the continent was practically lost, and European states found themselves in conditions of a potential large-scale war. Fortunately, such course of events is so far considered only as a theoretical probability. At the same time, it makes it extremely relevant to launch a complex dialogue about the future security architecture. Along with “clearing” the Euro-Atlantic space from the Cold War mechanisms of military-political cooperation, a lot of new conceptual ideas appear suggesting various forms of the European security system restructuring. Some politicians associate this process with the broadest possible coverage of the Eurasian space according to the Lisbon-Vladivostok principle. Others consider it crucial to preserve current demarcation with Russia along the entire perimeter of its borders, even to the point of leaving the Kremlin on the periphery of global processes. Recent statements by Kurt Volker, former US State Department special representative for settlement in Ukraine, confirm that Washington does not intend to reckon with Moscow’s position and has set about building an adjusted version of the European security system using patterns of the second half of the 20th century. For example, he proposed changing the conditions for admission to NATO for post-Soviet countries with unresolved conflicts on their territories, allegedly inspired by Moscow, in order to prevent their rapprochement with the North Atlantic Alliance. According to the US diplomat, due to the fact that NATO members are afraid of accepting new members because of a potential military clash with Russia, the alliance could make an exception in terms of applying the notorious “Fifth Article” to separatist territories and support their peaceful reintegration. This, in turn, should deprive Russia of incentives to continue supporting these enclaves. Recent US decision to leave the Open Skies Treaty further confirms that Washington’s withdrawal from certain security agreements is also considered through the prism of frozen conflicts. In doing so, NATO made a statement that Moscow should abolish its restrictions on inspection flights over Kaliningrad and near its border with Georgia, and in exchange for this, the United States will be ready to reconsider its decision to withdraw from this agreement. Aware of the fact that processes on the European continent were set in motion, the closest neighbors of Moldova unambiguously push Chisinau to the need to make fundamental decisions on their security. This April, the former Romanian representative at NATO headquarters in Brussels, retired general Virgil Balaceanu, said that the Republic of Moldova could at some point become a threat to Romania and the North Atlantic Alliance, although the threat would come not from the country itself, but from the existing stronghold of the Russian Federation in the region – Transdniestria. In this regard, European experts specializing in Eastern Europe have launched the idea of ​​creating new directions within the framework of the EU neighborhood policy by introducing security aspects into the common agenda with the Eastern Partnership countries. According to analysts, if Europe really wants to become more instrumental, ambitious and strategically autonomous, then now’s the time to demonstrate its proactivity - at least towards the Eastern Partnership, with its next summit scheduled for June 2020. Analyzing the ongoing processes, we can confidently say that the Republic of Moldova, one way or another, will be affected by the complex changes that all countries of the European space have to go through. And in this sense, the unsettled relationship with the left bank creates additional risk factors, since it not only keeps the republic in a state of strategic uncertainty, but also makes it another platform for a potential geopolitical struggle. In this regard, it is important to understand that the notorious geopolitical factor will continue to be actively exploited in the life of the Moldovan state. As you know, every political force in Moldova interprets the external factor in its own way, having broken in pieces the potentially consolidated identity of the population and having made the geopolitical subject trite in almost three decades. However, at the current stage, in the conditions of global instability and chronic inability of the Moldovan elites to lead the country out of a long-term political crisis, the positions of external development partners have a decisive influence. Therefore, there is no doubt that the conceptual solutions that define the contours of Moldova’s future will be actively promoted by external actors in order to construct a new security architecture on the continent. And it is not necessarily that these decisions will take into account the objective interests of a small unstable post-Soviet country. The reason for this lies on the surface - contemporary Moldova itself is extremely far from the ability to understand and clearly articulate its objective interests.