Germany- Russia: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that Russian President Medvedev should discuss his security initiative “within the framework” of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, RIA Novosti reported. Merkel said, “President Medvedev and I spoke by telephone last week and we reiterated that we should discuss his initiative on partnership in the security sphere.”
Note: The Russians are proposing a new European security treaty that rivals and might eventually replace NATO, but with Russia, Germany and France as the new leaders. The Germans plus some of the original NATO members appear to want more balance in their foreign relations, meaning they appear to be seeking to reduce their subservience to the US by establishing offsetting relations with Russia.
While that might seem odd, that is the way it looks. Even stranger is that the US is presented as supporting European NATO’s call for a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from western Europe, potentially leaving Russia and Frances as the only states possessing nuclear weapons in Europe. Of course, the French will not dismantle their nuclear weapons, even while they support withdrawal of American weapons.
US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years have forced the maturation of relations and attitudes in Europe and Asia. The security regime of the post-World War II era is finally ending, albeit slowly and a decade after it should have ended.
US strategic planners need to be thinking about the implications of being first among equals, more than of being the only superpower.
