Vilnius vs. Potsdam
The Cold War (which many experts consider the Third World War) ended in 1989–1991 with a clear victory for the Euro-Atlantic civilization. With the end of the war came the end of the political world order that emerged during the Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945) conferences. At least, that’s what the West thought. However, later it became clear that post-communist Russia, despite the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War, does disagree that the Yalta-Potsdam world order has collapsed.
At first, the “democrat” B. Yeltsin condemned the unipolar world and quite brazenly and groundless demanded from the member countries of the “Big Seven” to accept Russia and transform it into the G8. And in February 2007 (already 16 years ago!) the autocrat V. Putin made a famous speech at the Munich Conference, where he aggressively criticized the policy of the USA and NATO towards the Russian Federation. According to experts, this was the harshest foreign policy speech of the Kremlin’ master in half a century, after the memorable speech of the head of the USSR N. Khrushchev at the UN.
If Western politicians were wise and far-sighted, they would have paid due attention to the Munich speech of V. Putin and would have been able to see the gradual strengthening of the new totalitarianism and imperialism in Russia. The next year, the North Atlantic Alliance had the opportunity to put another big nail in the coffin of the Yalta-Potsdam bipolar world by providing Ukraine and Georgia with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) and continue the process of removing the post-Soviet states from Moscow’s geopolitical orbit (as was already done with the three Baltic states). However, A. Merkel, N. Sarkozy, and J. Bush Jr. made a mistake, that let Russia continue its occupation of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. The Russian elite still continues to dream of the Yalta-Potsdam world system.
Today, the leaders of the Western countries have an opportunity to finally bury the geopolitical ambitions of totalitarian Russia. It is extremely easy to do this — to agree to Ukraine’s accession to NATO at the Vilnius Summit. Perhaps one day historians will write that Vilnius-23 buried Yalta-45!
In this context, the statement of the Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer (on July 3, in an interview with the LBC channel) was revealing. As he rightly noted, “if Ukraine loses this war, it will not be the end of instability, it will be the beginning of even greater instability!” At the same time, he complained that strengthening NATO’s position costed a lot of money, and constant delays in increasing military spending were slowing down this process.
According to R. Bauer, the Alliance plans to make efforts to deploy 300,000 soldiers on the eastern flank. At the same time, the Admiral admitted that this requires long-term preparation. And on the eve of Vilnius-2023 the question arises: why NATO wastes precious time and money, if the Alliance can easily get at least 220,000 soldiers with unique combat experience by one willful decision! Moreover, we are talking about the regular Ukrainian army in peacetime, while, in fact, Kyiv currently has many more combat-ready military personnel. Soon we will see whether this will be a right and logical NATO’s decision.
