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We shouldn’t accept the Kremlin’s ‘new normal’ based on outdated thinking about spheres of influence. By Linas Linkevičius June 8, 2015 As the leaders of the Group of Seven countries meet in Germany this week, there are rising calls to end the diplomatic impasse with Russia over Ukraine. But wishful thinking is the worst basis for policy making. That was true in 1967, when Pierre Harmel, Belgium’s foreign minister at the time, issued a report advocating the type of diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union that would eventually become détente. The report came at a difficult time for the Western alliance. France had withdrawn from NATO’s military command structure, the U.S. wanted to cut its presence in Europe and voters across the West wanted less money spent on defense. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was playing a skillful game of divide and conquer, offering seductive bilateral deals. Sound familiar? But there are some major differences with Europe’s situation today. The ideological divide during the Cold War was real. Today it’s just a Kremlin construct, invented by modern Russia to cover failures of reform. It’s not a serious alternative to Western liberal democracy. Russia is integrated into the world, politically and economically, in a way that the Soviet Union never was. It has been offered numerous ways by NATO and the European Union to cooperate—it has only chosen in many cases, such as with the EU Neighborhood Policy, to decline. Before the aggression against Ukraine, Moscow sat together in the NATO Russian Council and within the G-8, among many other diplomatic forums. A more important difference is that the Soviet Union was a status-quo power, seeking to preserve the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 that helped establish Europe’s postwar order. Today’s Russia, on the other hand, is a revisionist power. It regards the 1991 settlement that reunified Germany as a defeat and continues to try and overturn it. It’s even on a mission to rewrite history, too: A new documentary on Russian state television has portrayed both the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia as reasonable responses to Western aggression. President Vladimir Putin recently even defended the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of nonaggression signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Some voices in Europe are now looking to Harmel’s report for modern-day lessons. But let’s draw the right lessons. Harmel’s main point on re-engagement was that the “relaxation of tensions was not the final goal.” The priority, he said, was to strengthen the Western alliance. The same logic should guide us today. NATO’s capabilities should be based on sober threat analyses, not illusions. Anything that the Kremlin perceives as weakness will encourage it to press ahead.‎We saw this in 1968, when just a year after re-engagement the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. And we see this now, when after a hasty “reset” following the 2008 war in Georgia the Kremlin last year started another war in Ukraine. If we are going to re-engage Russia, it should be based on our values and commitments, not wishful thinking. NATO and the EU should be prepared for a long, drawn-out process and not give in just for the sake of a resolution. Contact, relations and engagement with Russia are still possible. Vital, even—the Russian people are not our enemies. Diplomatic dialogue with Russia can be maintained at NATO’s 50-member Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which includes other eastern partners such as Ukraine. Concessions or retreats, whether at our own expense or negotiated over the heads of our allies, have no place. This means we shouldn’t backtrack on support for Ukraine and our other eastern partners. We should help build their defence capabilities and their resilience to Russia’s “hybrid” attacks. More broadly, we shouldn’t falter on NATO’s open-door policy and our ultimate goal of a Europe whole, free and at peace. We do not and will not accept the Kremlin’s “new normal,” based on out-dated thinking about spheres of influence and a zero-sum mentality. We shouldn’t be too worried about disappointing Russia. Instead we should worry about the greater danger of disappointing our own people. We in the frontline states of Europe need to be reassured of NATO’s readiness, adaptability and deterrence. Let’s learn the lessons from our past.‎