Abstract
Lionel Ponsard Russia, NATO and cooperative security: Bridging the gap London and New York: Routledge, 2007. 224pp., $140.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0415407236
In his book Russia, NATO and Cooperative Security, Lionel Ponsard explores the potential for common ground between Russia and NATO. He argues that these supposedly antagonistic political entities have the potential to be a model of cooperative security (i). By emphasizing identity as a key contextual variable, his approach presents a novel way of framing the debate on NATO–Russia interactions.
Ponsard begins with an investigation of Russian identity broadly speaking—its history, geography, ethnicity, culture, and religion. On the basis of this survey, Ponsard contends that Russian identity should be understood as plural—that it is not exclusive but inclusive—and that its primary nature is not national but multinational (32). Ponsard then points to the Russian Orthodox Church as a central element for understanding Russian identity. Throughout the country's long and tortuous history, the church has become the primary reference by which the Russian people have defined themselves. Orthodoxy has gone beyond its purely religious nature to become the guardian of Russian tradition and culture. No authoritarian rule, claims Ponsard, not even communism, ever managed to deprive the Russian identity of its orthodox references (43). Unlike cultural traits imported from the West, the Russian Orthodox Church bears strong anti-Western attitudes. This argument leads to a line of questioning about the nature of Russian political culture, which seems to have become an uneasy amalgamation of Western-imported traits and strong anti-Western feelings.
These considerations aside, Ponsard makes clear that successful authoritarian leaders have created and maintained a dominant autocratic culture that stands above these apparent contradictions (58). Moreover, a democratic counterculture has always been present and democracy should not, therefore, be considered a solely Western invention (52). Ponsard's analysis of Russian identity teaches us that identity alone does not provide the key to fostering common ground or “bridging the gap” between Russia and NATO.
The second part of the book, partly related to Russian identity, deals with Russia's attitude toward NATO by focusing on the common and clashing interests that exist between the two entities. Ponsard uses a case study of Russia's perception of NATO enlargement to show that the identity gap between NATO and Russia, namely the gap between liberal and illiberal political regimes, is not per se an obstacle on the road to achieving a positive NATO–Russia relationship (87). An alternative explanation of the volatile nature of this relationship is one to which we are well accustomed: NATO enlargement after the end of the Cold War was a considerable blow to Moscow's superpower status. This experience, therefore, must be counterbalanced in order to improve bilateral relations between NATO and Russia. NATO's and Russia's ability to work on their common interests, rather than looking back to the 1990s, would prove to be beneficial for both entities, individually and together (110).
In the final part of the book, Ponsard presents NATO–Russia relations as an illustration of the cooperative security model. As opposed to other models of cooperation, such as collective security or collective defence, cooperative security is not treaty-bound; it can be described as a federation of free states that seek to achieve security through consented cooperation (130). Ponsard attempts to demonstrate that this model of cooperation is compatible with Russia's understanding of its security relations with other states. As evidence of this, he refers to a number of high-profile events in Russian history, such as Alexander I's Holy Alliance and Concert of Europe, Brezhnev's thaw in East-West relations, and Gorbachev's new political thinking. Drawing on the cooperative security model, Ponsard concludes with a set of practical recommendations apparently intended for NATO officials.
Overall, Ponsard's arguments are undeniably eclectic. There is no unified theory or clear research design, but instead a collection of insightful research findings that relate to Russia's relations with the West and with NATO in particular. In other words, the content of the book is more diverse than the title suggests. The reader is left wanting to know more about NATO–Russia relations beyond the period ending with the accession into NATO of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1999. The book nevertheless represents an interesting and accessible guide for academics and students of international relations, security studies, and Russian studies.