Europe must disengage from US policy, initiating a comprehensive political process patterned on the common security tenets agreed at the 1975 Helsinki Summit, comprising the protection of individuals as citizens.
NATO’s current nuclear strategy is untenable. Crises during the Cold War reveal that nuclear strategies become dangerous exactly in the circumstances they are intended to deter, in political confrontations.
Western strategy in the Middle East has been torn between support for brutal dictatorships, and an urge to see the region change in the western image.
Whatever borders follow the ongoing violence and war, they must under no circumstances be ‘natural’.
In actual decision-making situations like the one Petrov faced on his watch at the command centre, group dynamics, not geopolitical considerations, prevail.
The three countries, and groups within them, are locked in narratives of confrontation, victimhood and fear. At present, their narratives are incompatible and seemingly unbridgeable. That is the real cause of the current conflicts.
