Europe's Cuban Missile Crisis

Europe’s ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’

Glenn Diesen,

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded guarantees from NATO that the US-led military bloc won’t expand further eastwards. Washington, however, has predictably ruled this out as a non-starter.

While Moscow sees more NATO members on its borders as an existential threat and a deliberate provocation, much of the West rallies behind the principle that countries have a “sovereign right” to join whichever factions and groupings they please. For many analysts, this is the fundamental principle of European security.

But Russia insists European security depends on limiting the expansion of military alliances and mitigating the oppositional format of the European security architecture. This dispute is at the heart of the standoff over Ukraine.

These competing views on the fundamental principle of European security are the result of a changing balance of power.

When Cuba exercised its sovereign right to engage in a military partnership with the Soviet Union, the US did not champion the principle of sovereign right to choose military partnerships. On the contrary, the US demonstrated it was prepared to start a nuclear war in 1962 to prevent Cuba from exercising its sovereign right to host Soviet missiles.

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