That British spy story that hides the weaknesses of the Atlantic Alliance

(To Federico Castiglioni)
16/03/18

The Sergei Skripal case is catalysing international attention for the continuum escalation diplomatic opposition between Great Britain, backed by the European Union and the United States, to the Russian Federation.

Although the case is now known it may be useful to summarize it. A former Russian secret agent who played the double game with the British, Colonel Sergei Skripal, was discovered by the Russian counter-espionage of the FSB and arrested in the 2004. In the 2010 Great Britain manages to get it back for an exchange of captured agents, a scene that we imagine by film and that closely resembles the Cold War, but it is very current. The 4 last March this former Russian colonel, as well as a former British spy, is found in a comatose state on a bench in a shopping center in Salisbury with his daughter. Subsequent investigations indicate that he was poisoned with a pulverized nerve agent named Novichok, developed by the Soviet Union as part of an experimental program on bacteriological warfare. Hence the passage is short: Theresa May in a tough speech in Parliament explicitly accuses Russia of being behind the attack and, after collecting the solidarity of Merkel, Macron and the President of the European Council Tusk, is also able to move the House Bianca (last) in a tough attack on Moscow. Yesterday, the American ambassador to the United Nations, with European support, brought the case before the Security Council by explicitly denouncing Putin as "very likely" responsible for the attempted murder.

The retaliation against Russia is under review. It goes from a tightening of the sanctions to the freezing of the asset Russians on British and perhaps even European territory. Meanwhile, 23 diplomats from the Russian Federation have been expelled from London and will have to return to Moscow this week. Clearly the Kremlin denies any involvement, but there is a long trail of deaths from poisoning in Britain in recent years that seems to undoubtedly lead eastward. The most famous case is that of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with Polonium 210 in a sushi bar in London in the 2006 along with several patrons.

The deaths due to unexplained poisoning linked to former oligarchs or Russian dissidents in England have been dozens since then and this explains London's furious reaction. But the problem that the Queen's internal services have in finding the network of Russian spies who certainly operate on her territory and the apparently disproportionate enlargement of the diplomatic conflict to Europe and NATO should lead us to a series of reflections on the continuing escalation of tension with Russia that continues now from the conflict in Ossetia and has considerably worsened since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict.

In particular, we had to ask two things: the first if indeed the Skripal case reveals only a British security problem or is actually a threat to the European countries and NATO, the second is if Europe is not becoming more and more crushing on the ideological positions that are convenient to the contingent political situation, but are not necessarily in its interest.

According to some European and American analysts the blatant poisoning of Skripal would be a clear provocation from Moscow, a warning to the allied countries that Russian intelligence can get to hit where and when it wants undisturbed. This was from the beginning the editorial line, for example, of the Washington Post and The Guardian. The threat would therefore be collective and addressed to the West as such, the answer should be just as hard and coordinated. Now on this interpretation of events we must say that those who remember a minimum of history know that Russia has sometimes chosen to use chemical weapons to solve delicate situations. Let us recall the accusations of using chemical weapons on Grozny in Chechnya in the 2000 or the use of gas to solve the Moscow theater crisis in the 2002 (photo). Nonetheless, one really wonders, reading the alarmist analyzes of the international newspapers, what a country like Russia should prove to be able to do knowingly using a nerve agent in a public place. A state with the second largest atomic arsenal in the world does not need to go and poison former spies in the shopping centers of Salisbury to launch a threatening message, especially at a time when there would be no reason. This is unless we hypothesize a sudden terrorist strategy of the Kremlin that can only seem ridiculous.

Russia, if it is actually involved in the showdown involving its former agents and dissidents who lived in the United Kingdom (15 seems suspicious cases so far), is more likely to launch an internal message than either NATO or Theresa's government May. The fact that this Russian activity is concentrated in Britain at least indicates a national internal security problem that is very serious and should alarm, that is, NATO partners.

Perhaps no one remembers it but last May, without much fuss, our services arrested a Russian agent in Rome while he was buying confidential documents on the defense programs of the European Union. This was undoubtedly an act that attacked the collective security of the allies, yet it was not treated as such. One certainly understands the impression that may have generated a poisoning in a public place: no country in the world can be happy to have inside a network of foreign secret agents that spread nerve agent in restaurants, but the incontrovertible fact until now is that there is no evidence, of any kind, linking this or other murders to Moscow.

You can create an international diplomatic incident and involve NATO partners in one escalation with a third country without any proof?

Can London ask its allies to follow such an aggressive policy only in the presence of some indications, however eloquent, but without any legal basis?

These questions lead us to the second point of reflection, that is to the continuous frontal confrontation between NATO and Russia that is distinguishing the international politics of our times. This confrontation comes at the right time, in a period of increasing tension and mutual suspicion among NATO members that lead many to question the future of the Alliance itself. After the end of the Cold War the Atlantic Alliance was modeled for the new millennium from a defensive tool to an offensive vehicle of peace keeping. Nevertheless, the last NATO intervention that can truly be considered a success was that in the Kosovo war at the end of the 90 years. In the new millennium, NATO interventions in Afghanistan and Libya are commenting on their own, while in order to intervene in Iraq in 2003 or in Syria in the 2016 the United States has discarded the Alliance and chose another modest operandi, more streamlined and discretionary.

Transatlantic trust is at a historical minimum. The interception case in Europe of 2013, soon forgotten by the press, risks to reveal a bleak reality of German services that helped the CIA to spy on other European countries, without imagining being spied on in turn. The trust between Berlin and Washington was such that Angela Merkel's cell phone was probably kept under surveillance by the NSA. If it were the Russians and not the Americans who set up such an operation today we would have a new Berlin wall on the Polish border, but instead after an official protest note in Washington the whole case seems to have been deflated.

Today, the US administration that threatens sanctions against Russia is at the same time adopting protectionist measures against European goods. Words change but the result does not: difficulty in exporting, shrinking the market, failure of companies specialized in foreign trade. Europe itself is hit by the sanctions from the west which it plans to impose on the east. Speaking of trust within NATO, it is no longer even worth talking about, for example, the relationship that the allies have with Turkey, now allied only in words. In this complex and fragmented context, rivalry with Russia seems to bring us back to a reassuring geopolitical framework, which pivots on the special relationship between the United States and Europe and sees the classic historical enemy of the old cold war rise again to the east. The idea of ​​strengthening an alliance by relying on an external enemy is the oldest thing there can be in international politics, but to give NATO a purpose and overcome transatlantic difficulties, it will be more important than putting your head in the sand or deploying some division waiting for a phantom invasion in the Baltic "desert of Tartars".

In conclusion, it can not be denied that the case of Russian spies in Britain is worrying, but it is only the last chapter of a game of the parties that we would not like to see and which is probably not really needed.

(photo: UK Gov / web / Nato)