Consequences of the war – “The new Iron Curtain is rising”

There are currently no signs of a victory for Ukraine in the war, “as (President Volodymyr) Zelensky would like, in which all Russian troops are expelled from Ukrainian territory, nor is there a victory in the sense of Russia capitulating Ukraine”. . A partition would then look like “Russia will not give up the eastern parts and Crimea of ​​Ukraine, will keep the troops there, and the rest will continue to claim Ukraine for itself with Western help. And further north, Sweden and Finland naturally want to join NATO and a new blockade is opening up on NATO’s eastern flank.

“Permanent Truce With Constant Tension”
This line would then extend to the Black Sea and Belarus – “like the German-German border or the German-Czech border in the Cold War. I would say even worse – it is more likely to settle in a post Korean war situation, with a permanent ceasefire but constant tension,” Gärtner told APA.

Of course one would now wish for a negotiated solution. “But I don’t see that at the moment (…) because both sides are not ready and the army will decide, and the army will get stuck in a division, and the division will, so to speak, perpetuate itself.”

“Block thinking brought back to Europe”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has brought war and “thinking in blocks” back to Europe. However, one should not “accept Putin’s standard as reality,” Gärtner stressed. Putin has already “changed thinking in the European security architecture about cooperation and common security. That doesn’t mean you have to give up those thoughts.”

Helsinki model as a solution?
What Europe can do is “soften this division, try not to completely isolate the two parts of Europe, and Russia is part of Europe.” According to the connoisseur, one could imagine “the Helsinki model from 1975”. At that time, the representatives of 35 Western and Eastern Bloc states signed the Final Act of the “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe” (CSCE) in Helsinki. “One was at the height of the Cold War, there were hot wars all over the Third World, the Vietnam War had just ended, and the other said that this division of Europe and these tensions and these rearmament processes that you have to at least mitigate that,” says Gärtner.

“If you know that Russia is at war, it is difficult to think of an architecture with Russia, but it will probably be necessary for Europe not to live in a permanent confrontation.” Gärtner closes the possibility of such a process after the war “mechanisms will again be found within the OSCE” (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), which is “an important organisation”.

“Don’t Just Talk to Friends”
However, a multilateral forum must remain multilateral, the political scientist stressed: “There are no security talks if you only talk to friends. You also have to deal with those you classify as unfriendly states or even hostile states. If you abolish multilateralism, then only power remains, then you really play Putin’s game.” The Austrian government’s decision this week to issue Russian MPs with visas to attend a conference in Vienna was “definitely” the right one.

Of course, it may also be “that it is necessary to consider a security forum outside the OSCE because the OSCE is under too much pressure,” says Gärtner. However, a “future Helsinki 1975” would “no longer be called Helsinki, but could very well be Vienna”, given Finland’s intended NATO membership.