Thread by @scharap

You might have noticed Lavrov is fixated on the “indivisibility of security” principle these days. As Tim Colton and I note in our book, the debate over principles of “freedom to choose” and “indivisibility of security” dates to the 1990s. A thread.
amazon.com/dp/1138633089/…

BLUF: since the 1990s, both sides cherry-picked their respective preferred principle to justify their respective preferred policies. [quotes below are from the book]

“Yeltsin grounded his early receptivity to talking about Russia-in-NATO in indivisibility ... Russia was comfortable inside a revised security framework only so long as its prerogatives and stature were taken into account, with all that connoted for the US having to share ...

control. Change without its participation and consent was doomed to be interpreted as ‘a sign that we were not welcome’.”

“Justification [for NATO enlargement] was found in the principle of freedom to choose, one of the two keystones of the Charter of Paris. Individual countries, and they alone, should decide on what security alignments were to their liking...

If any or all of the post-communist nations threw in their lot with the US-shepherded Euro-Atlantic alliance, no other state – the United States included, ironically – could question that choice.”

But as we conclude, this debate about abstract principles conceals less pleasant truths about the current policies of both sides vis-à-vis Ukraine.

“Russia’s concept of indivisible security often boils down to a yearning for an accord among great powers, Yalta-style, that would reinforce rather than remove divisions in the region. Such a deal would not work even if it were agreed to, which it will not be.”

“It is not tenable for the West to insist on the right of all countries to make their own choices while at the same time being unable or unwilling to grant them those choices (like NATO and EU membership) or to be accountable for the consequences of choosing.”

the debate on these principles isn’t really a productive use of any policymaker’s time right now. The stakes are too high.