GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Hillary Clinton made her debut yesterday at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels and today holds her first meeting with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. Coming a month before Barack Obama's inaugural presidential trip to Europe and a NATO summit, this is a chance to hit the reset button not only with Russia but with America's closest European allies.

NATO is currently divided on two central issues. One is about finding the right balance between maintaining security on the European continent and fighting expeditionary missions in places like Afghanistan. The question is whether Washington can produce a credible strategy that allies believe can succeed and that allied leaders will be willing to invest in. At the moment, that is not the case.

The second, equally critical divide is on Russia and the future of NATO enlargement in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Georgia last summer. Some allies believe that, in the face of a more nationalistic and aggressive Russia seeking to rollback democracy and reassert its influence over its neighbors, NATO shouldn't seek any further eastward expansion. This timidity toward Moscow has led some Central and East European NATO members to wonder whether the alliance's security guarantees are really credible. Their willingness to contribute to Afghanistan is tied to addressing their concerns. Other allies believe those fears are overstated and stress instead the potential benefits of working with Russia on issues ranging from energy to Iran and Afghanistan.

These different impulses need to be reconciled in a new bargain across the Atlantic. To do so, it's instructive to consider the alliance's own history. In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, NATO had to reconcile the need to counter the insecurity which that invasion produced with the desire to still move forward with Moscow on arms control and other issues. NATO did so by linking deterrence and diplomacy, and embracing a dual-track strategy of defense and detente. It recognized that to engage with Russia, allies had to first feel secure and that allied solidarity was central.

Today we again need to find this balance between strategic reassurance and engagement. The more secure America's allies feel and the stronger solidarity is within the alliance, the more effective we will be in engaging Russia -- on a new security charter and arms-control issues, as well as on missile defense and President Obama's offer to reconsider the deployment of the missile shield for Russian help to stop the Iranian nuclear threat.

This means we must nip in the bud any doubts member states may have over the alliance's collective security commitments by engaging in prudent defense planning. This includes establishing a larger NATO presence on the territory of new members consistent with the NATO-Russia Founding Act. Furthermore, NATO must strengthen the reinforcement capabilities for new members and other countries bordering Russia.

The U.S. needs to help its European allies reduce their energy dependency on Russia through projects like Nabucco, a planned pipeline that would transport gas from the Caspian region to Europe. The European Union also needs to stand up to Russian gas monopolists. The EU's regulatory power can bring American corporate giants to their knees, but Brussels has been unable to bring it to bear to tame Gazprom. That too has to change by liberalizing the EU energy market and coming up with new ways to regulate Russian financial and commercial clout concentrated in the hands of a few firms with close links to the Kremlin. After all, our real concern is that Russia will use its economic assets to divide, manipulate and pressure Europe.

A final issue where we need to overcome our divisions is whether we should continue to work for democratic development in the region between the West and Russia, including through EU and NATO outreach and enlargement. This means coming up with new ways to expand partnership activities to deepen our ties with countries like Ukraine and Georgia as well as expanding the EU's and NATO's actual presence on the ground in these countries.

Particularly after the Georgia war, some NATO member states increasingly prefer backing off from such missions. But when we set out to create a new European security system in the early 1990s, a core goal was to provide equal security -- a system where big countries could not beat up on little ones.

We enshrined -- and Russia accepted -- the core principle that any country was free to choose its own path and alliance. Russia's invasion of Georgia broke those rules and principles. This war took place largely because of Moscow's desire to thwart Tbilisi's desire to be independent and to go west.

The Georgians for sure made mistakes. But the West bears its share of blame for not standing up for those core principles and not drawing red lines for Moscow. Europe and the U.S. failed to engage sufficiently in meaningful peacekeeping and conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

It would be short-sighted to abandon these principles out of a tactical desire to mollify Moscow or close on some short-term deal. No one today knows where Russia will be in two or even five years' time, and whether the current financial crisis will tame or further radicalize Russian foreign policy. Working for democratic change on the West's borders neighboring Russia -- as well as in Moscow itself -- remains the real key to peace and security in Europe and Eurasia.

We need to engage Moscow. Yesterday's agreement to resume the NATO-Russia dialogue was an important step. But we also need to pursue a strategy of supporting the kind of democratic change that will truly make Europe a better and safer place. It is that kind of transformation, not acquiescing to Moscow's demand for spheres of influence, that will produce real partnership and security. So let's get better, smarter and more realistic about how to pursue these goals, not abandon them. Here, too, we need a reset of Western policy as part of a new bargain across the Atlantic.