Balance of power and community of power are two terms that are often used interchangeably in international politics. The former system, with some kind of equilibrium between a limited number of great powers, has dominated throughout history. The periods of some kind of effective community of power have been brief and occurred after major conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars, and most recently after the end of the Cold War when George Bush, Sr., spoke of a new world based on international law.

Today we are far from this world. When discussing Ukraine, it is mostly about whether Putin is acting according to a strategic plan or improvising, and more rarely about the conditions that made Putin's aggression possible. In his recent speech (2/2 2015) on the occasion of the almost 75th anniversary of the Finnish Winter War – with Swedish help – coming to an end, Carl Bildt spoke about the danger for small states when the balance between the great powers, which occurred both in 1807 and 1939, ends. The victim on both occasions was the old Swedish Empire and its successor state Finland. He also emphasized the importance of maintaining some kind of balance against Russia in today's Europe. Today, this balance is skewed in that Russia has been heavily armed in recent years, while both NATO and non-aligned countries have been disarming. How then can one organize any form of effective deterrence?

The regional Russian conventional superiority was a fact during the Cold War. Thanks to this dominance, the Soviet Union was able to intervene militarily both in 1956 in Hungary and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia without anything other than political reactions from the alliance. In practice, the alliance had no other option than to threaten to escalate the conflicts to the nuclear level or to accept the interventions. For natural reasons, the latter line was chosen. No one wanted to risk a world war when Moscow wanted to prevent countries from effectively threatening to leave the Warsaw Pact.

In these conflicts during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a status quo power and wanted to defend what it considered to be its sphere of influence. In today's conflict over Ukraine, the situation is different. Back then, Moscow had already unilaterally and by force, despite commitments in the Paris Charter of 1990, etc., changed the European map (Crimea) and is now seeking to establish control over the eastern part of Ukraine. This offensive warfare once again reinforces the image of Russia as a revisionist great power, even though Putin believes that the local militias in the Donbas region are only defending their own against a terrible regime in Kiev. Concerns about the Russian president's possible wider territorial ambitions in the Baltic Sea region are now being discussed seriously, most clearly the other day by the British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon.

At the same time, NATO has gradually divested itself of part of its security policy arsenal for almost 25 years without the EU's defense dimension being filled with any more substantial content. In addition, the US announced a few years ago that, due to China's growing power, it wants to shift resources and attention to the Asian theater. The sanctions against Russia are clearly having an effect, but between the diplomatic and sanctions level on the one hand and the escalation to the threat of nuclear weapons on the other, there are now fewer opportunities to confront Russian conventional dominance. The delivery of weapons to Ukraine is one such possibility that is being discussed but is highly controversial within the alliance. On the global level, the US and NATO can certainly more than stand up to Russia, but not in Central and Eastern Europe. Putin therefore has more steps on his escalation ladder than NATO. The big question is, of course, whether the Russian president can demarcate each step from the next.

For NATO, there are hardly any other options left than to set up what are usually called tripwires, the effectiveness of which we do not know much about. Of course, the very point is that an attacking power should not know what consequences a cut tripwire could have. At the same time, these should not be designed so that one can easily step under them. Now the Kremlin has shown some skill in avoiding possible tripwires by resorting to so-called hybrid warfare with little green men, aid to local potentates, the dispatch of so-called volunteers, arms smuggling, propaganda, disinformation, etc. According to current Russian military doctrine, only a small part of the strategic arsenal is currently military in the traditional sense. In this way, one can try to avoid the tripwires and claim that one is not involved in any conflict, which Putin claimed during the recent Minsk negotiations. And then one cannot trip over any wires either.

It is thus quite obvious that there is a military imbalance in Europe that benefits Russia. It is likely that both the rather short-lived reactions to the war in Georgia in 2008 and the US's announced reorientation of its strategy towards Asia have been interpreted in Moscow as a signal of reduced American interest in Europe. This has thus occurred at the same time as the lesser great powers, primarily Britain, France (and Germany?), continued to collect the so-called peace gains from the end of the Cold War, while Russia has been rearming again for a number of years.

How a reasonable strategic balance in Europe can be re-established is thus the overarching challenge for our continent, for NATO as well as non-aligned countries. The gap between stumbling blocks and nuclear threats must be filled again. This will take time, but signals of political intentions will at least go some way. Continued peace depends on such a policy. Military and political vacuums will be filled sooner or later. And any effective power community is as unlikely now as it has been for most of history.

The author is an ambassador and member of KKrVA.