Page 1 of 4 A new dividing line in Europe
By M K Bhadrakumar
The widespread perception is that in the remaining two years of the George W
Bush presidency, the "realist" Condoleezza Rice-Robert Gates team is shifting
US foreign policy from confrontation to the diplomacy of engagement.
But this apparent shift to diplomacy is in fact merely a tactical change
largely necessitated by the predicament of Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor
posed a sharp question this week: "Has the administration forsaken its vision
of America's
aggressive role in the world?"
Is it the climbdown that former Bush administration hardliner John Bolton says
it is? Or, as some officials at the State Department and elsewhere insist, is
the administration simply harvesting the produce of long-tilled soil?
The fact is, if one were to look at the tempo of US-Russia relations, the
apparently fading influence of Vice President Dick Cheney or the prospect of
the team of Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates dominating Bush
foreign policy doesn't seem to make much difference.
On the contrary, the prospect is that with these two hardline Russia experts at
the helm of the State Department and the Pentagon respectively, the chill in
US-Russia relations is only likely to deepen. Washington stoutly resists a
Russian re-entry into the Middle East and seeks to exercise its monopoly of
conflict resolution in the region. It insists that the autonomous Kosovo
province of Serbia should be granted independence; it refuses to pay heed to
Russian sensitivities over missile-defense deployments in central Europe.
Last week, the US Senate passed legislation calling for direct assistance to
Georgia and Ukraine for their membership of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, completely disregarding the Russian objections to NATO's
expansion into the territories of the former Soviet Union.
The US pursues an aggressive policy aimed at rolling back Russian influence in
the Caucasus, Caspian and Black Sea regions. Most important, it has largely
succeeded in making Russia's relationship with the European Union hostage to
the fault lines appearing in the geopolitics of the Eurasian region.
The fault lines are so worrisome that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,
while addressing a meeting of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council in Moscow
last Saturday, said, "We support a comprehensive approach to problems of
stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, and we can develop informal interaction on
all complicated issues within the Russia-EU-US framework."
Moscow counts on 'Old Europe'
Washington's sustained effort to re-establish its trans-Atlantic leadership
over Europe in the post-Cold War era has run into difficulty primarily on
account of Russia's refusal to be cast into a confrontational mood vis-a-vis
Europe as much as the refusal of the European states to behave toward Russia
with a herd mentality.
Moscow remains constructively engaged with the major European powers despite
the obstacles that have appeared in the conclusion of a new pact that is to
replace the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), which is to
expire this year.
A new Russia-EU pact only can provide a legal base for elevating their
cooperation, especially in such pressing areas as energy. But Poland is
doggedly blocking the EU from holding talks with Russia despite the recognition
in Brussels that negotiations are inevitable. Even if a new PCA is finally
negotiated, there looms a final hurdle in the nature of the mandatory
ratification of any such treaty by all of EU's member states. The pro-US
countries of "New Europe" may not easily permit the development of a pragmatic
relationship between the EU and Russia.
Moscow faces an additional handicap insofar as the leadership of "Old Europe"
is itself in a state of transition. Russian President Vladimir Putin had
excellent personal relations with Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, French President
Jacques Chirac and Britain's Tony Blair. These European leaders had by and
large set the tone of the EU's relations with Russia during the recent years.
But uncertainty lies ahead.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shown that she has a distinctively
different approach toward Putin's Russia as compared with her predecessor
Schroeder. She may not be "anti-Russian", but she definitely is not wedded to
Schroeder's concept that Russia deserves special treatment. She spoke harshly
when Russia's recent energy spat with Belarus surfaced. "It is unacceptable,"
Merkel rebuked the Kremlin, "when there are no consultations about actions of
this type. That always destroys trust."
Such directness was almost unprecedented in EU-Russia relations. Yet the
undercurrents of European politics are such that when Merkel meets Putin this
weekend in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, that will be their sixth "summit"
since she became chancellor in November 2005. Nothing can speak more eloquently
about the significance of German-Russian relations.
Trade between Germany and Russia touched US$40 billion last year and German
investments in Russia during the first nine-month period in 2006 alone amounted
to $2 billion. Poland is visibly uneasy about a new German-Russian axis in
central Europe. And that, in turn, gives impetus to Warsaw to move still closer
to Washington. Writing in the Washington Post recently, Poland's defense
minister until last month, Radek Sikorski, called for a "new security
partnership" between the US and the countries of central Europe.
"Our American colleagues say not to worry, that NATO will protect us, but
rhetorical assurances are too easy ... Poland is haunted by the memory of
fighting [Adolf] Hitler alone in 1939 while our allies stood by. Never again
will we allow ourselves to be egged on by paper guarantees not backed by
practical means of delivery.
"Therefore, if relations with Russia are to deteriorate because of the proposed
missile base [US deployment of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech
Republic], the United States must demonstrate that it will do for Poland what
it is doing for Japan ... Placing the main operating base of allied ground
surveillance in central Europe would also reassure the region that its
countries are truly NATO territory. Finally, the United States should tell NATO
how it intends to include the Central European base in the alliance's
missile-defense architecture," Sikorski wrote.
Sikorski's words suit Washington's goals. Indeed, after the decision to make
the missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, Washington
has already approached Kiev about the establishment of a US station in Ukraine
and, furthermore, is planning yet another base in the Caucasus, possibly in
Georgia. The Ukrainian Parliament sought a report from the government on
Wednesday on the issue.
Public opinion in Ukraine doesn't favor missile-defense deployments. However,
the pro-US Ukrainian president, Viktor
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