Tag Archives: Belarus

Europe’s Russia strategy / Russia’s Europe strategy

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NATO, the EU, the former Soviet Union and the new Russian Federation, with Europe caught in the middleSo, what is it going to be, exactly? A military response isn’t an option, and Moscow knows it – though quite how far they can push before getting shoved back in return we don’t yet know (Georgia may be strategically important, but isn’t yet a member of NATO; the same goes for Ukraine; but what about Estonia, with it’s sizable population of ethnic Russians and history of tensions with its larger neighbour? We’re all meant to fight for EU and NATO member Estonia – but if push did come to shove, would we?) Economic sanctions are unlikely to have much impact when Russia has such a tight grip of the European energy market and can hurt us far more than we can hurt them. We also can’t risk ceasing to trade with Moscow as winter approaches and Russian gas supplies become ever more vital – whereas they can do without European markets, if necessary.

But one thing is clear – if Europe’s strategy remains unclear, Russia’s seems to have failed. If the aim of the Georgia expedition was, as many have assumed, to reintroduce Moscow’s will to the Western periphery of the Russian Federation, then finally pushing Poland into the arms of the Americans was certainly not the desired result. Especially when Ukraine – that other nascent nation with a history of troubles and a sizeable Russian population on the Eurasian border that some have pointed to as “Russia’s next target” swiftly follows suit.

But still, I’m not sure I buy this whole “extending influence” thing. Not only does Russia seem to have hardened the anti-Moscow attitudes of the old Warsaw Pact EU member states (including among the people, many of whom have, in ex-Soviet countries, had a tendency for rosy nostalgia for the days of communism), but also pushed Ukraine further westwards, and potentially gained Georgia the NATO seat she wanted even though Tbilisi’s recent actions show that the country’s really not ready yet.

But that’s not all. Russia’s also singularly failed to maintain control over Chechnya despite years of fighting, and has even found the conflict spreading into neighbouring parts of the Caucasus – as well as to the Russian capital itself. In Georgia, rather than a disciplined and efficient military manoeuvre, we’ve seen poor targeting, poor discipline, and a seeming lack of ability to decide what the hell to do – having pushed in to Georgian territory and taken Gori, the Russians seem largely to have been milling around trying to look macho for the last week or two, while seemingly ignoring presidential orders. This is, it seems, what you get from a conscript army.

So, when we come to look back on this in a few months’ time, what will Moscow have achieved? Well, she may be able to gain a bit more influence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but those two regions hold little of any strategic value (bar Abkhazia’s apparently rather beautiful stretches of Black Sea coastline). Georgia will continue to be the non-Russian route of choice for Central Asian oil and gas to Europe – only now, undoubtedly, with a far stronger western military presence to guard the infrastructure. Georgia’s chances of NATO membership will have been greatly increased, as will those of Ukraine. The significance of energy dependence on Russia will also have become far more apparent to a far wider group of people (the reason we need to develop alternate energy sources is not global warming, folks, it’s Gazprom…) The threat of Russian instability – long largely ignored by many in the West, desperately hoping that Putin was one of us despite his authoritarian ways – will have become clear. But it should also have become clear that Russia’s army really isn’t much of a threat. A few ill-trained teenagers with battered equipment can cause some short-term chaos, certainly – they can maim and kill and loot and burn as well as anyone. But even supported with tanks, I’m not convinced of the threat of the Russian army any more – or of the minds coming up with Russian strategy. It’s still early days, but as NATO plans its longer-term response this whole escapade is beginning to look like it’s backfired on Moscow.

So, what’s the next step? Well, having been slow to act to the initial violence, the best bet for Europe/NATO is probably to sit back and wait to see what the next move from Moscow is going to be, because they’ve probably already started to realise their mistake. For NATO or the EU to suddenly come out with some hasty, highly public punitive measures is likely to spark further escalation as Moscow seeks to save face.

Location of BelarusI can’t see too much direct Russian intervention in Ukraine – bar the usual behind-the-scenes funding – as long as Ukraine’s politicians continue their ridiculous infighting (that’s been going on ever since the damp squib that was the Orange Revolution back in November 2004), as a divided Ukraine is very much in Russia’s interests, something that can be exploited while the West sits back and waits for them to resolve their differences. The most likely option is a revival of the old plan to merge Belarus with Russia – a project that’s been on-off, on-off for years now, and which Russia has previously been the reluctant party to – not worth much to Moscow in real terms (Belarus has little to offer economically), but psychologically important, almost completely cutting off the Baltic states, and giving Russia a border only 150 kilometres from Warsaw.

But how do you second-guess Russia? Moscow doesn’t think like governments in the West. At least, we don’t think they do. Because no one really seems to know what Russia’s up to. We can’t even tell who the next head of state is going to be until they tell us, after all. There are countless conspiracy theories about what Russia’s plan is – from shadowy groups of ex-KGB men plotting a global takeover to shadowy groups of ultracapitalist gangsters trying to wring as much money out of everyone as possible – and none of them are entirely convincing.

The old question “cock-up or conspiracy” should always be met with the answer “cock-up” until you’re presented with some very compelling evidence to the contrary. Russia’s Georgia escapade looks rather like it was designed to be a conspiracy, but it’s one they so far appear to have cocked up. A plan designed to show Russia as strong, powerful, and capable of decisive action has, instead, shown her to be incapable and pushed those she was wooing even further into the opposing camp. This Georgia episode has shown that Putin’s old tough guy act is just that. Russia’s prepared to bully those littler than her, but wouldn’t be able to hack it in a real fight. (Not that I’m advocating getting into a real fight with Russia, obviously – in this case, the best response to the bully is probably to pretend to ignore her while sniggering a bit to make sure she knows we didn’t miss her failure… The embarrassment may just be enough to stop her from trying it again – because image does seem to be everything to this lot.)

NATO, Russia and Europe

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Hunting around for a handy overview of just what’s been happening at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, depending on who you read you’ll get some wildly different ideas. I’ve been confused for much of the morning. Here’s a brief indication of why:

Der Spiegel‘s “Germany Puts the Brakes on US Expansion Plans” is countered by the International Herald Tribune‘s “NATO backs U.S. missile defense plan for Europe”

EU Referendum‘s claim that “NATO has thrown Ukraine and Georgia to the bear. President Bush’s attempts to put them on track to future and very distant membership of NATO has failed” is then contradicted by Radio Free Europe‘s report that “pro-NATO forces in Ukraine and Georgia celebrated the announcement, which offered stronger-than-expected support for their entry bids”

Repeat for pretty much every issue under discussion at the summit (for which, see this very handy round-up).

People always like to look for tangible, obvious outcomes from these things. But this is international diplomacy. Worse than that, it’s strategic military international diplomacy where all but one of the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council are involved (and we know how infrequently that lot manage to get along). Making compromises left, right and centre – leading to a stalemate in which, well, the status quo has largely been maintained – was the only sensible course of action. The thing was always going to end up a waste of time and money.

NATO flagBut the real fun is that despite the fact that NATO is now overseeing operations in Afghanistan (that well-known North Atlantic power) and looking to a more global role, this summit has made one thing increasingly apparent: the Cold War may have ended, but NATO’s principal opponent remains Russia.

Pretty much every compromise on the European front, every bit of backing down, appears to have been done to placate the Kremlin – because the principle areas to which NATO is looking to expand its influence (largely under the prompting of the US) lie in former communist countries, be it Ukraine and Georgia or Croatia and Albania.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s been a growing tension between Russia and the West in recent years – from ex-FSB men assassinated in London to the resumption of patrols by Russian nuclear bombers through the vendetta against the British Council in Moscow. Then there’s the war of words with Belarus, Europe’s oft-forgotten fanatically pro-Moscow wildcard (a country that misses the USSR so much its secret police are still called the KGB and there are constant rumours that it is planning to formally merge with Russia), cyber-warfare against Estonia, and the ongoing standoff over Kosovo’s independence. Even the EU’s (and NATO’s) difficult relationship with Turkey is getting caught up with the Russian situation thanks to the Russo-Turkish partnership in the Bluestream and Nabucco pipelines, both of which are helping to make Europe increasingly reliant on Russian energy supplies.

The relationship with Russia, in other words, increasingly seems to dominate all European diplomacy. Where during the Cold War the presence of the USSR may have ensured that western Europe and the EU was operating under the constant fear of nuclear attack, Moscow’s then lack of engagement in western European affairs allowed everyone to get on much as they pleased. Since the end of the Cold War – and especially since Putin came to power – Moscow’s long-sought-after engagement with the West has if anything caused even more problems.

During the Cold War it was America who stood guard and kept watch, now Europe (both the EU and non-EU countries) has to be constantly on the alert for far more subtle Russian encroachments than columns of Red Army troops or falling H-bombs – encroachments largely economic, and mostly achieved through that strange form of diplomacy at which Putin so excels: smiling with fangs.

With such a large, unpredictable neighbour to the east – especially one with the ability to shut down a sizable chunk of the European economy on a whim (as has already happened to Ukraine) – little wonder there seem to have been few major advances at this latest NATO summit. In fact, I can barely see the point of holding these things until Russian attitudes to the West shift further in the direction of friendly cooperation (no signs of that any time soon) – because Russia’s never going to accept public humiliation, which is how the current regime seems to see any kind of outside involvement in what remains of the bear’s sphere of influence.

So the real points of interest after such standoffs between Russia and the West are never going to be the big issues. We’re not suddenly going to have a Kremlin change of heart on any of the major issues any time soon. And if and when such a change of heart comes, it’s certainly not going to come at one of these big public summits – far too humiliating. Where such shifts in Russian attitudes – either pro-engagement or heading towards hostility – are first going to be seen is in the details. The precise wording, the precise terms of any diplomatic agreement between Russia and the EU, US, NATO or individual European countries – the small print that the journalists rarely have time to scan in their rush to hit deadlines and get an angle that gives the subs a good shot at an interesting headline – that’s where we’ll first spot the changes when they come.

These summits are, in other words, little better than MacGuffins. The real diplomacy is going on off the radar, with lots of little standoffs in places like Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

NATO may well be starting to look globally – but Europe needs to do the same to keep tabs on just what its unpredictable neighbour is up to, because Russia has more ability than any other state to screw Europe over. If Russia’s got its fingers in a lot of pies, we need to be keeping an eye on all of them, and not get distracted by the occasional fuss over the more obvious ones like Ukraine and Georgia (both of which have had high-profile popular pro-democracy uprisings in recent years, which are always of appeal to the press). To do so would be to fall for the oldest trick in the book.