By Duncan Hooper
The European Union is struggling to come to terms with a newly empowered Russia
The re-emergence of Russia as a global power has transformed the political landscape of eastern Europe. The EU is no longer the only game in town, and governments which had turned west following the demise of the Soviet Union are now anxiously watching over their shoulders to see how Moscow will wield its new-found influence.
In addition, with the EU struggling to present a coherent policy towards its neighbour, the ultimate fear for the west is that disengagement will lead to the formation of an eastern power bloc linking pro-Moscow central Asian states, Russia and the world’s newest superpower, China.
As the world’s biggest gas supplier and second largest oil exporter, Russia has regained a status which nuclear weapons alone are no longer able to provide. Ever since Gazprom turned off the taps to Ukraine in January, the western world has woken up to the fact that president Vladimir Putin’s government is quite capable of bringing a new kind of pressure to bear in regional politics.
The US has reacted angrily, with vice-president Dick Cheney accusing Moscow of blackmailing its neighbours. EU leaders have been unable to muster a similarly decisive line, raising questions in the corridors of Brussels about how to manage future relations. The enlargement of the union in 2004 has exacerbated tensions between the two sides after Russia became disgruntled over a lack of input in the process, while the new members feel they have an axe to grind over decades of soviet occupation.
Estonia and Latvia don’t even have a ratified border agreement to the east, as their demands for an acknowledgement of their mistreatment were stonewalled by Moscow. Poland too is seeking an apology from Putin for the past behaviour of Russian troops.
Crisis
“I think there’s a crisis, there’s a deep systematic crisis in EU relations with Russia, which can be explained by the lack of any systematic framework,” says Nadia Arbatova, section head of the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations. The internal splits within the union’s 25 countries mean the bloc “isn’t ready to overburden its domestic agenda with the so-called Russian factor,” according to Arbatova.
She goes on to suggest that some of the EU’s new eastern members may be suffering from “soviet syndrome or a victimization complex” and are obstructing efforts to bring a regional integration to north-east Europe to mirror EU-sponsored projects in the Balkans.
“I’m convinced there’s no alternative to the EU in our foreign policy, but there are other people in our political arena who think Russia can be an independently powerful country, that Russia should have strategic relations with China,” she warns.
A 10-year partnership and cooperation agreement between the EU and Russia expires next year, presenting the choice between a renewal, a new deal or perhaps even no deal. On a purely economic basis it would seem high time for an upgrade. Russia in 2004 sucked in E46 billion of EU exports, 5% of the bloc’s total, and pumped out exports to the 25 nations worth E81 billion, mainly in commodities and energy. Both figures have more than doubled from five years earlier when the export number was E17 billion and imports were down at E34 billion, according to EU statistics.
Russia fits uneasily into an EU foreign policy strategy which aims to reward neighbours for good behaviour through economic benefits or ultimately the promise of EU membership. The Kremlin has rejected such an approach demanding a different status to that granted to Ukraine or Morocco. Instead the EU denotes Russia as a “strategic partner”, an ego-soothing term which as yet seems lacking in substance.
Too soft?
Some analysts claim that, far from being driven to an anti-Russian agenda by its new members, the EU has been too soft on the democratic backsliding criticized by Cheney on a recent visit to the Baltics. Putin’s infringement of media freedom and appropriation of private property, epitomized by the confiscation of Yukos assets, has escaped sufficient censure, according to Katinka Barysch, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform.
“The Russians would have you believe that the entire EU foreign policy is now driven by Latvia. That’s clearly not the case,” she says. “The EU hasn’t got tough on Russia although maybe I, for one, would have liked to see that.”
She cites the discussions regarding Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organization as an example of a missed opportunity to push the Kremlin into line. US objections to Russia’s closed financial markets now appear to be the last major obstacle preventing accession to the 149-member trade club.
Ukraine, victim of the most high-profile example of Russia’s new-found economic muscle, provides a pertinent insight into the undercurrents sweeping the region as a result of political tensions on either side. Last month’s election saw the pro-Russian Party of the Regions garner 32% support, the biggest slice of the vote. The orange coalition which swept to power in 2002 has split leaving Yulia Tymoshenko’s faction ahead of the Our Ukraine party.
“Ukraine is obviously a country that’s stuck in the middle,” observes Barysch. “Is the EU the only game in town? For some Ukrainians it is, for some it isn’t.”
On the other side of the coin, Moscow ally and president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko is subject to EU sanctions in the form of a travel ban after facing accusations of election rigging. He claims that the unexpectedly strong support recorded at the polls was a reaction to interference from Poland and other EU states in his nation’s affairs.
Tit for tat
EU-Russia relations have taken on a “tit for tat” aspect, according to Richard Sakwa, a Pole by birth who now heads the department of politics and international relations at the University of Kent. “Things have turned out far worse than we expected; what’s happened is the new EU members have quite clearly ganged up on Russia,” he observes.
Moscow’s economic power now reaches beyond the field of energy, and the country has imposed import bans on wine from Georgia and food from Poland and other EU countries, in what opponents describe as politically motivated moves. Still, rather than address the roots of these problems, EU policy-makers have tended to try to relieve the symptoms, tackling issues on a case-by-case basis that fails to resolve deeper malaise.
“There’s no vision of where relations are going; they’re going to carry on focusing on little things,” says Stefan Ganzle, a professor in German and European Studies at the University of British Colombia. “What’s missing is the big picture. Cooperation will be rather pragmatic, very issue specific with no over-arching agreement but simply existing because you can’t avoid the issue of Russia.”