Divisions within the European Union will thwart attempts to develop a common Russia policy even though the EU consensus is to engage rather than confront or isolate its authoritarian neighbor.
The EU does not compete for geo-political influence, but must defend its values by engaging its eastern neighbors, Tomas Valasek, foreign policy and defence director at the Center for European Reform, told a Washington meeting today. Given EU resistance to further enlargement, its principal agent for democratization and stability, it can only offer such incentives as visa-free travel and “deep” free trade.
There is a “real problem” with Rome and Berlin, with Germany in particular seeking a special relationship with Moscow through a new ?stpolitik, a policy which is causing “very serious concern” in Paris, CER’s Charles Grant told the meeting at the German Marshall Fund.
Russia appeared threatening to its neighbors, but was really of little strategic significance. With less than 35 of global GDP, it remained an economic pygmy. “For all the talk of a multi-vector world, and the support Moscow has given to authoritarian regimes like Venezuela, Burma and Uzbekistan, it has almost no friends,” said Grant, addressing a Washington, DC, meeting today, dismissing notions of an authoritarian axis as “fantasy”.
China’s leaders are openly “contemptuous” of the Kremlin, he said. Beijing is also resisting Russian efforts to turn the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a geopolitical instrument, writes Bobo Lo, Grant’s CER colleague.
Neither the US nor the EU can influence domestic policy but Russia needs western technology and bolstering its economic development will ultimately enhance the influence of modernizing elements, Grant said. There are undoubtedly factional divisions within the ruling elite but they remain opaque, he said, reflecting on a recent meeting with both President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He cited Winston Churchill’s claim that Kremlin conflicts were like two dogs fighting under a carpet.
The EU should offer Moscow the carrots of WTO membership, postponing missile defense until a real Iranian threat emerged, and deferring NATO enlargement. Yet if Russia again transgressed its neighbor’s borders, the EU should employ serious sticks, including banning Russian companies from seeking investment in European capital markets.
Kremlin political technologists like Gleb Pavlovsky often cite their preference for dealing with Europeans rather than pushy Americans promoting NATO enlargement, Grant said. But others believe Russia’s supposed fear of NATO encirclement is a ruse to hide a deeper fear of the civilizational alternative represented by the European Union.
