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76 Opinion
bne May 2021
“The problem is that unlike the Cold War, there are no rules
to govern relations in the middle of Europe. As commentators such as Mark Galeotti and Professor Stephen Cohen have argued, despite its adversarial nature the Cold War was governed by a set of unwritten rules worn smooth by long use, which prevented the war ever getting hot. But all of those mechanisms were destroyed in 1991. It is time for Europe to sit down with Russia and draw up a new pan-European security pact,” I wrote five years ago.
The need for a new security pact is as acute today as then, as this last few weeks have shown. Without one we are destined to be plunged into these crises. And each one is pregnant with the possibility of mistakes leading to a hot war in Europe and beyond.
A security deal could put a permanent lid on those dangers. And the salient point here is actually the Russians want a new security deal. It has already thrashed out a possible framework and circulated it to the EU, NATO and other partners for discussion. But it was simply ignored. But it is not too late to dust that draft off and take a serious look at the proposals as a starting point for talks to end this dangerous insecurity.
Them and us
The existing security arrangements in Europe have not changed much since the Cold War, except those arrangements have been significantly weakened after the US unilaterally withdrew from one missile treaty after another, including
the ABM ballistic missile treaty in 2002, the INS nuclear missile deal in 2018 and most recently the Open Skies military surveillance treaty this year, to name the most significant.
NATO remains at the centre of ensuring Transatlantic
security, but the alliance was set up as a Cold War “them
and us” organisation that was specifically designed to unify US-European security through collective commitments (Article five) and unifying defence systems. NATO was specifically designed to point guns and bombs at the Soviet Union.
Russia has inherited some of the assets of the Soviet Union, including its massive military machine and its nuclear weapons, but the Russians complain it is not the Soviet Union, but has still had the “them” mantel thrust upon it.
The Cold War was an ideological clash between socialism and capitalism, whereas modern Russia is now “on our side” in that it has embraced capitalism. The material well-being of its people has been transformed out of all recognition as a result and it is committed to becoming a market economy.
Of course the state still plays an important role in the economy, but Russia has a well-developed market economy and boasts some world-class privately owned companies
such as Europe’s most valuable tech company Yandex, a sophisticated telecoms sector, a flourishing agricultural sector, a rapidly developing light manufacturing sector, an already large automotive sector and several of the biggest retailers
in Europe amongst many other things.
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Economically Russia is now fully integrated into the global mar- ket as the attempt to sanction Oleg Deripaska’s aluminium com- pany Rusal in 2019 showed: a ban on doing business with Rusal caused the price of aluminium on the London Metal Market to spike by 40% overnight and the leading Western investment banks howled in pain as hundreds of millions of dollars of Rusal securities had in effect to be marked to zero overnight.
That is not to say Russia has finished its transition to a fully fledged market democracy. It continues to face serious problems with corruption and weak democratic institutions. Its political opposition is small, fragmented and weak, thanks to state repression. But the same can be said for many of the former Warsaw block countries like Hungary and Poland, and all of those in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
I won’t labour the point, as there is plenty to discuss here, but it is clear that Europe’s relationship with Russia is deeply conflicted as it treats Russia as, on the one hands, a political problem, and on the other, as a large and lucrative business partner.
Brussels has sanctioned Russia for annexing the Crimea and Berlin has slammed the poisoning of anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexei Navalny. German Chancellor
“I won’t labour the point, as there is plenty to discuss here, but it is clear that Europe’s relationship with Russia is deeply conflicted”
Angela Merkel made a point of meeting with Navalny personally when he was recuperating in a German hospital last year – a clear gesture of solidarity with Russia’s political opposition to Putin.
But at the same time Merkel has repeatedly stressed the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that would directly connect Germany to Russia’s Yamal gas fields, by passing Ukraine entirely, is a purely “economic” project. The two points of view – political problem, lucrative market – are contradictory and leave the EU weak and divided on Russia.
The same is not true for the US, for which investment and trade with Russia play a much smaller role, so its rivalry in geopolitics is the main consideration, allowing it to be much tougher. The main constraint on the White House is its desire to repair relations all but destroyed by Donald Trump and so take European concerns into account when it comes to dealing with Russia.
Moscow itself has got fed up with this dual approach, where European firms hope to make fat profits selling creams,