Newsweek
Sept 6 2008

The Rude Awakening

EU leaders believed Russia’s economic development would make it more
European. Not anymore.

By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 6, 2008
>From the magazine issue dated Sep 15, 2008

The criticism of the European Union’s weakly worded resolution on the
Russian-Georgian conflict’warning Russia to withdraw its troops from
Georgia without naming specific consequences should Moscow fail to
comply’was as predictable as it was seething. "Europe can keep sucking
our oil and gas," mocked the Moscow tabloid Tvoi Dyen. Western
commentators likened Europe’s message to Robin Williams’s spoof of
unarmed British cops: "Stop! Or we’ll say ‘stop’ again!"

Once again, the limitations of Europe acting as one on foreign policy
were painfully obvious. The one measure the 27 leaders could agree on
at their emergency summit in Brussels was to suspend talks on a
planned EU-Russia agreement regulating such things as trade and
visas’a largely symbolic act considering the talks have been stalled
for more than a year. But the more interesting news was how closely
aligned EU members were compared to the last emergency summit in 2003,
when the continent’s split over the Iraq War led to the worst
foreign-policy crisis in the EU’s history. This time, they unanimously
agreed that there had been a red line, and that Russia had crossed it
by invading Georgia and unilaterally declaring two of its provinces
independent.

What’s more, the lack of tough action was more a reflection of
coolheaded realism than of disunity. "Europe’s short-term options are
close to zero," says Jan Techau, an analyst at the German Council on
Foreign Relations. Fighting a nuclear-armed Russia over Georgia?
Forget it. Trade sanctions would hit Europe with a painful
backlash’its citizens depend on Russian deliveries for 25 percent of
their oil and gas consumption, and its companies are heavily invested
in Russia. Given Russia’s phobias about Western conspiracies and
encirclement, threats would likely harden Russian policies. Even if it
wanted to take a tougher line, says Techau, the EU hasn’t even begun
to develop strategic options for a more bellicose Russia, instead
choosing to live comfortably with the narrative that Russia’s economic
integration would align it with a soft-power, multilateral,
postconflict Europe.

The Russian-Georgian war has shot down this illusion. "Georgia shows
that a military conflict in Europe is not as unlikely as it seemed
just a short time ago," says Klaus Reinhardt, a retired Bundeswehr
general and former NATO commander. The real test of Europe’s resolve
is how it intends to deal with these threats in the future. That would
start with uncomfortable questions of how the bloc would react if one
of its members were threatened. Several EU countries (including
Estonia and Latvia) have sizable Russian minorities, which Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev said two weeks ago Moscow has the right to
"protect." It would include turning rhetoric into action on cutting
Europe’s growing energy dependence on Russia’finding new suppliers,
building new pipelines, boosting alternative energy and nuclear
power’and getting serious about a European energy market that would
make it harder for Russia to play off one country against another. And
it would include finally getting serious about resolving exploitable
frozen conflicts from Moldova to Armenia.

That assumes that the EU can find the will. The weakest link may be
Germany, despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s shuttle diplomacy that
kept the bloc unified last week. Germany has traditionally nurtured a
special relationship with Russia, and there is a strong undercurrent
in public opinion blaming the United States (and its Trojan-horse
allies like Georgia and Poland) for any trouble with Russia. In recent
weeks, Russian diplomats and lobbyists, including former chancellor
Gerhard Schröder, seem to have been on a propaganda offensive
to boost public opposition to any robust EU reaction. The emerging
divide between the pro-Russian Social Democrats and Merkel’s more
hawkish Christian Democrats also threatens to draw Russia policy into
next year’s national-election campaign.

So far, though, the biggest effect on Europe of Russia’s actions is a
tenuous unity. Europe’s leaders seem desperate to avoid the fracas
that divided them over Iraq’or, for that matter, over the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s, another conflict that battered Europe’s
illusion of itself as a soft-power superpower. Now there seems to be
growing agreement that Russia will be a more uncomfortable neighbor in
the future. Whether that is the catalyst for the EU to develop a
common strategy and effective foreign policy remains to be seen.

© 2008