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Monday, November 1, 2010

Temptation of Europe



Deauville summit and Dmitry Medvedev’s promise to take part in the NATO summit in Lisbon makes us take a seriously different view of his initiative to create a new European security system

Security system that emerged after the Second World War was based on confrontation of two competing military-political alliances: NATO and the Warsaw Treaty — these agreements were personifying the bipolar system of the Cold War period. After the collapse of the USSR and, consequently, the Warsaw Treaty, there was a short period of the mono-polar U.S. dominion.
This stage was characterized by three principal peculiarities:  

  1. NATO, which was deprived of its main “possible enemy”, felt kind of emptiness around it and started to search for its new identity.
  2. Former countries of the socialistic bloc that earlier filled the zone between NATO and Russia were gradually becoming members of NATO and tried to realize their own national interests.
  3. Dramatically weakened Russia was going through a difficult period of internal problems.  

That’s the very period of time when the American concept of the radical “neoconservatism” became widespread — it found the “humanitarian intervention” formula as form of self-expression — and the war against Yugoslavia was unleashed as a result of it. Russia that had no abilities to influence these events somehow, could only react to that by a famous Primakov’s “U-turn over Atlantic”. That was just a form of a passive protest but still it was the only means that the Russian Federation obsessed.

Such anarchy couldn’t have lasted long. Soon after that, eastern European countries started to acquire their national identity, NATO formed its new strategy of expanding to the East and Russia was recovering its powers and returned to the arena of the global politics.

So, by the end of 20th century creation of the new European and trans-Atlantic security policy has begun. That was a period of restoration of the second pole of the international politics. Russia — slowly, but inevitably — was becoming this pole. Russian attempts to bring the European security system back to the international law, simultaneously reinforcing the UN and the Security Council, haven’t succeeded at that stage — especially in the matters of armed invasion under the slogan of a “humanitarian intervention”.

The USA — stupefied by its obvious power superiority — and other NATO members didn’t want to consider Russia’s opinion, having ousted it to the roadside of the international politics and having deprived it of the ability to influence the decision-making process; center of mass of the European security system was moved from the UN Security Council to the NATO Council.

OSCE as a new instrument of the European politics
     
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was created in 1994, resulting the change in the Conference for the security and cooperation in Europe concept. At first — when A. Kozyrev was the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister and the Russian expert society of the foreign-policy analysts was consumed with an euphoria of a “liaison with the West” — Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarded OSCE as the main institutional pillar of the European security.  Russia was even trying to make OSCE the primary forum for the coordination of actions and the decision-making process at the Old Continent. Russia considered this international organization to be the NATO alternative. In the year when OSCE was created, Russia has formulated the “Program for the increasing of the OSCE efficiency” that met the requirements of the eighth chapter of the UN Charter about the regional agreements.

Russian idea of the OSCE contemplated the creation of the international European law and the effective decision-making and executive bodies. OSCE Executive Committee — created in the image and likeness of the NATO Council — could have become such body. But all the Russian efforts to transform OSCE to a truly effective international policy institution were in vain. On the 19th of November, 1999 at the OSCE summit in Istanbul “Charter of the European security” was adopted — this episode crowned the activity of this organization — but, unfortunately, this charter has never been applied in reality. After the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia that lasted since March until June of 1999 the adoption of the Charter looked rather like a reconciliation gesture towards Russia and an indirect avowal of the European fault.

At the same time, declarations of the “resolute commitment to the causes of creation of a free, democratic and even more united OSCE region, where state-members co-exist with each other in peace, while people and communities live in freedom, prosperity and safety” (1st cause of the Charter) make an impression of an inappropriate joke. Instead of becoming an authoritative regional international organization — the one that would act in conformity with the UN Charter — OSCE has turned into subject of monitoring of the human rights in Russia and other post-Soviet states. For justice sake, we have to admit that European civil rights advocates from the Bureau of the democratic institutions and human rights didn’t have to make too many efforts to discover the violations of these rights at their monitoring objects.

Amorphism of the OSCE structure and the undisguised indifferent attitude of the main European countries towards this organization have led to the state when it wasn’t even able to become a forum for the discussions and the search of mutually acceptable decisions for the European countries. In a situation like that it’s hard to imagine OSCE transformation into the real instrument of the European security. On the 5th of December, at the sitting of the OSCE member-states foreign affairs ministers council in 2006 Sergey Lavrov even mentioned the probable Russian withdrawal from this organization in case “if it’s not going to move the stress of its activity from the observation of human rights monitoring to the military-political and the economic sphere”.

NATO and the Russian idea of European security

After the election of Vladimir Putin as the President of the Russian Federation, Russian foreign policy became more pragmatic. NATO and European Union turned out to be our new primary foreign policy partners. Traditional OSCE objects of competence were passed to another international organization: observance of the human rights is a subject to the Council of Europe monitoring now, European Union is dealing with the economic cooperation issues and NATO is dealing with military-political matters. At the same time Russia keeps proposing the initiatives to reform OSCE. In particular, at the Madrid summit on the 29th of November, 2007 Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs offered to streamline the scheme of financing of the OSCE functioning, to specify the framework of the OSCE cooperation with the non-governmental organizations and formulate the principles of performing the OSCE observing missions at the country-members of this organization.

Though, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs still concentrates its attention mostly at the NATO cooperation. NATO expansion to the East for the account of the former countries of the socialistic bloc hasn’t actually been the military threat for Russia, but it still created the negative background for the cooperation with this organization — as it was breaking quite a number of Soviet-American agreements. Mostly it was the agreements concerning the unification of Germany and the pullout of the Soviet troops from the territory of the former GDR. Russia — not without a reason — felt that it was offhandedly betrayed by its Western partners and this feeling couldn’t have a positive effect on the complex of Russo-Western relations.

Despite the fact, that military aggression of NATO against Russia is impossible from the military-political point of view, speaking in terms of the real-world politics, Northern Atlantic Alliance is still a competitor of Russia — the one, impeding its participation in the creation of the European security principles. Having united its members and, thus, making them parts of the alliance with the USA, NATO is actively interfering the expansion of the Russian influence in Europe and — despite the absence of an actual military threat to the Russian Federation — is still the main constraint to the realization of the Russian interests at the Old Continent. Here’s the commentary of Ira Strauss, head of the non-governmental organization “Russia in NATO” regarding the current relationship between our country and the Northern Atlantic Alliance:

“When the Russian foreign policy was dramatically changing, the USA didn’t want to believe in that. Western politics have seen just a propaganda exercise in the unexpectedly peaceful appearance of the new Russia. When the Russian policy has changed again in the end of 90s it has been too late already”.

At the current situation, when NATO really needs Russian help in Afghanistan, while Russia itself hardly wants to be left face to face with the Afghan “heroin regime”, there’s a real possibility of the new stage of cooperation between NATO and the Russian Federation in that field. But before this NATO would have to understand and accept the hard-line Russian attitude to the expansion of this alliance for the account of the new members, and in the first place, it has to do with Georgia and the Ukraine.

Russia and the European Union in the system of the European security structure

In the 90s Russia considered European Union to be mostly economic alliance that couldn’t have become its partner in the “serious politics”. But in the 21st century the situation has changed. American invasion to Iraq initiated a serious relationship crisis between the “old” Europe and the USA — that fact made Moscow to look at the Europeans from a different angle. Idea of creation of the European security forces and the obvious contradictions between the “neoliberal” European international security concept and the “neoconservative” American one has made Europe the natural partner of Russia, the one sharing its opinion about the multilateral world concept (ref. to Gregory Tinsky, “Trans-Atlantic polemics”). The process of the economic approach of Russia and the European Union has started, which was mostly apparent in the Russo-German relations, and then the Russo-French ones. The EU expansion to the East became the semblance of the alternative to the NATO expansion, though the countries that became the members of the EU have already been members of NATO by the moment. Despite these circumstances, EU-membership was making the former socialistic countries dependent not only from Washington but also from the Brussels — and the economic aid coming from the European capital was making the “Euro-dependence” at least equal to the “Atlantic-dependence” at that.   

That was reflected in the Russian foreign policy doctrine that was adopted in 2000. This document stipulated the further development of the political and economic relations with the European Union in general and with some of its members in particular. In 2003 parties have declared the consolidation of their strategic partnership via creation of the following “common spaces”:      


-          Common economic space
-          Common space of freedom, security and justice
-          Common space of international security cooperation
-          Common space of scientific research, education and the cultural aspects

On the 10th of May, 2005 at the EU-Russia summit in Moscow, the so-called “road maps” of the four common spaces were adopted — they represent the joint plans of actions in order to create the common spaces at the declared areas. “Road map” of the foreign policy common space was foreseeing the extension of the cooperation framework at the global policy arena (especially at the border regions), fight against terrorism, non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction and the means of their delivery and the means of overcoming the crisis situations. This document, however, wasn’t stipulating the cooperation in the settlement of the conflicts at the CIS territory (Abkhazia, Southern Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Transdniestria). 

This gracious period of the Russo-European relations was followed by a cool-down caused by the Russo-Ukrainian gas conflicts, war in the Southern Ossetia and the Polish-Swedish initiative of the Eastern partnership. Despite the fact, that there was no objective fault of Russia neither in the case of conflict with the Ukraine, nor with the case of war with Georgia, the significance of the conflicts themselves was very high and the Russian informational support of them was very poor; that’s why Europe interpreted both episodes not in our favor. Program of the Eastern partnership, in its turn, was unwelcomed in Russia, although all the diplomatic proprieties were observed. In spite of the true reasons of the emergence of this program, it has created more space for our “allies”, giving them an opportunity to balance between the Russian Federation and the European Union, having, thus, increased the price of their loyalty for Russia. (ref. to Gregory Tinsky, “A carrot for the Eastern “donkey”). Despite the very severe restrictions, foreseen by this program in respect to the future “eastern partners”, the very fact of the Eastern partnership existence has strengthened the positions of the traditionally anti-Russian powers in Poland and Sweden.

All of this has reinforced the vector of the Russian foreign policy at the European area; the one that was pointed to the consolidation of cooperation with the certain member-states of the European Union via the closer cooperation in the economic (and first of all, the energetic) sphere with Germany, France and Italy…

 (To be continued)
            


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