Over the past fifteen months, something fundamental has changed in the relationship between Russia and the European Union. The great disillusionment over Putin’s decision to return to the Kremlin; the rise and fall of the Russian protest movement; the targeted repression of opposition activists and the passage of new restrictive legislation in Russia; the Pussy Riot scandal; the U.S. Magnitsky Act and the Russian response to it have severely impacted the atmosphere of the EU-Russia relations. The hopes Europeans nurtured during the Medvedev years of a gradual top-down democratic evolution for Russia are now remembered, bitterly, as a hoax.
Disillusionment and disgust are powerful emotions but they are not terribly useful as one sets out to map a way ahead for relations with Europe’s biggest neighbor. Now is the time to assess the new reality soberly before making new steps.
The point of departure is the recognition that it is not just the atmosphere but the political landscape that has changed. Russia is clearly turning more nationalistic. Patriotism has become a valuable political commodity in Moscow. This goes beyond Putin and the Duma: important sections of the business community and society at large are leaning towards the same direction. As a consequence, they view Europe’s recent record more critically and question where it is going. Having rejected Europe as a mentor some time ago, these influential quarters are now also rejecting Europe as a model.
At the level of foreign policy-making, Europe is no longer assumed to be part of Russia’s extended family. While some still talk of a “Greater Europe,” the center of gravity is no longer on integration with the EU; it is on strengthening economic, security, and political ties with the former Soviet states. The “European choice,” boldly proclaimed by Vladimir Putin at the German Bundestag in 2001, has been replaced, a decade later, by a “Eurasian choice,” signifying a Moscow-led integration with its willing neighboring countries. A “Greater Europe” is still possible, Putin clarifies, but only as a binary construct in which the EU and a future Eurasian Economic Union would participate on an equal basis.
This change alters the agenda and the Leitmotif of the relationship, with elements of convergence and contention more or less in a dynamic balance. On energy, building new gas pipelines—from North Stream 3 and 4 to South Stream—will be accompanied by more intense arguing over the terms of gas trade in Europe. On visas, the positive aspect is that ordinary Russians will still want to travel to Europe. Any attempt, however, to relax visa requirements will be resisted by several European countries who remain anxious over Russians coming over here. This, in turn, will breed Russian resentment over Europe’s unfair treatment of their country and its citizens. On human rights and values, contention prevails: the Kremlin has not only acknowledged the values gap, but has proudly proclaimed its own set of values, such as national sovereignty; religious faith as a foundation for society’s morals; and support for the traditional family.
In the realm of geopolitics, expansion of the European Union and NATO into the former Soviet territory has not only stopped for the time being, but has ceased to be the only game in town. Putin’s proposed Eurasian Union is not a USSR Redux, as Secretary Clinton has recently stated—aiming perhaps for a new career—but it is the first serious effort in 20 years at meaningful economic integration, with obvious political and security implications. It is also clear that Putin wants to reach out beyond Belarus and Kazakhstan which already form a customs union and a single economic space with Russia. He has recently signed agreements with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to strengthen his hand vis-à-vis China in Central Asia, and he is certainly working to bring Uzbekistan, the region’s heavyweight, closer to Moscow.
It is Ukraine, however, which promises to become the stage of the most intense competition between Moscow and Brussels. Had Ukrainians decided to reform their economy and moved to bring their political system closer to Europe, there would be no competition: the EU would have won hands down. But the Ukrainian elite is deeply mired in its old ways and has no real incentive to modernize. This puts Ukraine in a precarious position. Continuing a balancing act between Moscow and Brussels will be ever tougher for Kyiv whose partners will press it for a definite answer as to Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation. In any event, the EU needs to decide now how it wants to engage Ukraine in a situation where Russia is the other credible suitor.
Finally, on the issues of the global order and regional security, Europe and Russia, while sharing a number of important general interests, diverge on ways of dealing with actual contingencies. Syria is a case in point, where Moscow—for the first time in two decades—has not only complained about Western practices of military intervention and regime change, but has actually stood up for what it believes is the right approach. Thanks to Russian support, Bashar al-Assad has been able to hold on to power, while Moscow is discussing the future of Syria directly with Washington. That is something the world has not seen in two decades. The Russian position, however, is not ideological: Moscow has just approved the French military intervention in Mali.
Given this new environment, the way ahead for the EU in its relations with Russia needs to be based on the following elements:
- Expecting—and bracing oneself for—several more years of Putin in power;
- Appreciating the complexity of the Russian Awakening, which has a strong nationalist element to it;
- Being prepared to compete with Moscow on a broad range of issues: from energy to values to geopolitics;
- Being ready to engage with Moscow on matters of common interest, and on a more co-equal basis.
This means a big change from the time when the EU was the main driving force in western Eurasia and Moscow was seeking some form of association with it. The new environment brings discomfort to Europe. The upside—if one wants to look for a silver lining—is that, by competitively/cooperatively interacting with Russia, while at the same time reshaping itself internally, Europe may acquire elements of strategic power it presently lacks in its relations with the United States, China, India—and, of course, Russia.
Comments(2)
It seems as though Mr. Trenin resorts to framing, in order to emphasize minor issues and deem those more important and relevant. He does so in his second (almost identical to the first - see 25 December C) article over a month period, which strongly suggests an advocacy agenda. Mr. Trenin wants us to focus on how allegedly Russia's perception of Europe has changed, and what changes in its relations with EU would that bring. Besides the fact that this claim is highly questionable, at least for regular observers of Russia, it is also of little relevance. What matters is whether or not the Russia's intentions and policy aims towards the world around it (including EU) has changed. And they did not change - to the contrary, we can observe an amazing persistency. Trenin tries to shape our perception of Russia by falsely emphasizing things that have been present for years, framing them as new and revolutionary trends. He alleges nationalism is the new game in town, failing to also clarify that it is identical to anti-Westernism, as both things go hand-in-hand since Vladimir Putin had taken over Russia in early 2000s. It is easy to prove, through media monitoring, that starting 2001, as the Russian government began to take control over the mass-media, their coverage of the West became utterly negative. Following public opinion polls in Russia since then, we see a linear growing of anti-Western feelings among many Russians, which is just the other side of the coin that Trenin labels "Russian nationalism". The EU has always been portrayed by Russian elites to its population as an American puppet. Bottom line is, this is not a new trend, and it is not as persistent as Mr. Trenin claims it to be. Besides, as in an authoritarian country, Russia's leadership does not feel pressed to listen to their public (they actually do not), and its efforts to show that it does are amusing, at most. Perhaps, it is also relevant to once again emphasize that it was the Russian leadership that has consistently and systematically developed these anti-Western/nationalist feelings for over a decade now. A good question to ask then would be why Russian leaders have done that aka what were their goals behind this policy?
The second major claim of Trenin's article is that "Europe is no longer assumed to be part of Russia's extended family" and that the Russian foreign policy "center of gravity is no longer on integration with EU". Well, one would counter with the idea that Russia had never seen the EU as family, and it has never wanted to integrate. Integration with EU would mean democratic reforms, and observation shows that Russian leadership does not believe this is the optimal way for Russia today. Russia's designs for Europe were also far from being a family thing. Moscow's approach to wider Europe was to subdue the weak and to divide the pie with the strong. Observing Russia's foreign policy towards Europe over the last decade we can see a strong continuity, which means evidence is against Mr Trenin's claims. Talking about EU and NATO expansion fading in energy and being replaced by a "gathering of the lands," pursued by Moscow in regard to post-Soviet countries, this is a rather temporary trend. Putin's proposed Eurasian Union is unattractive to these countries, as they don't seem to believe Mr. Trenin's claims, and view it as the attempt to restore Moscow's control over them, perhaps in a different shape but similarly in its Soviet-minded substance. Even though Western institutions are busy dealing with their expansion fatigue, this does not mean the West has given up on post-Soviet countries that are willing to integrate. To sum up, there is no revolution either in Russia's domestic development or its foreign policies towards EU specifically, or the West in general. To the contrary, we have observed a strong continuity over the last decade. The only difference is that currently the Russian leadership believes it has the power to actually change things in its favor, and therefore, may try more bold actions than before. That EU should be aware of, indeed.
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