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U.S. seeks to keep EU and Russia apart

Vladimir Radyuhin

American efforts have centred on rolling back Europe's emerging energy alliance with Russia, and widening EU rifts using its allies in "new Europe."

AS RUSSIA regained its strength and reasserted its dominance in the former Soviet Union, its geopolitical rivalry with the United States has moved to Europe. A deep U.S. shadow hung over a disappointing Russia-European Union summit at Samara on the Volga River in May. The two-day summit ended without as much as a joint communiqué, let alone any agreements, for the first time since the sides started holding bi-annual summits more than a decade ago.

European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson warned that relations between the EU and Russia were marred by a "level of misunderstanding or even mistrust we have not seen since the end of the Cold War." A lion's share of this "misunderstanding and mistrust" has come from the European Union's new members from the former Soviet bloc.

Since joining the EU three years ago, the East European nations, above all Poland and the Baltic republics, have become a U.S. Trojan horse in Europe in return for Washington's help in enabling them to play a bigger role in European affairs than their economic weight justifies. The "new Europeans" have scuttled the adoption of a EU constitution and "enriched" the EU's Russian agenda with grievances about the "Soviet occupation" and Russia's "new imperial ambitions."

The U.S. has been watching with growing alarm as President Vladimir Putin pushed for closer ties with Europe. Russia-EU trade has grown nearly three-fold since 2000 to $231 billion last year. The EU accounts for close to 53 per cent of the foreign trade of Russia, which is Europe's third largest trade partner. Russia is Europe's main source of energy supplies — meeting 26 per cent of its natural gas needs and a large share of its crude and oil consumption.

A roadmap Russia and the EU adopted two years ago called for stronger relationship in economy, security, justice, and cultural affairs, and set in motion a programme to ease visa procedures that should eventually bring about visa-free travel between Russia and Europe. After Russia signed a partnership accord with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 2002, the two sides embarked on joint training for peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations. Russia's Security Council even came up with a plan to seek a close relationship with NATO along the French model. This would give Russia full-scale involvement in all NATO activities except in the military sphere.

Integration of Russia with Europe is a nightmare scenario for Washington. Russia's vast natural resources combined with Europe's capital and technologies can generate a tremendous synergy effect that would turn Europe into an independent global player, no longer strapped to U.S. foreign policy. U.S. efforts have centred on rolling back Europe's emerging energy alliance with Russia, and widening EU rifts using its allies in "new Europe." Lithuania's parliamentarians have drafted a "Russia Containment Strategy," which they summed up as: "The more there will be America in Europe, the less there will be Russia there." Estonia's former Ambassador to Russia, Mart Helme, has formulated the East Europeans' goals even more bluntly. "We need a new `Berlin wall' against neo-Stalinist Russia and its anti-Western allies," Mr. Helme wrote last month in the Brussels Journal, a pro-U.S. neoconservative weblog published from Belgium. He urged "new Europe" to "stop putting its trust in the EU's dream of a common foreign and military policy and opt for a clear security policy oriented to the United States."

It is this goal of splitting Europe that Poland and other East European nations have been pursuing on behalf of the U.S.

The U.S. plan to deploy missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic and set up war bases in Bulgaria and Romania is as much a military as a political project. Unhappy with the refusal of its NATO allies from "old Europe" to commit additional troops to Afghanistan, Washington has started building a military alliance with the more forthcoming "new Europeans." Lithuania's Defence Minister Juozas Olekas has called for deploying the U.S. missile shield in his country as well. This would enable the U.S. to kill two birds with one stone: form a cordone sanitaire along Russia's borders and undermine Europe's unity.

In a recent interview, Mr. Putin suggested that the deployment of U.S. missile defences in Europe could be aimed at "thwarting closer ties between Russia and Europe."

The U.S. and its allies have succeeded in poisoning the political atmosphere between Russia and the EU. Russia has been the target of a massive hostile propaganda campaign in the European media, which depict President Putin as an authoritarian leader who has curbed freedoms in Russia, orchestrated assassinations of critics, and used energy as a political weapon to blackmail Europe. Poland has vetoed the launching of Russia-EU talks on a new partnership accord, and threatened to block EU approval of the Russian WTO bid over a meat embargo Moscow says it imposed on health grounds.

In the run-up to the Russia-EU summit in Samara, Estonia in a demonstratively anti-Russian gesture relocated a WWII monument to Russian soldiers from the capital Tallinn. The move further soured Russia's relations with the EU, which denounced Moscow's angry response as "interference" in Estonia's internal affairs. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution supporting Estonia's action and condemning protests against it in Estonia and Russia.

Following the dismantling of the war memorial in Estonia, Poland came up with two draft laws that would allow the removal of monuments to Soviet soldiers located on its soil. The war on monuments is seen in Russia as part of a wider campaign aimed at rewriting history and depicting Russia as successor to a totalitarian empire worse than Nazi Germany. Last year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes," which effectively equated Nazism and Communism in line with a 1997 Black Book of Communism, which held Communist regimes responsible for a greater number of deaths than fascism.

In his hard-hitting speech in Munich in February, President Putin warned Europe of the dangers of subscribing to the U.S.' "illegitimate" and "ruinous" policies, which are "breeding conflict after conflict and fuelling the arms race." In a further warning to Europe, Mr. Putin in his Victory Day speech on May 9 compared U.S. attempts to impose diktats on the world to the ideology of Hitler's Third Reich which triggered the Second World War.

Even as the EU leaders promised after the Samara summit that Europe would henceforth speak to Moscow with one voice, it is in fact split on the issue of relations with Russia and has been unable to come up with a unified response to Russia's energy-driven offensive. The core EU members — Germany, France, Italy, Spain — favour stronger partnership with Russia to enhance Europe's security through mutual dependence. However, some East European nations maintain that Russia poses a threat to European energy security and lobby for a tougher EU stance against it in close alliance with the U.S.

However, "there are ever fewer means of putting pressure on Russia today," Mr. Putin said recently on a visit to Luxemburg. "There are practically none left. Russia has restored its military and economic potential." Moscow is making the most of the EU rift, strengthening its energy ties with "old Europe" and the more friendly EU members in Eastern and Central Europe. Russia has tied up with Germany to build a gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea despite fierce opposition from Poland and the Baltic states, signed an accord with Hungary to extend the Turkey-bound Blue Stream gas pipe up through the Balkans to western Hungary, and struck a deal with Bulgaria and Greece to build an oil pipeline to the Mediterranean markets bypassing the congested Bosporus Straits. The new and existing Russian pipelines to Europe gained added strategic significance when Moscow signed landmark pacts with Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to expand the transit of their oil and gas to Europe via Russia. Moscow has thus thwarted U.S.-led efforts to route Central Asia's gas exports to Europe around Russia.

All Russian pipeline projects in Europe have one common feature — they bypass Russia's fiercest critics and U.S. allies, Poland and the Baltic states. As one Russian analyst put it, we are witnessing a recarving of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between Russia and "old Europe" that is reminiscent of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany.

"Once Poland and the Baltic states cease to be transit routes for Russian gas, their value for Russia and old Europe will drop to zero," the expert said.

Add to this Russian companies' aggressive acquisition of industrial stakes in European countries and you will understand Mr. Putin's confidence that no amount of spanners thrown in the wheels of Russia's integration with mainstream Europe can derail the process. "Relations between Russia and Europe will grow whether somebody likes it or not," Mr. Putin said after the Samara summit.

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