Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference may have been a wake-up call to the United States and Europe. Six years ago, Putin declared to the German Bundestag that the Cold War was over and that Russia wanted to join the West. Putin’s speech was warmly received, and European politicians could imagine a common European house.
Now, sixteen years after the end of the Cold War, Russia is again seen as the West’s aggressive rival. After the conference Putin elevated Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to First Deputy Prime Minister, making him Putin’s heir apparent. The Munich speech favored the nationalist rhetoric of Ivanov over that of Dimitri Medvedev, the other feasible contender for Putin’s succession. Medvedev suggested at Davos that a changed Russia would seek true partnership with the West and full-fledged integration into the world economy.
Putin is popular in Russia: he has strengthened the state and established order inside the country. The majority of the population feels safe, living standards have increased, and there is hope for the future. Russians again feel proud of being Russian. An emboldened Moscow has drawn a red line on NATO’s embrace of Ukraine and Georgia and opposes the recently announced plan to deploy anti-missile defense forces in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russians perceive the EU and US as building a new architecture for Europe without them. Russia hears that it will never become a member of NATO and the EU, the two principal institutions designing the future of the continent. Russian investors are being pushed out from EU markets. Russian companies are seen as instruments of the Kremlin’s “expansion” into Europe and their activities blocked.
Russia has appeared anti-democratic—not investigating the murders or Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko; bringing the legal case against Yukos; handling the energy negotiations with Ukraine and Belarus unprofessionally. But these bad PR moves have driven the rhetoric of US conservative politicians towards a pitch approaching Cold War. The gas and oil disputes with Ukraine and Belarus raise doubts that Russia could be a reliable partner in energy supply for the West.
Russia and the EU need a direct line of communication, such as the one which existed between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War, in order to avoid future misunderstandings and conflicts. Russia could use this hotline to immediately inform its partners in the West about shortcomings in energy delivery. Russia should work hard to regain the status of a reliable energy supplier.
The West should continue to support democracy in Russia and facilitate a European path for Moscow. The election year of 2007 will see Russians debate on whether to ally with the West. Russia will no longer be satisfied as merely a “junior partner”: the country is stronger in world politics and cannot be ignored on issues of global importance. The US and the EU must re-engage with Russia. The worst possible choice would be a return to containment.
Alexander Rahr is program director of the Russia and CIS affairs program at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked as a frequent consultant for the Rand Corporation, the Institute of East-West-Security Studies, and the Council of Europe.
Related Materials from the Atlantic Community:
- Bastian Giegerich and Raffaello Pantucci on why Merkel’s Russian Moment is Now
- Alexander Graf Lambsdorff on The Russia Conundrum: EU and US Should Cooperate with the ‘Imitation Democracy’
- Ron Asmus on the Importance of the Black Sea Zone
- Richard Morningstar to Europe: Russia’s Not the Only Country with Energy Resources
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May 24, 2007
Raffaello Pantucci, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Silver Contributor (58)
While the current European policy can be read as antagonistic, the truth is that finally the EU seems to be moving towards its own internal consensus on a Russia policy, something that was notably absent before. In the past Russia was able to capitalize upon wildly divergent European states stands on Russia to divide and rule - now at last there is some sort of consensus forming and the Russians no longer like the path that it is leading down and so are fighting it. However, the reality is that they need to learn to be (to steal Bob Zoellick's phrase about China) "responsible stakeholders" in the international community and in their common space with Europe. It is not that the West is trying to treat Russia like a "junior partner", but rather that Russia is trying to treat Europe like a "junior partner." They cannot expect to simply push an obedient Europe around as they please. The failings we saw previously were mostly the product of an EU that was driven by a few leaders who missed the core truth in the EU-Russia relationship, and that is that it is one of equals dependent upon each other in a symbiotic relationship. The EU needs Russian energy as much as Russia needs the EU's money (for its energy) to feed its growth. Tales of shifting allocations to the East are wildly overstated and miss the fact that the Russian energy infrastructure is barely able to meet current needs.
The critical fact is not simply that the EU and US need to re-engage with Russia (which is true), but they need to re-engage on common terms, not dictats delivered in aggressive populist rhetoric aimed at a Russian audience.
Finally, as an aside, one comment i would directly disagree with is the fact that Russia, to my knowledge, has no desire to be a part of NATO. In fact, the consensus is that NATO is still some sort of tool of military policy that is aimed directly at them, a paranoia left-over from the Cold War that one hopes time will disabuse them of.