War as chance for dialogue

Europe is pushing Russia into an alliance with China.

EU emergency summit yesterday was not the first attempt to revise relations with Russia. Neither will it be the last, of course. Europe is making one and the same mistake over and over again - it remains obsessed with the today's agenda and unwilling to look beyond that. Hence the idea to suspend negotiations over prolongation of the partnership and cooperation agreement and the threat to keep Russia out of the WTO. The partnership and cooperation agreement has absolutely nothing to do with the actual economic and political dialogue. As for the WTO, it is coming apart at its seams due to the efforts of its own members.

We cannot help seeing two principal platforms. The first one is promoted by the so called New Europe: Russia has always been an aggressor; given half a chance, it will attack everyone within sight and restore the empire. The second platform comes down to the following: let us be more careful about Russia or else we may find ourselves without fuel and electric power. Promoted by the so called Old Europe, this platform is undeniably more pragmatic. On the other hand, even it denies Russia its rightful place among European countries. Keep treating Russia as a barbarian country and it will certainly foment fitting behavior on its part.

In a word, neither Europe exactly objects to another Cold War. It is just that one of them is quite reckless about it, while the other prudently wants something like the state of affairs of the 1970s and 1980s when the Cold War never interfered with oil and gas export from the USSR and when the latter never used this export as a means of applying political pressure to anyone else. This revision of the previous Cold War is no longer possible, of course. Politics and businesses were divided the because Europe had alternatives to Russian hydrocarbons while Moscow lacked other foreign markets for its hydrocarbons.

Options of Russia and Europe at this point are down to only two. Option one comes down to recognition of failure so that the concerned parties will start preparations for a war - and not exactly Cold War either. Option two suggests an attempt to meet and try to put together a new global security framework. To accomplish this latter, we will have to recognize validity of two premises. First, that the old system is ruined. Second, that it was ruined by the United States rather than by the war in Georgia. It is the United States that has been barely acknowledging existence of international institutions. As for Europe, Washington's arrogance certainly hurts Europe. Here are a few examples to illustrate. The war in Yugoslavia resulted in establishment of several Moslem states in central Europe. The Kyoto Protocol never came into force, due to Washington. War in Georgia and America's potential strike at Iran will kill Europe's hopes for alternative sources of hydrocarbons.

Russia and the European Union might launch a dialogue over a complete rearrangement of the existing security framework and invite other interested parties to join it too. The global war scenario is still reversible, fortunately.

Instead of doing so (initiating a dialogue), Europe prefers to push Russia into Beijing's embrace. Speculations on advantages of an alliance with the People's Republic of China become more and more animated in Russia.

Author: Konstantin Simonov.

Source: Vedomosti - September 02, 2008.