The confluence of interests between Russia and Europe

[NatVox]

The confluence of interests between Russia and Europe

El Mundo (paper edition)
September 30, 2006

The meeting which took place last Saturday, near Paris, between Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancelor Angela Merkel and French President Jacques Chirac, constituted a reminder of the wide agenda that exists and of the importance of the remaining issues between the heir of the now vanished Soviet Union and the European Union.

For reasons which are easy to understand, the attention of the conference focused on the issue of energy (Russia delivers 30% of the gas and 18% of the petrol consumed in Europe) and on the acquisition of the 5.2% of shares of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), builders of Airbus, by the Russian state-owned bank VTB. A slightly smaller percentage of shares than Spain has. Both questions are only a part of the huge iceberg of common issues which can help towards building up a strategical alliance between Russia and the European Union or, if the still non-buried criteria of the Cold War persist, to be a constant source of conflicts which would seriously damage the stability and the security of the continent and of its immediate geographical surroundings.

After the Soviet debacle a series of unordered processes of re-accomodation in the old area of influence of the USSR took place: some had a good ending, like the transitions in Poland or Hungary; others were unfortunate, like the gratuitous division of the Czech Republic; still another derived in a tragedy, like that happened in the old Yugoslavia, which its most recent history is still waiting to be written. The traumatizing killings in the Balkans had the effect of bringing to a halt similar processes --which in political jargon are called frozen conflicts--, that affect Moldavia (with the problem of independentism in Transdniester), Georgia (with Abjasia and Northern Ossetia), and Armenia and Azerbajan (the Nagorno-Karabaj enclave).

The list doesn't end there. To the frozen conflicts we should add the latent conflicts, which refer to countries with considerable minorities of Russians or Slavs (like Latvia, where 40% of the inhabitants are Russian; Estonia, with a 35% of Russian population; and especially Ukraine, with a 30% and where the conflict over Crimea, the historical peninsula given to Ukraine in 1954 and the see of the Black Sea fleet, is dormant but unquiet. The eventual joining of Ukraine --a country united since its origins to Russia-- in NATO could be the detonator for a geopolitical conflict of unforeseen consequences.

When considering these issues there meet two antithetic conceptions. One in the conception propugnated by the US, which has NATO as a spearhead and defends the continous expansion of the Atlantic Alliance over the former Soviet republics, as an essential step to prevent the reconstruction of the Russian area of influence in Europe and Central Asia. According to this doctrine, the joining of Ukraine in NATO would be a fatal blow to Russia as a great power and it would make firm the hegemonic control of Washington in the region. Thanks to NATO, the US would penetrate deep in the bowels of Russia, making Ukraine a satellite, which would add up to the area integrated by old members of the Warsov Pact, today turned into docile allies as evidenced by their alignment during the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is, therefore, a policy of confrontation which doesn't leave any benefits to Europe, since Europe is reduced to an instrument to apply the old theory of Halford Mackinder of preventing an alliance between the two bigger land powers of Europe --Germany and Russia--, in benefit of the sea power --Great Britain yesterday, the US today.

The British Mackinder, conscious that a Germano-Russian alliance would be fatal for keeping the English hegemony in the world, proposed on the one hand to create a series of plug-states between both countries (which is what the US have achieved with the adhesion of the Central European states to NATO) and, on the other hand, to impede the emergence of strategical and economical links between Russia and Germany. The Cold War acted in favour of this thesis and, after the vanishing of the USSR, the United States thought that it had come the time to apply that theory in Eurasia. For this reason, Ukraine became an essential piece of a game of an uncertain future, where the European Union is reduced to a pawn on a strange chessboard. In the best of cases the servitude of the European Union with respect to the United States would be even bigger, and in the worse of cases Europe would become the scene (and the hostage) of a number of ethnic and geopolitical conflicts of extreme seriousness.

The alternative would be to substitute the confrontation by the confluence of interests between Europeans and Russians, which implies to assume different --and independent-- political policy lines to those promoted by Washington. The field is wide and it offers great benefits to both parts, as well as being the best possible guarantee to ensure peace and security in the European continent. Former German Chancelor Gerhard Schroder, who encouraged with enthusiasm one of the projects that will contribute more to change the relations between Germany and Russia, the construction of the North-European Gasoduct, seemed to have understood this well. This gasoduct will allow the direct delivery of gas from Russian territories, by-passing Ukraine --which, when the gasoduct starts working in 2010, will lose its main instrument of pressure over Russia and the European Union. With all reason, the sunday paper Sonntag Algemeine Zeitung, wrote that "the North-European Gasoduct will change the political coordinates" of the region, admiting that this work goes beyond the simpler economical and energetic aspects.

If we agree in that power is the control of the energy, the acendancy of Russia over Europe is more than clear. The world energy crisis, which comes as a result of the voracity of emerging powers like China and India and of the huge instability of the Middle East, makes it of the utmost importance that the European Union guarantees the stability of the deliveries to the maximum. Russia appears as the most natural and solvent allied, but that would force the Europeans to take into account and to satisfy the esteemed interests of Russia in this continent and its proximities.

A first step forward is to understand the Russian geopolitical concerns and to respect perennaly her worries in her historical areas of influence, i.e. Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Another step forward is to understand that Russia is willing to enter as an active partner in the relevant economical, scientifical and technological sectors of the European space, like EADS or the industry of steel. Until now, Europeans have reacted with reflexes of the Cold War era, making of the European Union a tributary of NATO which, instead of disolving itself like the Pact of Warsov, it has been turned into a war machine with pretensions of world police. It is from those reflexes that the Russian entrepreneurial initiatives have been opposed if not boycotted. Thus, when the Russian company Severstal entered in Arcelor, the European Union prefered the depreciated Hindo-British company Mittal, which in Moscow it was seen as an anti-Russian decision. The entrance of Russia as a shareholder of EADS has provoked even more negative reactions as if, instead of winning a partner, an enemy had been infiltrated. Distrust is not the best way to win those "trustful partners" of who Chancelor Merkel spoke during the meeting in France.

Russia has a powerful aeronautic and space industry which if of interest to Europe in order to widen its activities in that field --nowadays rather limited--, and Russia in turn is needed of European technology. EADS, submerged in the present in one of its worse crises, would receive a multi-million injection if Russia chose the Airbus instead of the Boeing for its already previewed renovation of the fleet of Aeroflot, which has 300 planes. If the Russian airlines decided to go for EADS, it would be a noticeable backing and it would aleviate its crisis and improve its position with respect to Boeing.

It is also important not to forget that the biggest adversary of Europe in the aerospatial sector is the United States, not Russia, and that the US is the rival to beat. The same can be said of other strategical sectors for the EU, like the satelite system Galileo (which had the first satelite launched from the Russian base of Baikonur), which is set to substitute the GPS system controlled by the US, or the markets competence in MERCOSUR or the Quaero system, an European alternative to the omnipresent search engine Google. Not to forget the spy system ECHELON, created by the US to spy on the EU, and contested by the EU with the SECOQC system. In the opposite direction, EADS acquired the 10% of the Russian company Irkut, the builder of the SU-27 and SU-30 airplanes, among other aeronautical products. An example of colaboration worth to imitate. It could be said that, at least in these fields, the United States is the past while Russia could be the future.

The strengthening of the world security and peace is another important field of coincidences, as it was made clear by the war against Iraq. The convergence of France, Germany and Russia was a decissive factor in the political defeat of the Bush Gorvenment and in the non legitimisation of that barbaric aggresion, which turned into a disaster. Even in selfish terms, the EU needs to promote this alliance. To Europe, which gets the 40% of its petrol supplies from the Middle East, it is necessary to maintain the peace in that region, especially because its dependency on Muslim petrol will keep on the rise as it has been admitted by the EU.

To the US, the dependency is not as bad, since its imports from the Persian Gulf are just 19% of its total consumption. A bigger conflict in the area (e.g., an attack against Iran) would shake the US but it would turn into a catastrophe for the EU. For a start, it would force the EU to turn to Russia in order to avoid the collapse of energy in its countries and the bankruptcy of the economy. In other words, both for peace and for war Europe would still need of a strategical alliance with Russia.

In a world of uncertainties and with the US in decline, it is necessary to have forces which are capable to provide sanity and equilibrium and that they contribute to put an end to the wars and violence started with the war against the now defunct Yugoslavia. The European Union, alone and divided, could not do it. In an alliance with Russia, it would be ready to deliver stability to the world.

In any case, it would go against the interests of the European Union to continue reducted to being an instrument of failed dreams of world dominance. Russia, with her 17 million squared kilometers and her huge material, scientific and human potential, is a reality that cannot be ignored. Since Russia is there and will remain there, growing stronger each day and recovered from the dreadful government of Yeltsin, the more intelligent thing to do is to have her as an ally. France and Germany have finally understood this. Now it must be understood by the rest of the countries in the European Union. A good part of the future of Europe depends of the relation with the largest country of the world.


Augusto Zamora R. is a professor of International Law and International Relations in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

[NatVox]

Germans Say No to President Over EADS

The St. Petersburg Times
October 13, 2006

President Vladimir Putin was rebuffed in his desire for a bigger Russian stake in aerospace firm EADS on Wednesday, as he ended a two-day German visit clouded by the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.Putin had hoped to further Russian business interests on a trip that took him first to the eastern city of Dresden to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, and to Munich on Wednesday, but he came at a time of deep suspicions in Europe over Russia's intentions.

Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber said he had talked to Putin about EADS and told him there were limits to foreign investments in sensitive sectors.

"I asked him to understand that in some strategic industries there are limits to taking reciprocal stakes," Stoiber said. "We must both respect each other's interests."

Germany worries that Moscow is trying to use revenues from its vast oil and gas reserves to wield greater global influence.

Stoiber's comments were a clear warning to Putin — who makes no secret of his wish to invest further in Germany — that he should steer clear of seeking a strategic investment in EADS after a Russian bank bought 5 percent of it.

But Putin hit back in a speech to business leaders in the Bavarian capital.

"We do not understand the nervousness in the press about Russia investing abroad," he said. "Where does this hysteria come from?"

"The Russians are coming here, not on tanks and with Kalashnikov assault rifles in their hands; they are coming with money, and they deserve to be welcomed and helped in their work," Putin said.

"It's not the Red Army that wants to come to Germany," he said. "It's just the same capitalists as you."

Moscow has been pushing for a seat on the EADS board and Putin told the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Wednesday that he favored Russia boosting its stake in the Airbus parent, which has dual headquarters in Munich and Paris.

Putin also pushed for visa-free travel between Russia and other European countries. "Our goal is an exchange without visas," he said. "After the fall of the Berlin wall, no new walls should be allowed to appear in Europe."

Putin was meeting business and regional leaders in Munich and noted Bavaria's strength in the high-tech sector.

"This is an especially important area of cooperation for us because one of the main jobs in the short term is for us to diversify the Russian economy," Putin told reporters.

Putin brought with him Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman, as well as leading business figures such as Pyotr Aven, head of Alfa Bank; Oleg Deripaska of Russian Aluminum; and Alexei Mordashov, head of steelmaker Severstal.

A range of corporate deals has been signed during the visit, and both the president and Stoiber stressed the potential for closer cooperation in future.

Siemens, Europe's largest engineering company, on Wednesday announced an agreement worth up to 450 million euros ($565 million) with Renova to upgrade Russian energy, transport and telecommunications resources.

The agreement covers areas including power generation, power distribution, telecommunications and airport modernization, Munich-based Siemens said in an e-mailed statement.

Putin has made much of Germany's reliance on Russia for its future energy needs during his visit. Memories here are still fresh of the supply disruptions in January after Gazprom cut deliveries to Ukraine.

Germany is the biggest foreign end-user of Russian gas, importing 40 billion cubic meters per year. Imports will rise substantially when the Nord Stream pipeline is completed in 2010 to carry Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea.


[source]