This September, the heads of each of the EU’s 27 member states met in Brussels for what was only the Union’s 2nd ever emergency summit.  Russia had just crushed its neighbour Georgia in a short, sharp war, and only one item was on the agenda – how should the EU respond to a resurgent Russia on its Eastern borders?

After a full day’s discussions, the 27 wise leaders of the European Union managed to reach the not very startling conclusion that “relations between the EU and Russia have reached a crossroads.”  After screwing up all their courage, they went on to warn Moscow that EU-Russia relations would be subjected to “a careful in-depth examination” at the next scheduled EU-Russia summit.

Not exactly the kind of words that would cause the Kremlin, buoyed by an overwhelming military victory to quake in its boots.

Certainly, the Russian media didn’t think much of Europe’s strong words. “Europe Can Keep Sucking Our Oil and Gas,” was the delightfully crude headline emblazoned across Russian tabloid Tvoi Den.

If French President Nicholas Sarkozy had stood outside of the Kremlin just after the summit and put his ear to the door, he would have heard the sound of two vodka glasses being clinked together, and the harsh laughter of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the two men who run Russia.

The lumbering elephant…

By almost every objective measure – population, GDP, military spending to name but a few – Russia is inferior to the European Union.  So why does it seem that Russia is running rings around a beleaguered EU?

Put simply, it’s because the EU draws its strength from unity and Russia is one of the most divisive issues facing the Union today.

The EU is made up of Trojan Horses, Strategic Partners, Friendly Pragmatists, Frosty Pragmatists and New Cold Warriors.

In their excellent November 2007 analysis “A Power Audit of EU-Russia Relations” authors Mark Leonard and Nicu Popescu argued that, when it comes to Russia, the 27 EU member states can be divided into five distinct groups – Trojan Horses, Strategic Partners, Friendly Pragmatists, Frosty Pragmatists and New Cold Warriors.

The list of Strategic Partners (those countries that Leonard and Popescu describe as enjoying a ‘special relationship with Russia’) is relatively small, but contains three of the powerhouses of EU politics – France, Germany and Italy.  Towards the other end of the scale, the group of Frosty Pragmatists (those countries ‘less afraid than others to speak out against Russian behaviour’) is larger, but contains a just one major power – the United Kingdom.  This, combined with the presence of Poland in the ‘overtly hostile’ New Cold Warriors camp, is enough to ensure that the scales of European Union opinion on Russia are frustratingly balanced.

Each EU member state has its own reasons for being either friendly or hostile towards Russia.  Sometimes these reasons are to do with historical emnity (Poland is a particular case in point here).  Other times, it’s because of business interests.  Greece and Cyrpus, for example, are widely seen to be strong allies of Russia within the EU, and have on occasion threatened to use their veto to defend Russian interests.  And, of course, the prospect of becoming overly dependent on Russian energy supplies is making everyone nervous these days.

…  versus the nimble bear

Russia has raised the game of divide and conquer to an art-form..

Russia isn’t the only country that takes advantage of the European Union’s divisions.  The United States regularly takes advantage of its relationships with the UK, Holland and Poland, to name but a few countries.  In fact, every country’s diplomatic service probably spends a great deal of time thinking about how it can use the tactics of ‘divide and conquer’ effectively against the European Union.

But Russia has taken advantage of European complacency about its weakness, and raised the game of divide and conquer to an art-form.

Russia has assiduously courted smaller EU member states, such as Greece to which it provides substantial military support and Cyprus which receives unstinting political support in its dispute with North Cyprus).    At the same time, it has not been averse to threatening other weak EU states and, over the past 5 years, Russia has cut off oil supplies to Estonia, Latvia and Luthuania – each time, co-incidentally, in the midst of a poltical or economic dispute.

But Russia’s real strength has been in building relationships with its ‘Strategic Partners’.  In particular, it has played on France’s desire to see a multi-polar world, and expended considerable energy on increasing trade with Germany and in wooing key German politicians.

Through an early recognition of Europe’s weaknesses, and an astute manipulation of Europe’s member states Russia has been able to outwit its larger neigbour(s) to the West.

But there is still danger for Russia.  No matter how nimble it is, and how sharp it claws, the EU remains an elephant.  The European elephant is slowly waking up to the danger that Russia poses and, if the EU’s 27 member states ever manage to reach a common position, Russia could find itself squashed underneath the feet of an angry Elephant…

The EU's Lumbering Elephant versus the Nimble Russian Bear is a post from: Siberian Light

Russia is brilliantly playing divide and conquer with European Union nations, argues a new paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations.

In “A Power Audit of EU – Russia Relations“, authors Mark Leonard and Nicu Popescu provide a sharp analysis of exactly how the nimble Russian bear – which on almost every objective measure of soft and hard power is massively inferior to the EU – has been able to run rings around the lumbering herd of elephants that is the 21st century European Union.

Russia has achieved this success, they argue, because it has managed to identify and manipulate the divisions between EU members states who have wildly varying views on how to deal with Russia.

However, instead of arguing that the EU has been split broadly into two camps by the arrival of new but rabidly anti-Russian members such as Poland in the East, Leonard & Popescu argue that, when it comes to relations with Russia, EU members can be divided into five distinct groups:

‘Trojan Horses’ (Cyprus and Greece) who often defend Russian interests in the EU system, and are willing to veto common EU positions;

‘Strategic Partners’ (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) who enjoy a ‘special relationship’ with Russia which occasionally undermines common EU policies;

‘Friendly Pragmatists’ (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia) who maintain close relationship with Russia and tend to put their business interests above political goals;

‘Frosty Pragmatists’ (Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom) who also focus on business interests but are less afraid than others to speak out against Russian behaviour on human rights or other issues;

and ‘New Cold Warriors’ (Lithuania and Poland) who have an overtly hostile relationship with Moscow and are willing to use the veto to block EU negotiations with Russia.

I hadn’t considered EU divisions over Russia in quite that way before, but now I think about it, I tend to agree with these groupings (although ‘Trojan Horse’ is perhaps a bit too strong a term). And the ultimate assessment that Russia has taken advantage of the EU’s structural weakness as best as it could is pretty much spot on, too. The Russian government has invested a massive amount of political capital in wooing those countries it thinks it can do business with, and has been prepared to play hardball (when it can) with those countries who are less friendly to the current Russian regime.

Having said that, Russia isn’t the only country that has noticed and exploited the European Union’s fabled lack of unity. The US is an expert in the game, and regularly takes advantage of its relationships with the UK, Holland and Poland, to name but a few countries. That the Bush admnistration managed to persuade half of the EU’s countries to provide military support in Iraq while EU public opinion was deeply divided on the Iraq War is clear testament to the skill of the US here, as well as to the underlying systemic weakness in the EU’s approach to foreign policy.

The Russian bear should beware when baiting the EU’s herd of elephants, though. The EU does find it tremendously difficult to agree on a common position, but when it does agree on something, the EU has the political muscle to match and defeat any country in the world – witness the recent negotiations over trade between the EU and US.

If the Russian bear overplays its hand and pushes the EU that little bit too far, it might just find itself looking up one day to find a herd of elephants thundering towards it…

Update: Check out Johsha’s post over at Registan.net, discussing some of the implications for Central Asia.

How the nimble Russian bear pushes around the EU's lumbering herd of elephants is a post from: Siberian Light

As usual, the summit begins amongst tensions between the two European powerhouses (but, then again, if there were no tensions, there would be no point in holding a summit, I suppose…).

Top of the agenda for the Europeans from the West will be energy security and human rights (not only are rights organisations shouting loudly this week about Russian rights abuses, but Maria Litvinenko has published an article in UK newspaper the Telegraph arguing that EU leaders should refuse to sit down with Putin and that, for good measure, Russia should be kicked out of the G8 as well).

The Europeans from the East, on the other hand, will want to talk about how they can become members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Poland will be a key talking point here – Russia’s relations with Poland are tense and the Kremlin is concerned about the veto that Poland wields within the EU.

Finally, the future status of Kosovo will be on the agenda, but I suspect that both sides will wish it wasn’t.

More later, as we begin to hear what comes out of Portugal. Hopefully there will be at least a modicum of good news – officials on both sides are being described as “cautiously optimistic“.

EU-Russia summit begins amidst tensions is a post from: Siberian Light

“The situation in the world and internal political interests require the Foreign Intelligence Service to permanently increase its capabilities, primarily in the field of information and analytical support for the country’s leadership,” said Putin.

Or, to put it another way: ‘we need more spies’.

Which is probably a good idea, considering that Spain have just uncovered a Russian double agent operating within Spanish intelligence:

The suspect, Robert Flores Garcia, was arrested Monday morning at his home on Tenerife Island in Spain’s Canary Islands. He passed secrets in exchange for hefty payments from December 2001 to February 2004, said the spy chief, Alberto Saiz, head of the National Intelligence Agency (known by its Spanish initials CNI).

[...] The suspect allegedly revealed the names of dozens of Spanish spies, possibly including the seven Spanish spies killed in an ambush south of Baghdad in November 2003, Saiz said.

Yet another EU country with soon-to-be frosty relations with Russa.

Putin orders increase in spying and military budgets is a post from: Siberian Light

If the US plan goes ahead as expected, high powered radars from Poland will be able to cover all of European Russia, and a good chunk of Siberia as well:

At the same time, it illustrates just why Central/Eastern Europe is such a perfect site for this anti-missile system.

• It’s directly in between any missiles that may be fired from Iran towards the US.
• It’s almost directly in between any missiles that might head towards Western Europe.
• It’s sufficiently far enough away to allow interceptors to be launched in good time.
• It’s perfectly placed to mesh with US-based radars covering the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
• Oh yes – and it just happens to have a bonus feature allowing sneak peaks into Russian airspace…

(Hat tip: Cyrill Vatomsky, who posts his thoughts on the issue here).

A map of the Russia-US anti-missile dispute is a post from: Siberian Light

Details of exactly how such a scheme would work are a little sketchy at the moment, to say the least, but it seems as though the Kremlin envisage a system built primarily around the radar station they currently rent in Azerbaijan.

Dmitri Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, insisted that a radar base in Azerbaijan would be sufficient to cover the whole of western Europe and that the use of Poland for interceptor rockets should be reconsidered. “The two sides could completely share the technological data of that station with equal control of the station . . . It would lead to a substantial easing of tension and it will solve the problem.”

In principle, I think it’s a good idea – and, with the benefit of my 20-20 hindsight – makes Putin’s brinkmanship of the past few weeks seem much more logical. Lets face it, Russia is at much at risk of missile attack from ‘rogue’ nations or terrorist groups as Western Europe and the United States – if not more so – and a joint missile shield does seem the logical way forward.

But will it happen in practice? I can see plenty of potential problems.

For starters, there is the whole trust issue. An effective joint shield would require a lot of actual joint working, and there isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest that Russia and the US could work well together on such a politically charged project. Although, having said that, there’s always a first time for everything…

Technical issues are also going to come to the forefront. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, although welcoming Russia’s joint missile shield proposal, argued that a shield located in Azerbaijan wouldn’t be able to react in time to incoming missiles:

“It’s a bit close to the rogue states we are discussing.”

A shield located primarily in Azerbaijan wouldn’t cover all of NATO’s member states either.

I suppose this could be overcome by stationing the main radar in Azerbaijan, and the interceptor missiles somewhere else – say, in Poland – but for this would not only require phenomenal co-ordination, but would still probably require radars to be stationed too close to Russia’s Western borders. And wasn’t the whole point of Azerbaijan to avoid that…?

Ultimately, I don’t think this is anything more than a good idea, destined to failure – but I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

Update: For the true cynics among us, here another explantion as to why Putin offered to develop a joint missile shield based in Azerbaijan:

I think that the Russian base, there in Qabala [Azerbaijan] is getting ready — they’re going to lose the base, the lease on the base is going to expire, and they’ve already been making plans to relocate the radar to Krasnodar [Krai, in Russia]. And so what they’re trying to do here is legitimize their presence in Azerbaijan at the expense of the Azerbaijanis. And they will also permanently make the United States a target of the Iranians, and the Azeris, and it’s designed to divide the United States and Azerbaijan. And it creates a Russian military presence there, if I understand the statement correctly.

Cunning, or what?

Putin offers to work on joint missile shield is a post from: Siberian Light

As you would expect, the western press – particularly in the UK – are muttering darkly about the new Cold War and a renewed arms race (see the Express and Guardian, for examples).

I was more interested by the following comment from First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov though:

“As of today Russia has new missiles that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems. In terms of defence and security, Russia can look calmly to the country’s future.”

As Russia now has an unbeatable nuclear deterrent we can clearly expect it to stop worrying about America’s piffling missle shield defences. 

No, seriously, mark my words… from today onwards the Russian government won’t make a single complaint about the US missile defence bases in Eastern Europe.

Or maybe not.

Russia tests new missile is a post from: Siberian Light

1. Russia cut off Latvia’s oil supply in 2003. Purely co-incidentally, this happened at the same time as a Russian takeover bid for the oil port of Ventspils.
2. Russia cut off Lithuania’s oil supply in 2006. Purely co-incidentally, this happened at the same time as the Mazeikiu oil refinery was sold to a Polish firm at the same time as a Russian one.
3. And Russia cut off Estonia’s oil supply in 2007. Purely co-incidentally, this happened at the same time as a violent dispute over the location of a Soviet war memorial.

And that’s not counting the number of times that Russia has cut off oil or gas supplies to a non-EU member state, affecting onward gas supply to EU member states.

To all those bureaucrats in Brussels who have been burying your heads in the sand, believing that Russia will never use its dominance over the EU’s energy supply as a political weapon – now’s the time to raise your head, and take a long hard look over the fence at your neigbour to the East.

Will the EU say to Russia: "Three strikes and you're out"? is a post from: Siberian Light

Anyway, without further ado, I bring you the best of this week’s Euro-blogging, with an Eastern twist (plus a bit from France, because they’ve got an election this weekend).

France

The French are all at the polls this weekend, as the first round of their Presidential election finally gets underway. From what I can gather, it’s not been all that pleasant a campaign. Crooked Timber’s analysis is heavy on the intellectual naked mud wrestling angle, while France Decides 2007 writes about how the election has turned bloody (thankfully not literally – at least not yet) as the candidates have launched themselves at each others throats with gusto.

Nosemonkey has a roundup of the latest happenings as well but, rather disappointingly, the gore count in his post seems rather low.

Meanwhile, Tobais Schwarz at A Fistful of Euros has quite sensibly taken a step back from the whole messy business of electioneering to muse on De Gualle’s “une certaine idée de la France”, and how France reconciles its position as one of Europe’s ‘rebels’ with its position at the heart of calls for European integration.

Pan-European

The Dustbin of History thinks even bigger than the French – he’s wondering whether the European Union needs a unifying narrative or not.

The ever-excellent Devil’s Kitchen has put together a comprehensive post on the evils of the latest bonkers idea from Brussels. The innocuously named Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia [PDF] (which is now agreed, and no longer just a proposal) is rather heavy handed, and if applied to the letter would actually make legitimate debate illegal as well.  EU bloggers in particular should watch out – there’s a section in there that specifically applies to you…

Scrap the CAP is the call from Czech blogger Tomas, who wants to replace it with incentives for entrepreneurial activity. He wouldn’t get an argument from me, although I imagine pretty much every Russian farmer out there would be hammering down the doors of the EU en masse if they knew just how much government subsidy was on offer.

Czech Republic

Blogging in the Czech Republic isn’t just about the ordinary people, you know. Aktualne.cz, the biggest Czech news portal has recently asked about 70 “celebs” (from various fields, mainly politics) to start blogging.

Apparently, the Czechs have even got a blogging President (Václav Klaus, who blogs in both Czech and English).

Latvia

All you ever wanted to know about the upcoming Latvian elections.

Poland

The Polish government continues to try and reconcile itself with its Communist past, in a way which makes most liberals wince. This week they’ve announced that hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens in positions of authority must detail in writing whether they co-operated with the Communist government. Those that fail to do so risk losing their jobs.

Bulgaria

Sofia’s Hidden Beauty explores the Bulgarian capital’s public transport system, and writes about the major expansion of Sofia’s underground.

Finland

The Finnish cabinet lineup has been completed with the addition of Ilkka Kanerva, “a domestically experienced and internationally mediocre former KGB-informant” as Foreign Minister and Paavo Väyrynen, who “had always very warm relationship with the Soviets” as Foreign Trade and Development Minister. Aapotsikko isn’t best pleased with the choices, although I imagine the lads in the Kremlin will be drinking the finest Finnish vodka in celebration…

Greece

Devious Diva writes about discrimination against the Roma in Greece. With perfect timing, Romantic explains the difference between various groups of Gypsy, of which the Roma are just one.

Moldova

One of Europe’s forgotten, but frozen conflict zones may have taken a step closer to a political settlement this week. Russia and Moldova have apparently done a deal over the future of Transnistria. Kosmopolit reckons the deal is weighted in Russia’s favour – so does Economist blogger Edward Lucas.

Moving on to happier things – Lyndon writes about the Moldovan web awards.

Montenegro

Montenegro is well on its way towards EU membership, writes Douglas Muir at A Fistful of Euros. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have noticed. Douglas goes on to assess how close to EU membership Montenegro’s Balkan neighbours are.

Russia

I was going to resist the temptation to cover Russia in this roundup, but it seems like it’s not just the Kremlin’s reaction to Boris Berezovsky’s recent comments that was heavy handed. Apparently, British government’s reaction was symptomatic of the slow death of free speech in the United Kingdom, too.

Belarus

Finally, a success story for Belarussian bloggers. Their hard work has raised more than $7,000 required for the release of Dzianis Dzianisau on bail. He was in jail for disturbing public order, by raising a white-red-white Belarussian flag on a pole overlooking a local park and amphitheatre in Vitebsk.

OK, that’s it for this week. Normal service will hopefully be resumed next week, as (IT hiccups permitting) the Euroblog roundup returns to its spiritual home at Europhobia. If you’d like to be featured in next week’s roundup, email your submission to EUroundup [at] gmail [dot] com by next Sunday lunchtime.

Euroblog roundup – 3 is a post from: Siberian Light

One post in particular caught my eye – 1948 Blog’s article about how Russia is “hijacking” the European Court of Human Rights. 

Apparently, there are about 90,000 cases currently meandering their way through the ECHR (Russia is the defendant in 19,300 of them) that the court is about to come to an administrative standstill.

The ECHR want to implement an administrative reform that would see many cases being heard – initially, at least – by single judges, rather than by a panel of judges.  It’s estimated that this would increase the court’s productivity by 25%.

Russia, however, is blocking the move, arguing that it endangers the “main principles of justice.”  The suspicion, however, is that Russia would actually prefer to see the court grind to a halt, in order to end the embarrasment of having so many cases (and judgements!) directed against it.

The problem is, though, that I think Russia’s stated reasons (although probably not their real reasons) are good ones.

Moving to single judges to hear cases is really an admission that the court is hearing too many cases.  Instead of trying to hear so many cases, it should instead concentrate on setting up more hurdles to prevent frivolous cases (of which there are many) from even reaching the court, so that it isn’t overwhelmed in the first place.  That way, the ECHR could focus its energies on delivering justice, rather than on coping with its administrative burden.

Euroblog roundup is a post from: Siberian Light