Russia between Europe and Asia
Actually I am reading a book from a well known journalist in Germany who is an expert in analyzing geopolitical conflict situations in different regions of the world. His name is Peter Scholl-Latour and he is now in his eighties. Few of his books have been translated into English, e.g. Death in the Rice Field, reporting on three wars in Indochina.
His age does not keep him from travelling regularly as he did throughout his life. During the last year he has again been in Russia and some neighboring countries. The result is a book about Russia and it's situation being “squeezed” between Europe and Asia. Let me pick up some of his thoughts.
Russia's strong disagreement demonstrated towards US plans to deploy missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic reported in late January is raising memories to the times of cold war and iron curtain. Clearly with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the US sphere of influence is more and more spreading towards the east, towards the borders of russian core country.
Scholl-Latour goes back to the days of Michail Gorbatshov the Russian president of Perestroika who made the German reunification happen. From many of his Russian compatriots though he is regarded as responsible for letting the soviet empire fall apart and carelessly making concessions to the west. During the negotiations about the German unification it was discussed that the NATO should not expand more towards east and verbal promises were made that never appeared in any contractual document and apparently Gorbatshov did not further insist.
Today the NATO has expanded pretty massively further east aiming at countries like Ukraine as future members. No surprise that Russia feels threatened if the US drive to put missiles into past Russian “brother” countries. The NATO seems to corner Russia and it looks like the US does not leave Russia room to stay the No. 2 behind superpower US.
The European Union (EU) and even more some member states are purely driven by loyalty to their perceived protector, the US (although you could probably argue if the modern superweapons that do not prevent to bring the US in trouble in Iraq are still adequate means of defense in times of asymmetric war). The EU does not appear to be a strong partner that speaks with one voice and has an own agenda. The interests of the EU are different from those of the US. For the US the EU is the base on the Eurasian continent on the other side of the Atlantic and with the spreading of the EU also the US influence spreads. The EU is geographically much closer to Muslim countries and to the perceived roots of terrorism. Terrorist attacks have hit more frequently in the past.
A stronger EU would be a better partner for the US and considering more own interests questions would pop up like: should not Russia be a more closely aligned partner for Europe? Why should we focus and insist so much in claiming our way of democracy for Russia?
On the other side of the Asian continent China is on the rise and stepping up to play a part in the “Great Game”. Alignment between Russia and China can bring a lot of combined power to the play. Already Chinese and Russians did maneuvers together. Most of the second half of the book is dedicated to this eastern side of the “squeeze”.
Fitting to this wording describing rivalry and strategic conflict for supremacy is a book Scholl-Latour refers to a lot: “The grand chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” from Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor in the Carter administration. Suggested it to myself for one of my next reads.
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09:00PM Feb 11, 2007
by Volker Seubert in Europe & Beyond |
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Comments[1]
Posted by Yannis on February 11, 2007 at 10:10 PM CET #