#11 - RW 267
French Commentary Views Russia's Strategic Posture Toward Europe, US
Le Monde
July 30, 2003
Commentary by Daniel Vernet:
"Russia and US Hegemony"

Russia occupies a choice position in France's line of argument on the multipolar world. During a visit to Moscow at the beginning of the month, the foreign and defense ministers, together with Alain Juppe (chairman of the Union for a People's Movement), offered a reminder of this fact. Their interlocutors listened to them politely, eventually acquiescing to this vision of the international system. However, it would be a mistake to regard these remarks as gospel.

Of course, Russia's support would be important, in view of the fact that France's European partners harbor reservations, to say the least. Without the existence of several different poles of power, there can be no multipolarity. This is an obvious fact that French diplomacy sometimes forgets. Russia, however, tend to reason somewhat like China and to acknowledge US hegemony as an established fact to which it is advisable to conform, while trying to derive the best possible benefit from it in terms of the defense of national interest.

This attitude is probably more evident among circles of foreign policy experts than among political leaders. The latter more easily adapt their line of argument depending on their interlocutors, whereas the former, even if they are not always heeded, express more long-term ideas.

The seminar that took place in Rome recently between representatives of the Moscow Academy of Sciences' Europe Institute, accompanied by several of President Vladimir Putin's advisors, the Italian Institute of International Affairs, and the German Foreign Policy Society, offered a perfect illustration of this fact.

What do the Russians say? They complain first about the obstacles raised by the EU to the free circulation of Russian citizens, by visa requirements, whether for travel between the enclave of Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia or more generally for travel within Europe.

The EU's enlargement merely exacerbates the problem. When the Europeans reply that it is necessary to combat organized crime, the Russians retort that the mafia is a myth used to defend the demand for visas.

The prime purpose of these grievances is to put the Europeans on the defensive, because, in any case, Russia acknowledges that it has not resolved the principled question concerning its future relations with the EU. It is for the present unable to choose between the four possible solutions -- membership, the definition of special relations, association by common law, or the establishment of an independent, or competing, pole.

Furthermore, it is wondering about the EU's future. It tends to regard it from the same viewpoint as the United States. The European defense effort divides, and therefore weakens, the EU, it says, and the discussions about the Constitution, within the Convention and then the Intergovernmental Conference, will not alter the fact. As after Maastricht, one of Vladimir Putin's advisers explained, the EU will focus on its own internal problems and will not, as such, perform any role in world affairs.

This, at the very time when the United States is displaying even less support for European integration. In an increasingly dangerous world, soft power, which seems to be the Europeans' specialty, is no longer enough. The politicians currently in power in Moscow are no longer motivated by the pro-US enthusiasm displayed by some of them following the collapse of communism.

Paradox

At home, they have turned away from unbridled economic liberalism. But abroad, they do indeed share the Bush administration's ideas, even if they admit that "some aspects of US policy seem dangerous." They extend the paradox -- or the bragging -- as far as to portray themselves as the pioneers of the new world politics: "It is not Russia that joined the antiterrorist coalition after 11 September 21001," one expert said. "It is the coalition that joined Russia in its struggle against terrorism," with reference to the war in Chechnya and the maintenance of order in Tajikistan, threatened by Taliban-backed Islamists.

These factors enable them to understand the Bush team's political philosophy better than the Europeans. Taking up the image cited by neoconservative Robert Kagan, of a Europe from Venus and a United States from Mars, a close associate of Vladimir Putin declared: "We would also like to be from Venus, not only because we are weak -- and therefore theoretically attached to the primacy of the law over force -- and because we have in the past provided the battlefields for terrible wars. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the dangers of the world -- mass destruction weapons, failing states, terrorism." Confronted with these dangers, the United States now issues a response that corresponds better to Russia's interests than the Europeans' response -- or lack of response -- does.

Russia is probably hostile in principle to any form of US unilateralism. It prefers to play the multilateralism card (which is not the same as multipolarity,) but Kremlin experts agree with the United States when they wonder about the instruments of multilateralism. With regard to the United Nations, for instance. "The United Nations is not weaker because of the US attitude," one Russian expert observed, "but because it needs to be reformed." It is impossible to think that one of the dangers to the international system comes from "failing" states and at the same time to accept the status quo within an organizations whose General Assembly is dominated by those same states.

The United Nations must therefore be reformed. Russia is not putting forward any specific plans, but it would certainly not be opposed to the ideas current in Washington about a reform of the Security Council that would confirm its place, possibly at the Europeans' expense.

Be that as it may, one thing is certain: Russia's international relation experts forthrightly assert that, in their opinion, current US policy displays some negative tendencies. It is not about to change in the short term in its desire to reshuffle the pack in the direction of US interests, without bothering about some Europeans' qualms.

This is a factor that Russia cannot fail to take into account. Let it not be asked to choose between the United States and Europe, even though in some circumstances a specific understanding with the Europeans strengthens its hand in its dialogue with the United States, which is ultimately the only one able to deal with it at its own level.

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