| There is nothing like a good old-fashioned summit
in the Kremlin between
erstwhile
superpower rivals, with a treaty on nuclear missiles thrown in
for good
measure, to get
the pundits excited.
That is what it has been like these past few days in Moscow.
The travelling
circus was
all over town. Only this time, the summit between George W. Bush
and Vladimir
Putin was
almost like an event in a time warp.
Scrapping nuclear weapons, even several thousand apiece, scarcely
seems
dramatic any
more. It amounts to little more than recognition of their irrelevance.
This
summit
between US and Russian presidents was really just a footnote to
history, a
belated move
to bury the cold war long after it had been declared dead. It
was scarcely a
breakthrough in international relations.
But there is another summit this week that matters potentially
a lot more: the
meeting
between Mr Putin and the leaders of the European Union. It matters
because
talks between
Russia and the rest of Europe are about the future. A meeting
between Russia
and America
is primarily about the past.
Perhaps that sounds exaggerated. On the face of it, the Russia-EU
event does
not look
so important. They will probably spend most of their time squabbling
about the
future of
Kaliningrad, the city that was once KÜnigsberg, the proud
capital of East
Prussia.
Moscow wants visa-free travel for the inhabitants of what is
now a miserable
Russian
military enclave locked between Poland and Lithuania. They are
both set to
join the EU,
while Kaliningrad's only claim to fame is that it has the highest
incidence of
Aids in
Europe. The EU is determined not to allow a visa-free corridor
through its
future
territory.
But Kaliningrad is a distraction. This meeting matters, not just
for Russia or
for the
EU but for global peace and stability.
Funnily enough, it was Mr Bush who put his finger on it in Berlin
last week.
He spoke
of the shared task, for America and Europe, to "encourage
the Russian people
to find
their future in Europe and with America". Note the prepositions.
"Russia has its best chance since 1917 to become part of
Europe's family," he
said. "A
Russia at peace with its neighbours, respecting the legitimate
rights of
minorities, is
welcome in Europe."
To Russian ears, those were welcome words. They may not have
gone down so well
in
western European capitals. Mr Bush does not seem to have consulted
anyone else
before he
spoke. His tone was condescending. But he was perfectly right,
at least in
principle.
The future of Russia is as a regional power in Europe. That is
the main source
and
destination of its trade and its foreign investment. Its cultural
ties are
with Europe.
More than 60 per cent of its international telephone calls go
there.
Russia is a natural part of what Mikhail Gorbachev once called
the "common
European
home". It is time the leaders of the region faced up to what
that implies.
Does it mean
full membership of the EU, with all its requirements for integration
into a
single
market, and a common foreign and defence policy? Or is it nothing
more than
belonging to
the Council of Europe, as a guarantor of basic good behaviour?
Or is it some
half-way
house called a "single European economic space"?
In Moscow, opinion has shifted towards full EU membership. In
an opinion poll
published
by the Public Opinion Foundation a week ago, 52 per cent of respond-ents
were
convinced
that Russia must seek EU membership, against 18 per cent who opposed
it.
As for the leaders of the EU, they know it and they fear it.
They do not want
to do too
much about it. Their plates are full, handling enlargement to
take in a few
small and
medium-sized countries in central and southern Europe. They are
tying
themselves in
knots trying to reform their own institutions to avoid bureaucratic
gridlock.
The last
thing they need is to bother about how to accommodate a country
with a
population larger
than Germany and France put together and an economy smaller than
that of the
Netherlands.
There are plenty of people in western Europe who think that the
enlargement
currently
being negotiated is already a step too far. In France, most people
oppose it.
In Germany
Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian prime minister and conservative presidential
candidate, is
adamant that enlargement must be limited. He says Turkey should
not join,
although it is
an official candidate.
Yet the current enlargement will leave the EU with a host of
outstanding
problems -
mostly on its eastern borders. It is in danger of creating a new
Iron Curtain,
or a
curtain of poverty, along the western borders of Belarus and Ukraine.
If
Turkey is seem
as a genuine candidate for membership, can the EU really say no
to Kiev - or
to Moscow?
Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party in the
Russian Duma, the
parliament, is grateful to Mr Bush. "The door to Europe is
in Washington," he
says. "He
has to give his sanction."
He is both cautious and optimistic. "We have only one way
forward if we want
to be
stable, secure and without threat," he says. "That is
to be a full member of
the
European club - in 20 years from now. What form it takes we can
discuss."
Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre,
is also
convinced that Mr
Putin has cast his die. "There is no Eurasia to go back to.
With the EU
arriving in
Warsaw, and eventually in Kiev, there must be a place for Russia
in that
Europe. This is
where Russia is moving."
That is the subtext of the EU-Russia summit this week. Russia
wants an
ever-closer
relationship. The EU is nervous about how it may look. What is
needed is an
idea about
whether it is realistic to think of Russia as a full union member
at some
stage; then, a
strategy on how to get there.
The idea of a "common economic space" has been propounded
but without real
content. It
should include both a free trade area and a customs union. The
former would
underpin
trade flows in both directions. The latter would help Russia overhaul
its
corrupt and
inefficient customs services.
At the same time, Russia is keen to be more closely involved
with the EU's
common
foreign and security policy. That could grow naturally out of
the closer
integration of
Russia and Nato, to be agreed in Rome tomorrow.
With quicker economic integration, the prospect of eventual membership
might not seem so alarming. But it might worry the man who seems
most relaxed about it: Mr Bush.
See also:
the
origainal at http://news.ft.com
Russia-EU
Relations
| 