THE PLANK JANUARY 13, 2009
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Anne Applebaum has a typically good column today on the lack of a unified European energy policy, particularly vis-a-vis Russia. "Instead of sending in crisis negotiators [to the Ukraine] every Jan. 1," she writes, "Europe's leaders could focus on this problem and solve it. I would love to describe this past week's events as a 'wake-up call,' but there have been so many 'wake-up calls' already. When will Europe heed them?"
It's a good point, but surely Applebaum knows things aren't so simple. It's not just about Brussels forgetting what really matters, focusing instead on "E.U. sausage-making regulations, E.U. Intercultural Dialogues, even E.U. attempts to broker peace in Gaza." The EU spends a lot of time thinking about Russia; the problem is, there's no easy answer. Bush and other outside observers (including Applebaum) would have them draw a hard line between east and west, in part because Russia seems already to have done so. Every time they attempt to do so, though, Russia makes threatening noises, and so far no one in Europe has the gumption to ignore it.
But even that is too easy a reading. Europe's security insecurities are as much existential as anything else: It still isn't sure where Russia fits within its worldview--if Turkey can be a candidate for EU membership and Georgia a possible (though increasingly longshot) member of NATO, who's to say that Russia isn't a part of the European community? And if it is, doesn't that require it be treated with a softer hand?
If anything, the gas crisis underlines less the need for a concerted European response than the difficulties inherent in any such effort. Not to put too fine a point on it, would they bring the Ukraine into the fold, or leave it, well, in the cold?
All of these are tough questions, without easy or obvious answers. And while I'd like to see Europe take a more concerted stand on energy, I can also understand why they have an easier time regulating sausage.
--Clay Risen
4 comments
The other big obstacle to a common Russia policy or a common energy policy is the structure of the EU, which demands unanimity among 27 member states. It might be easy enough to hash out a unanimous agreement on sausage regulations, but dealing with larger issues demands ceding some not-insignificant measure of sovereignty over areas that traditionally fall under the national aegis - energy, foreign relations. As long as Russia continues to exploit this by forging deeper ties with individual states, particularly large and influential ones like Germany and Italy, a common EU policy towards it will be nearly impossible to achieve.
- adaglas
January 13, 2009 at 11:44am
It would save everyone time if whenever Anne Applebaum opines about Europe she, and those who quote her, remind us what position in the Polish Government her husband currently holds. Its hard to keep track. Sometimes, I think, she confuses Europe with Poland.
- ndmackenzie
January 13, 2009 at 1:00pm
Only ndmack could take a balanced, witty, sensible, thoroughly well-researched and pro-EU piece like Applebaum's and sneer that it's a stalking horse for perfidious Polish imperial designs.
Clue for you, nd: Applebaum's been writing brilliantly about Russia, and Europe, for two decades-- IOW she was putting out brilliant, pathbreaking research long before she met her Polish husband to be.
Clue #2: Applebaum's piece continuously examines the issue from the west European POV, not the E European or ex-Soviet Bloc view. Every one of her points is legitimate, balanced, well-considered.
Clue #3: the big story, which Risen fails to mention and which Applebaum touches on in passing, is the buying of the German elite by a Russian state whose corruption has reached African levels. Gazprom's orgy of slush-- via opaque trading subsidaries in which Putin and his fellow bandits have large stakes as well as other schemes for siphoning billions out of the company every month-- make Enron look like a Junior Achievement project.
This is the company that hired Schroeder, the man who salvaged his grip on power by railing against capitalist "bloodsuckers" and then took a lucrative position whoring for Merrill Lynch. This is the company that provides perhaps as much as half of PutinMobutu's fortune, making him Europe's richest man. This is the company that Russia's gangster state uses to reward Europe's nightmare regime, Belarus, and punish European nations seeking nothing more than to become normal democracies ensconced in the EU's democratic club.
And as Applebaum notes, the Europeans have allowed a few businessmen and corrupt pols to let Gazprom's minders play them off against each other and treat them like helpless client states.This farce more than any other explains why Europe, for all its great promise, will slide into second-tier status in this Asian Century. What a shame.
- teplukhin2you
January 13, 2009 at 2:40pm
Hubby Sikorski (since 1997) is currently Polish Foreign Minister. Previously Defense Minister. And?
There will be no "unified European energy policy", any more than there will be a unified European foreign, monetary, or any other kind of policy, because the EU is a Potemkin village.
Russia, on the other hand, is an increasingly coherent and forceful nation state.
- Robert Powell
January 13, 2009 at 5:44pm