Zee Beam News

July 10, 2006 - Financial Times - By Timothy Garton Ash, Dominique Monsi and Aleksander Smolar -
Timothy Garton Ash in professor of European studies at Oxford University; Dominique Mo?si is senior adviser to the Institut Fran?ais des Relations Inter­nationales in Paris; Aleksander Smolar is president of the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw.
On the eve of the summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, which opens this week in St Petersburg, Europeans are faced with a delicate balancing act in their policy towards Russia. Should the message be one of trust in a re-emerging power whose energy resources are vital to us, or wariness of a regime whose authoritarian instincts are clearer than ever? Ten years ago, Europeans could recognize themselves in the following motto: "Let's engage Russia if we can, contain it if we must." Today the psychological balance of power has shifted. Russia has regained its pride and sense of confidence while Europe has entered a deep crisis. Because there is more Russia and less Europe in the world of today, the issue is not to "engage Russia in Europe" but for Europeans to "engage with Russia", a subtle distinction made by Dmitri Trenin, a noted Russia expert. The European Union is paralyzed by its inability to escape from the institutional morass into which it was plunged by the French and Dutch rejections of its proposed constitution. In the years to come, it will need to prove it can improve the lives of its citizens and make its voice heard in the world. The time has come for the EU to develop a genuinely European policy towards Russia. While seeking a long-term strategic partnership with its giant Eurasian neighbor, the EU should not hesitate to ask three elementary things of Russia. These strategic requirements are not only good for the future of the European continent; they are also good for Russia itself. The first of these requirements is that Russia should allow its neighbors to determine their own futures. Today's world cannot be one of spheres of influence. The age of Yalta should be behind us. Neo-imperial forms of intervention in countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova or Georgia are not only anachronistic but harmful to relations between Russia and the EU. Contrary to what is often said by Russian officials, the war in Chechnya is not over, and the behavior of Russian forces there is still, to say the least, very problematic. The second requirement can be expressed in classical terms: pacta sunt servanda. Energy contracts should be clear, binding and respected ­ not least for the sake of Russia's economic future in our globalised age. Russia is in the G8, whereas India is not; but for the majority of shareholders of European steel company Arcelor, the company headed by the Indian Lakshmi Mittal was a more secure, predictable partner than Russia's Severstal. The third strategic requirement has to do with certain minimal standards of legal and political conduct inside Russia's borders. We do not expect Russia to become a model parliamentary democracy overnight but we do expect it not to go backwards towards neo-Soviet authoritarianism. The concepts of "sovereign democracy" or "managed democracy" advanced by Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, remind us of yesterday's concept of "people's democracy". The more you qualify the concept of democracy, the more you run the risk of disqualifying it. As the old joke went, the difference between democracy and "people's democracy" is like that between a jacket and a straitjacket. Europe, more than any other region, needs a stable, law-abiding, increasingly democratic Russia. As all the world will see in St Petersburg this week, membership of the G8 gives Russia's rulers, like the tsars before them, a place at the top table of world politics. Let us now help Russia prove itself worthy of that place, by the higher standards of our time.