Opinions | Columnists
The Putin strategy is to divide Europe
He has deployed Russia's oil and gas resources to sow discord among his neighbours. In missile defence, he sees another opportunity to create division.
- By Philip Stephens, Financial Times
- Published: 00:00 April 16, 2007
Helmut Schmidt is approaching the end of his ninth decade. He has lost little of his verve. The former German chancellor walks now with the aid of a stick but his mind is as sharp, and his views as forceful, as they ever were. He still chain-smokes, equally disdainful apparently of any effect on his health and of social proprieties. One thing, though, has changed. Chancellor Schmidt once championed the Atlantic alliance. Now he speaks scathingly of American foreign policy.
I met him the other day at a symposium convened in Berlin by the Aspen Italia institute. Contributions to this high-level gathering are traditionally off the record, but Schmidt told me he was perfectly content for his views on the present US administration to be made public.
His ire was directed at Washington's plans to deploy its missile defence system in Europe. The plan to site interceptors and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic, he said, was irresponsible and destabilising. It would divide Europe - a strategy, he added, that George W. Bush had pursued since his reckless (in Schmidt's judgment) decision to invade Iraq.
Nato had been the place for collective discussion and judgment on strategic security. Now it was reduced to a tool of the Americans. Strong stuff, particularly if one recalls Schmidt's staunch advocacy of Nato's deployment of short- and medium-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s. That stance, defying the mood of his own Social Democrats, contributed to the then chancellor's electoral defeat.
Now, though, his views match the temper of the times. The SDP is in coalition with Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, but it has made no secret of its objections to missile defence. Kurt Beck, the SPD leader, evokes the cold war with warnings of a new arms race in Europe.
German public opinion, which turned decisively against the US over the Iraq war, is overwhelmingly hostile. All this leaves Russia's Vladimir Putin with a broad smile. Putin's foreign policy is shaped by a desire to reverse what he sees as the national humiliation inflicted by Boris Yeltsin's tenure in the Kremlin, a period that saw Russia flirt with the idea of joining the western alliance. The Russian president describes the expansion of Nato during that period as a "provocation". He rejects the idea of institutional links between Moscow and the European Union. Russia must be seen again as a great power, rather than an adjunct of the west.
Fracturing Europe
To that aim, Putin has deployed Russia's oil and gas resources to sow discord among his energy-dependent neighbours. In missile defence, he sees another opportunity to create division. The Russian leader has hinted that Moscow might withdraw from the agreement with the US that ended the Pershing controversy by banning short and medium-range missiles in Europe. This week Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, joined the fray, warning that the latest US plan would fracture Europe.
Lavrov's arguments, set out on this page (April 11 2007), merit examination. Deployment of the missile defence system, he said, would be an affront "to all Europeans". It would undermine Nato and the European Union. Moscow wanted to safeguard the "transatlantic bond". The process of decision-making on such grave matters of security, he added, should be "democratic". All this said without a hint of irony.
Such altruistic concern for the well-being of Europe will have come as a surprise to those who have dealt with Putin's Kremlin. Its expressed concern for the Atlantic alliance will be equally unconvincing. Moscow's strategy is to divide and rule. Putin sees in Russia's energy reserves an opportunity to recover influence over his country's near-abroad and intimidate the former communist states of eastern and central Europe. Lavrov's solicitousness is thus best taken with a sack of Siberian salt.
So too are Russian claims that a missile shield would overturn the strategic balance of the continent by directly threatening Russia. The US plan involves the siting of a dozen missiles in Poland. None would carry warheads but would rely on kinetic energy to destroy any missiles passing overhead.
If Moscow's purpose is to drive a wedge between the former Warsaw pact states and the "Old Europe" of Germany and France, it is worth asking where the idea first came from. Step forward Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, who thought it a clever wheeze to depict a continent split between Old and New when Washington was assembling its coalition for Iraq. Dividing Europe may have seemed a smart tactic then. It looks a pretty stupid strategy now.
Nor has the US administration quite grasped just how powerful a pull anti-Americanism now exerts - not just in Germany but across Europe. The uncomfortable fact is that when it comes to matters of security, public opinion is disposed to believe the worst of any new US initiative.
When US officials talk about bilateral negotiations with governments about issues that do affect Europe's collective security - as they have done about missile defence - they feed all these neuroses. That does not mean Schmidt is right, any more than it means that Putin has Europe's best interests at heart. It does mean that the US has a lot of bridges to rebuild.
Share this article
More from Columnists
More from Opinions
Popular in Opinions
-
Opinions
Speak Your Mind: World hunger
Who is responsible for world hunger? Are there any solution?
Opinion Editor's choice
-
Jobs vital to global recovery
Higher unemployment reduces purchasing power and revenues
-
Afghan people hold key to civil society
Besides stamping out corruption, the Karzai government must evolve new frameworks
-
Europe opts for the quiet life
The new leader of the European Council got his job because he's a technocratic choice
