After listening to reports in the French media, one feels European diplomacy could have achieved a major success in Ukraine. The departure of the former president — actually abandoned by the Kremlin, and negotiated commitments for new elections — a future rat race — considering a scattered opposition, should be credited to European diplomats. It was a blow to Eurosceptics.
Ukraine may be on the verge of bankruptcy (Europe already said it will not pay), with no clear future (see what’s happening in Crimea), it doesn’t matter: Polish, German and French foreign ministers, notably, made it. Even though a more honest analysis would underline the roles played by US President Barack Obama or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, still Europe as a whole would be a winner.
Yet, reality might be slightly different and possibly, start with a stunning discovery made last week by European politicians, including French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault: there would be a large country on the eastern part of Europe, in the name of Russia; leading to another astonishing revelation, the need for a Russian foreign policy, because in the midst of flames and violence, Europe is now discovering that Russia is not indifferent to what is happening in Ukraine.
European diplomats certainly are a reflection of their own rulers — vague, indecisive, lacking vision and courage, most of today’s European leaders can hardly inspire diplomats with meeting challenges. They rebel, condemn, point at all sorts of things. But when it comes to reality, they just lose their grip. As a recent self-explanatory example, they sponsored a conference in Geneva between Syrian belligerents — but they didn’t invite Iran, which had as many reasons to attend as Saudi Arabia.
Deceiving foreign policies are nothing new, but the level of trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye) reached these last years is somewhat unusual.
Let’s forget military operations, which finally did not turn up as expected — and wish well the Libyan people. Let’s put into brackets those conflicts western diplomacy has just been unable to unravel — and wish long lives to the Syrian Resistance. Let’s even smile about diplomatic fantasies which journalists from both sides of the Atlantic only mentioned during President Francois Hollande’s latest trip to the US.
There were too many accounts of insignificant matters during the event. A key reason for it is that in the end, there was not that much to report about. Both presidents are considered in their respective countries as enervate and weakened leaders. Both are speaking well but delivering little. As for France, the unbalanced relationship with the US was only a confirmation that America is pleased with the French soldiers fighting in Africa; and that France needs American investors’ money.
Looking at French diplomacy, which, save a few examples in Mali and Central Africa Republic (despite a pathetic lack of means), is so often missing the boat – voluntarily or not; taking stock or the astonishing silence of the UK diplomacy, notably in Africa; watching an Italian diplomacy, who will need time to be efficient when looking at the international background of their new leaders; appraising ultimately a German diplomacy which has been so often asking the rest of the world forgiveness, what is left in the region if not Russian diplomacy?
Domestic criticism
As strange as it may sound, Russia indeed has both leadership and a foreign policy. One may boycott the Sochi Olympic Games’ official opening in a posture play and dislike President Putin – rightly when he cuts short any type of domestic criticism; less rightly when he jails screaming Pussy Riot members who were protesting in a church.
This is a fact: Russia has interests abroad and it protects them. What is happening in Ukraine cannot therefore leave it indifferent — as is also the case in other places in the world, such as Syria — incidentally, two strategic places for the Russian Navy. Talking more regularly to Russia, with no anathemas but in a constructive way, looking at respective interests, identifying spaces for cooperation, better identifying red lines, avoiding giving too many lessons, many aspects of a needed new attitude for the West would help tackle issues and settle situations where victims are first civilians — as in Ukraine, so too in Syria.
A western trompe l’oeil diplomacy, which just looks like window-dressing, will therefore not make it, especially if it also relies on irresponsible declarations by agitators (see French essayist Bernard-Henri Lévy, the chap who wanted bombs to be dropped over Damascus ‘to save lives’). Witnessing the absence of European statesmen expressing a vision; considering the deficiency of a diplomatic European civil service (not to mention its proper head Lady Ashton), whose staff hardly leave the periphery of Brussels but to reach their home, who can be surprised that President Vladimir Putin takes the floor?
The Ottoman Empire was nicknamed “the ill-man of Europe” before the First World War. Today, one may find in Europe some of the most dynamic enterprises that are leaders in so many fields. But isn’t it time for a political class to react swiftly if one doesn’t want political Europe to become the ‘ill-man’ of the world?
Luc Debieuvre is a French essayist and a lecturer at IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques) and the FACO Law University of Paris.
