Natalie Cox is getting there:
In recent months, British-Russian relations have
become increasingly fraught. The cultural divide, at least between their
governments, grows ever clearer. For Britain, fresh from celebrating the
passage of gay marriage, but now reeling at Russia’s recent laws against
"promoting" homosexuality, it’s clear that an alignment of cultural
values is not a realistic goal.
But in a
new book out this week, post-Soviet scholar Robert Legvold argues that the
UK (and Europe) has to aim for a better relationship with the country. This
connection should not be based on case-by-case provisions for mutual interests,
but on a deeper and more beneficial arrangement.
Rather than approaching a relationship with
Russia from a humanitarian or social perspective, we should move past this
"web of irritants, only loosely related to vital national interests, which
has ensnared ties between two countries," Legvold writes.
Vital national
interests certainly lie beneath the surface of the fractious relationship
between Russia and Europe and, in the UK’s case, trade has taken a turn for the
worse. In 2011, Russia accounted for just 1% more than in 2001, while the UK
slid out of the top 10 of the country's trading partners, and now represents
less than 3% of Russian trade.
Legvold uses the analogy of Russian dolls to
suggest that the bilateral UK-Russia connection sits inside that between Russia
and the EU, Russia and NATO, and the US and Russia.
The problem, he argues, is
the missing doll: the Euro-Atlantic security community that American, European
and Russian leaders have regularly promised us since the 1990 Charter of Paris
for a New Europe.
The formation of this group could effectively meet the real
security threats that they all face; military cooperation, rather than
competition, would go a long way to causing much of what mars the other three
dolls to disappear.
The UK and Russia’s relationship has been made
particularly complex by events such as the Iraq war and the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, and the "special relationship" with the US has left
Britain an "unhappy outlier" among European states.
As Legvold
suggests, while the UK’s role in Russia diminishes, energy continues to
constitute the heart of the EU-Russia relationship, and when it comes to
centrepieces, Germany and the EU commission "control the action".
Ultimately, though, the NATO-US dimension of the UK-Russia relationship
"creates its deep underpinning".
From Russia’s nuclear choices to its energy and
climate change policy, (it is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas) the
stakes are high.
But the two largest issues, argues Legvold, are transforming
the "broader Euro-Atlantic region, including Russia, into a real, working
security community, from cyber-warfare to health pandemics".
It is down to Britain, he concludes, to
"help break the lethargy and paralysis that has left the Euro-Atlantic
world pinned under the detritus of the cold war" and "dismantle the
barriers that prevent progress on the hard, practical issues on the
agenda."
Despite David Miliband’s assurance during his 2009 Moscow visit
that he was there "to talk, not growl", the UK’s relationship with
Russia, both in its own right and as part of the EU, is more Russian bear than
Russian doll.
Whether or not it can evolve in the way proposed by Legvold
remains to be seen.
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