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EU-Russia relations are a thorny and controversial issue.And mostly debated in terms of energy and pipeline politics and/or within the human rights and democracy domain . However, having spent the last couple of years  debating EU-Russia relations with a number of academics/think tankers/policy makers I decided to post a couple of observations. For the sake of the argument I will have to use generalisations although I know perfectly well that there are exceptions on both sides. Moreover, I think, the argument does not only affect Europeans or Russians but also decision makers in the USA and in countries of the EU neighborhood/ Russia’s near abroad.  I should also mention that this mainly applies to policy-makers/ think tankers/ academics/intellectuals.

1) The “knowledge gap”

Surprisingly, there is quite a knowledge gap – on both sides.

Russian intellectuals and policy makers  do not know enough about the EU and how it works. They usually treat it as a something “state-like” but criticize it at the same time for not being a state. And something that is not a state cannot be efficient. Hence nothing to be taken too seriously. But I think the underlying problem is that many are not aware of how certain EU policies come into being. And that does not only include CFSP or ESDP issues but also the broader EU policy agenda.  It is actually striking how little decision makers in Russia as well as in the “EU neighborhood” seem to know about how the EU works in terms of agenda setting and lobbying. Questions about how to get something out of the EU machinery are not discussed. The only thing everyone seems to be thinking is: If the EU does not act we can ask member states. As if they were  not part of the EU. (Well, that member states are sometimes more receptive than the EU institutions is not helping either…) The problem here is that there is no understanding of how long decision-making in the EU actually takes and what needs to be done to influence it. It is not enough to only lobby for when there is a military conflict or when it is about energy and pipelines. Other policy issues also have an external dimension and can be shaped (at least to a certain extent) by outsiders! Moreover, by engaging permanently on a variety of substantial issues does increase trust!

The  creation of the EEAS  is a similar issue: Russians complain about the EU being ineffective without acknowledging the inter-institutional struggles within the EU. Nobody seems to understand the nature of the EEAS: why it is there and what it is supposed to do and especially what it is supposed to replace!  One example are the numerous complaints about the future of some the EU special representatives (Moldova, Caucasus) – in the past they have often been criticized of being not efficient enough because they have no links to the local EU delegation…

Europeans do not know enough about Russia’s political system and how it really works. Do we actually know who is influential? Do Europeans understand how the Russian elite ticks? What about the relation between business and politics? And how do they interpret (and teach!) the history since the end of the cold war. Can we actually grasp the idea of a country that spans 9 time zones and includes numerous internal conflicts? How do Russians perceive the USSR? And what does that mean for the “EU neighborhood”?

2) The “discourse gap”

Russians and Europeans work with different discursive models.

Russians think in terms of zero sum games. Realism is the only paradigm that seems to be acceptable for most commentators and policy makers. It is all about interests, power and geopolitics. Politics is about winners and loosers. The philosophical basis for any alternative approaches seems to be absent. Every theoretical idea outside realism (which is ironically an American model) is perceived as weak and is somehow denounced as being “western”. However, as long as Russian academics are not aware (or don’t want to be aware) of other philosophical traditions and methods of analysing politics, we will not see a change of politicians mindsets as they will be limited to the ‘realist’ options. The nature of realism is also not helping as it is quite easy to analyse everything as a zero sum game.

Europeans, generally speaking, are not that fond of thinking only in realist terms. Europeans think that realism is a lazy form of thinking. Russian commentators and policy makers are therefore perceived as being outdated and stuck in the cold war. Europeans think of “new forms of governance” that are embedded in “liberal norms” of democracy. But the underlying problem is how to deal with others that do not embrace this “governance” and “liberal” discourse  or do not not use it as a form of analysis? The clash of different methods of how to analyse politics seems to create problems how to deal with each other.

So what can be done about the “knowledge” and “discourse” gap?

Neil MacFarlane

We may be living post-historically. Russia is not.

Russia Today

Opposition candidates will get the right to lose elections.

Mark Danner

If Everybody Knew, Who’s To Blame?

Timothy Garton Ash

Europe is nice, boring and irrelevant. In many ways this is a great achievement. (…) The whole of Europe today is Greater Switzerland.

Horst Schlämmer

HSP is conservative, liberal, left-wing and a bit ecological.

via Times Online

I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?”

Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Certain ideas of Europe:

Foreign visitors arriving via Eurostar at London’s St Pancras station on Thursday might have wondered just how badly Britain has been hit by the credit crunch: more than 100 people turned up at St Pancras wearing only their underpants.

Jochen Bittner’s blog “planet in progress”:

Neenee! Lassen Sie mal. Sie wurden gelobbyt!

Meiden Sie zuviel Champagner, er ruiniert Ihre Magenschleimhaut.

“Just by getting closer to Russia’s borders, NATO is not becoming stronger,” Medvedev said. “…what if Georgia had a NATO membership action plan? I would not wait for a second in making the decision I made at that point.”

Vladimir Putin also tried his best to defend the war in Georgia:

“What did you want us to do? Wave our penknives in the air and wipe the bloody snot off our noses? When an aggressor comes into your territory, you need to punch him in the face – an aggressor needs to punished.”

I just have some objections about “the aggressor coming in your territory”, Mr Putin, somehow that explanation does not really convince me. Apart from that little “twisted fact”, I particularly like the diplomatic language in this statement.

The Russian President has another interesting analogy:

“Immediately after the events in the Caucasus it occurred to me that August 8 was for us almost what 9/11 was for the United States. There were many useful lessons from 9/11 in the United States. I would like the world to draw its own lessons from what happened. The world changed.”

Yes, the world is always changing. Interesting, first the “genocide” label, now the 9/11 analogy, any deeper meaning or just because it is September?  Russia as the victim? And what about these “useful lessons”? I can’t think of ‘many’.

I guess statements like the ones above show that Russia is trying desperately to tell its side of the story. But somehow it always sounds clumsy, undiplomatic, arrogant and based on ‘wrong’ realities (at least in our view). However, any ‘legitimacy’ depends on perceptions abroad. And Moscow is loosing ground there. It becomes obvious that Russia simply has neither the tools nor the allies to dominate a “global information war”.

Via Paul Goble’s blog I discovered some interesting data from UNOSAT, that is the” the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme”. Basically they released satellite images that were taken during the conflict in the region. Paul Goble explains the implications:

Satellite photographs analyzed by United Nations experts show that only five percent of Tskhinvali was destroyed during the fighting there but that 50 percent of ethnic Georgian villages were destroyed in that region by Ossetian marauders behind Russian lines, a pattern that undercuts Moscow’s claims about what took place. (…) But these photographs taken over the course of August also call into question repeated Russian claims that the Georgian army had destroyed much of the South Ossetian capital – the satellite photographs show only five percent of its buildings having been damaged — and that Georgian forces had carried out a systematic genocide there.

Human Rights Watch also offers some further explanations here.

I am pretty sure that we will see more of this kind of data in the future, also for other conflicts. Satellite technology has been developed rapidly and quality improved considerably in the last years. And when free services such as Google Earth already show quite detailed images, what about high quality, high resolution satellite images frequently used by governments? Propaganda and the spread of false information will definitely get more difficult.

I also wonder whether the EU Satellite Centre has similar evidence regarding the conflict in Georgia? Never heard of this EU agency? Here the short mission statement:

The mission of the European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC) is to support the decision-making of the European Union by providing analysis of satellite imagery and collateral data. The EUSC is an Agency of the Council of the European Union. It is one of the key institutions for European Union’s Security and Defence policy, and the only one in the field of space.

At least with that in mind the proposed EU “fact finding mission” in Georgia could get quite interesting…

• Serbia’s climate change

  The formation of a new government in Serbia offers modest hope of progress in its path to European Union membership, say Daniel Korski & Ivan Zverzhanovski.

• Grahnlaw: Anti-EU by any other name

  Is the label “euroscepticism” misleading? The idea is that labels such “anti-EU” or “anti-Europe” would be more suitable to describe “Eurosceptics” since most people that would put themselves in this category actually oppose any Europe wide approach. Very interesting thought!

• Fear and strange arithmetics: when powerful states confront powerless immigrants

  Interesting essay by Saskia Sassen: “It is surprising to see the high price in terms of ethical and economic costs that powerful ‘liberal democracies’ seem willing to pay in order to control extremely powerless people who only want a chance to work. Immigrants and refugees have to be understood as a historical vanguard that signals major ‘unsettlements’ in both sending and receiving countries.”

• National populism versus democracy – Antony Todorov

  Populist movements are a threat not because they raise the issue of direct democracy, but because they advocate nationalist mobilisation based on xenophobia, writes Antony Todorov. Given the failure of the leftist projects of the twentieth century, it is telling that far-right populism is more anti-democratic in the new democracies of central and eastern Europe than in western Europe. Is populism identical to the crisis of democracy or rather a symptom of it?

• Macedonia’s election | A Balkan Belgium? | Economist.com

• “A fashionable idea is circulating among Balkan-watchers: “Belgianisation”. This is not meant to suggest complex federalism. Instead it implies that different nationalities whom history has left sharing a state are at last behaving like Belgians, reaching for ballot boxes and courts, rather than guns and bombs.”

• The amusing approach to the Treaty of Lisbon – the spoofer’s guide
  

  Quite a funny “guide” … I wonder how many people in Ireland will actually read it…

• Lisbon Treaty faces rejection as No vote doubles in latest poll

  It is gonna be a close race. And it seems that No voters don’t know anything about the treaty: “The reason most often cited by No voters is that they don’t know what they are voting for or they don’t understand the treaty – with 30 per cent of No voters listing this as the main reason for their decision.” I have argued before that referendums and uninformed publics do not go well together, moreover referenda over several hundred pages of legal text will never cause any enthusiasm… Let’s see on Thursday…

• Brussels Blogger : Comments on the logo of the French EU Presidency

  The logo of the French EU presidency…it is actually quite ugly…

• Get involved over Georgia or invite a war

  “The west could be sleepwalking into a war on the European continent. Georgia, which burst into view with a moving display of democratic ambition during the Rose Revolution of 2003, is teetering on the brink of war with Russia over the separatist Georgian enclave of Abkhazia. The outcome of this crisis – involving a fledgling democracy with aspirations to join Nato and the European Union – will help determine the rules of the post-cold-war security system. But western diplomats are not sending strong enough signals to either side.”

• Medvedev’s Russia

  A bunch of experts share their views about the new Russian president and topics ranging from Putin and developments in the Russian society and economy to the Caucasus and relations with Europe, Asia, USA … even a short paragraph on McCain and Obama.

• Mark Mardell – A presidential game of musical chairs

  The latest rumours about the new EU top jobs…Barroso, Ahern, Rasmussen, Blair, Juncker?…but it is also true that the front runners never win!

• The Borders of the European Union: Zagreb, 1. June 2011

  The Balkans in 2011? – A rather pessimistic (but realistic?) outlook on the future political developments on the Balkans…

• Belarus: RFE/RL Cites Online ‘Solidarity’ In Face Of Cyberattack

  Another cyberattack… exactly on the day of the 22nd ‘anniversary’ of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. RFE planned live coverage of a protest rally in Minsk. Not that difficult to figure ot who was behind it…

• The Guest Blog : Le Monde goes Europe, the UK goes chicken

  Is the “Bureau of European Policy Advisers” (BEPA) of the European Commission (also known as the internal think tank) about to start blogging or is it only a guest post? Anyway, some good points on communicating and debating the EU and the usual problems and chances associated with it…

• Serbs to have easier travel in EU

  Another “carrot” for the undecided voters…

• ECFR: The new Russian presidency: Medvedev 1.0 or Putin 2.0?

  some “informed speculation” about the future of Putin and co.

• Time to think of a strategic bargain with Russia (pdf)
  

  Michael Emerson (CEPS) on the need of strategic relations between the West and Russia.

• Nicolas Sarkozy’s Foreign Policy: Gaullist by Any Other Name – Brookings Institution

  Is Sarkozy an Atlanicist, Gaullist or even a Sarkozyst?

- Russia will support the EUFOR Chad mission by deploying 6-8 helicopters. According to some EU officials, these helicopters are quite crucial for the mission…

- At the NATO summit in Bucharest, Russia agreed to give logistical support to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The plan foresees that Russia will provide a land corridor on its territory for NATO transports. Given the troublesome history between Russia and NATO, this can be seen as a milestone development.

The Kremlin in Moscow

It seems as if a constructive dialogue has started between European diplomats and their Russian counterparts. Of course it is too early to come to a final conclusion but basically two scenarios are possible: (1) in a more positive outlook, this could be the first sign of a new partnership between Europe and Russia; (2) a more negative (‘realist’ if you want) interpretation would also take into account all other problematic areas/ disagreements ranging from CFE , missile defence and energy issues to Kosovo, Ukraine and Georgia. One could even conclude that Russia sees itself in a stronger position which led to the perception that it can deal with the “West” on a more equal basis. In that context, the above mentioned issues are perceived to increase Russia’s relative power position.

Another scenario is relatively simple: It may only be a ” diplomatic present” of the “new” Russian president/government in order to symbolize a kind of new beginning … whatever the direction may be! (the fact that Putin was responsible for these negotiations is not a contradiction: Medvedev and Putin are, at least for the time being, a very efficient team)

Of course this seems to be a politically motivated move of the Russian authorities especially since the University has close connections to the USA and EU. Moreover, the university runs a programme funded by the European Commission to improve the monitoring of Russian elections which has been criticized by Putin on a number of occasions. Read more about it here, here and here.

A petition of support is available for signing here. The least we can do, I suppose.

Coming back to the topic of corruption: According to the Eurasia Daily Monitor, two Russian research institutes, namely the Institute for Public Projects (INOP) and the Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI)  published a study called “The Nature and Structure of Corruption in Russia” which also contains a very interesting (and expensive!) ‘price list’ for all sorts of bribes:

According to the list, a place on a party list for a State Duma election cost $2 million-$5 million while getting legislation introduced in the Duma for consideration costs $250,000. For a state monopoly to win a “goszakaz,” or state purchase order, it must pay 20% of the order’s total value; for it to participate in a national project, it must pay 30-40% of the project’s total value; for it to get a line item in the federal budget, it must pay three percent of the project’s total value.

A large private company must pay $1 million-$5 million to get a license, prevent a license it has from getting revoked or get a competitor’s license revoked. For a large private company to win a “goszakaz,” it must pay a third of the order’s total value. For a small business to ensure that a transaction is carried out, it must pay a third of the transaction’s value; in order to get “help” from officials, a small business must pay 10% of its total profits. Getting customs duties reduced costs 30-50% of the sum on which the duties were assessed; getting tax arrears written off costs anywhere from $1000 to 30-50% of the sum of the arrears.

To get the Central Bank to begin examining documents costs a bank $500,000, while winning the right to transfer federal budget funds costs a bank five percent of the sum of the transfer. To win a case in a civil court or an arbitration court costs 10% of the awarded damages. To win a grant costs a charitable foundation 20-30% of the value of the grant. Finally, according to the INOP-CESSI study, to get a television “talking head” to criticize an official costs $20,000 a month.

Two articles that remind us of the last couple of years in US politics: Think Progress » The legacy of Bush’s presidency & Iraq: The War Card – The Center for Public Integrity

Here is an interesting article on The Unravelling of Russia’s Europe Policy

Brendan Donnelly writes on the Social Europe Blog about The Reform Treaty and its Impact on the EU Institutions

ECAS blog asks: Why are there transitional arrangements for Romanian and Bulgarian workers?

The Centre for European Reform analyses Poland’s bold new foreign policy

And last but not least, two research papers: The role of UK academics as security
‘experts’ for news media and Leading think tanks in the world (.pdf)

So, what happened last year? … of course a non exhaustive list

The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2007

An Interview with the “Person of the Year 2007″: Putin and the Time Magazine

Can it get any better? well, we have to wait and see:

Awaiting us in 2008…

The world in 2008: a year and an era | openDemocracy

The EU will have to deal with the ratification process of the “Treaty of Lisbon”:

The Treaty of Lisbon – How much ‘Constitution’ is left? An Overview of the Main Changes

Understanding the Lisbon Treaty

Last but not least, an interesting article about Italy:

In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment – New York Times

…… and a happy new year to everyone!

The signing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights caused some turmoil in the European Parliament.

This is the Treaty of Lisbon. And here is a useful collection of papers and studies dealing with the new treaty.

ISN Security Watch reports about a surprise court decision that the UN does not have legal immunity regarding the Srebrenica massacre.

A new partnership between the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): “A counter-weight to what Russian politicians describe as the NATO-centric model of the world” ?

And Public Policy Watch writes about: Moldovan Democracy: How Amazing Is It?; the second part deals with the amazing Christmas tree story… On this note: Europe’s tallest Christmas tree can be found in Bucharest!

A new Euro referendum is coming up: Denmark is to hold new euro vote

Educating Russia looks at the education reform in Russia: A new history book for example claims: “We see that practically every significant deed is connected with the name and activity of President V.V. Putin”

An interesting article about the civil society development in South Eastern Europe by Risto Karajkov : NGOs in the Balkans: Too Much of a Good Thing?

The debate about the reform of the European Commission continues: In defence of national interests

And now to something completely different: Jimi Hendrix: Live at Monterey!

Normally, I do not post software links in this blog but this is an exception. I came across the Firefox extension Zotero – The Next-Generation Research Tool. Looks quite useful, has anyone tried to work with it? How are your experiences with this research tool? I would be very interested…please feel free to post a comment

Apparently, Commissioner Reding is planning to make DRM interoperable. Indeed a great idea! Let’s hope she can resist the intense lobbying that has probably already started…

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to read this interesting paper, but it is definitely an interesting topic: “The Capacity of Central and East European Interest Groups to Participate in EU Governance”

These days there is a lot of talk in Russia about the idea of establishing a sort of ‘National Leader’. But we might need to wait until the results of the Duma elections are known to see what Putin plans to do… Talking about the upcoming Duma elections, Global Voices reports that the Russian blogosphere is debating whether To Vote, or Not to Vote? Moreover, Duma elections will be held without OSCE election observers.

And Joseph S. Nye tries to convince us about the Soft Power of the United Nations.

First, the Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski used weird historic justifications for his negotiations at the EU summit last week:

We are only demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us. (…) If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would today be looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million.

Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin also discovered the benefits of relativism in order to justify his political agenda:

Concerning some problematic pages in our history — yes, they exist, as they do in the histories of all states. We have less than some countries. And ours are not as terrible as those of some others. (…) Yes, some pages in our history were horrible: We can think of the events beginning in 1937, and we should not forget them. But it wasn’t better in other countries — in fact, it was far more horrible.

Recently it became clear that Putin wants to use history and social science in a very ‘soviet way’. In order to reflect the apparent new strengh of Russia he wants to rewrite history to establish a new “national-patriotic ideology”. For a more detailled analysis read Pavel Felgenhauer article in the Eurasia Daily Monitor:

Putin told the teachers: “Many school books are written by people who work to get foreign grants. They dance to the polka that others have paid for. You understand? These books, regrettably, get into schools and universities.” Putin demanded new history textbooks that “make our citizens, especially the young, proud of their country” and reiterated “no one must be allowed to impose the feeling of guilt on us.”

Putin specifically noted that the history of World War II and Russia’s history after 1991 are wrongly interpreted and must be rewritten. Today Stalin has again been rehabilitated as a leader who made mistakes, but still secured victory over Nazi Germany. The 1990s — a decade when Russia was a freer state than at anytime before or since — today is demonized. The pro-Kremlin youth movement Molodaya Gvardia has announced it will be organizing marches in Yekaterinburg and other cities in support of Putin and against the regime’s critics under the slogan, “No return to the 1990s”

Putin’s personal paranoia and anti-Americanism seem to be growing and are increasingly dominating external and internal Russian politics.

Insistent rumors are circulating in Transdniester that Igor Smirnov has fallen out with the Kremlin. Moscow has again refused to grant financial help to the region. It is said that humanitarian money is simply melting under the hot sun in the region. This is how $40 million to $60 million has already disappeared.

Smirnov has made mistakes in the past too, but the first and the only Transdniester region president still continues to sit in his armchair. It is not ruled out that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current hard-line policy towards the region is due to a completely different reason: to incline the region’s authorities to accept a union with Moldova within a single state. There are rumors that Moscow is also behind the Renewal Party (read Sheriff company). Not official [structures] but some business structures. And they have their own interests in the region.

Thus, the struggle has begun. Who will win it? Ladies and gentlemen, place your stakes.