There are reasons why European countries find it hard to unite against Russia

Charlemagne
Unity is strength
Aug 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

There are reasons why European countries find it hard to unite against Russia

THE European Union will be heeded by Russia only when it speaks with one voice. That was the universal battle cry in Brussels as EU officials and diplomats hurried back from their summer holidays to prepare for an emergency EU summit on the Georgian crisis, called by the current French presidency for September 1st. And faced with the sobering sight of tanks trundling around Europe’s backyard, there was equally loud agreement among national politicians that their usual squabbling over the right attitude towards Russia harms the common interests of the 27-member union.

Yet the rhetoric seems largely empty. The summit will certainly see a lot of joint finger-wagging over Russia’s recognition of the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There may be more talk of an EU civilian mission to monitor the situation in Georgia (though the idea of an EU military force has been shelved, at least for the moment). But when it comes to the stated purpose of the meeting—to re-examine EU-Russia relations—the 27 leaders will remain divided into several overlapping camps. These include: those who think Russia can and must be engaged as a partner; those who think Russia needs containing; and a larger group of fatalists who think that Russia “has us over a barrel”, as one diplomat punningly puts it. The summit is not expected to agree to make any big changes to the status quo, for the simple reason that the various leaders do not agree over whether that would be a good idea or counter-productive.

Does disunity towards Russia hurt the common EU interest? Probably. A November “power audit” by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think-tank, argued that Europe was throwing away what should be its considerable leverage over Russia. After all, the EU’s population is more than three times that of Russia, and its wealth more than a dozen times greater. The EU depends heavily on Russian energy, but the flipside is that it is Russia’s biggest market for gas (indeed, for all Russian exports). If the 27 EU countries dealt with Russia as one, they would surely have less to fear from Moscow hawks.


The problem is that the ECFR’s argument is both true and beside the point, because it is so far removed from the way that individual countries act and think (reminiscent, in this respect, of the French statement issued after the Olympics proclaiming that the EU had collectively won, with a total of 280 medals). The cold calculation of national interests is a complex business, as any student of game theory can tell you. Disunity would be irrational if EU members always saw their common interests as paramount. But they do not, certainly when it comes to dealing with big third countries, from Russia to China to America.

In Europe, it is rarely enough to show that the union, in aggregate, will gain from a given policy. One must also show that the overall European gain manifestly outweighs individual national interests. This may seem a shabby calculation, but it has democratic roots. The EU is not a single country, whose most senior leaders are elected by a single electorate. In its highest decision-making body, the European Council, the 27 heads of state and government remain accountable to 27 different sets of voters.

Europeans do not even agree on what unity means. Countries such as Germany, which come closer than most to believing in a common European interest, tend to talk of it in terms of the interests of a majority of EU countries, not the interests of all. In recent disputes that pitted Russia against such countries as Poland or Estonia, a favourite line of German diplomats or politicians was to complain that individual countries had no right to take the wider EU’s good relations with Russia “hostage”.

Nor do the costs of disunity fall equally. Take energy. It must be in the EU’s interests to diversify away from the block’s dependence on Russian gas—which is why it supports pipeline projects that would bring in gas from elsewhere. But in each individual EU country the voters expect to have the heating on this winter and the lights on all year as cheaply as possible (nor would they easily tolerate sharing their energy with neighbouring countries in the event of rationed supplies). In recent years, countries from Germany and Italy to Bulgaria and Greece have signed deals that increase the EU’s dependence on Russia, and undercut alternative routes. From the perspective of those individual countries, such selfishness probably felt quite rational.

I’m all right, Jacques
American officials often wonder why they seem to take European energy security more seriously than the Europeans themselves. One answer is that not every country has to worry about energy security. Russia may shut off oil or gas deliveries to smaller ex-communist countries for spurious “technical” reasons from time to time. But it has never turned off the taps to Germany or Italy. And plenty of EU countries, from Sweden to Portugal, barely consume any Russian energy.

Will the benefits of European unity ever trump the pursuit of national interests when it comes to Russia? Optimists like those in the ECFR say that a more united Europe still has the chance to prod Russia into being a more reliable partner, wedded to the rule of law, international norms and other virtues. Pessimists say that the EU is unlikely to show much grit and unity until Russian behaviour becomes a lot more threatening.

If Russia starts to act even more recklessly—perhaps by stirring up trouble in Ukraine, which has millions of ethnic Russians, or among Russian minorities in EU countries like Estonia and Latvia—EU members may decide that their individual national interest is to stand up together. Even the largest EU country would not wish to be in a club that cannot look after its own. But that won’t happen unless Russia throws its weight around a lot more. Meanwhile weakness, selfishness and division will continue, however many fingers wag in Brussels on September 1st.