The situation is paradoxical. In February 2016, the White House announced plans to quadruple military spending in Eastern European NATO countries. U.S. marines began prepositioning tanks and artillery in “classified” caves along the Norwegian-Russian border. Yet, at the same time, Washington started negotiating with Russia on the future of Syria and a joint fight against ISIS.[18]
If American rapprochement with Putin is still tentative and reversible, a number of European NATO countries want a solid anti-ISIS alliance with Moscow. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015, the French president François Hollande rushed to Moscow for consultations, breaking the diplomatic boycott of the Kremlin.[19]
Europe
If you listen only to American interventionists, you can get the impression that the single obstacle to European unity is Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, things are not that simple. The main obstacle to European unity is Europe. The European Union, built and sold as a tightly knit alliance, was never meant to replace nation-states.
In the course of the crisis, “Europe” for all intents and purposes fell apart. Those of Russia’s neighbors that were once part of the Russian empire—Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—demanded a strong response. Russia’s economic partners—Germany, Italy, and France—tried doing business as usual.
Twenty-four hours after the infamous Crimea referendum, the Italian energy company Saipem pledged to build the offshore section of the South Stream gas pipeline. The state-of-the-art pipe-laying ship assigned to the task, Saipem 7000, was already a familiar sight on the Black Sea: Saipem had worked for Putin before, laying the Blue Stream pipeline that brought Russian gas to Turkey.[20]
On March 17, 2014, still at the peak of the Crimea crisis, E.U. energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said sanctions against Russia should not target the Russian economy. “It would be wrong,” Oettinger said, “to question the economic ties that have been built over decades. They are important for the economy and jobs in Europe and Russia.” Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder went farther. At a meeting in St. Petersburg he proclaimed: “One should be speaking less about sanctions right now but instead about Russia’s security interests.” A furious John McCain declared that the leaders of Germany, starting with Angela Merkel, were “governed by the industrial complex.” The comment caused outrage in Berlin, which deemed the senator’s analysis “vicious nonsense.”[21]
All of the big transnational oil companies, or “supermajors,” do business with Russia—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total, and three of the five are European. After a new set of sanctions was imposed in July 2014, BP lost $4.4 billion in market value within twenty-four hours. Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann commented: “I cannot approve of the euphoria of many in the EU over the success of sanctions against Russia. I see absolutely no cause for celebration. I do not know why we should be pleased if the Russian economy collapses.”[22]
With Western sanctions still in place, in September 2015, European energy companies signed three major deals with Gazprom. These included an asset swap, joint development of Siberian oil and gas fields, and building a second Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea. This last agreement was equivalent to a geopolitical statement, as the pipeline would let Russia send more gas straight to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.[23]
In fairness to the Europeans, natural gas is a vital necessity, something that a nation might want to procure at all costs. But European trade with Russia is by no means limited to energy. At the time of the annexation, France was building two Mistral-class warships for Russia. Mistral is the amphibious assault ship that can carry up to sixteen helicopters, seventy tanks, and four landing barges. It is a perfect instrument of maritime aggression. When they signed the contract in 2011, the Russians had already decided on the names: one Vladivostok, another Sevastopol.
In 2014–2015, the deal became an embarrassment. The Russians had prepaid $900 million of the contract price of $1.3 billion. The Mistrals were being built at a shipyard in Saint Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire. The local unions insisted that the town needed the seven thousand jobs the Russian order had secured. A union representative expressed hope that the deal would be the “start of a sustainable cooperation with Russia.” The ships he said, were simply “big ferries” with a “few weapons.”[24]
Several Eastern European E.U. members, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, objected to being dragged into a confrontation with Russia for strategic, economic, and status reasons. First, Russia was important economically; second, Hungary and the Czech Republic did not want the European Union to become a capitalist version of the Soviet-era COMECON, in which they, as junior partners, had to take orders from the headquarters; third, for Eastern Europe, Ukraine was a periphery, not necessarily deserving sovereignty, much less Western protection. In May 2014, the Hungarian government demanded from Kiev autonomy for the Hungarian minority in Ukraine—envisaging, one may assume, a little Hungarian Crimea. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is a vocal supporter of 3 million ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, whose ancestors ended up there after the Trianon Treaty of 1920. In 2014, Orbán started talking about “illiberal democracy,” praising the example of Russia, China, India, and Turkey. After Senator McCain called him a “neo-fascist dictator getting in bed with Vladimir Putin,” Orbán responded that he “would not be a viceroy in Hungary commissioned by some foreign state.” The president of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, called the U.S.-sponsored Kosovo an illegitimate state and said he wished the Czech Republic could take back its recognition. He defined the events in Ukraine as a civil war (a term most other E.U. countries refuse to use) and said Ukraine should become neutral.[25]
In Ukraine, the European Union had followed the principle, “You break it, you run”: having disrupted Ukrainian politics with vain promises of a “European future,” after the first shots were fired in Kiev the E.U. all but disappeared, leaving it to the United States to clean up the mess. It took the Europeans a year to return—but not as the European Union. Two great powers—Germany and France—began the process of mediation, their leaders conferring with the Ukrainian and Russian presidents on neutral territory, in authoritarian Minsk.
With the European Union undermined by the migrants crisis, and Russia seen as a strong ally in the fight against ISIS, European leaders are now likely to relegate war in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea to the icebox of diplomacy.
Intervention in the east was unpopular with Europeans from the start. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy complained in the New York Times: “To see the European Union acting so pusillanimously is very discouraging. France wants to hold on to its arms contracts for the jobs they are supposed to save in its naval shipyards. Germany, a hub of operations for the Russian energy giant Gazprom, is petrified of losing its own strategic position. Britain, for its part, despite recent statements by Prime Minister David Cameron, may still not be ready to forgo the colossal flows of Russian oligarchs’ ill-gotten cash upon which the City, London’s financial district, has come to rely.”[26]
18
Ryan Browne, “U.S. Stationing Tanks and Artillery in Classified Norwegian Caves,” CNN, February 19, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/politics/u-s-tanks-artillery-norwegian-caves (retrieved February 20, 2016).
19
Hugh Schofield, “Hollande in Moscow: A New Era in Russian-French Relations?” BBC, November 26, 2015, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34931378 (retrieved February 20, 2016).
20
“Saipem Awarded Contract for South Stream Offshore Pipeline,” The Maritime Executive, March 17, 2014, www.maritime-executive.com/article/Saipem-Awarded-Contract-for-South-Stream-Offshore-Pipeline-2014-03-17 (retrieved May 5, 2014).
21
“South Stream Pipeline Project Frozen over Crimea Crisis,” EurActiv.com, March 11, 2014, www.euractiv.com/energy/south-stream-project-takes-crime-news-534038 (retrieved March 11, 2014); “EU Policy to Blame for Ukraine Crisis—Ex-Chancellor Schroeder,”
22
Nick Cunningham, “As Russia’s Isolation Grows, Oil Companies Caught in Middle,” July 21, 2014, EconoMonitor, www.economonitor.com/blog/2014/07/as-russias-isolation-grows-oil-companies-caught-in-middle/?utm_source=rss (retrieved September 2, 2014); “Austria Says EU Must Not Seek Collapse of Russian Economy,” Reuters, December 20, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/20/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-austria-idUSKBN0JY0IY20141220 (retrieved December 20, 2014).
23
Judy Dempsey, “Europe’s Energy Companies Go Back to Business with Russia,” Carnegie Europe, September 7, 2015, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61207 (retrieved September 13, 2015).
24
Thomas Erdbrink, “Despite Anger Over Downed Jetliner, Europe Shies Away from Sanctions on Russia,”
25
“McCain Sparks US-Hungary Diplomatic Row over Orban,” BBC, December 3, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30318898 (retrieved December 8, 2014); Tom Porter, “Hungarian PM Viktor Orban Hits Back at John McCain’s ‘Fascist’ Accusation,”
26
Bernard-Henri Lévy, “Putin’s Crime, Europe’s Cowardice,”