uesday, 2 September 2008

Whatever you think about the conflict in Georgia – and opinions about
the rights and wrongs of it could hardly be more polarised – there is
one aspect on which there could surely be wide agreement. This fast
and furious little war, with far wider implications, was an ideal
opportunity for the European Union to show its diplomatic mettle.
Countries the world over have been crying out for the EU to take a
more activist role as mediator, where better to start than with South
Ossetia – potentially highly dangerous, but potentially soluble, too?

In fact, the EU's first moves were positive, as international
responses go. The French presidency of the EU placed the onus on
Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, to react
in the name of Europe. Exhibitionist and interventionist politicians
both, they made an admirably prompt start, exchanging their sacrosanct
August holidays for a few rounds of shuttle diplomacy. Within days
there was a six-point agreement, validated by the signatures of both
sides. It was a promising start: a single message, activist diplomacy,
and a realistic awareness of what was possible on the ground.

At which point everything fell apart, and a head of steam built up
once again behind the rhetoric – except that this time it was not just
Russia and Georgia doing the shouting, but their respective
cheerleaders, which meant pretty much everyone against the Russians.
And the EU voice of reason, as exemplified by the mediators, M.
Sarkozy and M. Kouchner, was progressively drowned out by a different
and more diffuse argument: not the small question of how to solve the
problem of South Ossetia, but the big question of what to do about
Russia.

The reason the focus shifted was that the east and central Europeans –
who became full members of the EU in 2004 – could see the war in
Georgia only through the prism of their bitter experience. For them,
it was just another example of Soviet-style Russian bullying and a red
flag they could wave at "old" Europe to illustrate the justice of
their fears.

Now I yield to no one in my delight at the fall of the Berlin Wall,
the liberation of east and central Europe and the death of Soviet
communism. These "new" European countries are fully-fledged nation
states with a reclaimed sense of their own identity. Visit any one of
them, and I defy you not to sense, and share, their sheer joy at being
able to be themselves. Given history and geography, their
preoccupation with the perceived threat from the east can also be
understood. In seeking not only EU but also Nato membership, they were
defending their vital interests as they saw them. Their single-
mindedness paid off.

The trouble is that while the "old" Europeans left past enmities at
the door when they joined the EU – that was the whole point of joining
– too many of the "new" Europeans saw the EU, like Nato, as a means of
pursuing old quarrels from a new position of strength. Recent
recriminations in "new" Europe about who did what under communism
demonstrate how much is still not resolved. For these countries, the
prospect of a new Cold War is ever-present quite simply because, for
them, the old Cold War is not yet at an end.

In 2000, Jacques Chirac's fears about EU enlargement drew reproaches
of condescension and worse. The official US and British view was
preferred; that these countries would form a "bridge" to Russia. Over
time, though, M. Chirac looks more right than wrong. Popular European
opposition to the Iraq war was less effective than it could have been
because of divisions between "old" and "new" Europe that were well
exploited by the US. As Iraq faded as an issue, EU efforts to reach a
realistic and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia were
repeatedly thwarted by a chorus of "new" Europeans warning of the
worst.

There are many reasons why the EU should review relations with Russia,
most of which predate the recent conflict over South Ossetia. A mutual
– yes, mutual – interest in reliable energy sales and supplies is one.
Moscow's relations with the ethnic Russian populations living within
the EU is another; and the permanent demarcation of post-Soviet
borders, which requires a resolution of the so-called "frozen
conflicts" such as South Ossetia, is a third.

That discussions on all these issues are coloured by the very
particular experience of the "new Europeans" is a good part of the
explanation why no solutions are being reached. Alas, that failure is
now water under a premature enlargement that has proved more of a
block than a bridge.

Jezeli jeszcze ktos pamieta- nazwisko kto
szczekal i plul pierwszy? ano
zioninazi szczekaczka numer jeden oraz agent
Mossadu Kaczynski-to on
byl prowokatorem tych zaczepek i niezgody!W
Polsce jeszcze dlugo
bedzie narodowym bohaterem nawet jak bysmy z
tego powodu zdychac
mieli z glodu!