Words Louder than Money in PACE
// The price of the question
The world is changing. I will not list all the signs of it – they are well known. After the end of the Cold War, it seemed that history had ended as well. Many suggested at that time that there was just one step left before liberalism and the free market triumphed in the world. The feeling grew that everyone would begin to endorse the same values, state sovereignty would weaken and the reasons for conflict would disappear altogether. That image was inspired by the idea that the future world would be managed exclusively by soft force, and government would be replaced by the institutions of civic society.
But the world Arcadia never happened. There are debates about what the world will be like in the 21st century – whether there will be one pole or many poles, or maybe there will be no poles. In any case, practice shows that the old world order does not work, and it agitates international institutions.
Russia has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1996. That European organization, the oldest, will be 60 years old next year. The Russian press often asks why Russia is in that organization, and a one of its largest payers. What does it do for us?
There are two possible answers. Either it gives us the opportunity to make our views known to our neighbors, to explain our positions where there is no mutual understanding, or it is a ring in which we do not so much express our views as fight for them and the quality of the work of our delegation is judged by the number of rounds of argumentation it wins.
The Council of Europe’s authority in Russia has never been lower than today. That is natural for an organization that seriously considers depriving Russia of its right to vote at the time of debates on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. That is natural for an organization whose head traveled to Tbilisi “for the truth” and not to Moscow after August 8 and whose reporters have full information and still make accusations against Russia. All the dregs of Strasbourg’s Russophobia have been kicked up.
They already deprived us of the right to vote in 2000 to punish us “for Chechnya,” for preserving the territorial integrity of Russia. At the end of 2007, the Russian representative was not allowed to take the office of speaker of the PACE, as punishment for the Duma and presidential elections, which the foreign observers did not like. And, in general, because we are Russian. Now they are trying to punish us for forcibly pacifying the political heirs of Stalin and Beria.
Of course, we do not plan to storm out. We will not give in to the provocation. We are no less European than the other members of the Council of Europe. The formality of whether or not we belong to the Council of Europe will not change that fact.
It is time for our European neighbors to get used to the fact that Europe is varied and there is no one pan-European cure for the pan-European headache. We will not grovel. The question of whether or not we should remain the largest payer in the Council of Europe is discussed more and more often in domestic circles.
Mikhail Margelov, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 30, 2008
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