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Russia May Join NATO before Ukraine
A conference entitled “Identification and Integration in the New Eurasia” was held by Georgetown University's Center for Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European Studies (CERES) in Washington on Monday. American experts discussed the NATO summit in Bucharest and its influence on relations between Russia and the West. Kommersant's Washington correspondent Dmitry Sidorov followed the discussion.
CERES conferences usually attract many influential experts and retired politicians. This time, former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Ukrainian foreign minister Boris Tarasyuk, former deputy secretary of state and director of the Brookings Institute Strobe Talbott, president of the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow Andrey Kortunov and director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Center at Johns Hopkins University Charles Gati.
The former Polish president gave the main lecture in the program. He spoke about relations between the West and Ukraine and Russia in light of the recent NATO summit. First, he told the audience that his baggage was lost on the way from Poland to the United States. “I think the disappearance of my baggage is a sign that it is a big risk to speak on this topic,” he joked.
Nonetheless, the former president took the risk. He began by saying that the process of European integration is trouble and the EU itself is divided. He blamed the disastrous situation on the countries of old Europe, which no longer find European integration attractive. It could be understood from his speech that the reason for that was to a large extent the fact that the acceptance of new members in Euro-Atlantic structures increased tensions with Russia.
Most likely, Kwasniewski's evaluation was influenced the NATO summit in Bucharest, where a number of the old members of NATO, led by Germany, blocked Ukraine and Georgia from receiving Membership Action Plans. “Many countries are in the gray zone between the West and Russia, with its growing ambitions and expectations,” he concluded. Ukraine is the main country in that situation. It, according to Kwasniewski, doesn't know what to do with its position in Europe and is experiencing a shortage of information on relations between Russian and the EU.” “With such a course of affairs, I can imagine Russia joining NATO before Ukraine, although that won't happen today or tomorrow,” Kwasniewski said.
Kwasniewski criticized Moscow at the end of his presentation. “Russia has left the path of democracy,” he said, “which is nothing new, since there has not been any serious reform there since the time of Peter I.” Kwasniewski noted that “there is no need to expect substantive changes in the next eight years, since Dmitry Medvedev will continue the present course.” Kwasniewski's only hope is young Russians, a category he does not place the new Russian president in.
Professor Charles Gati, who spoke after Kwasniewski, who divided the ten countries of Eastern Europe into four group by their attitude toward Russia. In the first group, with a critical attitude toward Russia, he placed Romania, the Czech Republic and the three Baltic countries.
Slovenia was alone in the second group, as a country that “Russia doesn't worry.” The professor told the audience an old Soviet anecdote about Rabinovich. The Party allowed him to take a tour of the socialists countries, on the condition that he send a telegram from each of them. Rabinovich sent telegrams reading “Greetings from independent Bulgaria/Hungary/German Democratic Republic, Rabinovich.” Then nothing was heard from him for two weeks. Finally a telegram comes reading “Greetings from Paris, independent Rabinovich.”
The professor assigned Poland to the third group, which “has a critical attitude toward Russia not only because of its own experience, but also because of it has problems with the U.S.” Gati suggested that Warsaw wants to solve its problems with the United States (the U.S. refusal to allow Polish citizens to enter without visas, economic issues of the American missile defense program) by playing on Russian-American differences.
The fourth group consisted of Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia. “Those countries consider eh Cold War over,” Gati said. “If a public opinion survey on NATO membership were taken now, the majority of the population would most likely vote against it.”
At the end of his talk, Gati analyzed the differences between Moscow and Washington. “American should understand that the Cold War and the crusade against Russia are over,” he said. “To improve relations with Russia, the U.S. should lower its level of enmity toward the country.” He said that that was necessary for pragmatic reasons, since “we have no options for changing Russian authoritarianism from without.”
Dmitry Sidorov
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 16, 2008
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