THINK TANK REPORT URGES EU TO RECONSIDER CHOSEN SECURITY STRATEGIES
Deutsche Welle
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Oct 15 2010
Germany
Pan-European security cooperation will top the agenda at the Deauville
Summit between the leaders of Germany, France and Russia but while
the topic is a pressing one, are they the right people to be talking
about it?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend the annual Deauville
Summit on Monday to hold talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on how security cooperation
between the three nations can be improved.
The three leaders will also discuss their joint positions ahead of
the Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Korea on November 11-12 and
France’s objectives for when it assumes the leadership of the G20 in
November and the Group of Eight (G8) in January.
The meeting in the French town comes at a time when relations between
Russia and the EU seem to be improving with Moscow showing signs that
closer ties with the EU, especially with those former Soviet states
which are now members of the European bloc, have become a priority.
Among the security issues up for discussion on the Deauville agenda
will be the stability of restive regions on Europe’s eastern flank
and potential flashpoints such as the breakaway Moldovan region of
Transdniestria, and the stand-off between Armenia and Azerbaijan
over Nagorno-Karabakh.
While these and other issues between the nations which make up Russia
and the EU’s collective neighborhood all have strategic and security
concerns for those in attendance, a report released Friday by the
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank claims that
“the Merkel-Medvedev-Sarkozy summit has the right agenda but the
wrong participants.”
Report suggests EU needs to look to Russia, Turkey
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Tensions are still high in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh In the
report entitled “The illusion of order and the specter of a multipolar
Europe,” authors Mark Leonard, the ECFR’s director, and Ivan Krastev
claim that a European security trialogue between the EU, Russia and
Turkey would be more effective in tackling conflicts and promoting
stability in the problem regions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
“The idea is that an informal forum with the key players could
breathe life back into the formal European security institutions,”
Mark Leonard told Deutsche Welle. “One of the reasons that the current
institutions are dead-locked is the fact that Russia is questioning
their legitimacy.”
“Meanwhile Turkey is frustrated at the short-sighted way that some
EU member states are holding up the accession process. It is so
difficult to get things done through the formal institutions that
Europe’s powers are often acting outside them. This is not good for
the EU as we want a continent run through multilateral institutions
rather than spheres of influence or the balance of power. The report
argues that we should therefore engage with the other players to
revitalise these institutions.”
“The EU is missing an opportunity to think creatively about a new
security architecture and come up with its own initiative on the
future of the European order,” Leonard added.
Europe urged to take responsibility
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Georgia War highlighted Europe’s weaknesses With the United States,
Europe’s erstwhile protector, shifting its focus to its own concerns
in Afghanistan, Iran and China, the ECFR report calls on the EU to
take more responsibility for security in its own neighborhood. It
states that the current security system has failed to prevent wars in
Kosovo and Georgia, gas and oil disputes between Russia and Ukraine
and defuse tensions between Moscow and former Soviet states and must
adapt to a new reality.
“All three players are very much affected by the states on the EU’s
eastern flank and have developed complex ‘neighborhood policies’
to manage relations with the western Balkans, Eastern Europe and
Central Asia,” said Mark Leonard. “This grey zone of instability is
threatened with ethnic tensions, weak states and energy issues.”
The report suggests that a three-way dialogue leading to a potential
security action plan with Russia and Turkey would provide the EU with
a new structure in which it could participate in reducing tensions on
its borders by demilitarising the continent’s most volatile regions
and solving frozen conflicts.
It also claims that if the initial results were satisfactory, EU
nations could then be more receptive to Russian President Medvedev’s
proposal for a European security treaty, a plan which has been met
with suspicion and skepticism by a number of member states, as well
as the US, which believe any such treaty could undermine NATO and
provide Russia with a veto of the alliance’s activities.
The ECFR has rejected the claim that such a security apparatus
involving Russia would threaten the NATO-Russia Council or other
existing structures such as the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), saying that any new forum would work
alongside existing structures.
Experts see much to gain from three-way security forum
Asher Pirt, a researcher at the British East West Center, an NGO
working with Russia and CIS states, believes that the EU, Russia
and Turkey have much to gain from being involved in such a three-way
security dialogue.
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Ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan has wider repercussions “Russia, Turkey
and the European Union are very clear that stability in the former
Soviet Union is very important to them,” he told Deutsche Welle.
“Potential conflicts can cause numerous problems to all the great
powers and demands for military intervention are costly and politically
dangerous. Humanitarian aid is expensive and the tragedy of conflict
is something none of the great powers wish to observe. The issue of
displaced persons also becomes an issue for the three powers.
Finally, conflicts can spread and create instability within their
borders, something all wish to avoid.”
Pirt believes that the combination of the three powers could have
a positive effect on unstable regions, with each bringing its own
expertise and knowledge to the table.
“Turkey and Russia have linguistic connections with ethnic groups
throughout the former Soviet Union,” he said. “For example, the
ongoing crisis in the Kyrgyz Republic needs and could benefit from
Russian and Turkish diplomatic intervention.”
“The European Union is still needed to finance long-term projects that
can promote understanding between parties to various conflicts. It
is also clear that all the powers need to discuss financing long
term development projects organized by NGOs to improve education,
employment, socio-economic problems and democratic practices.”
No quick fix for the problems on EU’s eastern doorstep
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Any alliance will face the same problems as if faced alone However,
even if the three-way dialogue becomes a reality, the EU, Russia
and Turkey will still face incredible difficulties in resolving the
conflicts in restive regions throughout their common neighborhood.
“Resolution of these conflicts will only come about when the parties
involved really want this to happen, no matter how much pressure
is imposed on them,” said Pirt. “Sanctions do not work as only the
population suffers and not the leadership.”
“Dealing with security issues like these takes decades rather than
months,” he concluded. “Unless the alliance manages to agree a united
framework on how to deal with the security issues, any attempts at
dealing with the issues will end in failure.”
Author: Nick Amies
Editor: Rob Mudge
From: A. Papazian