Eastern Partnership: The West’s Final Assault on the Former Soviet Union
en.fondsk.ruÐ?rbis Terrarum
05.03.2009
Rick ROZOFF (USA)
At a meeting of the European Union’s General Affairs and External
Relations Council in Brussels on May 26 of last year, Poland, seconded
by Sweden, first proposed what has come to be known as the Eastern
Partnership, a programme to `integrate’ all the European and South
Caucasus former Soviet nations – except for Russia – not already in the
EU and NATO; that is, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova
and Ukraine.
The above are half of the former Soviet republics in the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) established as a sop to Russia immediately
after the breakup of the Soviet Union in that year and in theory to be
a post-Soviet equivalent of the then European Community, now European
Union. (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania never joined and both were
absorbed into the European Union and NATO in 2004.)
The Eastern Partnership has since last May been presented as an
innocuous enough sounding proposal containing a mission statement to
promote `a substantial upgrading of the level of political engagement,
including the prospect of a new generation of Association Agreements,
far-reaching integration into the EU economy, easier travel to the EU
for citizens providing that security requirements are met, enhanced
energy security arrangements benefitting all concerned, and increased
financial assistance.’ (European Union press release, December 3, 2008)
The key phrases, though, are `upgrading of the level of political
engagement’ and `enhanced energy security arrangements.’
What the Eastern Partnership is designed to accomplish is to complete
the destruction of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian
Economic Community (EurAsEC) comprised of Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the only post-Soviet
multinational security structure, the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), as well as to abort the formalization of the
Belarus-Russia Union State.
Which is to say, to isolate Russia from six of the twelve CIS states,
with the other five, in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), simultaneously targeted by a
complementary EU initiative.
The ultimate intent of the Eastern Partnership is to wean away all the
other ex-Soviet states from economic, trade, political, security and
military ties with Russia and to integrate them into broader so-called
Euro-Atlantic structures from the European Union itself initially to
NATO ultimately.
Coming out of last year’s NATO summit in Romania the increased
political, security and military integration – one is tempted to say
merger – of the EU and NATO, trumpeted by France’s President Nicholas
Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, wa
rmly embraced by the
Bush administration and since affirmed most strongly by British Foreign
Minister David Miliband at the recent Munich Security Conference, is
the yet further consolidation of the longstanding EU-NATO `soft power,
hard power’ division of labour mutually agreed upon. `[T]he Partnership
would demonstrate the `power of soft power’ and acknowledge that the
conflict in Georgia in August had influenced the decision to launch the
Partnership’ (PanArmenian.net, December 11, 2008).
The Eastern Partnership was first proposed in May of 2008 as mentioned
earlier, but the impetus to endorse it at a meeting of leaders last
December was the `soft power’ response by the EU to complement NATO’s
establishment of the NATO-Georgia Commission a month after Georgia’s
invasion of South Ossetia triggered last summer’s Caucasus war.
The EU will provide the `diplomatic’ persuasion and the economic
subsidies as NATO and its individual member states (in almost every
instance in Europe the same as the EU’s) continue to supply Georgia
with advanced offensive arms, surveillance systems, military training
and permanent advisers.
As a further indication of what the EU’s true objective is, Belarus has
been added to the other five only with the proviso it will be accepted
`if it accepts a democracy improvement plan.’ (PanArmenian.net,
December 12, 2008)0D
The same has not been openly stated regarding Armenia, but for two
critical reasons it is in the same category as Belarus, all pabulum
concerning democracy notwithstanding. (If democracy in any acceptation
of the term was a precondition then the US-installed despot and
megalomaniac Mikheil Saakashvili and the hereditary president-for-life
dynasty of the Aliev family would disqualify Georgia and Azerbaijan,
respectively.)
Armenia and Belarus are both in the second tier of Eastern Partnership
candidates and will require a good deal of `improvement’ before being
absorbed into the West’s new `soft power’ drive to the east.
Neither is part of the GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova)
anti-CIS bloc set up in 1997 through the joint efforts of the Clinton
administration and its secretary of state Madeleine Albright and its
European Union allies in Strasbourg. Both are members of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with Russia and four Central Asian
nations (all except for Turkmenistan), which has in recent years taken
on a more overt military mutual defense nature.
The deadly `Daffodil Revolution’ in Armenia a year ago and the
attempted `Denim Revolution’ in Belarus two years before having failed
to replicate their predecessors and prototypes in Georgia in 2003,
Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005, other means were required to
`reorientate’ the two
nations from their close state-to-state and
security relations with Russia. Hence the need for the Eastern
Partnership.
The role of GUAM, whose members are both identified by the EU as the
preferred four in the Partnership and who collectively comprise
two-thirds, indeed the foundation, of it, will be taken up in depth
later on. As will the simultaneous and complementary Brussels programme
aimed at Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan, itself mirroring US and NATO military and energy plans for
Central Asia.
The day after Poland and Sweden first proposed the initiative in May of
last year, the British newspaper The Telegraph, under the headline
`Poland takes on Russia with `Eastern Partnership’ proposal,’ wrote
that `Poland will take on its mighty neighbour Russia today when it
proposes that the European Union extends its influence deep into the
former Soviet Union by establishing an `Eastern Partnership’ and more
markedly that `The Eastern Partnership would be particularly galling
for the Kremlin if its aspiration to include Belarus is achieved.’ (The
Telegraph, May 26, 2008)
Ahead of last December’s EU summit where the plans were formalized for
the implementation of the Eastern Partnership project at the summit of
EU heads of state in March of 2009, this commentary appeared in a
Georgian paper: `[T]his latest EU action could entail another
consequence, one that few appear to be thinking about now. `In the
early 1990s, the United States took the lead in pushing the idea that
EU membership for East European countries could serve as either a
surrogate or a stepping stone to NATO membership. `If that idea should
resurface, and some of its authors will be returning to office with the
incoming Obama Administration in Washington, it would change both the
EU and NATO and equally would change how Moscow would deal with
Brussels, thus introducing yet another complication in East-West
relations.’ (Georgian Daily, December 8, 2008)
With the Czech Republic poised to take over the presidency of the EU in
two days, The Telegraph of Britain accurately characterized not only
the subversive but the provocative nature of the Eastern Partnership by
indicating that `The Czech Republic, which will become the first former
Warsaw Pact country to hold the presidency, has made a priority of a
scheme to establish closer ties with former Soviet states, irrespective
of Russian concerns of encroachment close to its borders.’
It further stated that Czech Foreign Minister Karol Schwarzenberg,
coincidentally or otherwise a staunch supporter of US missile radar
plans for his country, `stressed that the EU’s relations with the
former Soviet states were its own affair and that Russia should not
interfere.’ (The Telegraph, December 30, 2008)
To insure that the point wasn’t missed in Moscow, Schwarzenberg
thundered that Russia should abandon any illusions it might entertain
concerning `some privileged interests abroad’ and, throwing down the
gauntlet altogether, `in such cases a red line must be established
beyond which the EU must not make concessions.’ (Black Sea Press
[Georgia], December 30, 2008)
The Czech foreign minister evinced a curious sense of geography in his
use of the word abroad, as Russia borders Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia
and Ukraine and is only one nation removed from Armenia and Moldova,
whereas his own government is pressing for the deployment of missile
radar facilities and troops from the other side of the world and has
troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As though in anticipation of Schwarzenberg’ s diktat, two weeks earlier
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned `[W]e cannot agree when
attempts are being made to pass off the historically conditioned
mutually privileged relations between the states in the former Soviet
expanse as a `sphere of influence,” adding `If you accept that logic,
then under this definition fall the European Neighbourhood Policy,
Eastern Partnership and many other EU (let alone NATO) projects, on
which the decisions are taken without the participation of Russia or
countries to which they apply.’ (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
December 15, 2008)
Two days ago the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union [1987-1991],
Jack Matlock, `explained Russian motivations and highlighted what he
considered to be American hypocrisy in geopolitical affairs. While
America has claimed nearly monopolistic power in the Western Hemisphere
for 200 years, Matlock said, it has increasingly denied Russia its own
regional sphere of influence since the fall of the Soviet Union. `The
West has been picking and choosing which principles to uphold.’ (Yale
Daily News, February 12, 2009)
To backtrack, a month after the initial proposal for the establishment
of the Eastern Partnership in May of 2008 Polish Foreign Minister
Radoslav Sikorski called the Partnership `the practical and ideological
continuation of the European Neighbourhood Policy’, which should become
a supplement to the Mediterranean Union…. (InfoTag [Moldova], June
26, 2008)
Sikorski was alluding to the Mediterranean Union project of French
president Nicholas Sarkozy, which in July 13, 2008 was renamed the
Union for the Mediterranean, the southern wing of the European Union’s
`push east and south’ (US State Department phrase for its own emphasis
in and from Europe), the eastern complement of which is, of course, the
Eastern Partnership.
A summit of EU leaders in Brussels in the same month, June of 2008,
further pursued the initiative and the `Eastern Partnership…
Polish-Swedish proposition of deepening cooperation with Eastern
European countries’ was discussed. (Polish Radio, June 20, 2008)
The above advancement of the project evoked these comments from a
Caucasus news source: `Moscow itself understood that the main aim of
the initiative was to save the above-mentioned countries from the
influence of Russia’ and `According to the EU Commissioner for Foreign
Relations and Neighbourhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner at least one
billion euro per year will be allocated for the Black Sea Synergy
project.’ (Azeri Press Agency, June 30, 2008)
Black Sea Synergy project is synergy not as in the word whose adjective
form is synergistic but as in syn + energy. Of the six nations targeted
for the Eastern Partnership two, Georgia and Ukraine, are on the Black
Sea and one, Azerbaijan, is a Caspian Sea littoral state.
The Eastern Partnership is designed among several other purposes to
complement the Union of the Mediterranean and to augment the Black Sea
Synergy programme as an integral and advanced component of the West’s
campaign to dominate world energy supplies and transit and to provide
the civilian supplement to NATO’s expansion throughout Eurasia, the
Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East.
The website of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU,
on a page dedicated to Black Sea Synergy includes these comments: `The
Black Sea region, which includes Bulgaria and Romania, occupies a
strategic position between Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
The European Union intends to support regional commitments tending to
increase mutual confidence and remove obstacles to the stability,
security and prosperity of the countries in this region.’
`Black Sea Synergy is a cooperation initiative that proposes a new
dynamic for the region, its countries and their citizens. Regional
cooperation could provide additional value to initiatives in areas of
common interest and serve as a bridge to help strengthen relations with
neighbouring countries and regions (Caspian Sea, Central Asia,
South-eastern Europe).’
And, which will bring the issue back to GUAM and the prospects for
further armed confrontations after the model of last August’s war in
the Caucasus: `The EC advocates a more active role in addressing frozen
conflicts (Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh)’
(Europa, June 3, 2009)
GUAM was set up by the West in 1997 to accomplish several strategic
objectives: As a Trojan Horse within the Commonwealth of Independent
States – until Georgia withdrew after the war last August all four GUAM
member states were in the CIS – it was intended to undermine and
ultimately dissolve the community, eventually luring other CIS states
away from it. The inclusion of Armenia and Belarus in the Eastern
Partnership is an example of thi
s strategy.
Incorporating the four ex-Soviet states into a trans-Eurasian strategic
energy and military transit corridor from the Black Sea through the
Caspian Sea Basin to Central and South Asia. The addition of Uzbekistan
in 1999 extended the range of the bloc, although Uzbekistan would
withdraw in 2005.
The GUAM states are involved in all four of the so-called frozen
conflicts in the former Soviet Union: Georgia with Abkhazia and South
Ossetia; Azerbaijan with Nagorno-Karabakh; Moldova with Transdniester
(Pridnestrovie).
In fact there are several other unresolved territorial disputes in the
GUAM states including Adjaria (suppressed and occupied by Georgia in
2004 after a show of force by Saakashvili’s American-trained and
-equipped army, the first example of the `peaceful resolution of a
frozen conflict’) and the ethnic Armenian inhabited area of
Samtskhe-Javakheti/ Javakhk in Georgia; Gaugazia in Moldova; and the
Crimea and potentially even the Donetsk region in Ukraine.
The four frozen conflicts proper – Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South
Ossetia and Transdniester – are illustrative of the cataclysmic
consequences of the precipitate breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
All four former autonomous republics seceded from the respective Soviet
Socialist Federal Republics they had belonged to, in all cases also
entailing armed conflict and loss of life.
The four, and the other potential conflict areas mentioned above,
for example Crimea in Ukraine, part of Russia for centuries until being
ceded to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, had belonged
to the three federal republics they did until 1991 only within the
context of the broader Soviet framework; once the latter ceased to
exist, so too did the rationale for the autonomous republics remaining
within new states that had never before existed as nations – Moldova
and Ukraine – or, if so, not for centuries except for a three year
period during the Russian civil war with Georgia from 1918`1921 and a
two year interlude with Azerbaijan from 1918`1920.
The US and its NATO allies are past masters at fishing in troubled
waters and in troubling the waters the better to fish in them, and the
frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union allow the West to impede
integration processes within the Commonwealth of Independent States,
develop close military ties to the nations involved with them and
increasingly to intervene in post-Soviet territory under the auspices
of peacekeeping operations whether through the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union or, the
ultimate objective, NATO.
Most dangerously, the US and all its NATO allies have refused to ratify
the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) arms treaty – which has
only been approved by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine (as
successor states to the former Soviet Union) – and have justified their
non-ratification by linking it to the withdrawal of small Russian
peacekeeper contingents – mandated by the Commonwealth of Independent
States and in at least one instance the United Nations – from Abkhazia,
South Ossetia and Transdniester.
In the eighteen year interim since the treaty was negotiated until now
numerous new nations have been created in Europe – Bosnia, Croatia,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia,
Slovakia and Slovenia (and of course the pseudo-state of Kosovo) – and
in the South Caucasus Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia which are not
signatories to it and which then could have US and NATO forces and arms
stationed on their territories without any provisions made for Russia
and the three other nations that have ratified the treaty to monitor
them.
Such deployments are not limited to conventional weaponry.
At the 2006 summit in Kiev, Ukraine, GUAM expanded its name to
GUAM-Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, declared
itself an international organization and announced the creation of a
joint military (`peacekeeping’) force.
The summit also laid out in more detail and candor why the US and its
allies created and fostered GUAM, whose expanded format is the Eastern
Partnership, to begin with: `The creation of the bloc is a bold step in
promoting energy supply routes linking the Caspian Sea basin and
consumers in the EU, allowing to reduce heavy dependence on Russian
energy. One of the main projects to be promoted is launching supplies
of Caspian Sea crude oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan via Georgian
and Ukrainian pipelines to markets in Europe….-[T]he plan also calls
for extending the Odessa-Brody pipeline to Plock of Poland, which is
already hooked up with a major oil terminal and an oil refinery in
Gdansk.'(Ukrainian Journal, May 23, 2006)
The same report contains this important detail: `[T]he situation
changed last year when Yushchenko, a pro-Western leader, had been
inaugurated to the presidency in Ukraine and had pledged to replace
Russian shipments with Caspian supplies. The pipeline would bypass
Russia on the way to Ukraine and to the E.U….’ (Ibid)
A Russian commentary of late last autumn reflected the last paragraph’s
allusion to the role of putative `colour revolutions’ in strengthening
GUAM’s subservience to Western interests by remarking that the group
`was created with a broad list of functions to combat Russian influence
in the region, but remained largely unused, before the Orange
Revolution in Ukraine and Mikhail Saakashvili’s coming to power in
Georgia.’ (Russia Today, November 7, 2009)
The following year at its summit in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a
GUAM-US, GUAM-Japan, GUAM-Visegrad Four (Czech Republic, Hungary,
Poland, Slovakia), GUAM-Baltic and other new
partnerships were
launched.
In November of 2007 the US hosted a meeting of GUAM states national
coordinators in Washington where `A special topic of the discussions
was the assessment of the potential of Caspian Sea networks in the
consolidation of the GUAM states’ energy security and the present-day
shape of the Nabucco Project.’ (Infotag [Moldova], November 2, 2007)
At the 2008 GUAM summit in Batumi, the capital of Georgian-subjugated
Adjaria, `The sides [chartered a] course for the development of
regional cooperation as a part of the European and Asian integration
processes, and for strengthening partnership relations with the US,
Poland, Japan and other states as well as international organizations.
`The declaration expressed concern over the protracted conflicts,
aggressive separatism… and underlined the importance of the
international community’s support for the settlement of the
conflicts.'(Azeri Press Agency, July 2, 2008)
David Merkel, Assistant to the US Secretary of State `said GUAM unites
the Caspian and Black Sea regions and can fulfill the function of
connecting Central Asia with the Near East.'(Georgian Public
Broadcasting, July 1, 2008)
The Georgian Energy Minister, Aleksandre Khetaguri, extended the reach
of GUAM-centered energy projects to the Baltic Sea in adding `We have
discussed the question of an Odessa`Brody`Gdansk pipeline, which will
allow the oil from the Caspian countries to be transported first to
Ukraine and then to other parts of Eastern Europe.’ (The Messenger
[Georgia], July 1, 2008)
The turning point in the West’s resolve to back its GUAM, and now
Eastern Partnership, clients to definitively `solve’ the issue of the
frozen conflicts came at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in April
of last year. All twenty six Alliance members affirmed that Georgia and
Ukraine, the most pro-American and pro-NATO of the four GUAM and six
Eastern Partnership states, were on an irreversible road to full NATO
accession but baulked at granting them the Membership Action Plan, the
final stage to complete integration.
Two central barriers to a nation joining NATO are unresolved conflicts
in and foreign (that is, non-NATO nations’) bases on their territories.
Georgia still laid claim to Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Ukraine
still hosted the Russian Sixth Fleet at Sevastopol in the Crimea.
Far from being the rebuff to Georgia and Ukraine and to their American
sponsor the non-granting of Membership Action Plans to the two
candidates appeared to some, Georgia and Ukraine were both given not
only a green light to resolve these issues but in fact were directed if
not ordered to do so.
At the beginning of last August Georgian shelling killed six people,
including a Russian peacekeeper, and wounded twelve on the outskirts of
the capital and on August 7 Georgia’s American-armed and -trained armed
forces crossed the border and laid waste to much of the South Ossetian
capital.
The assault, coming only days after the Pentagon had completed a two
week military drill, Exercise Immediate Response 2008, under the
sponsorship of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme with troops from
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, weeks after Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice had visited the Georgian capital and hours after
Georgia’s Saakashvili had proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire, led to
direct military hostility between Russia and the preeminent client of
the US. During the same interim after the NATO summit Ukrainian
authorities escalated their demands that the lease for the Russian
Sixth Fleet not be renewed.
Weeks after the Caucasus war ended, the EU convened an extraordinary
summit `devoted to the situation in Georgia’ at which it adopted a
resolution stating that `it is more necessary than ever to support
regional cooperation and step up its relations with its eastern
neighbours, in particular through its neighbourhood policy, the
development of the Black Sea Synergy initiative and an Eastern
Partnership.’ (ForUm [Ukraine], September 2, 2008)
Shortly thereafter Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk revealed the true
dimensions of the Eastern Partnership when he said that, `Developments
of the past months, especially the crisis in the Caucuses, have shown
the farsightedness of the Swedish and Polish initiative ` a proposal
for the entire European Union with a global dimension….'(UNIAN
[Ukraine], September 18, 2008)
The above occurred as the US sent a flotilla of warships to Georgian
ports and NATO boosted its naval presence in the Black Sea.
In the middle of last November an energy summit was held in the
Azerbaijani capital of Baku and attended by the presidents of Ukraine,
Turkey, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Georgia and other heads of
states.
American expatriate and current Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus
said that `The number of letters in the word `GUAM’ should be
increased: it would consolidate both the organization and the
participating countries,’ explaining `[W]e are working towards
strengthening the GUAM organization, expanding contacts between the
countries of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Sea regions, and making
cooperation in the energy field more intense.’ (Today.AZ [Azerbaijan],
November 14, 2008)
Adamkus’ statements were supported in a Western press report of the
same day: `The plan [elaborated at the summit] emphasised developing a
`southern gas corridor’ to transport supplies from the Caspian Sea and
Middle East regions, bypassing Russia, as well as an energy ring
linking Europe and southern Mediterranean countries.'(Agence
France-Presse, November2014, 2008)
The meeting was overseen by US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and
special envoy of the US president for Eurasian energy issues Boyden
Gray. The main focus was on the Caspian-Black- Sea-Baltic Odessa-Brody-
Gdansk oil pipeline project, but also included as the Agence
France-Presse dispatch alluded to the Nabucco natural gas mega-project,
which is to take in North African and Persian Gulf as well as Caspian
energy resources and transit lines.
While at the summit US Energy Secretary Bodman effused that the `Baku
Energy Summit is the continuation of `The Contract of Century’ signed
in 1994,’ an allusion to the contract signed between between American
and Western companies and Azerbaijan in that year which laid the
foundation for the subsequent trans-Eurasian Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan oil
and Baku-Tbilisi- Erzurum gas pipelines as well as the Nabucco project.
Those three energy undertakings, unprecedented in scope and political
capital expended, are to be expanded with the new Eastern Partnership.
In late November of last year the EU issue a draft communiqué on the
Eastern partnership which stated, inter alia, `On the energy front,
Memorandums of Understanding are to help guarantee EU energy security,
leading to `joint management, and even ownership of pipelines by
companies of supplier, transit and consumer countries,’ as well as
noting `EU `concern’ over energy infrastructure in conflict zones, such
as a Russia-Balkans gas pipeline running through the disputed Moldovan
region of Transdniestria.’ (Azeri Press Agency, November 25, 2008)
A European Commission report of a few days later included the demand
that `The EU must significantly boost relations with Ukraine and five
other ex-Soviet republics and make easing Moscow’s sway over them a
priority.
`The report says the EU must seek diversification of energy routes by
enabling the ex-Soviet nations to build new and better connected
pipelines and oil and gas storage facilities. The EU wants to see a gas
pipeline from the Caucasus fully skirting Russia.’ (Associated Press,
November 30, 2008)
As mentioned above the EU signed the draft communiqué on the Eastern
Partnership in December of last year with the intent of pulling `the
EU’s six post-Soviet neighbours closer to the West by recognizing their
`European aspirations and creating a new European Economic Area…’
(PanArmenian.net, December 3, 2008), `Accelerated partly because of the
summer 2008 conflict in the Caucasus…’ (Sofia Echo, December 3, 2008)
On December 12 the heads of state of all 27 EU members approved the
establishment of the Eastern Partnership. Twelve days later the EU
special representative to the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, added,
`This programme was elaborated in the light of the recent developments 0D
in the region, the war in Georgia, as well as the concerns of the South
Caucasus countries on security issues…’ (Today.AZ, December 24, 2008)
On December 19 Washington signed a United States-Ukraine Charter on
Strategic Partnership with its compliant client in Kiev, Viktor
Yushchenko, and within a week the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute began,
plunging much of Europe into a crisis and renewing Western calls for
energy routes circumventing Russia.
On February 10 of this year Deputy Prime Minister for EU Affairs for
the Czech Republic, which assumed the EU presidency on the first of the
year, Alexandr Vondra, announced that he expected the Eastern
Partnership to be formally inaugurated on May 7 in Prague at the EU
summit to be held there.
Dispensing with the standard verbs like assisting and aiding, he added
another one – stabilizing. `The recent gas crisis has not only its
technical but also political implications. The crisis highlighted how
important it is for the EU to assume responsibility for the
stabilisation of its eastern neighbours and to pay them more political
and financial attention.’ (Czech News Agency, February 10, 2009)
The report from which the preceding quote is taken fleshed out the
strategy in more detail: `The Eastern Partnership summit is to be
followed by a meeting of the countries that are connected with the
`southern energy corridor’ that links the Caspian region with world
markets, bypassing Russia….[T] he meeting will probably take place on
the same day as the Eastern Partnership summit.'(Ibid) To further tie
together the West’s plans to penetrate and assimilate all of former
Soviet territory, the following day it was reported that `Czech Prime
Minister Mirek Topolanek will go to Central Asia on Thursday to have
talks on the Eastern Partnership and possible gas supplies for the
European Union that would reduce the EU’s dependency on Russian gas’
and that `During his two-day visit, Topolanek will have talks with top
politicians of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan,’ and, lastly,
`Topolanek will negotiate in Central Asia on behalf of the EU as the
Czech Republic has been EU president since January.'(Czech News Agency,
February 11, 2009)
And to further confirm the predetermined and integrated approach toward
all non-Russian Commonwealth of Independent States nations, last
December a Central Asian news sources revealed: `The European Union
launched, on 28 November, a rule of law initiative for Central Asia –
one of the key elements of its strategy for a new partnership with five
Central Asian countries adopted in May 2007. The initiative provides
for support for Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan…’ (UzReport [Uzbekistan], December 19,
2008)
Exploiting the issue of alleged European energy security, a campaign
first addressed in a major manner by NATO Secretary General Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer at the Alliance’s 2006 summit in Riga, Latvia, the real
intent of the Eastern Partnership is to subordinate eleven of the
twelve former Soviet states not already in the EU (and NATO) to
Brussels…and Washington.
By adding Belarus, either through cooptation or `regime change,’ to the
Western column, Russia will lose its only buffer against NATO in Europe
and the only substantive early warning missile surveillance and air
defenses it has outside its own borders. By adding Armenia Russia will
effectively be driven out of the South Caucasus. With the absorption of
the five Central Asian nations, Russia would lose all influence
throughout the entire former Soviet space except for its own territory.