Why can’t Russia and the European Union reach an understanding? Despite the fact that the European Union and Russia are linked with the idea of strategic partnership, in the last 20 years of rapprochement, they have failed to become true allies.

       Russia is becoming immersed in the election campaign. Just as in most other countries, voters have little interest in foreign policy issues. It should be noted, though, that Russian society is not indifferent to the fate of the European Union.

       The European Union has remained Russia’s main trade partner for many years. Russia obtains financial resources and technologies for modernization from the EU. The democratic system and market economy of Europe continue to serve as a model for Russia’s development.

       Despite the fact that the European Union and Russia are linked with the idea of strategic partnership, in the last 20 years of rapprochement, they have failed to become true allies. Meanwhile, without the EU-Russia alliance, there cannot be a common European house. The EU and Russia want to have economic cooperation, but have some serious political disagreements.

       The EU insistently calls for democratization and reinforcement of the rule of law in Russia. Meanwhile, Russia needs the West to recognize its national interests in post-Soviet territory.

       While the EU is creating a unique civilization on the territory of Europe, one that is based on liberal ideas, comfortable living conditions and legal protection of its citizens, Russia, though declaring that the welfare of its citizens must take priority, is still searching for its future political model. Russian elites have not rejected the idea of partial recovery of the nationhood that was lost in 1991, while Western liberalism is not very popular in Russia.

       In the 1990s, Russia considered the idea of Western integration. In that era, the EU and Russia’s differences in worldview were less significant than today. In the last decade, Russia has decided that it does not need to join with the West, but create its own European civilization. Both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev advised against Russia’s becoming part of the West, instead putting forth the idea of “co-existence” of the EU and NATO on the territory of the shared continent.

       But even the idea of co-existence calls for consensus in the sphere of economy and security. For political reasons, the EU rejects Medvedev’s idea to create an energy alliance. The West responded to Medvedev’s proposal to create a shared Euro-Atlantic space from Brest to Vladivostok, in the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, by putting pressure on Russia to withdraw its peacekeepers from Transdniester. Nor was the idea of a joint-European air defense system realized.

       The European continent remains somewhat split. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has severely weakened the economy of both western and eastern European states. Instead of creating a joint-Russia-EU plan to rescue Europe (including from future misfortunes), western states are taking it upon themselves to rescue countries such as Greece, while refusing to accept loans from Russia. Moreover, Russia’s rescue of Belarus from economic collapse is carried out without looking to the West.

       For a long time, Russia refused to look at the EU as having political value. The constant talks about “superiority of values” irritated Russia. Moscow considered Europeans to be some sort of eccentrics. Today, Russia is seeing the Western policy of values gain a military nature. The West has, in a unilateral manner, changed the parameters of international law. State sovereignty is no longer an overriding law if human rights are violated in a country. The West has openly declared war against all “dictators” in the world.

       The world is becoming completely unrecognizable. And it is unclear as to how it will continue to develop. The formerly peace-loving Western democracies have got the desire to introduce freedom and the liberal model by force. What is so bad about the fact that the number of authoritative regimes in the world is decreasing, and the Islamic world could change its orientation toward pro-Western development and abandon terrorism?

       The terrorist attacks of September 11 plunged the West into a decade-long war with Islamic extremism. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were waged, and the policy of containment of Iraq was initiated. In 2008, the West was hit by a financial crisis. Analysts began talking about the West’s inevitable decline and the rise of a new superpower – China. The year 2011 has changed the course of history yet again. The Islamic world, which until now has been considered to be the West’s main enemy, has been taken over by “democratic revolutions”, similar to the 1989 “Velvet Revolutions” in Eastern Europe. US special forces liquidated Osama bin Laden, and NATO brought down the rule of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The world order has, again, suddenly begun to develop in favor of the West.

       The West no longer has fears of oil wars with incompliant Arabs and there is hope that the West will be able to defeat Islamic extremism. Western NGOs now have a new territory to promote democracy – the new Islamic world. Now, all that is left is to simply encourage the “Arab Spring” and secure a reliable partner in the Islamic world while building a new world order.

       Before 2011’s events, Western experts believed that the US and the EU needed at any cost to secure a strategic partnership with China to stabilize world order. Throughout this entire time, the Islamic world was regarded as a dangerous rival, against which it was necessary to build an air defense system – and now?

       If at the end of next year neo-conservatives, who still see the world in black and white, come to power in the United States, then the statements of some of US political legal experts, who claim that the US, which cannot live without an enemy, and so will enter into a new confrontation with Russia, may be justified.

       Future global conflicts will, apparently, unfold for control over natural resources. Wars will be waged for oil, gas, minerals, and perhaps access to food and drinking water. Issues concerning energy supply and acquisition of natural resources will become very relevant for Europe. Without “strategic partners”, such as countries or regions possessing these resources, Europe will not survive. A number of Western analysts, inclined to think strategically, are calling on the European Union to create a strong alliance with Russia, which has everything that the Western economies need. But most Western politicians tend to think otherwise, and believe that Russia has no other choice but to support the West on every issue, including its idea of world order.

       Russia will probably never become a part of the West but, for the sake of its interests, it should build common European architecture with the EU, and adopt a large number of legal norms and standards that exist in Europe.

       On the one hand, Russian elites are mostly hostile to the Western post-Cold-War triumphalism. Russia objects to the Western desire to solidify the status of the center pole in the world order.

       But voices calling on their leadership to support the Western policy of imposition of democratic rules in the world are also being heard in Russia. Due to its limited capabilities, Russia is unable to oppose to the West. Besides why should it? Do dictators such as Gaddafi really mean something to the country? With its ability to engage in “democratization” of the world order, Russia will be able to negotiate substantially better benefits for itself during global reorganization and obtain access to the vast global markets. Cynical? Of course it is, but such is modern political morality.

       No matter who argues otherwise, in critical times Russia has always sided with the West. Yeltsin, after harsh criticism of NATO’s war in Yugoslavia, joined the Western peacekeeping operations in Kosovo. During the Afghan war, from the very beginning, Russia offered NATO its aerial and ground corridor for the supply of troops. On the eve of the Iraq war, the then-head of the Kremlin administration, Aleksandr Voloshin, negotiated with the US leadership on Russian companies’ involvement in the coming division of the oil pie. Based on this experience, Medvedev’s support of NATO’s military operation in Libya is quite logical.

       This article was originally published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta

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