Robert M. Cutler on Energy and Eurasia

Europe and the Future of NATO

It's not going to happen in Riga next month, but in five to ten years Europe (by which I mean "Europe" and not only the European Union, i.e., including the European countries as members of NATO) may have digested its 1989-1991 revolutions enough to be able to play a cooperative partnership role within NATO (by which I mean "NATO" and not only the U.S., not excluding in the end some EU capabilities). This is not to say that they have not recently tried. History may well show that the U.S. Administration's refusal of NATO assistance offered in the wake of 11 September 2001 was a myopic error, inasmuch as it presented an opportunity for re-cohering the alliance after the institutional disorder that emerged throughout the 1990s. NATO is in the process, if it hasn't already finished, of basically giving the St. Petersburg tasks back others such as the EU (when the EU can handle them), and refocusing on the neglected level that is intermediate between battlefield strategy and tactics.

Further military-industrial integration may be anticipated in Europe, since Europe cannot afford three or four varieties of what may essentially be the same system for the same goal. The professionals in Washington now out of favor (the so-called "multilateraliststs") look like the only ones in the Western world with anything resembling an idea for a vision of grand strategy: this would be a NATO-EU cooperation that can police its own borders and basically deal with its own security, a NATO with integrated EU-member participation in policy and implementation that would focus also on North Africa and some parts of the Middle East (and perhaps part of that nebulous construct called "Southwest Asia"), plus a series of "Global Partnership" agreements between NATO and third countries further distant from Europe. (What a "Global Partnership" would consist of is still an evolving idea, including whether it would resemble the "Partnership for Peace" in any manner.)

All this is upbeat news for people who lament the apparent death of the Enlightenment, and who may mistake 9/11 for the sack of Rome. Rome was neither built nor destroyed in a day, and stayed around in some form or another for some time after the Goths left town. One may debate whether those forms were progressive, and the new Charlemagne's appearance anyway would be some decades hence even with the present-day acceleration of history. We still have to get through the 2030-2050 period, which will see an international system-wide struggle between the "Enlightenment bloc" (i.e., Europe plus North and at least parts of Central and South America; Russia is leaning the other way for the moment) and the Asian counterweight. (I do not necessarily mean China, and this is not a "the West vs. the rest" argument!). If you wonder how I got these ideas, look at my 2004 book chapter on Central Asia and the West after September 11. If you wonder in turn where I got some of those ideas, then also read my 1999 article The Complex Evolution of International Systems and the Nature of the Current International Transition.

Russia and Iran's nuclear program

Takeyh and Gvosdev are right on target when they write:

It should be abundantly clear that Moscow and Washington do not see eye-to-eye on the Iranian question. When [U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice declared last Saturday that Iran had no need for even a civilian nuclear program, [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov countered that Iran had a full right to possess a nuclear fuel cycle.

Indeed, the only puzzle is why this should have ever been doubted. It was only "during her recent trip to Moscow that [the U.S. Secretary of State learned that] Russia would actively oppose any push to refer Iran's case to the [U.N. Security] Council." Russia's recent abstention in the IAEA Council was meaningless because it neither cost nor changed anything.

     The Europeans have an excuse, albeit a poor one, for such naîvété: they (specifically, significant and influential sections of West European elite opinion) are still seeing the after-images of the 1848-49 revolutions when Russia suppressed an uprising in Hungary in behalf of the Habsburgs and also convinced Prussia not to accept a liberal constitution. These acts earned Russia the reputation, now disclaimed by candid Russian analysis itself, of being the "gendarme of Europe".

     Unreflective opinion in Western Europe even believes that somehow Russia will save the Continent from the political effects of the steady demographic increase of its Islamic population. This irrational and emotional view is based upon the satisfaction of seeing Russia "rejoin" Europe after decades of Bolshevik/Communist rule. It ignores the cultural fact that the Bolshevik movement was firmly rooted in West European tradition and thought (here I mean not Marx but Rousseau: see for instance J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy), but those who hold that view also inhabit social strata sympathetic to Russia’s suppression of the liberal current in mid-19th century Europe. So it is all of a piece.

      But why should the U.S. Secretary of State have hoped for Russian support on the Iranian nuclear question? Her worldview was not formed by the aforesaid European circles. But also, it is unlikely that her background as a Sovietologist comes into play here. Probably, her social background and career trajectory have simply not allowed her to develop the practical Machiavellianism characterizing such of her predecessors as James Baker and Henry Kissinger. Indeed, her public pronouncements occasionally evoke nostalgia amongst other great-grandchildren of the Enlightenment. Sadly, the times call for a Mazarin, not a Masaryk.

      One more observation may be made. A politically weak Europe is not necessarily antithetical to Russia's interests. The report of sub rosa Russian assistance in transferring nuclear missile technology from North Korea to Iran, so as to extend the reach of the Iranian Shahab-3 missile to Europe, makes sense in this respect. Think "SS-20": the Soviet missile targeted on Western Europe, implanted in Eastern Europe in the late 1970s, which gave no real military advantage but was deployed for the purpose of political intimidation and weakening of political will at both the elite and mass levels. What does Russia lose if Europe is politically weak? It already has the epoch-making but little-noticed North-European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) project in its pocket.

Be wary of translations

A Russian news agency has reported in an English-language dispatch, concerning a meeting by the Armenian secretary of energy with his U.S. counterpart, that the latter "expressed his readiness for negotiations over the ways of development of Armenian power engineering and interest in construction of Iran-Armenia gas pipeline."

     It would be understandable to interpret this as stating that the U.S. would be interested in supporting construction of said pipeline. However, the Russian original reads, in full and correct translation:

[U.S. Energy Secretary] Samuel Bodman reflected a readiness to examine, through familiarization with the American experience in this sector, ways to develop Armenia's power engineering [industry]. The American side also was interested in the situation and the construction program of the Armenia-Iran gas pipeline.

Now that is slightly different. It would be possible to suppose that the difference is due to a poor translation, until one observes, also in the original Russian, a sentence totally omitted in the translated text: "[The Armenian Energy] Minister also suggested organizing an Armenian-American forum in the field of power engineering, in which the participation not only of the private sector but also of financial organizations would be advisable/expedient [tselesoobrazno]." This omission makes it clear that the other mistranslation was no mistake, but instead designed to mislead.