New Europe's membership in the European Union was and is seen by its proponents as a further security issue. While the EU's primary function is an economic one, it also possesses foreign policy clout. As such, outsiders may attempt to influence the EU leadership to pressure member nations on issues that clearly have little to do with EU internal matters but much with the outsider. There really is only one outsider that matters in continental affairs. That interfering and quarrelsome bully is, of course, Russia.
It amazes to this day how little some politicians and nations understand Russia's tactics. The nature of the beast has not changed just because the hammer and sickle have been thrown into history's dustbin. Russia has historically been a country that uses strict authoritarian measures to counteract any attempt at change from within, propaganda and bluster to achieve foreign policy goals. While Putin has yet to do anything as memorable to rival Khrushchev emphatic use of his shoe at the United Nations the message has been the same as the Soviet leader's: I'll do what I want in my own backyard, thank you very much.
That backyard unfortunately peers onto New Europe. And Old Europe, blithely continuing to elect socialists and communists to the Europarliament has conveniently forgotten that the Red Russian menace was real, that Russia historically has always focussed on expansion.
Today the threat is more insidious - Russia is bent on using western democratic practices to gain foreign policy goals abroad while retreating to authoritarian if not already totalitarian rule domestically.
There is some irony in the fact that the USA and Europe are pushing for furthering democracy within Russia while ignoring these undemocratic foreign policy ploys in New Europe. Politicians from the freshly-minted NATO and EU member states are also using the proper vernacular while at the same time expressing concern about Putin's return to centralizing power. Consider Juhan Parts' language as he urged the EU this week to adopt a common front toward Russia. "We believe that the European Union should act as a union, this is the only way to support democratic development in Russia" quoth our PM after talks with his Polish counterpart Marek Belka. Well, it is not the only way, but a united front is key.
Parts is correct when he stated that that the EU has to grasp its very clear responsibility in forming a common European position regarding Russia. Earlier this month the Dutch, presently holding the EU presidency, ticked off Moscow by asking for an explanation of the handling of the Beslan hostage crisis. This right after Lithuania's and Latvia's foreign ministers critically suggested that Russia did not handle the crisis well at all, and suppressed facts of what actually took place.
Belka and Parts spoke independently of over a hundred prominent "citizens of the Euro-Atlantic community of democracies" who issued an open letter to the heads of state and government of the EU and NATO on September 28th. Among the signatories were Estonians Mart Laar and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and to note just a few others from the above mentioned community Vaclav Havel, Madeline Albright, Francis Fukuyama, John McCain, Joe Biden, and Carl Bildt felt the issue to be important enough to attach their John Hancocks.
The letter warns that the current EU policy toward Russia is failing, thanks to hopes that Russia would right itself. "All too often the West has remained silent and restrained its criticism in the belief that President Putin's steps in the wrong direction were temporary and the hope that Russia would soon return to a democratic and pro-Western path" they write. But, as the signatories note, Putin has systematically undermined the freedom and independence of the press, arbitrarily imprisoned both real and imagined political rivals, removed legitimate candidates from electoral ballots and weakened Russia's political parties. Their point - that "we must speak the truth about what is happening in Russia" - should be heard by a wider audience than the one that Belka and Parts addressed in Poland.
The foreign policy goals of Russia are risible. At home all's fair, abroad everything is unfair. This is precisely why the EU should adopt a common front. As Paul Goble wrote for the Jamestown Monitor last Friday, both Moscow and Minsk are attempting to use European Union institutions to put pressure on all three Baltic States to change polices on ethnic Russians. It is a tactic that Goble notes has been tried before, but now is one that Slavs "clearly appear to believe to be more successful."
Russian politicians are now saying that they expect the EU to side with Moscow in compelling Estonia and Latvia to change their policies with regard to ethnic, stateless Russians residing there as well as forcing Lithuania to ease its position with regard to travel and transit between Kaliningrad and Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had the audacity last week to call on the EU to take "energetic measures" to improve what Lavrov described as "the humanitarian situation in Latvia and Estonia." Belarussian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka also sharply criticized the EU for not addressing the "citizenship issue" in Estonia and Latvia as well as not dealing with what he called Baltic interference in the internal affairs of Belarus.
This is not news. What is news is that in light of the Beslan tragedy the Russians are hoping to capitalize on sympathy and goodwill from the international community to deflect attention from internal affairs once more onto the external stage. These outrageous claims came during a week when the Baltic countries marked the 60-year anniversary of fleeing from communism. Coincidence? One knows that it was not.
Lavrov’s comments, designed to provoke debate within EU countries, were made, as Goble writes, so as to divide the EU and NATO over Baltic issues. Tuesday’s open letter should and must bring healthy debate within the European Union about avoiding double standards, controlling its own members, and most importantly, place the onus on Russia to put its own house in order. What is required is for Old Europeans to understand what the word Union means in the European, not Soviet context. The latter union had no compunction when deluding democratic Europe and its institutions to brutally gain undemocratic goals of their own. EU leaders, pay heed.

Märkmed: