OBAMA AND THE EASTERN FRONTIER – January 10, 2009

- an interview with Mr. Wess Mitchell, a foreign policy expert and the Director of Research at the

Center for European Policy Analysis – a Washington-based think tank analyzing international relations in Central and Eastern Europe and the U.S. foreign policy toward Europe.

Sebastian Aulich: How should Obama formulate his policy toward Russia?

Wess Mitchell: It is important for the new administration to understand that our means are more limited than they were in the previous administrations. There will be voices within the administration which will be very strongly lobbying for the President to pursue a policy toward Russia that would be very similar to the one he inherited from President Bush, which also President Clinton pursued. Broadly speaking it is an expansionist agenda of the 90’s – a strategic template which involves continuous expansion of U.S. and Western influences as far East as possible. The most important thing for the new president to understand philosophically is that such kind of approach is no longer possible. There will be strong voices within the administration encouraging him to continue on that path. There will be a handful of minor voices that would be encouraging him to go in the opposite direction and to begin the process of strategic retrenchment. What the new president has got to do, and it is a difficult thing to do, is to walk a very careful line on Russia that matches American policy ends to American power and means. What that will involve is to avoid extremes of either continuation of strategic expansion or overcorrection in the direction of strategic retrenchment and instead walking a line, what I would call, of a strategic consolidation. It is a difficult line to walk, but clearly we cannot continue with expansion. Ukraine and Georgia are not going to be offered “membership action plans” anytime soon. Not because we don’t want it to happen, but because Germany simply will not let it happen. So if we persist with the expansionist mindset, it will divide NATO more deeply and make it less of a usable tool. But we also cannot go in the opposite direction. We cannot retrench; we cannot back off of Russia entirely. This would just embolden Russia. There are already very strong signs that the Putin-Medvedev clique has very serious designs on Ukraine and could within the next couple of years make a move, one type or another, against the Ukraine. We cannot embolden them and we have to walk the line somewhere in the middle.

SA: In other words, it should be a policy of avoiding confrontations with Russia? If we admit Ukraine and Georgia into NATO it could result in a confrontation with Russia?

WM: I am not against confrontation as a policy tool vis-à-vis Russia in principle. Philosophically, I don’t have a problem with it. My problem with confrontation, though, is that it should be a usable policy tool, when we actually have something to back it up. If we were right now backed up by the Alliance, which would favor the membership action plans for Ukraine and Georgia we would be in an entirely different calculus vis-à-vis Russia. But the fact is that we are not in that situation. So persisting with the call for membership for Ukraine and Georgia, just for the sake of having them, to have a poker face, would only take us so far. At some point we have to confront the reality that these are not two countries that NATO in its current form is willing to bring into the Alliance. For that matter and from NATO’s perspective, Georgia is utterly indefensible militarily. NATO is an instrument in the U.S. power kit. We are using it right now in Afghanistan and elsewhere and there are a lot of signs that militarily and politically we are already using it beyond of what it is capable of providing. And to ask it even more to bring these two post-Soviet countries into the Alliance, I think is a bridge too far.

SA: What do you mean by consolidation as a strategic option?

WM: By consolidation what I mean is that if we cannot continue with the expansion, we also cannot go in the opposite direction and begin the process of retrenchment as some folks at the Nixon Center, for example, or the National Interest begin to argue. What they mean is that the U.S. should take an off-shore balancer strategy vis-à-vis Europe and back away while de-emphasizing NATO. If those two are not the options, and my opinion is that they are not, then the only action that recommends itself is consolidation. We’ve got to politically and militarily hunker down. I personally think that the first step in that direction should be the movement of the U.S. military personnel and NATO’s facilities from their current locations in Western Europe, further East – certainly into Poland, which needs as many Western military posts as possible, possibly the Baltics although that’s a more contentious issue. The change of the power equation in the Central and Eastern Europe would do more to send a message of Western strength than any other political gesture we can make relating to Ukraine and Georgia.

SA: You mentioned that Germany will not allow Georgia or Ukraine to enter NATO. How much does Germany act in that as an advocate of Russia?

WM: I think that, unfortunately, it is precisely what is beginning to happen in Berlin. In recent years, we’ve seen a major change in post-Cold War Atlantic order and that is the emergence of Germany as a post-Atlanticist and increasingly negationist power. A power that does not perceive itself to have a strong alignment of interests with the United States. Increasingly and for a variety of reasons, the most significant being the German dependence on Russian oil and gas, Germany is undertaking the role of de facto lobbyist of Russia in the West. Now, Germans will tell you, well intentioned Germans from both major parties, that this is a valuable geopolitical function that Germany is uniquely suited to play. Nevertheless, if they are playing a role of a bridge between Russia and the West you will be hard pressed to find a single example of a major issue in which Germany has actually performed the role of a bridge, meaning the honest broker, between the United States and Russia or the West and Russia. On the other hand, you can find lots of examples in which it has only been a blatant pro-Russia lobbying. It is actually one of the greatest emerging challenges for U.S. and European policy makers in the current generation and that is how to begin to operate in the Alliance in which the largest continental European power is a de facto appendage of Russia.

SA: Why does Germany – the most powerful country in Europe, which is annually spending on military more than the Russian Federation – try to become a political client of Russia and not vice versa? 

WM: The German-Russian relationship is rooted in a lot more than the oil and gas. Although, there are clearly pathways of dependency on oil and gas that point very clearly in the direction of German dependence on Russia. You may always say that there is a power of supply, which Russia wields in a centralized and explicit manner and frankly it is rather good at it. But there is also a power of demand that Germany is able as a purchaser of the natural gas to turn into a point of leverage vis-à-vis Moscow. The problem, of course, is that while it is generally true that there is the power of supply and the power of demand, the power of supply when you are providing the vital commodity like oil and gas will always trump the power of demand. In the last resort, if the Germans are saying that they won’t buy Russian oil and gas until it has viable alternatives, simply doesn’t translate into the diplomatic leverage that Russia would have in saying that it is willing to shut off oil and gas in the middle of the winter. But oil and gas is only part of the glue in German-Russian relationship. This is an ancient relationship that actually has been a norm in Eurasian and European politics for several centuries. The largest Eurasian land power and the largest European land power have sort of always been drawn to one another like magnes. This a long standing feature of European geopolitics in the way the Cold War was an anomaly. For the rest of the Western history this has actually been a norm. It has a lot to do with geopolitics and geography, obviously oil and gas is becoming a major factor, it also has to do with the business interests – Germany is a gigantic investor in Russian economy also outside oil and gas industry. But I also think there is a psychological link between Germans and Russians that Germans look eastwards. Germans at heart are romantics and look eastward with the vision that they have there this grand East colossus. Somewhere deep down in the German soul there is something attractive in that, something attractive that they don’t see in smaller, nickel and dime states between themselves and Russia.

SA: What kind of challenge does the German-Russian romance pose for the identity of the European Union? Are we going to eventually have a pro-Russian Europe?

WM: The problem that it poses for the Central European powers could be summed up in a little petty line that I like to use that the Central European countries find themselves wedged between a 19th century power to the East and the 21st century power to the West, while they are relying for their security on the 20th century power beyond their horizon. From Central European member states’ standpoint, and I am generalizing here, particularly for Poland and the Baltic states, it is a nightmare scenario. Right now in Euro-Atlantic politics you have three mega-trends. You have a stalling European integration process, then a restive resurgent Russia and you have also the United States that is, at least for the moment, distracted and overstretched. If you add those three mega-trends together it doesn’t take much to see how from the standpoint of those states that stand along the Eastern frontier that it is a nightmare scenario. In one fell swoop they are losing their two primary Western lines of geopolitical credit. The United States is clearly preoccupied with other problems in a way that it is easy to imagine a scenario that down the road it becomes so preoccupied with those other problems that it begins to, if not default on our security commitments in Central and Eastern Europe, then to reach a point at which we are less willing to invest vast amounts of political and military capital on their behalf. Then the main back up for the United States, which in the ideal world, the world we thought we were heading for in the 1990’s, should have been there to provide a back up in case the United States ceases to be a credible security provider to the European Union, is clearly removing itself from the equation altogether in security terms. Obviously the emerging Germany-Russia link has a lot to do with this pattern. The European Union can’t function as a unified geopolitical actor in any meaningful sense of the term as long as the largest continental power and the largest economy at the heart of that 27 member project has its own separate agenda. From the Central European standpoint, short of outright Russian attack, this is just about the worst scenario.

SA: What are the options for Central Europe then?

WM: If Central European history shows us anything it is that there are no easy options for the group of countries at a hinge point like this. Basically the Central Europeans now find themselves like their ancestors did in the past. They find that they are prisoners to geography again. They are at a hinge point, a regional hinge point, one of probably 5 or 10 in the global transition to multipolarity. The options that they have are few. Historically in Central Europe states like Poland, what is now the Czech Republic, Hungary, had typically three basic options. They could balance against the potential aggressor, whether that be in most instances Russia, sometimes Germany or Prussia. They could bandwagon with the aggressor. Or they could try a third option, which was sort of Central European self-sufficiency - some semblance of a regional form of cooperation. Different states in Central Europe tended to prefer different options. The Poles have always preferred the balancing option time and time again. When confronted with external threat, a revisionist power, the Poles chose to balance against it, sometimes suicidally. The Hungarians in their history, typically when confronted with external aggressor, have tended to bandwagon with it, to side with it and to cohabitate finding some sort of agreement. That’s what they did after all with the Austrians, this is what they did in World War II and that’s what they are doing to some extent right now with Gazprom. The Czechs have tended to hide from the problems most of the times although they are now breaking from that mold. However, the only valid option right now is to invest deeply in Euro-Atlantic menu items at their disposal. Invest more deeply in European project and hope that at some point, even if it doesn’t emerge in a legitimate superstate like some European federalists would like to see it, at least it will have some semblance of security mechanism or political solidarity, which would certainly help their situation. Simultaneously, investing more deeply in their bilateral links with the United States. Those are their main options even though neither of them are particularly good options. But I think the Central Europeans do have an option they are not making good use of and that is to coordinate their security and foreign policy, especially in Brussels, but even in the relations with the United States. We are talking about a region of a hundred million people that do more business with Germany, for example, than Germany with Russia. The economic relations between the 10 Central European states with Germany are much stronger than economic relations between Germany and Russia, even if you include oil and gas.

SA: Is that the political self-efficiency option?

WM: That’s not the self-efficiency option. It’s using their indigenous geopolitical weight collectively.

SA: Are you arguing for closer integration and cooperation of those states?

WM: I wouldn’t say integration. I am arguing that the Central European powers make greater efforts to coordinate their policy approaches to Brussels and to Washington in order to carry more weight in both those forums. There is a massive potential for countries of Central and Eastern Europe to reshape the geopolitical complexion of the European Union. Individually it would be very difficult, but in a league with one another, given the great similarity of interests that they have with one another, and in a league with other Atlanticist powers in the European Union, like Britain, the Scandinavian countries, there is an enormous voting weight that the countries of Central Europe have in the European Council, European Commission, European Parliament, that at this point at least is desperately underutilized.