Pr Dutkiewicz : la Russie est "probablement à la croisée des chemins"[en] 

The topic of one of your lectures here in Bratislava was 'Russia: Europe's friend? Ally? Enemy?' Can you briefly elaborate on this: what, then, is Russia to Europe? 

There are three or four things that would be worth mentioning. First would be that Russia, from the European perspective, is an important political asset, or could be. It could be an important political asset but it is also at the moment quite a loyal supplier of commodities, meaning oil and gas. 

And this Russia plays a very significant role for the European Union. What is important is that Russia is a pretty loyal supplier, judging by the direction of the pipelines. There are no other pipelines going to Asia. 100% of the gas Russia sells goes to Europe and they are not going to build additional pipelines towards Asia at the moment, so it shows Russia's commitment to Europe. So in this sense, I believe Russia is a loyal partner to Europe. 

Regarding commodities, I believe Russia is also becoming very attractive for European capital and for European commodities, because Russia's purchasing power has been growing steadily for the last five or six years, at about 10% to 12% yearly, which means that Russia can buy more European products. 

As far I know, European companies are very happy with the dynamics of trade between Europe and Russia. So Russia is becoming more and more of an attractive market. But a market for many things - not only a market for commodities and products, but also for services and for capital that could be invested - if Russia changed its internal regulations a bit and also cut corruption. 

If this happens - that a law becomes a law and corruption is curbed - then Russia will become even more attractive to European partners because of it cultural proximity. 

In their hearts Russians feel they are European. They are not Chinese, they are Europeans and therefore this cultural proximity will help European companies to be more competitive in the capital market of Russia. 

This is economics, but politically?

Politically it is a different story. Russia is more assertive, Russia is gaining strength and Russia is trying to position itself as a powerful country again so it means that there will inevitably be growing concerns in the dialogue between Russia and the European Union. 

This is inevitable because Russia today is a very different Russia than it was eight years ago. Russia eight years ago was almost not in a position to be bargaining with anything - except nuclear weapons. Now they are in a position to bargain in many areas. Not only in the military and security areas but also in the economic area, in access to their own market. Having a surplus […] Russia can afford to buy European assets and is looking at this quite eagerly. But still, I feel that politically Europe has problems with accepting the new Russia as more assertive or more aggressive even from time to time. 

The European Union, from my perspective, does not know what it wants from Russia. One thing they want is stable access to Russia's natural resources, but what more? This is not very clear. 

On the other hand, Russians are puzzled because the type of foreign policy they exercise is oriented rather to bilateral relations, not to multilateral relations, so they have a big problem finding out what this European Union is. Not that they do not know, they study the European Union and they do know exactly who is who and where and why. 

The problem is that they cannot deal with this. Because of changing European presidencies, because of the fact that any member state can veto major political initiatives, they are sort of puzzled as to why it can happen that the EU can proceed in negotiations and then one country can block the whole process. They are puzzled about the energy charter that they will definitely not sign with the European Union. They may sign the European cooperation agreement but as far as the energy charter is concerned, they will hesitate to sign this because they feel that is very unfair to Russian producers. 

Regarding this, the Russian Ambassador to the EU said in an interview with EurActiv that the newcomers to the EU brought "ghosts of the past" to the EU and they are affected by them when dealing with Russia. Do you think this is so? 

Very good question. I would say that you could say the same about Russia. It means the Russian ambassador could be right by asserting that some ghosts of the cold war are still flying over some European capitals and it is definitely true. But you can say the same about Russia - that some ghosts of the cold war are flying over the Kremlin. And what is unfortunate is that the ghosts are flying quite high in both places simultaneously. That is the biggest problem. For many reasons, Russia sees certain countries as being aggressive towards it, as not understanding [its] new position, as blocking Russia and as trying to diminish [its] position. 

And on the other side, from the European perspective they see in the Kremlin are sometimes very incoherent policies. Because on paper, Russia has many policies that are wonderfully coherent. But in the implementation they are incoherent, like the dispute with the Ukraine over the gas. It is typical, having right thinking in mind and then implementing this in the worst way that they could have done it. This is this kind of the situation, which requires special attention and the goodwill on both sides, but the ghosts are flying on the both sides of Europe. 

Definitely I would say that Europeans are overcritical towards Russia but not only Europeans, Americans as well, Canadians as well. They do not accept Russia as it is right now. They would like to see Russia different. A normative stance towards Russia is not helpful. A normative stance can be useful if negotiating very practical sections of the deal, but if the normative stance is overwhelming, then it overwhelms all the agreements: political, social and not only economic. Then it becomes an impediment instead of being helpful, but this not only an issue for Europe, it is also an issue for North America as well. 

Do you see profound differences between Europe and United States in dealing with Russia? 

There are significant differences. Europeans are seen as natural partners, trade partners, for instance, which is not the case in North America. The North American trade is meaningless in comparison to any other. Investments mostly come from Europe, not North America - another factor. 

Politically speaking, Russia sees the current American administration as very unpredictable, while they see that the EU administration is maybe not very friendly, but at least predictable. 

They see Europe as more friendly culturally than the US, so there are significant differences and obviously they see Europe as a military threat while they see US dominating NATO as a military threat to Russia. There are very significant differences between the European Union and the United States. 

What message did Europe send to Russia by refusing to give Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for NATO? 

The message, I believe, is strong and I am not sure whether this is appreciated in Russia enough. But the message is strong: the message is “we are taking both considerations into account”. 

One is consideration of the Russian objections and another consideration is that NATO can think in its own right what is good and what is bad and NATO came to the conclusion that this is not the best time to include both of them in NATO. 

So there are two overlapping, reinforcing messages, one message is that NATO can think in its own right and thinks right and the second is that NATO still is listening to Russia as an important partner. So both messages were right in my opinion. 

Ukraine is not fully ready, there is some progress but it is not fully ready because the situation in Ukraine is very volatile in comparison to any other country. And the situation in Georgia is a situation of potential conflict between Georgia and Russia, so if NATO comes and says “we are embracing you” then article V may be revoked and the NATO members will feel to be going into direct conflict with Russia. 

So NATO was sober enough and balanced enough to make the decision and this is appreciated in Russia, but I am not sure that Russia fully appreciates the depth of the support that NATO gave to Russia by refusing Georgia and Ukraine. 

But this was far from a unanimous decision: the EU newcomers - members of NATO - supported MAPs for Georgia and Ukraine. 

My sense is that the newcomers sometimes make decisions on historically based grievances and emotions rather than on cold-blooded calculations of what is in the best interests of themselves or the European Union. 

Not only themselves - that would be my critical remark. It is very hard for the newcomers to think in the same way as ‘Old Europe’ thinks. The policies prepared [were] based on components that no longer exist in the European Union. The EU does not see Russia as an enemy, while those countries still see Russia as an enemy, EU does not see Russia as an imperial power, while those countries see it that way because of the history and size. 

Can we speak of Russia as a democratic country in the sense of Western liberal democracies? Some media and commentators even indicate that Russia is an exotic country. Can we expect any changes to its rule with the new president in office? 

An exotic country? Well, in a sense it is a very exotic country from the European perspective. It stretches for several thousand kilometres into several time zones and also culturally it is exotic, definitely. 

But politically is not so exotic, I believe. To label the political system in Russia, in particularly when it comes to elections, as a liberal democratic election [system] is nonsense. There is no liberal democracy in Russia. Full stop. 

Another question is to what extent the Russian political system proves the hypothesis of a limited type of democratic rights and freedoms and we still regard that as a sort of illiberal democracy. And here my approach would be that this is a sort of illiberal democracy, there are rights and freedoms, people can say what they want and people can travel where they want and people can purchase what they want and so on and so forth. The local press in particular is very much free. The problem is with the central television, but the local press and the regional press are quite free to express criticism. 

This is a mixture. This is not a liberal democracy in the Western sense but there are definitely elements of the democratic order which are entrenched and quite stable. It could take time. It would take a specific approach by the leadership that would allow civil society to do more to create alternatives and to debate with society. This is inevitable. 

If Russia is going to modernise, which I hope [will happen], and if Russia is going to be different under Medvedev to what she was under Putin, then in the sense that Putin strived for stability after the huge economic crisis in the mid 90s (Putin's task was to stabilise society and the economy) now Medvedev's task as the new president is to modernise society. 

For this modernisation he needs different instruments than Putin needed. Putin needed a very strong rule of law, but a very sort of top-down rule of law. A politicised rule of law. Medvedev does not need it any more - he can simply have rule of law, full stop. 

If he takes modernisation seriously - and judging by [recent] presentations, he takes the modernisation of Russia seriously - it means he will have to build a sort of social coalition, otherwise he will not be able to develop the economy, to develop society. So it means developing these coalitions even if they are developed from above and start to live their own lives. This will be the nucleus for civil society in Russia. Time will tell whether this optimistic scenario for Russia will materialise. 

The question is not very simple, it is not in the categories of black and white. It is a category of many grey colours in the process of transforming one system to another system, which takes a lot of time. Japan became a democratic country after 60 years and from the authoritarian, despotic type of system, the same in Germany. 

So if you are taking this historic comparison as a valid comparison for Russia, the 20 years, including this huge economic crisis in 1990 which derailed Russia for many years, still didn't reach the GDP of 1989. This is a statistical fact. In other words this means Russia will still need years to come to consolidate. 

You gave a lecture today on the globalisation of the world economy. What is the role of Russia in this process? 

Russia is one of the main suppliers of gas and oil, this is obvious - and the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. So in the current situation Russia is well positioned to participate in all serious discussions of the future of global markets. 

Russia is weak enough institutionally and weak enough industrially that [it] is sometimes taken very lightly on those files because some countries do not see Russia as a partner in this, so I would say that Russia is an important player but because of those two institutional weaknesses, is not yet at the stage of being capable of steering the process without building alliances, so Russia cannot go alone. 

And I am not sure whether they are ready to go with the larger alliances, they are suspicious of alliances at the moment, locker alliances, they would like to build ad hoc alliances, and the post-globalisation period requires not ad hoc alliances but very stable, long-term arrangements, otherwise the world would be very unstable in the years to come. 

Russia is probably at the crossroads of being involved or not being involved in how to play along and having limits how to play along. But she is now starting to understand that she cannot go along and now this is the time of uncertainty that as far as the file of post-globalisation is concerned. Because another file is in international relations, where Russia is firm in what she wants. 

But I am not sure whether they are thinking in the terms of 20-25 years ahead or to put it better: they think about it but it does not have any real policy consequences.