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Back To The Future
Former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer argues that a return to the Congress of Vienna's concept of "spheres of influence" may be the best way to manage Europe's relations with Russia.
Despite being a diplomat by profession, Sir Christopher is what the British press have in mind when they describe someone as "no stranger to controversy" - and not just because of the lurid red socks which became his signature. His published recollections of Tony Blair's antics during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq won him the ire of New Labour's inner circle, while his views on European leaders proved that for Eurocrats at least, here is one ambassador who really isn't spoiling us.
His latest column, in the Times, is similarly controversial, but in the light of recent events consideration.
A central theme of the essay is how Professor Francis Fukuyama, who speculated on The End of History, got it wrong. This is not new. For many commentators, history started again seven years ago when the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamist terrorists: The rise of Islam and the threat it posed to the West (if any) became the dominant narrative, while the discredited ideology of Communism decomposed quietly and unmourned.
What is new in Sir Christopher's analysis, however, is his assertion that history, or European history at least, demonstrates that the continent's bitter nationalisms have transcended countless attempts to manage them in the course of the centuries.
We make the mistake of seeing the world as we would like it to be, rather than how it is, writes Meyer.
"Those who think that there is such a thing as progress in international affairs - that we are capable of learning the lessons of history - have been brutally disabused by the Georgian crisis. You can have all the rules you like to discipline international behaviour; but they are not worth the paper they are written on if they run against fierce nationalisms and ethnic passion" he writes,
"Ethnic and nationalist rivalry is as old as sin, and as inextinguishable."
This being Sir Christopher, there are some great anecdotes. He writes how a French diplomat warned him last year that if Kosovo were to be granted independence, Russia would march into Georgia: Prescient stuff. Also,
"As a diplomat in Britain's Moscow Embassy during the Cold War, I spent time in two of the Caucasian republics, Georgia and Azerbaijan. They were then under Moscow's heel as part of the Soviet Union. Their loathing of Russians was palpable.
"At the time of my visits, Stalin, a Georgian by birth, was still officially a non-person, airbrushed by his successors from the annals of Soviet history. But in defiance of Moscow his portraits could still be seen in Georgian state farms and government offices. I asked a Georgian official why this was so. “Because he killed so many Russians,” came the sardonic reply.
"The feeling was mutual."
Meyer argues that recent events have shown that time has not weakened these simmering hatreds, despite hopes that "Globalisation and interdependence" would sweep them away. In fact, he continues, the opposite seems to be true. Rather than erase national boundaries, the free flow of people, culture and money seems to have created a world where the sense of nationhood and national interest has strengthened. Look at Vladimir Putin's cynical but astute prediction that individual European nations would "look after number one" when debating a punishment for Russia's intervention in Georgia for evidence of this.
In the west, the European Union strives to create an impression of surface calm. Nationalistic organisations are frowned upon by mainstream parties and marginalised by the media, but few would argue that they've gone for good. Home Office observers even in dedicatedly multicultural Britain fear that the small vote cast every election for what it describes as the "far right" is but the tip of the iceberg of the share of votes nationalist parties would win in the event of an economic downturn or other such crisis. Further east, there are few such niceties. The Soviet Union's "iron fist" (and that of Tito, in the former Yugoslavia) crushed nationalists, often with appallingly repressive measures.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Meyer writes, "nationalist and ethnic tensions broke surfacewith the murderous velocity of the long supressed."
Reversing conventional wisdom, Sir Christopher argues that the Cold War put history on hold; its end allowed history, teeming with tribal conflicts and ancient hatreds, to burst back into life.
Sir Christopher puts forward the idea that we should once again consider how the world was divided into "spheres of influence" as carved out by the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna. This would involve a much closer understanding of Russian concerns - which have, he adds, a history dating back long before Communism. These would result in "rules of the road" for the 21st century: Perhaps not as crude as drawing a line in the sand and standing behind it with a big stick, but not far off. NATO, he says, would drop its "provocative" claim to Ukraine and Georgia; Russia would be warned that any move to reclaim territories further west would result in a military response.
Does this analysis mark a return to realpolitik? Meyer himself says that the world needs to sweep away the "rose-tinted illusions" of the Bush-Blair years, and admit that relations with Russia will always be bumpy. Many in the West and in the "New European" nations in the Baltic and central Europe would argue that effectively feeding Ukraine and Georgia to Russia would be unacceptable, yet this is what a non-interventionist policy Sir Christopher proposes suggests.
Furthermore, how do we go about creating these spheres in the first place? With the knowledge that a new Vienna Congress is about to draw up the boundaries of a new world order for decades, what is to stop Moscow rolling its tanks into other nations it claims as its sphere of influence? Possession is more than nine-tenths of the law in diplomacy and war, as Russia's continued occupation of Georgia demonstrates - particularly when your opponents refuse to be drawn in a global conflict. Worryingly, Russia's President has warned that he will order the same response to protect Russians everywhere. There are sizeable Russian communities in Ukraine and Baltic states. Unless we are in the business of driving huge masses of people from their homes in a version of peacetime ethnic cleansing, these spheres of influence are always going to overlap. And it's within the fuzzy overlaps where the sparks that can start wars begin.
A further question is whether or not the model of Russian-European-US "spheres of influence" could also be applied to the Middle East, for the past seven years a beneficiary and testing ground for the Bush-Blair interventionism Meyer dismisses. The existence of Israel, the stated determination of some of its neighbours to destroy it and the security guarantee provided by the US suggests otherwise. "Do as you please within the Muslim world, but if you step over this line surrounding Israel, we will crush you" does not sound like an agreement that would bring lasting peace, no matter how tempting it may appear. Additionally, while it seems that the dominant strand of western foreign policy doctrine no longer advocates encouraging Arab states to embrace western-style democracy, the possibility that previously stable nations could breed radical movements should the west leave them to their own devices cannot be discounted.
As far as relations with Russia are concerned, there is no strong reason for the West and Moscow to be at one another's throats. The great ideologies are dead: For all their rediscovered admiration of the Soviet Union, the Russians aren't about to return to the destructive creed of Communism. The Bush-Blair doctrine of intervention may have been more admirable than Communism, but five years in Iraq followed by the distinct non-intervention in Georgia, where NATO forces may have been more welcome, have discredited it.
Sir Christopher says that such clear guidelines would "leave no scope for miscalculation, the mother of far too many wars." We'll leave it to the war historians to explain if this is the case. Would a series of spheres of influence - perhaps mirroring the "multi-polar world" that former French President Jacques Chirac hoped would be a consequence of global opposition to the invasion of Iraq - guarantee the peace better than today's arrangement?
Would it mean a new Cold War? And would this be a worthwhile price to pay to bring history grinding to a halt once again?
