UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be
published as HC 276-ii
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
DEFENCE COMMITTEE
RUSSIA: A NEW CONFRONTATION?
Tuesday
17 March 2009
PROFESSOR JONATHAN STERN and MR JOHN ROBERTS
Evidence heard in Public Questions 96 - 153
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Defence Committee
on Tuesday 17 March 2009
Members present
Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair
Mr David S Borrow
Mr David Crausby
Linda Gilroy
Mr Dai Havard
Mr Adam Holloway
Mr Bernard Jenkin
Mr Brian Jenkins
Robert Key
________________
Memorandum submitted by Mr John Roberts
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Professor Jonathan Stern, Director,
Gas Research, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and Mr John Roberts, Energy
Security Specialist, Platts, gave evidence.
Q96 Chairman:
May I
welcome both of you. You are the first
wave of our witnesses this morning talking about Russia. You are our energy experts and I wonder if I
could ask you to introduce yourselves.
Mr Roberts: I am John Roberts. I am the
Energy Security Specialist with Platts. That basically means I look at the
relationships in energy between the Caspian/Russia/Europe. That takes in Turkey as well. I have a predominant, increasingly, interest
in gas, because while energy security was once considered to be an oil problem,
it is now increasingly a gas problem.
Professor Stern: I am Jonathan Stern, Director
of Gas Research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and I hold
appointments at the University of Dundee and Imperial
College. I have worked on Soviet and then Russian
and CIS energy, especially gas, for over 30 years and I have recently published
quite a lot of work on specifically gas security and Europe,
not completely but partly in respect of Russian gas supplies.
Q97 Chairman:
Would
you agree with John Roberts that this is a gas issue not an oil issue? Or do you see it more as a gas issue?
Professor Stern: I think the urgent questions
relate to gas. I would not say there is
no oil issue but the urgent questions are certainly gas ones.
Q98 Chairman:
Thank
you. To what extent is Russia using energy as a foreign
policy tool?
Mr Roberts: It has declared publicly from
time to time - I think it is there in the 2003 document on Russian energy
policy - that energy is a tool to be used as part of foreign policy. It has instituted cut-offs primarily to
former Soviet or Soviet-controlled areas: cut-offs in energy have been applied
in pursuit of political goals. On the
other hand, in its relations with the bulk of the European Union, it has been,
at least until the latest crisis, impeccably good and a reliable supplier. You have a rather split mentality between the
way Russia
behaves to former Soviet territories or Soviet-controlled territories and to western
partners.
Professor Stern: I would partly concur with
that, certainly in relation to European energy suppliers. In relation to CIS supplies, the position is
very complicated. When normally it
refers to Russia
using energy as a political tool, it tends to imply the use of energy as
a weapon to threaten countries by withholding energy. This is very complicated, because the whole of
the post-Soviet period has been punctuated with the inability of these
countries to pay anything like market prices for energy supplies, so a great
deal of the Russian cut-offs of energy have been largely commercial problems
with these countries incurring massive amounts of debt in billions of dollars. Nevertheless, there have certainly been
situations where the Russians have used energy if not as a political tool then
with political motivations.
Chairman: Thank you. That is very helpful.
Q99 Mr
Borrow: I would like to move on specifically to the
European Union energy policy and the extent to which the European Union is and
will be in the future dependent upon Russia for oil and even more so for gas
and the security implications of that dependency. Would you perhaps explore that a little bit.
Mr Roberts: I think the principal concern
is that Russia
is almost in a sense the residual supplier.
If you look at likely demand increases for European gas imports, more or
less you could say the anticipated increase in demand could be met by
increasing production from Norway, obviously, North Africa and, in the near-term
future, LNG from Qatar and other suppliers, but that presumes that you have a
more or less stable supply of gas coming from Russia, which currently accounts
for one-quarter of EU supplies and close to half of EU imports. The problem there is that I do not believe we
know what Russia will be producing over the next ten years or so, what it will
be consuming itself over the next ten years or so, what access it will have to
Central Asian supplies to make up the balance, and all of this reflects on
Russia's inability to come up with what we would like to see, which is a transparent
and coherent investment policy for the development of Russia's own gas
resources. It looks to me as if the Russian focus is at
least as much on development of new and largely unnecessary transit
infrastructure in the form of pipelines, rather than upstream infrastructure in
the form of developing new fields. Unless
we get that one sorted, there has to be, if not a presumption, a serious
possibility of declining volumes of Russian gas for export.
Professor Stern: I think it is almost
impossible to talk about Europe as a
whole. One thing that the crisis in
January taught us very starkly is that North West Europe, while dependent on
Russian gas, can withstand an interruption of very considerable proportions; in
fact, most North West European countries could have withstood an interruption
for months without even cutting off interruptible supplies of gas. The problem is in South
Eastern Europe where most of those countries only have Russian gas
or have a very small amount of other gas.
There is a big issue about a timeframe here. The situation has changed fundamentally in
the last six months to the point where in a book that my institute published a
couple of months ago but which I finished in June I was foreseeing a
significant supply crunch for Russian gas as early as 2011. That has now completely gone away because of
economic crisis and reduced demand in Russia,
in CIS, and in Europe, so we are looking at,
if there is a problem, a problem for the 2010s. But let me make two fundamental points about
European security. I disagree with
John, in that I believe that this crisis has shown that all the new transit
infrastructure that Russia needs to build or is trying to build in the Nord Stream
and South Stream is essential for Europe, because I believe that this most
recent crisis proves that the Russian-Ukraine relationship has broken down
probably irrevocably in relation to the transit of gas. The other thing that I think it is fundamental
to understand from the Russian perspective is that they do not know what the
Europeans are saying to them. Are Europeans saying, "We don't like you and we
don't trust you and we want less of your gas - or certainly not more of your
gas"? Or are Europeans saying, "Well, in
the future we're going to need more of your gas, so please put yourself in a
position to provide more by investing"?
They do not know and, frankly, I do not know what position Europeans are
taking about this.
Q100 Mr
Borrow: Following on from that, because it raises the
question as to whether the EU needs to develop an EU energy policy, given what
you have said in terms of the difference between one part of the EU and the
rest, if the EU does need to develop an energy policy should that be one that
diversifies away from dependence on Russian energy? If the EU wants to do that, how can the EU
develop a more diverse energy policy which is not dependent upon Russia? What are the main planks for that policy?
Mr Roberts: I do not think you can end
dependence on Russia. I think you can reduce the level of
dependence on Russia. To put it bluntly, Russia is the world's biggest gas
exporter and the European Union is the world's biggest gas importer and they
live next-door to each other. The logic
is a partnership. This is where I think
I move to disagree with Jonathan. It
makes sense to insist on good and smooth transit across Ukraine because repairing the pipelines,
restoring the pipelines, improving the pipeline infrastructure in Ukraine comes a lot cheaper than either €15
billion or so investment in Nord Stream or a similar investment in Russia's
proposed South Stream project. For the
record, I have to say that I think the Nord Stream anyway will go ahead - it is
too late for the Russians and the Germans to pull back. That will be built. There is pipe audit. But South Stream I think is very much a
classic example of a pipeline that brings little or no new supplies of gas onto
the market, so therefore does not improve Europe's
energy supply system per se. It does, I
would grant, diversify Russia's
delivery options. But Europe
certainly does need a coherent energy policy.
It has one, to the extent that it is promoting energy efficiency. The 20-20-20 plan will help reduce what would
have been the rate of acceleration of gas demand. Indeed, if you look at one extreme, there are
even beginning to be suggestions that the need for European gas imports under
certain circumstances could decline. The
point is simply that we live in a different era in terms of gas demand
assumptions today than we did a year ago, and that is because of
recession. Also, the European Union
needs to do two things that it is doing.
The first is greater integration of existing European networks,
improving gas connections that would enable the states that are 100 per cent
dependent, or close to that, on Russian gas supplies to have diversified
options. Second, to diversify import
supply routes for Europe as a whole by
accessing new sources of supply. That is
why there is such focus in the EU at the moment on the Nabucco pipeline. That would, as it were, create a route
between Turkey, and allow
any country capable of accessing the Turkish market with transiting through Turkey
to the heart of the EU. It also is a
reason why the EU is very strongly in favour of the Italy-Greece-Turkey
interconnector, which is primarily designed to allow gas to flow from the
Middle East or probably Caspian suppliers to Italy but which in a crisis could
be used in the other direction to allow gas from North Africa to transit Italy
and then head into the Balkans to alleviate the pressure in the event of a
crisis. So there is a coherent EU
policy. What is required, of course, is
the implementation of that policy. I
think there is a greater effort at that than I have ever seen before.
Professor Stern: I have to say I am a veteran
of over 30 years of looking at EU energy policy statements. The EU could never agree and implement an
energy policy when it had far fewer members than it currently does. Very briefly, because this is not really our
subject today, I feel that the EU is split down the middle, between the
old Member States
who are largely prioritising carbon reduction and the new Member
States who are largely prioritising
security of supply, by which they mean reducing dependence on Russia. I have to say that while I think
20-20-20 is admirable, I do not see it as being very realistic. I think the key thing to say about
diversifying away from Russia
is that this is not a new story. The
reason why the dependence on Russia
is so great today is not something that anyone intended. It happened because other sources of supply
failed for one reason or another. John's
description of the Caspian situation I think is fine, but 30 years ago I wrote
a paper on pipelines from the Middles East and Caspian region to Europe. Nothing
very much happened until about the last five years. These are very, very complicated
pipelines. If you look around the world,
taking away the Russian pipelines which were built in a different era, there
are almost no pipelines anywhere in the world which cross more than two
borders. Even one border is big. I would say let us get our framework clear: it
is going to be very difficult to do these things. I disagree with John about South Stream
because, although I think he is right logically that we should be able to
repair the Ukrainian relationship, the post-Soviet period suggests to me that
that is not going to be possible. Unfortunately. For a number of reasons to do with Ukraine
and the Russian-Ukraine relationship.
Because 20 per cent of Europe's gas is
dependent on that corridor, we cannot, I think, continue to hope that things
are going to come right. We are
unfortunately required to support transit diversification pipelines.
Q101 Mr
Holloway: I hear what you say in terms of how you
mitigate this in the longer term, but it strikes me as if they have got us over
a barrel. What sort of leverage do we
have over them? What could we create
over them?
Mr Roberts: Seventy per cent of Gazprom's
income comes from its exports to Europe; in other words, we have seen that at a
time when Russia itself, when Mr Putin himself decided that he would not pump
gas through the Ukrainian system to Europe, the decision he took on 7 January,
that had an immediate impact on Russian revenues. You are looking at a country at the moment
that has collapsing reserves, that has limited funds for investment, that
exhibits an enormous array of problems related with being an energy-reliant
state rather than having diversified into a broader economy. Energy is either a form of partnership or it
is a two-edged sword. This is a very
complex relationship. It is not one in
which Russia can use its
leverage against Europe or its customers in Europe - and I agree that it is a
diversified position in Europe - as a weapon
without harming itself. I think the best
thing that Europe can do is to prompt Russia
to take a more commercial attitude to energy, and the way to do that is by
putting Russia
in a position where it faces greater competition. At the moment it faces competition to a
degree from Norway, North
Africa, indigenous North Sea, LNG. I think we should add a new source;
namely, Caspian. Put that in and it
frees up the Caspian states to sell their gas commercially, it ends Russia's
position as a monopsonist purchaser of the bulk of Caspian energy, and at the
same time it forces Russia to adopt a little bit greater degree of competitive
practice in terms of the kind of market it faces in Europe - not wholly, not
completely, but usefully.
Professor Stern: I agree with almost all of
that, except I would say that I think it is going to take 20 years before
Caspian energy becomes anything like a competitor for Russian energy, certainly
gas, in Europe. Although it does not affect this country,
because we do not have any contracts with the Russians, the Russians have
long-term gas contracts with every single European country. Many of them stretch out beyond 2030. These are internationally legally binding
contracts with liquidated damages, so none of this is going to change very
quickly. I completely agree with
John about leverage of markets and revenues, but the other thing that I think
is possible, because it is non confrontational, is solidarity mechanisms which
were sadly lacking, although the European gas companies did their best in
January, so that we can indicate to the Russians: "If you attempt to threaten
any single European state, whether they are an EU state or not, we have enough
infrastructure to be able to make up the gas that you may or may not be able to
withhold. I think that is a non
confrontational statement. The one thing
that I think is completely counterproductive would be to try to threaten the
Russians by trying to force them to do something, because then they even more
dig their heels in. The gas situation is
far more stable than people realise because of long-term contracts and because
of the infrastructure which exists.
Mr Roberts: Perhaps I could add one
further comment on that. I agree with
that in principle, but there was the comment from Mr Golovin, who is the
Russian special envoy to the Caspian, and newly appointed boundary negotiator
for South Ossetia and Abkhaziav, that said: "Do not presume we will necessarily be able
to deliver as much gas as you expect in the next ten years." It was said in Vienna
in January and it was quite clearly a reference to the fact that Russia
might not be in a position to fulfil contracts.
Mr Havard: You said earlier, Mr Roberts,
that as far as the Ukraine
is concerned we should "insist". I would
like to know how we insist. There seems
to be a different view from you, professor, which is that that relationship is
irrevocably broken anyway, so I am not quite sure how we insist on mending an
irrevocably broken process. It spills
into whether this means for NATO, red lines, what it also means for them as
well as the EU. I would like to be
clear. You now seem to suggest that the
way you would insist would be the weapons of competition. You, professor, say that that is going to
take too long and in the meantime we will all be frozen to death, so we need to
get on with doing something else. Where
is the Ukraine
in this? Are we wasting our time in
relation to that or not?
Q102 Chairman:
Could
you answer that briefly, because David Crausby wants to come in on this as well.
Mr Roberts: If you are asking about the
term "insist" I was meaning that we need to make sure that both Russian and Ukraine, but particularly in that regard, I
would say, Ukraine,
honours its obligations as a transit state.
The key point of that is that Ukraine is now deeply and
increasingly in debt to western societies in general to maintain a very shaky
economy. The very least it can do is to
honour its obligations on the smooth transit of gas across Ukraine.
Mr Havard: We shall discuss that with
both of the Ukraines,
shall we? They are not monolithic.
Q103 Mr
Crausby: Specifically on Ukraine
and its implications for EU energy supply, what are the connections between Ukraine and Russia's wider political
struggle? What impact can we have on
that? To what extent are these conflicts
involved with the use of Sebastopol port, for
instance. Will there be future
negotiations on Sebastopol that will effectively make a difference to the
deal on gas supply and how Russia
and Ukraine
react to each other?
Professor Stern: I am going to leave the wider
political issues to the gentlemen who are coming next because they are
certainly better equipped than me to deal with them. I would say that any attempt to barter off
gas supply with other issues in the relationship, like the Black Sea Fleet, has
been tried before and did not work. I am
not sure that it could work in the future.
I have to say - and I hope I am wrong about this - I am deeply depressed
about the short- to medium-term future of Ukraine. Anyone I see being elected as the next
president in January 2010, I am not sure the situation will get very much
better. At the moment we have a
completely hopeless situation where neither the Prime Minister nor the
president can agree on anything, and we have extraordinary things like armed
security services breaking into the gas companies' offices in order to, so
called, inspect their accounts. It is
just bizarre things. I want to make one
comment on transit. John was mentioning
Ukrainian obligations. The Ukraine
is a ratified party to the Energy Charter Treaty and its transit protocol. The Ukraine failed to live up to any of
its obligations and, I am deeply disappointed to say, not a single
official European voice was raised in criticising that. That has done enormous damage to the
credibility of European transit arrangements in the eyes of the Russians. That is another reason why I am not at all
confident that this transit corridor can be a long-term going concern.
Q104 Robert
Key: What practical and legal strategic difference
will the Nord Stream project make to this debate?
Mr Roberts: It adds a substantial volume
of gas, 16 bcm, from the Shtokman field, as and when the Shtokman field finally
comes on line - and we do not know because they have not yet taken the final
investment decision in the first place.
Essentially, for the bulk of its projected eventual 55 bcm capacity it
simply reassigns existing gas supplies to a direct route, from a Russian
perspective, to Germany. The Russians are perfectly entitled to spend
their money on that if they want. The
Germans too. The same will go with South
Stream and Russia
and ENI. But these are essentially
pipelines that serve existing production areas; they do not bring new supply online. And that is the paradox. When you look at Nabucco, it is planned as a
transit line open to anybody to use, but in practice it accesses new sources of
supply. One is a producer's pipeline that
does not add fresh production; the other is a transit pipeline that curiously
does have fresh production.
Q105 Robert
Key: Do you agree with that, professor?
Professor Stern: I agree with the last
part. I think it is important to say
that Nord Stream is two pipelines. The
first one would bring gas from Western Siberia,
and that is over 30 bcm. The second is
intended to bring gas from the Shtokman line and whether or not that will occur
is hard to say. The key thing is that
these pipelines would allow diversification of about 40 per cent of the
gas which flows through Ukraine,
and that would enormously assist in any kind of crisis that we might have in
Ukrainian transit. It would not be a
complete answer, but it would be an enormous assistance, because it would mean
that the Russians would be able to keep a very substantial amount of gas
flowing through a winter if there was a problem with Ukraine. It is an important strategic issue for Europe. However,
just to go back to something I said earlier, the problem in Europe in January
was not in the North West,
it was in the South East, and therefore, the significance of South Stream is
considerable.
Q106 Chairman:
You
said, Jonathan Stern, in relation to Ukraine
that Europe did itself a lot of damage by not criticising a failure of the Ukraine
to stand by its obligations. It has been
suggested to us in the past that the arrangements between Ukraine and Russia
were so opaque and had so little transparency that it was very difficult for
anybody to work out what those arrangements meant and whether Ukraine or Russia
were to blame for what happened. Do you
think that is fair or unfair?
Professor Stern: I think it is probably
unfair, in this sense: people who are not familiar with the gas business in Europe do not realise how opaque the gas business
is. In fact, we know an enormous amount
more about Ukraine/Russia commercial relations than we know about, shall we
say, German/French commercial relations. In a paper that we have just published on the
January crisis, we have the contracts, we have all of the details of the
agreements between the countries. I
would say there are some legal questions about exactly how to construe some of
those agreements, and, in particular, how to construe the January 2006
agreement. But to my way of thinking we
need to set this aside a little bit, because the Energy Charter Treaty is
absolutely crystal clear in its principles and one of its principles is: No
matter what the bilateral disagreement between two countries are, that will not
be allowed to stop the transit of energy through either of those
countries. This is what I was referring
to when I said it was enormously disappointing not to see any European voices
raised, pointing this out to Ukraine, that, whatever the rights and wrongs of
the bilateral dispute, their obligation was to continue to transit energy to
Europe.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q107 Robert
Key: As some of us discovered two weeks ago, this
all looks a bit different if you are in Latvia,
Estonia or Lithuania. Are there any strategic implications for
those three rather delicate Baltic economies of the dispute between Russia and Ukraine? Or, indeed, would it make any difference when
Nord Stream is on tap, as it were, even though it bypasses those three
countries?
Mr Roberts: It is a relatively small gas
market. It could be supplied by LNG if
the three Baltic states could agree on an LNG
common terminal. If the Russians had really been looking to security of their
customers as well as their own in developing Nord Stream, the obvious route
would have been to have channelled it onshore and through the Baltic states,
which as Members of the EU would, one would presume, have been more inclined to
honour obligations of international treaties such as the Energy Charter. The Russians had no interest in doing this
whatsoever. They wanted direct access to
the biggest single market of all: Germany - and, if they could,
control beyond that. For the Baltic
states I think there is little prospect of diversification in emergency outside
Russia beyond either an LNG system or an ability to do without Russian gas
in the form of increased electricity interconnection with Finland, which is
almost as complicated.
Q108 Linda
Gilroy: To what extent was energy a factor in the Russian-Georgian
conflict?
Mr Roberts: I am going to be as honest as
I can and genuinely say that this is a question that is still to be
determined. The reason I say that is
that, on the whole, I do not believe it was.
The factors, including the nature of governments in both Tbilisi and
Moscow, the personal animosity between President Saakashvili and Prime Minister
Putin, the impact of the more neocon side of US policy in Georgia that gave the
Saakashvili administration an overconfident belief that it was, as it were,
somehow a beacon or a bulwark of western strategy in the region, all
contributed. The role of Georgia
in energy is very important because of its position as a key transit country
through which one of the world's biggest transnational pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
line, runs. It is a pipeline that
currently accounts routinely for around two per cent of the world's
trans-border flows and is probably going to account for about four per cent of it in the next
five or six years. It is already a corridor
for gas supplies to Turkey
and, indeed, to part of the EU, to Greece,
and has the potential to play a much more important role as a major
conduit for Caspian gas, not only for Azerbaijan
but, in timing, from Turkmenistan. It is very clear that during the course of
the war the Russians took just about every step that they could not to be seen
to be targeting specifically energy installations. Railway bridges were hit. That damaged rail traffic and that stopped
the flow of rail cars but they did not go for the pipeline. The pipelines were stopped as a result of force
majeure. Then we come to the most
critical question that has the potential to turn all of this completely on its
head; namely, what happens if proof ever emerges that the incident at the valve
30 pumping station in Turkey
two days before war broke out turns out to have had a Russian connection.
Q109 Linda
Gilroy: It seems a big coincidence.
Mr Roberts: It is a big coincidence. It is also true that the PKK, the
Turkish/Kurdish guerrilla movement, has stated repeatedly that it regarded the
BTC as a target. I can remember two
years earlier being in South Eastern Turkey when Turkish security forces told
me that the PKK was, indeed, in that area trying to target the line. We are left with a coincidence. We are left with uncertainty. You have Turkish oil company officials
saying, "No, it was definitely an accident."
You have other oil company corporate officials arguing privately that
they think it was too sophisticated to have been an accident and therefore
probably too sophisticated for the PKK, and you have western diplomats,
including a diplomat from NATO nations, again taking much the same line,
that it was sabotage and that it was too sophisticated for the PKK. We do not know and there has not been either
an independent investigation or, as far as I know, the leaked report of
any internal investigation that would show significant light on the
matter. It is an extreme worry because
you start with the presumption, which I still hold to in the absence of any
evidence to the contrary, that essentially it was the Georgian Government that
triggered the immediate crisis by ordering the bombardment of Tskhinvali, the
South Ossetian capital, on the evening of 7 August last year. But if it turns out that the Russians were in
some way involved in the valve 30 - and, as I stress, that is pure hypothesis -
it does turn that argument on its head.
Linda Gilroy: Thank you.
Q110 Chairman:
Do
you have anything further to add to that?
Professor Stern: I do not have anything
further to add to that, but I would like to add a comment on the Baltic
question that I think was asked before. Particularly
for CIS countries but also for the new Member
States and Europe, with the break up
of the Soviet Union, every single one of these states repeatedly and almost
forensically looked at options to diversify their energy supplies away from Russia. Even with the help of many, many EU studies
and consultancy studies, the results over the last 20 years have been very,
very modest, and this suggests that it is extremely difficult and expensive and
we should not expect that to change very greatly in the future.
Mr Jenkin: The energy consequence of the
Georgian conflict effectively now puts this two per cent pipeline, with great
potential for much more, under Russian control.
What is the significance of that?
Q111 Chairman:
Do
you think it does have that effect?
Mr Roberts: I do not think it places it
under Russian control. I think you could
also argue that, were the pipeline for some reason to come under Russian
control, the Russians would more or less simply allow it to function but
perhaps to function a bit more in their own interest. I think there is a curious thing. Immediately the war happened, you suddenly
got something happening that had not been there before; namely interest at the
very highest level about the state of the corridor. The Prime Minister drew attention to it in an
article in the Observer, I think on the last day of August, that there was
the need to look to the southern corridor for energy and to safeguard it. That I think shows the kind of attitude that
is required. The one point that really
does have to be borne in mind is that, as a result of the war, perceptions -
which I think were gross misperceptions - in the governments of Georgia and
Azerbaijan that somehow being a partner to NATO might have implied some kind of
protection from NATO, have been thrown out the window. These are now very nervous governments. They are governments that understand the great
commercial advantages of having direct access for their energy resources to
European markets but that are also concerned about making sure that they have
cover from Russia. In this context I would like to say one thing
very, very strongly indeed: any cover for western energy interests or for
energy production and transit from the Caspian to Europe
has to be essentially safeguarded through diplomatic rather than military
means. It has to be made quite clear
that, in practice, if there is Russian interference with this, this is contrary
to Russia's
own long-term energy relations with the West.
It is not a question of us, or anybody, whether it is NATO, being able
to put military forces in there. I know there is a military aspect because of
the lines of communication to Afghanistan,
but essentially I do not think we are in a position to put in a military
guarantee for the security of either Azerbaijan
or Georgia.
Q112 Mr
Jenkin: Is Europe wise to become more energy
dependent, particularly for gas, on Russia? Or is your advice that we should be seeking
to diversify supplies elsewhere?
Professor Stern: I think diversification of
supplies elsewhere is fine. It is always
the best policy. The problem is, as I
said earlier, it is not a new policy.
You need to be very, very clear that supplies from the Caspian region
coming through a large number of countries, many of which have had problems
with each other, may also not be the most secure of supplies.
Chairman: The next question will be the
final question to these two gentlemen.
Q113 Mr
Holloway: Your answer to this question may not be only
energy related - and I know we have covered part of it already. What is
the list of measures, short of military confrontation, that we have or where we
could create leverage over them? It
strikes me at the moment that you set the fleet in their direction if they
invade Georgia,
and surely we need to develop other mechanisms or other areas where we can do
this.
Mr Roberts: The Eastern partnership
initiative is one approach. Obviously,
improved trade relations. One would hope
for an improved focus on human rights, democracy involved in rule of law in the
partner states. I think the best way is
essentially trying to get across two concepts: (1) that the states with which
we are proposing to deal that are not Russia are in and of themselves
independent states with a right to be treated as independent states, and
(2) that what we really want is, in cliché terms, win-win relationships
with everybody, including Russia, and that we do not regard the energy issues
of the region as a zero-sum gain. We are
not looking to replace Russia. We want a productive co‑operative
relationship with Russia
and we are not sure how we are going to get that.
Mr Holloway: How do you restore Russian
pride?
Chairman: That is a question, because
the previous one was the final question, which could take you a couple of days.
Mr Holloway: It is quite important.
Q114 Chairman:
It is
important, but may I suggest that we should move on and possibly ask that question
to the next ----
Mr Roberts: You treat Russia as a grown-up nation.
Chairman: Right. Let us pursue that question with the three
people coming after you. Thank you very
much indeed both of you. It has been
most helpful and very interesting.
Memoranda submitted by Dr Roy Allison and Dr Alex
Pravda
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Professor Martin
McCauley, Senior Lecturer, University
of London, Dr Roy Allison, Reader in International Relations,
London School of Economics and Political Science, and Dr Alex Pravda, Director of the Russian and
Eurasian Studies Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford University
gave evidence.
Q115 Chairman:
Welcome to all of you for this second part of
the session. Would you like to
introduce yourselves and give the briefest of backgrounds of your interest in
this subject of Russia,
please.
Professor McCauley: Martin McCauley. I have spent 30 years teaching and
researching Russian history and politics at the University
of London, and I continue researching
and writing on Russia
and also on defence and security matters and so on.
Dr Pravda: Alex Pravda. I am Director of the Russian and Eurasian
Studies Centre and a Fellow of St Anthony's College, Oxford.
I am also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs at Chatham House. Like my
colleagues, I have, for more decades than I care to remember, been involved in
the study of Moscow's
external policy, both in Soviet and what we still call post-Soviet times. I am particularly interested in the homemade
nature of much foreign policy, and we do well to pay close attention to domestic
sources and domestic politics of external actions, particularly in the case of
systems like the Russian and the intimate linkages with issues like pride,
which was mentioned, to explain and not to over-rationalise sometimes their
external actions.
Dr Allison: I am Roy Allison. I am Reader in International Relations in the
Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and
Political Science, where I specialise on Russian/Eurasian foreign and
security policies. Prior to joining the
LSE in 2005, for 12 years I was the head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at
Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where my interests
spanned Russian foreign policy, Central Asian and South Caucasian foreign and
security policy, and relations with the West.
I have directed a series of significant research projects, during that
period and since, at the LSE, where we investigated not only policy matters at
the level of decision-making but also the attitudes of elites, elite thinking within
Russia, and also popular opinion through survey material. We are looking at these different dimensions
of attitudes within Russia.
Q116 Chairman:
Thank
you. Does Russia have an overall strategy for
its foreign policy? I suppose that
means a long-term strategy.
Professor McCauley: It does because it wishes to
become like the Soviet Union. Its end goal is to become a superpower - a
great power and then a superpower. You
can say this is really myth making, but this is the goal. If you look at foreign policy, you would have
to look first at security policy, which is made in the Security Council, which
consists of the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Internal Affairs, the FSB
(the foreign intelligence arm). They
formulate policy and that seems to be passed over then to the presidential
administration which is a carry over from the former Soviet
Union, the politico of the communist party apparatus. Foreign policy is made there. Underneath that, you have the Minister of Foreign Affairs and
the Ambassador and the Staff, but the presidential administration has its own
sources. They are experts, they collect
information, they get papers from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Therefore you have a whole lot of people and
institutions, if you like, pulling together and making foreign policy, and if
you ask for a single coherent decision-maker, I suppose you would come back to
Putin as the Prime Minister, but it is very difficult to see. There is no ideology. If they had an overbearing ideology under the
communists, they did at least have an ideology.
Therefore in many ways it is pragmatic.
Q117 Chairman:
It
comes back to Putin, but is it not Medvedev who is in theory in charge of
foreign policy?
Professor McCauley: No.
Q118 Chairman:
In
theory?
Professor McCauley: In theory the President is
responsible, but foreign policy is made in the presidential administration,
which is full of people appointed by Putin or loyal to Putin, and Medvedev,
when he goes abroad, would be accompanied by the head of the presidential administration
responsible for foreign policy, Prikhodko, and others, and they will advise him
on foreign policy. He is not an
individual foreign policy maker, neither is the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Sergei Lavrov. He just articulates the
policy, I think.
Dr Pravda: I disagree in some respects
with what my colleague just said. I
think the notion of any state having a coherent overall foreign policy strategy
long-term is a difficult one to sustain in practice. Russia has struggled more than most
states with incoherence of strategy. It
has various visions, set out in long documents which are readily issued, both
on security and foreign policy. It has tactics,
at which it is quite adept, in a chess-playing way, self-consciously. It often lacks the middle, which is the
strategic element of how to match the visions with means. Things have improved somewhat and we
conventionally compare the incoherence of the Yeltsin 1990s with the increasing
coherence and control of the Putin two administrations, and that goes through
to, in most people's analyses, the Putin-Medvedev tandem era. However, I think that the two regional
conflicts, the armed conflict with Georgia, the gas conflict with Ukraine, and
the handling of the global crisis with which Russia has been trying to grapple,
show up the very important elements of lack of co‑ordination between
various agencies, the high degree of personalisation and decision-making,
sometimes the improvisation of decisions, because obviously crises tend to
bring that out even more strongly. I do
not think one wants to look for enormous differences among decision makers, but
one wants to be realistic about the degree of improvisation they have to
undertake. From their view of things, as
often from inside, things look much more chaotic than any smooth advance
towards a strategic aim. He increasingly
comments on what they are aiming to achieve, the vision. The vision is not a soviet vision. No one I think in Russia wants to spend what they saw
as needless resources on maintaining some sort of semblance of global
reach. The moves to send warships to Venezuela and so on, echoes of global ambition,
are often more criticised than supported in Moscow and they are very tentative. The aim of the exercise - and this relates to
the question you finished your last session with: Russia's
pride - is to be acknowledged as a senior great power, not just any great power
on a par with France and Germany. Not a superpower, because that is to
expensive and beyond Russia's reach and ambition in a global sense, but a
senior great power which has particular droit de regard in the form of
Soviet space, dealing in a very difficult way with post-Imperial
situations. We have to at least
emphasise - not sympathise - with the difficulties of dealing with states that
were part of an imperial structure, linked up in gas pipelines, security
arrangements, mental outlooks, ethnic blood links, so dealing with all that and
yet achieving an equal great power status with the large senior great powers of
the world, and therefore to be included in the clubs of senior great powers to
work within the system.
Dr Allison: I agree with Dr Pravda that
in many ways it is easier to find the lack of co‑ordination, and there is
a disfunctionality of decision-making in foreign policy than coherence and real
design and strategy. One could argue
that in some respects this difficulty in co‑ordinating and developing a
coherent consensual policy has increased as the decision-making process has
become even more centralised. This is a
comment more generally, of course, about the Russian political system as
well. In that system there is reluctance
to provide information which could be viewed as gloomy or negative, so there is
not an effective feedback process to
assess and evaluate where things have gone wrong. This is one way one could interpret some of
the crises that have taken place that seem to have been against Russia's
best interest in any measured sense. But
Russia
tries to present a coherent set of principles or concerns in a problematic
way. We have heard reports recently that
President Medvedev commissioned a new national security strategy for the period
2008 to 2020 that this should be published soon, and conceptually that would
fit alongside the foreign policy concept signed into force by Medvedev last
July and also the rather ambitious development plan to 2020. These kind of documents do not allow one very
clearly to assess priorities in policy.
Often they set out a range of different objectives without really
showing how they interact, one against another.
Q119 Chairman:
That
document has not been produced yet, has it?
Dr Allison: No. It has not, to my knowledge. As far as ambitions and vision are concerned,
this has been driven by the Russian perception of its relative status and
influence globally. Here, certainly
until last autumn, the Russian ambition was to find itself or to allow it to
work towards becoming one of the top five economies in the world and a state
still more influential than that suggests.
Its claim was that it was already in the top ten, and I think this sense
of being in that top five has coloured much of its policy, how it relates to
other countries. This expectation is one
of course that could be challenged now, or maybe is under challenge, simply
because of the fact that the Russian economy now has moved into recession,
perhaps two or three per cent this year, more than three-quarters of the stock
market value has been wiped out. Of
course there is a question of possibly sustained low energy prices. All of this is, I think, creating an
existential challenge to the fundamental Russian attitude about its position in
the international system and therefore its global aspirations. It certainly still has the aspiration to be a
global player. It expects to receive the
kind of response from other countries that befits that status. As part of that is the assumption that the
world is moving in a multipolar direction rather than sustaining a
unipolar or America-centric system, and that Russia
is one of the rising poles within that conception, alongside countries like China and India. How far this belief about Russia being on the crest of a wave
of the future is dented by the economic misfortune it now has is something we
need to watch carefully.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q120 Mr
Crausby: After such a show of suspension, August last
year, was it the right decision to resume meetings of the NATO-Russia
Council? What sort of message did that
send to Russia as a result
of its conflict with Georgia?
Professor McCauley: Russia
is very, very sensitive to the penetration of NATO into the former states, the
states which are the successor states of the Soviet Union. Georgia
and Ukraine
are two very important states to them from their security point of view. It is their top priority to prevent those
states slipping into NATO membership. They do not mind those states becoming
part of the European Union, because it is economic, but they take great
exception to those states possibly going into NATO, and therefore they have
made that a top priority. On the conflict
in Georgia, one can say that
the consensus seems to be that it was provoked by Georgia,
that they were the ones who in fact initiated - although they deny this - and it
led to a situation where the Russians then penetrated Georgia. The security situation there is still quite
uncertain. There is at least one Russian commentator who thinks that the
prospect of continued war and renewed war between Russia
and Georgia,
beginning in May, is possible, but most Russian commentators do not think that
is possible. So Georgia is an allergic point,
a very, very sensitive one. They would
like to see President Saakashvili go and a more malleable president come to
power.
Dr Allison: In my belief there is no
practical alternative to having a mechanism of dialogue with Russia. The only one available is the NATO-Russia
Council - at least, that is the one which has the structure underneath it to
allow NATO to engage Russia
in many areas. However, there is a
precedent, and that was the breakdown of NATO-Russia relations after the
beginning of the Kosovo campaign by NATO in 1999. That took years to be properly restored. In my view there were two requirements of
that, and we could look at this as some kind of analogy. The first was that Russia
demanded a jettisoning of the structure that previously existed and claimed
that the Permanent Joint Council, which was the mechanism then existing, did
not allow Russia
a voice of any consequence on matters essential to European security. Indeed, that was sidelined and then dropped
in favour of the NATO-Russia Council set up in 2002. Crucially, I think, also, that revival of
relations at that time depended upon the ability to find a consensus on a range
of key security issues, a new agenda for security relations post 9/11. If we look at the contemporary situation,
there are no plans to replace the NATO-Russia Council that I am aware of at the
moment, but Russia has become increasingly disparaging about the workings of
that body, claming that it failed fundamentally last September and that it has
made little progress in implementing agreements in the period since 2002, that
much of its work has been fairly low grade or public diplomacy relations
without leading to any practical results.
So there is scepticism from Russia on that front, but, in
addition, we do not have a new agenda that is equivalent to that post 9/11 that
would really galvanise the two sides, to find them to bond together. In my view, common interest can be found on
such matters as non proliferation or seeking to curtail Iran's capacity to
develop a nuclear bomb, some aspects of counterterrorism or more mundane
matters such as piracy and quite important transnational threats such as
narco-trafficking, and all of these are important for discussion. At the higher strategic level, I think this
discussion is beginning already between the United
States and Russia, but it is not clear at all
that the NATO-Russia Council is an adequate suitable structure for that
discussion.
Q121 Mr
Crausby: Are the Russians right about the NATO-Russia
Council? How effective is it? Is there any point? Is that effectively why it was suspended in
the first place, because of its unimportance?
Professor McCauley: It is important to the extent
that there is political will on both sides that enthuses the discussions. The institutional structure, as such, can be
as empty or as full as that which is brought into it. Really this is an issue about the wider
political climate of relations between Russia
and NATO states now, so we should not invest too high hopes in the restoration
of this relationship simply because of the channels that have been reopened
between NATO and Russia
as institutional channels.
Dr Pravda: To comment on your question
on the wisdom of the restoration of those ties, despite perhaps a feeling among
some new East European members of NATO that one should have held out longer in
order to influence some degree of influence for Russian thinking, I think
that restoration was a wise move because withholding that is likely to increase
the very high levels of suspicion that tend to prevail between Russia and NATO
and not likely to help in any sense to rebuild degrees of trust. I think the dialogue, as my colleague has
said, may not bring any specific improvements early on in the day, it is
contingent on a whole climate of relations; however, having that forum for dialogue
at least reduces the chances of the kind of rhetoric of distrust and mutual
accusation that we have had for so many years in the Russia security
interchanges with NATO members. I think the
restoration is a useful and productive way to go forward, therefore, particularly
as we are likely to have parallel forums and parallel channels opening up on
security issues of a wider kind between Russia and the United States on
strategic nuclear arms, the one platform where Russia, even in its diminished
economic stature, can claim to deserve a seat at the top table. I think the Russia‑NATO Council is
a way of trying to reduce mistrust, to try to build some degree of
confidence, and is a useful adjunct forum working in parallel with others. However, I do think that we need to open up
new ways of exchanging both information and opinion with Russia on broader
security issues which bring together energy, military security, political
dialogue and therefore try to take advantage of the apparent Russian
willingness to think in broader terms of a process which may lead to something
approaching a pan-European security arrangement. That process itself, not the product - which
is not going to be with us for many years - is useful, and the Russia-NATO
Council is part of that process.
Chairman: Clearly, you have all sparked some interest here because four
colleagues have caught my eye wanting to ask more about the NATO-Russia
Council.
Q122 Linda
Gilroy: My question is to Dr Allison. In your written submission you say, "It is difficult
to envisage the further development of NATO-Russia interoperability exercises,
given Moscow's characterisation of its war with Georgia effectively as a proxy war with the United States." To what extent was that a feature before the
halt in the relationship? How do you see
the claim about a proxy war fitting?
What does it say about attempts to characterise the Georgia conflict as something which
was the result of Saakashvili being rash and him starting it?
Dr Allison: I make that assertion about the problematic nature of discussions
and attempts at further exercises to encourage interoperability because I
consider this is not just a military technical matter. It is very much a political and diplomatic
matter. In many ways I think those kinds
of exercises functioned as more a diplomatic function to try and open out the
security relationship, to encourage the two sides to overcome the kind of
mindsets which were antagonistic or suspicious.
Therefore, I think that the war in Georgia, in the way it was
characterised, in particular on the Russian side, has seriously damaged further
the hopes to really overcome the lingering legacy, the kind of legacy of Cold
War thinking, the adversarial thinking.
In Russian military planning there is no doubt that the scenario of
major, large-scale war with the West or NATO still influences their force
structure and planning concepts, so in this sense we are working on two
levels. There is a surreal quality to
it. There is the hope that through
interoperability one can develop forces which are able potentially to work
together in different kinds of scenarios for managing conflicts in third
regions, potentially even some kind of joint peacekeeping, but the Russian
military culture and attitude towards the use of force has been a consistent
problem here. That was shown in the
early operations in Chechnya. I think the way in which the American role
has been presented by senior Russian military officers makes it very difficult
for those kinds of exercises to work to promote trust military to
military. It may require a pause of
quite some time, and then to see if we can resume some of that, take up some of
the thinking that was developed earlier.
For example, the NATO-Russia Council has a working group on peacekeeping
where the conceptual aspects of peacekeeping were being jointly worked out and
a joint conceptual understanding of peacekeeping was worked out. This kind of issue may be possible to return
to in the future but when Russia
characterises its military operations in Georgia as a form of peacekeeping,
a highly coercive form of peacekeeping but some kind of peacekeeping, you will
see the difference between the Western and the Russian interpretations of those
concepts. The proxy war notion I think
is more a political characterisation. It
feeds into a wish to present the United States as in some ways
adversarially reacting to greater Russian influence in the international
system, but on the military side there are some elements... It is claimed that sharing of information
with the Georgian authorities, between the American and the Georgian
authorities, may have been a contributory factor. I think that there is not much substance to
the idea of a proxy war but it plays also into a wish to test weapons systems
on both sides and the extent to which Russian weapons, Russian forces, Russian
tactics can prevail against some kind of putative scenario with Western forces
is one lesson, perhaps a false lesson, that has been drawn in Russian
interpretations of that conflict. There
is a lot of military writing along these lines and therefore there is a
temptation to view this in some way as a proxy war.
Q123 Mr
Havard: I would like to return to this
NATO-Russia Council. It has a utility,
you suggest, and you have suggested ways in which we might increase its utility
and that is fine; it opens a dialogue and it provides a forum and it is an
opportunity. That is fine. The truth of the matter however is that Russia wants a bilateral relationship with United States of America that is only partly
invested in the NATO-Russia Council and would prefer presumably America to get out of Europe in some fashion in
the longer term and have a relationship with Europe,
which we will come on to later. What I
want to be clear about is, the French are now joining NATO fully,
apparently. That might provide a change;
it might not provide a change. I am just
wondering the extent to which really the deal is between Medvedev and Obama on
2 April, the two mathematics or law professors, whatever they are, come
together, and that is the relationship that is really important and, in a
sense, the NATO-Russia Council is a surrogate for the opening of those
discussions. Is that right?
Professor McCauley: I would say the Russia-NATO Council until a year ago was not
treated very seriously by the Russians.
The Russian representative in Brussels
was Dmitry Rogozin - it still is. He is
not a military person, not a security person, and he was quite aggressive in
his language. Therefore, if the Russians
are to treat the Russia-NATO Council more seriously, perhaps if Rogozin were
replaced by a much higher person, because he is just a nationalist politician.
Q124 Chairman: You do not have to use the word "just" in those circumstances.
Professor McCauley: Well, he just does as he is told.
He is not a decision maker and he is not a very good diplomat in his
language. If he were replaced by
somebody further up the security ladder, a more senior politician, perhaps they
will begin to take it more seriously but you are absolutely right; the
Russia-NATO Council is small bread from the Russian point of view. The key relationship, obviously, is the US
one.
Q125 Mr
Havard: Unless the US invest in it.
Professor McCauley: That is it. That is the key
relationship. The decisions would be
taken there and then the NATO Council will be just talk.
Dr Pravda: There is no question that Russia
has and continues to regard Washington
as the key to all matters western in the security arena, and in fact many
others too. It would like to, I think, concentrate
very much on that relationship for reasons we mentioned earlier, of status, and
only the United States can provide Russia with the assurance that it really is
playing at the top level of international affairs. The Russia-NATO Council cannot do that. On the other hand, Russia is, with some
difficulty, taking major European states, the large European states, more
seriously as security participants, if not the determinants of NATO security
policy, with clearly the strongest vested interests and clearly the greatest
stakes in the area most vital to Russian interests, which is the shared
neighbourhood with both NATO and the EU, overlapping institutions, which are
becoming increasingly overlapping in the sense of being concerned with various
dimensions of security. Russia, like ourselves, does have a strong sense
of security, not just for academics but for practitioners, is now
multidimensional, and Russia
is well advised to focus on the interplay between the various dimensions. For that it needs dialogue with the Europeans
sitting within the Russia-NATO Council because they also sit within other
councils in other forums and they deal with energy issues and issues of
political relations and movements of people, which are just as essential,
arguably more essential to Russia's
security interests in places like Leningrad
than purely military issues.
Q126 Chairman: I want to move on from this subject as quickly as possible.
Dr Pravda: The conclusion is the Russia-NATO Council in and of itself is not
considered to be a weighty body.
However, given the increasing securitisation of European issues, it is
more worth the Russians' while engaging with members of the European Community
in that.
Q127 Chairman: Dr Allison, can you give us one sentence?
Dr Allison: The basic problem is that the Russian representative, Rogozin, has
said that he does not envisage any more "small business as usual" and much of
the activity of the Russia‑NATO Council in the past could be described as
in that category, but the big business, on strategic questions mentioned, would
be, as Dr Pravda described, viewed as better undertaken with the United
States. The further problem is the
Russian claim now that the NATO-Russia Council is acting effectively as a consolidated
NATO group, is a consolidated bloc on positions. They are pre-cooking the agenda and
presenting it to Russia,
which is exactly what this body was intended to avoid, and by the creation also
of a preparatory committee, and Russia
believed that that kind of relationship had been overcome in the first years of
the NATO-Russia Council.
Mr Jenkin: Did the war in Georgia
alter your perceptions about how Russia
is likely to behave, what kind of Russia foreign policy there is, and
were we right to break off the Russia‑NATO Council?
Chairman: That is enough.
Mr Havard: It is so important.
Q128 Chairman: We can come back to it.
Could you answer that question?
Professor McCauley: Very quickly, last August Russia felt itself very powerful
and very rich, and it thought it could basically go ahead, but now its economic
situation is in fact deteriorating by the day, and Russian activities and
Russian power has declined. Therefore Russia's ability to project its power and its
perception of Russia
as a great power is declining. Therefore
it in fact is not now as belligerent or it does not feel so confident now as it
did last August. The economic decline, I
think, has radically changed the situation in changing their perceptors. I think we will come on to this because it
could be quite dangerous: if they decline to a certain point, what will they
then do to protect Russia?
Q129 Chairman: Was it a mistake to break off relations?
Professor McCauley: No.
Dr Pravda: Directly to your question, I was not surprised by the direction of Russia's policy in Georgia, even in August. I together with many of us was surprised by
the degree to which Moscow
decided to disregard international opinion by using the degree or proportion of
force that it did and as a signal of the disapproval of the amount of force
used and the way it violated undertakings on sovereignty, suspension was a good
move. I think in the past we have not
made enough moves which clearly signalled disapproval.
Q130 Chairman: Dr Allison, do you have anything to add?
Dr Allison: The interpretation of Russian action, Russia, concerned that it had the
capability to intervene militarily on its perimeter, to concentrate forces for
a small military engagement and prevail, this is nothing that would surprise
us. There was some evidence that the
Russian forces worked better than perhaps many expected. On the Russian side they interpreted it as
overcoming a period of military humiliation, a much exaggerated period of
military humiliation of the previous decade, but the question which remains
unanswered here from this is whether the result of this, both the way in which
Russia carried out the operation and the way it interpreted the Western
reaction, has in some way lowered the threshold which Russia sees over which
intervention, the use of the military instrument, for political or foreign
policy purposes, is considered appropriate.
Has Russia drawn the
lesson that, as a state with global aspirations and regional predominance in
the CIS region, it can and should use military force, as the United States has, in support of
its perceived interests and it is more ready to do that than in earlier years.
Q131 Mr
Jenkin: Does a resuming of the meetings of
the NATO-Russia Council send a signal that we have now downgraded... Will Russia regard the George crisis is now less
important to the West as a result of resuming the Russia-NATO Council, in
particular, the illegal recognition of south Ossetia
and Abkhazia?
Dr Allison: Russia
chooses to interpret the restoration of links as some admission on the NATO
side that they had mischaracterised the conflict last autumn. Russian officials are talking about a
significant re-evaluation in NATO about the causes of conflict, the role of
Saakashvili and so forth. This is partly,
of course, to justify on their side and domestically the resumption of ties
with NATO, given the way in which NATO was vilified last autumn, but I think it
does also play to a belief in Russia that their actions have gained, if not
international approval, at least a measure of acceptance and tolerance and
that, with a new American administration in office, they are in a much better
position to wipe the slate clean and to set out a new agenda for
discussion. That is the way that they
would like this to be viewed.
Q132 Mr
Holloway: Is it muddled and woolly thinking
to, on the one hand, see it as quite correct that Russia
should treat countries on its borders as independent states but, on the other
hand, to sympathise with Russia
over Ukraine and Georgia
joining NATO?
Professor McCauley: Russia treats
the former republics of the Soviet Union as
the "near abroad". They would obviously
like to treat Eastern Europe, the former
Warsaw Pact countries, as the near abroad.
That is not now possible. Their
thinking is that Georgia
is part of the near abroad and that is very important to grasp. They do not see it as a country which is
separated from Russia
and so on. They would like Georgia
to come back within the fold. They would
like Ukraine
to come back within the fold. So you
have this conflict about the sovereignty of these states and President Medvedev
has said that Russia
has the right to intervene in these states.
He talks about a zone of privileged influence, that Russia has the right to intervene
to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in these states. That may be rhetoric but it articulates a
longstanding Russian view; that is not a new view. They believe that they have the right to do
this and therefore their right should be respected. They would like to get the Americans out of
NATO, out of European security, so it is only European states and they would
become a major player as well. In that
way they will achieve their objective.
Q133 Chairman: But in their European policy, how does that differ from the Cold
War? Dr Pravda, you described Russia
as wanting to be a senior great power.
How in their European policy does their approach to their CIS neighbours
differ from the Cold War?
Dr Pravda: I think that the view from Moscow of their relationship with what
are now independent states within the former Soviet space is extremely
difficult because of a residual set of both beliefs and emotions that those
states have something of a qualitatively different relationship with Russia
than, as it were, other truly sovereign independent states. I think it is much easier for Russia to think
of sovereignty in the case of the former East European member states of the
Warsaw Pact than it is of course of the states of the Soviet Union itself. I think the whole notion of sovereignty
within what has been correctly described as "the near abroad" - and although
Russian officials do not use that, they are used to refer to it and it gives a
sense of the distinction - the whole sense of sovereignty and the whole notion
is rather unclear and it particularly came about in the Georgian crisis, where
you saw the unilateral recognition of two parts of a sovereign state and yet
still a commitment to international law on sovereignty on the other hand. To explain that or to try to bridge that gap,
there has been much talk, of course, of the conditionality of sovereignty on
the exercise of responsible policy by the state towards its populations. This is not, of course, exceptionally only a
Russian view of the qualified nature of sovereignty; it is part of a debate
about sovereignty. To turn to the European
policy---
Q134 Mr
Holloway: Really the question is about
whether or not the two are incompatible.
The question is whether or not Russia is reasonable to be wound up about
Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO and, on the other hand, the fact that we
should treat these as independent countries.
In my ignorance, I think both are reasonable positions. How do you square that?
Dr Pravda: They square it by stating that they of course recognise - and they
do this repeatedly - the right of all sovereign states, including Ukraine and Georgia, to join whatever
organisations they wish to join. They
always accompany that statement with another one which says of course, this
affects Russia's vital
security interests and Russia
has the right to be concerned with exclusive security organisations, such as
NATO, extending their reach to its borders.
They do not question, in other words, the notional right of Ukraine or Georgia
or Belarus
to join NATO. They point out, however,
exactly at the same moment that this has serious security consequences for
Russia and Russia's responses to those security concerns might lead to the
diminution of security on the border with one of those states, which is a
perfectly fair set of parallel statements by any state in that particular position. I do not think from their point of view it is
something which contradicts their notional belief in sovereignty but of course
qualifies it, and in practice, we see with the Georgian crisis that their
understanding of what is sovereign in a legitimate way from a Moscow point of
view is conditioned by the threat it presents to the security of Russia and the
threat it presents to Russian citizens or Russian passport holders. That particular lever, of Russians living beyond
Russia's borders, which Russia
has often talked about but rarely pulled, is something it holds in
reserve. So there is a very fragile
recognition of sovereignty, conditioned on Russian security perceptions and
that is why the best way to respond to that fragility of both those statements
is to try and overarch the problem with some kind of inclusive organisations
which make it easier for Russia to accept the fact that those are truly
independent states with their own security.
Q135 Chairman: Like perhaps a new European security architecture, such as they
suggest. How should we react to that?
Professor McCauley: I am just going to make the point that the problem of sovereignty
and Ukraine and Georgia
joining NATO also has a political aspect.
The elites in Moscow
know that they are not really democratically elected. They fear a democratic revolution. We saw this last year. Therefore the penetration of American ideas,
of American power, into Ukraine
would in fact make them very nervous.
They see this as a long-term strategy to overturn them, the elites in
power in Moscow, and to make Russia subservient to the United States. Therefore it is these political elites that
wish to keep power. We are now in a
situation where the economy is going down very fast. Will they become more amenable then to
lenience(?) and how they will react to that is another question.
Dr Allison: The imagery of Cold War is to some extent there in the way that
NATO is characterised and NATO objectives are characterised in Moscow,
particularly the way in which it is viewed as representing some kind of
offensive policy of containment. As far
as the arguments against expansion are concerned, Russia
points to problems within those countries, in particular in Ukraine, that the public opinion
support base for NATO accession is low and has remained consistently low, and
indeed, this is something accepted on the NATO side. It would have to be changed significantly if
accession were to be regarded as a realistic prospect. In Georgia the argument is that the
prospect of possible eventual NATO accession has acted to encourage policies of
non-negotiation over the separatist territories, of military solutions to those
problems, and that this would be importing security problems into NATO and
therefore unjustified. So there are some
Russian claims of this kind, which are taken seriously in a number of NATO
states, but the underlying problem I think is the overarching change in
Russia-Western relations since the time when this large accession process began
in the 1990s. At that time the hope, if
not assumption, was that some kind of meaningful partnership, if not
integration, shared strategic goals, was a realistic track and that NATO would
be working with Russia
as a partner. The divergence between the
two sides has meant that Ukraine
and Georgia
have effectively positioned themselves on one side of a significant political
divide.
Q136 Chairman: Thank you. How should we
react to the European security architecture proposed?
Professor McCauley: How should we react to it?
We should welcome it because - I come back again to the situation in Russia today - we are getting to a situation
where Russia
may become more amenable. Russia
needs the outside world more than it did before. It is possible by the end of the year they
will need foreign loans and this, I think, would then make a more reasonable
scenario for a debate and discussion between Europe and Russia. Of course, the Germans, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, the present Foreign Minister, who may
become Chancellor in the elections later this year, is for Russia becoming very
close to NATO, perhaps Russia even possibly joining NATO, and Joschka
Fischer, who is the Green candidate and may become the new Foreign
Minister, is very keen on Russia joining NATO.
Therefore, at the end of this year you may have a different scenario
where you have a very powerful state, Germany, which is keen really to exclude
to a significant extent the United States from European security and to make
European security the responsibility of European states, with Russia playing a
much more important role in this pan-European strategic and military
relationship.
Dr Pravda: I think we should welcome the opportunity of discussing greater
European security with Russia
on a more equal basis institutionally and politically than has been possible
with NATO enlargement and EU enlargement, where Russia never can be regarded as a
founder member of the exercise but has to respond to momentum and developments
from elsewhere. While welcoming the
opportunity, and I think it is something which will help those within Russia
trying - and they are a minority often - to put the case for greater
interaction and perhaps even partial integration with Europe, while welcoming
the opportunity to do this, we should of course be wary, and Russia will be
conscious of our wariness, of talk of a greater Europe being exclusionary in
terms of the United States' role both in European security and political and
economic matters. We want to make sure,
I think, that Russia understands the fact that this is a complementary process
of dialogue to that in major international institutions, the UN, and also
complementary to its own bilateral talks with the United States. I do however think that, even with the
inbuilt dangers of excluding the United States, which exist, the
advantages far outweigh the costs of engaging in such a dialogue. I do think that continuing merely to conflict
over the expansion of Western institutions closer and closer to Russian orders
is not the most fruitful way forward and it would lead, I think, to a
strengthening of the kind of insulationist, nationalist arguments that still
have quite a lot of purchase in debates in Moscow.
The global economic crisis, after all, can both induce greater
co-operation and greater participation in forging a new economic global
architecture. On the other hand, it can
also, as we know, increase the pressure to protectionism and to political
defence and insulationism. I think we
should grasp the process offered to us ever since last summer of a dialogue on
European security architecture and inject into it our own content and ideas,
because classically, and quite typically of Russia, this is a framework without
content, an invitation to contribute and to give them ideas. Last and not least, a dialogue of this kind,
although unappealing perhaps to officials already engaged in multiple
dialogues, is an opportunity to try to forge our own coherent policy towards Russia. So it is not just an opportunity for Russia to get content on its thinking about its
relations with the greater Europe; it is also a further opportunity for the
European states to get together and try to work out something approaching a
coherent policy in its relationship with Russia.
Q137 Linda
Gilroy: Is the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe the right place to have
this debate? Is it an organisation that
should be thinking about the shape of its own future? Do any of you study the OSCE and the
contribution it has to make, or not?
Professor McCauley: In general, one can say the OSCE has been downgraded. It is less and less effective because the
Russians have pursued a policy which is to ensure that it does not take any
decisions against its own security, political and economic interests. So OSCE has become rather toothless, I would
say, and therefore, if you are going to have a real dialogue with the Russians,
it has to be something like the Russia-NATO Council or some other grouping or a
conference where you bring the Security Council thinking into it so that both
sides feel that they are going to gain something from the relationship so that
confidence is built on both sides - but not the OSCE.
Dr Pravda: I do think the OSCE is the natural starting place, at least, for
thinking about the forum within which this dialogue on Europe
could take place. After all, the
Russians themselves and many western commentators have seen the new proposals
being a kind of "Helsinki plus", not a replacement but a follow-on to the
Helsinki process, including a structure of particular clusters or baskets of
issues which could be discussed in parallels, between which there could be
linkages made. So I do think the OSCE,
much maligned for being inclusive and rather weak and losing out in functional
terms to NATO and the EU, is the natural starting place precisely because of
its inclusive structure and because of its historical inheritance from the Helsinki process. I think a European summit of a kind based on
OSCE, and then a long process of complex negotiation - one hopes not quite as
long as the first Helsinki process, 2,500 meetings of some kind - a long
process, which would itself yield benefits in terms of the climate of
confidence and understanding, and I think it is this climate of confidence, the
degree of mistrust, misrepresentation, lack of understanding, conspiratorial
theory, which has really very badly affected our relationship with Russia ever
since the end of the Cold War. Milieu
matters.
Q138 Linda
Gilroy: Is that not understandable? The way it was put to us when we were in Russia
by some people was: "The Warsaw Pact has gone.
How can you expect us to accommodate ourselves to NATO, an organisation
that was set up to effectively oppose us?"
Dr Pravda: There is long recognition that there is a fundamental asymmetry
there which we have not been able to correct and which the Russians have
grappled with rather unsuccessfully but I think the chance of recasting it,
relocating it, in a forum which is one which includes not just Russia but all
the former members of the Soviet space and of the Warsaw Pact, together with
their European counterparts, is a good start.
Obviously, it has to be not over-ambitious in achieving specific goals
but again, it is the health of the process that is probably the main thing about
it, and I think the OSCE is the natural starting point.
Dr Allison: I think the Russian proposal is driven by the claim that you hear
frequently made that the existing framework in the Euro-Atlantic region based
on NATO is inadequate to the security requirements that countries face, and
they link this to the events in the south Caucasus
last autumn. This gives rise, of course,
to concern that the underlying motivation is to displace NATO, and indeed,
Russian proposals going back to the early 1990s or even before on reform of the
OSCE seem to be aimed at boosting the security framework of the OSCE at the
expense of NATO, to displace NATO as the primary security organisation in the
European continent. However, we should
not forget that the CSCE process when it was initially mooted was received with
great suspicion as well in the West, and over many years of negotiation
effectively that concept was adapted and developed in ways which then worked
very much to the benefit of security on the European continent, and that
process is what my colleague Dr Pravda was referring to. It is necessary to go into this wide
open. It is clear that Russia has an
interest in downgrading the so-called human dimension in these discussions, as
indeed it considers the current OSCE emphasis on this, and electoral monitoring
and so forth, has skewed the original purposes of that body, but this does not
mean that we cannot bring this to the table and insist on it as being integral
to an understanding of security, that it is not simply a military defence
definition of security. Another concern
in the West is that this notion of greater Europe could in some way act to
reinforce Russia's
claims for controlling influence in the CIS region. If you look at some of the definitions by
senior Russian officials, they suggest that you have two parallel poles and two
parallel integration processes, one centred around Brussels
and the other around Moscow, and that these two
should be interacting in a greater Europe but that Moscow should have the pre-eminent influence
within the CIS region. That is certainly
not, I think, how the EU views its relationship with those countries, nor
indeed how Western countries in general would.
Q139 Linda
Gilroy: Before we move on from there, I want
to ask what the implications are of what you have just said to the Committee
about the Russians undermining the democratic part of the OSCE and its role in
encouraging democracy, given that the very least one can say about Russia is
that its progress towards democracy has stalled and it does not have any effective
democracy. What does that mean for
defence? NATO is very much about
democratic countries which have their military under some varying levels of
democratic control.
Dr Allison: This is a fundamental issue concerning the normative dimension of
these institutions and the expectations in the West of those institutions
acting to advance normative agendas which are ones which are held dear by
Western states. Of course, NATO
membership does assume a certain consensus around basic principles of Member
States. This is not built into the
NATO-Russia Council structure however.
It is built into EU relations through partnership agreements, through
the European Neighbourhood Policy - one reason why Russia is reluctant and has been
reluctant to engage with that programme.
With the OSCE, Western states cannot believe that this can function
without giving due weight to the human dimension but Russia has been seeking to develop,
in some senses, counter-processes within the CIS region. I mentioned, for example, election
monitoring; the election monitoring process under the OSCE, in ODIHR, is now
paralleled by CIS election monitors, which invariably give a good bill of
health to elections within CIS states.
Q140 Linda
Gilroy: And do not work to any international
standards.
Dr Allison: No, and indeed, you even have Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
election monitors nowadays. So you have
this kind of competitive monitoring process under way which ultimately does not
tell you very much about what is happening on the ground.
Dr Pravda: One important reason for making the OSCE the forum of basis is
precisely because Russia, as my colleagues have pointed out, has been extremely
critical and wary of the normative mission of OSCE and they, on the other hand,
want an all-European security conference.
The thing is to match the two together.
The second thing about the normative aspects of the problem is not to
take the kind of cultural, full frontal approach of pointing out, quite
rightly, that democracy in Russia has regressed rather than developed, but to
take the more rule-based approach and to see if we can agree on a set of
regulations which they would want to observe for reasons of effectiveness,
which is becoming ever more important in the economic recession, and working
our way through what might be called, and is often called in international
analysis, a community of practice rather than a community of values. One gets to it, I think, with Russia through
the practice to the values rather than, as it were, insisting first and foremost
on building a community of values and then working through to other sets of
relationships.
Q141 Mr
Borrow: I want to come back to the comments
that Professor McCauley made, which was the concept of a Red-Green government
in Germany pushing NATO
membership for Russia. I would be all in favour of Russia becoming a member of NATO but that would
mean Russia
would have to comply with the terms and conditions involved in NATO
membership. From what has been said
since that comment by Professor McCauley, I certainly get the impression that
there is little likelihood of the position of a Red-Green government in
Germany, pushing Russian membership of NATO, actually getting anywhere because
it would imply fairly quickly that Russia would need to have significant internal
changes to its government and its structures, which is not perhaps tactically
the best way to go about things.
Professor McCauley: I would expect a Red-Green coalition in Germany
to push Russia's
membership of NATO because a Red-Green coalition would like to see the
Americans out of European security.
Anti-Americanism gains votes in German elections and
Gerhard Schroeder proved that.
Therefore, I would expect them to go quite left and the policy to be
very pacifist and quite anti-American and pro-Russian and, for instance,
Steinmeier, who may become Chancellor, only addresses his comments to Medvedev
and regards him as a key decision maker and then ignores Putin. That, of course, is technical but the Germans
would argue that case, which means that inside NATO, NATO will be to a large
extent paralysed. The new members of
NATO, the Eastern European members of NATO, would fight tooth and nail to keep
Russian out of NATO because they would see it as signing their security death
warrant. Therefore the old and new,
France and Italy, may in fact have some sympathy for the German point of view
but, as you say, you are going to be in a situation where neither side can win
and Russia would not become a member of NATO because, if that happened, it
would basically be the end of NATO, from many points of view. In order for a member to join NATO you have
to have unanimity, and the United
States would block it.
Q142 Mr
Jenkin: Briefly, coming back to this
question of the Moscow sphere and the Brussels sphere, did Brussels
rather accelerate the credibility of that concept by forcing the recognition of
Kosovo?
Professor McCauley: How can it force the recognition of Kosovo? The Russians will never recognise Kosovo with
their present regime. It is possible in
years' time when we have a totally different set of decision-makers.
Q143 Mr
Jenkin: Did it not rather encourage the
Russians to say, "If you Europeans think you can recognise what you want in the
European sphere, we will recognise what we think in our sphere"?
Professor McCauley: But if they recognise Kosovo, they sign Kosovo away, and then you
go back to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and
they have other interests. We have not
come to the risk of a conflict, say, in Crimea, over Sebastopol. They would then want Crimea; they would like
to recognise Crimea as a sovereign state. There is no quid pro quo here. I do not see one.
Q144 Chairman: Dr Pravda, you reacted.
Dr Pravda: Yes. I want to say that
obviously, the precedent of Kosovo, although much denounced before the Georgian
conflict, was useful as a way of justifying recognition of those two
enclaves. However, I think the notion
that Russia is going to
continue this kind of wars of recognition or conflicts of recognition and
extend that to Crimea is fanciful, and I wanted to bring up Ukraine in this regard. Ukraine is qualitatively different
from anything to do with George. The
relationship with Ukraine is an absolutely existential one and here, to refer
back to our previous session, I do not think, because of the reasons it is so
vital to Russia, that one can think in terms of an irretrievable breakdown of
the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, whether on energy or on other
matters. I think it is something which
Russia has to manage and has to make sure that it is as stable as possible
rather than excessively destabilising what is already a fragile situation by
playing with Crimean secession. To
overcome the problem of two poles, which were pointed out as a danger within a
greater European framework, one has to again work within the process of making
quite clear the terms on which we go forward in the process, that there is
going to be no distinction within a greater European area between spheres of
influence and trying to at least weaken the natural tendencies of poles of
attraction to develop in West and East.
Q145 Chairman: I am afraid you remind us of how very much we have to cover and how
very little time we have to cover it in.
I want to get on shortly to the issue of Afghanistan. Professor McCauley and Dr Allison, did you
want to add anything to what has just been said?
Professor McCauley: I was just going to say about the Moscow
pole of attraction attempting to drag in former republics of the Soviet Union.
Central Asia has no intention of becoming subservient to Moscow, nor would China in fact really favour
that. Central Asia is between Russia and China. Turkmenistan
has just signed a gas deal to run a pipeline to Xinjiang in western China, and therefore China
is economically and politically attempting to pull Central
Asia towards itself. In the
long term, I would see China
winning that relationship and Russia
losing out.
Q146 Chairman: It is good that we mention China in this discussion this
morning because I think that is the first time.
Dr Allison: The important political background is the Russian interpretation of
the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. To the extent that those could be accepted as
political faits accomplis, then it does allow for an easier negotiation
process on the wider security framework in Europe. To the extent that there are temptations in
Moscow to try to pursue strategies, including political strategies, with those
countries or within those countries to revise that, as some kind of roll-back
out of the perhaps lightened and exaggerated sense of self-confidence with
Russia's rising global status, then it becomes much more difficult. If there is that temptation and it coexists
with Russia's perception of the European Union itself as revisionist within
post-Soviet territory, through programmes such as the European Neighbourhood
Policy, which are seen as aimed to change the previous policies increasingly
towards an EU-driven normative and political framework, it means that there is
a very sensitive political climate within which these negotiations have to take
place. I think we have to make clear
that the results of elections which are at least fairly free and well conducted
have to be respected within these states, and that is a bottom-line
consideration, and in that sense hold Russia to its word when it says it does
support democratic governance.
Chairman: We must move on to the issue of Afghanistan.
Q147 Mr
Borrow: Russia has offered NATO some
assistance in terms of transport arrangements for NATO to get equipment, et
cetera, into Afghanistan that there is a suspicion that that is less than
wholesome help, and that it may actually be in Russia's interests, not
necessarily to see NATO defeated in Afghanistan but to see NATO bogged down for
many years in a conflict which seems not to end.
Professor McCauley: Dmitry Rogozin, who is the Russian representative in NATO, stated
that Russia welcomes NATO
participation and fighting in Afghanistan
and hopes that NATO will stay there but fears that they may become war-weary
and withdraw. Would Russia think that a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan
was in its interests? The answer,
obviously, is no. Northern Afghanistan
had a segment which held out against the Taliban before 2001 and it is
dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks, and my instinct tells me that if NATO decided
to give up in Afghanistan, basically from Kabul to the South - the North is
totally different - then Russia would regard northern Afghanistan as part of
its security zone and would need to protect it against the Taliban penetrating
that region, as they did before 2001, because they fear Islamic forces,
fundamentalism, penetrating Central Asia.
If that happened, they could then penetrate the Volga, Tatarstan and
Rajputistan, and the Caucasus and so on. They are very concerned. The Central Asian governments, especially Uzbekistan, are very exercised by what they call
the Islamic threat and they would do everything in their power to prevent the
Taliban penetrating northern Afghanistan. I do not think they would attempt to do
anything south of Kabul
but that zone would be their perimeter.
They would defend that and so on.
Q148 Chairman: I think you answered a different question from the one that David
Borrow asked. I think David said that
there was a suggestion that Russia
did not want to see NATO withdraw, which was really what you were talking about
there, but NATO bogged down. Do you
think that is what they would be quite interested in seeing?
Professor McCauley: Yes, the danger of being bogged down is, if you look at it from the
British point of view, you are fighting a war, you are fighting an
anti-insurgency war, you are fighting rebels, you are fighting a new type of
war. You develop high-tech weapons,
drones and so on; military technology is developed as you fight these wars and Russia
has not fought these wars. Russia
has not fought a modern war since 1945, and the technological gap between the
American forces' capability and the Russians is widening all the time. They might say it is a good thing for NATO to
be bogged down but, from the military technical point of view, the Americans
are developing all the time. China
is also very concerned about that. China does not want to see the Taliban or Al
Qaeda win in Afghanistan
and in fact, if there is a threat of the Taliban coming to the door, they might
come together with the Russians on that matter.
Dr Allison: I think there is a quite strong tendency among Russian military
officers to look at this in terms of schadenfreude, particularly given
their woeful performance in the first Chechnya campaign and arguably in
the second. So there is that personal
sense of the humiliation they went through, which feeds into their assessment
of NATO now. But I think, more importantly,
there is a concern among strategic thinkers about this as a test of NATO's
globalist mission. Afghanistan is the
first fighting war in which NATO has really put to the test its far expanded
out-of-area mission objectives, and that, to be seen to be successful in this
in some sense, would then encourage a direction of development of NATO which
Russia sees very much as against its interests.
So something short of success but which would still contain and manage
the Taliban for a good period of time might be seen as the preferred outcome
from that Russian perspective. However,
I think there is a rising concern that NATO simply cannot manage the scale of
resistance by Taliban and other forces within Afghanistan,
that the broader destabilisation of central Asia
is once again in prospect. Russia is looking at developments in Pakistan
now with alarm. There is not much
discussion of this but they are certainly concerned about Pakistan acting as a hinterland, which would
mean that the kind of threat that they saw from the Taliban at the end of the
1990s would actually be on a much larger scale, much more serious potentially
for Central Asia. There are some Russian officers who simply
say now that NATO is staying in Afghanistan
and should withdraw. Boris Gromov,
the last Russian commander in Afghanistan,
explicitly said this recently. Russia
is also exploring the possibility of developing a more substantive, direct
security relationship with the Karzai government, which should be monitored, as
well as developing co-operation through the Russia-dominated Collective
Security Treaty Organisation, initially on counter-narcotics efforts but
possibly there will be a range of other areas of possible collaboration. That is not at the moment co-ordinated with
NATO in any way. I think now we should
find ways to ensure that whatever efforts are being made to a common goal are
not being done wholly independently of one another and cutting across each
other.
Dr Pravda: Can I just agree with that.
There is obviously a degree of satisfaction in seeing NATO faring with
great difficulty in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the greater problem for Russia
is instability and insecurity in the South.
Were NATO to either fail or to withdraw, that would mean that Russia
would have to engage to some extent in securing that area, either through
political and economic agreements or through - reluctantly probably - engaging
military resources. I think we ought to
capitalise on this greater danger for Russia in having yet another theatre of
instability to deal with when it does not have the resources to cope with the
instabilities and potential instabilities in Central Asia at the moment, and to
build some sort of terms of engagement to co-operate in various ways on
maintaining that as a relatively secure region for the foreseeable future.
Q149 Mr
Jenkin: So if the Western powers invited Russia to be part of some international
conference to bring about a settlement in Afghanistan,
Russia
would be likely to be a constructive player in that, in helping NATO to
disengage?
Professor McCauley: I do not think the Russians are going to take over the fighting if
NATO says this is a wonderful way of getting out of---
Q150 Mr
Jenkin: No, I am not suggesting that.
Dr Pravda: I think the answer to the question is yes. I think Russia would try to play a constructive
role in that. I think there might be, as
there has been on similar occasions, some dubious contacts made and concerns
voiced about what games Russia is up to on the periphery but I think, generally
speaking, if it were a genuine attempt to involve Russia in some sort of
framework of stabilising and managing Afghanistan, it would probably prove to
be a constructive partner for its own interests.
Q151 Mr
Crausby: Can you say something about the
effect of the economic crisis? Is Russia
more likely to be aggressive to its neighbours as a result of the difficulties
that it is having in the economic crisis?
It is probably the question that was asked earlier: is a poor Russia more dangerous than a prosperous Russia?
Professor McCauley: It depends. It is in the hands,
I would say, of Vladimir Putin. The
economic situation is deteriorating by the day.
The Central Bank still has considerable reserves, which will run out
possibly in six months' time or even before that. Before that happens, in order for Vladimir Putin
and the elite that forms the group which rules Russia to stay in power, will they
in fact then consider a short, successful war to unify the nation and, if you
like, militarise the state and eliminate any opposition by saying it is
anti-Russian and anti-patriotic and so on?
There is one place which is an obvious candidate and that is Crimea,
because Sebastopol is the Russian military
base they have to leave by a certain date.
In Crimea the majority of the population is ethnic Russian and therefore
there would be a lot of support for Crimea becoming part of Russia. That is one scenario. Then the question is, would the military
actually follow Putin in that? Would
they in fact obey him? That is
impossible to say because the military reform, which has been put on hold,
which may result in 200,000-350,000 officers and warrant officers being sacked,
in a situation where the economic situation is deteriorating, that has been put
on hold. I have been told that middle
level FSB officers are also rather unhappy.
Therefore you have a scenario where, would Putin risk a military action
and would the military follow him? There
were to be reductions within the Ministry of Internal Affairs but they have
been put on hold because they expect social unrest in the summer. If you look at the social unrest which has
occurred, in Moscow they are bringing in troops and police from outside, and in
Siberia they are bringing in troops and police from outside Siberia, because
Siberian police and military would not shoot at Siberians, their own
people. So you have a situation which
could be quite volatile. It is possible
you may have a war scenario and I do not know what the probability of that is
but it is one. The other is that the
situation will deteriorate to the point where there is some kind of coup, where
Putin is removed, and then the obvious person to play a leading role would be a
military general. All we are doing at
present is guessing. There is no hard
evidence one way or the other but there are these two scenarios. The third scenario is that you get back to
1991, that the elites cannot agree and the state disintegrates.
Q152 Chairman: Those three are all profoundly serious, and all within the next six
months, you are suggesting.
Professor McCauley: Yes. The military industry
is in a very bad state because they do not have any market for their
products. China has basically stopped buying
Russian military hardware because it is not good enough. They are relying now on Israel; they get most of their military material
from Israel. They have signed lots agreements but the
technology is not very good. They have a
very good agreement with Israel
and they are exporting to India
and so on but, apart from that, the military industries face tremendous
problems. Russia has one-industry towns, over
100 one-industry towns. If the one
industry fails, then there is no employment.
The whole town has a problem. You
can add all these things together and you can see that within the next six
months all this could come together and cause an unprecedented challenge, shall
I say, to the Putin regime.
Dr Pravda: Could I just say that obviously, the economic crisis has
intensified the debate within the elite about how best to respond in terms of
adapting the regime. There are people
who wish to tighten controls, mainly in terms of administrative controls. However, I do think it is alarmist to talk in
terms of the real chance of some sort of short, sharp war to mobilise the
population and increase the popularity of a regime which cannot deliver
economic performance.
Q153 Chairman: Although Professor McCauley is not the only person talking in such
terms.
Dr Pravda: I am sure he is not but I do wish to state my opinion that I think
it is alarmist and unrealistic in terms of the fact that a short, sharp war,
particularly over Crimea, would not be one
greeted by the Russian population with great enthusiasm. All the poll evidence shows that there is a
great deal of division of opinion on that and very small support for any use of
force to deal with Ukraine
relations. It is much more favoured to
deal with it through economic and political means. The more serious problem is that yes, there
are people within the military who are dissatisfied with the way in which they
are faring. There are budgetary cuts
coming. Everyone is aware inflation plus
budgetary cuts effectively take out the real increase in military spending, the
effects of that increase, but that is something that is felt across the board. The serious discussion is between increasing
the vertical hold of Moscow over the regions and using administrative means to
increase performance and delivery in times of difficulties and, on the other
hand, an argument put by many people in the economic side of the
administration, and some liberals in business circles, to ease controls to try
and absorb some of the dissatisfaction, the disappointed expectations, of the
Russian population with the impact of the economic crisis, and the
disappointment and surprise, I think, of some members of the elite about the
extent to which the economic crisis has sucked them in, that they were not
immune from that crisis through lack of development of financial institutions,
which they initially thought they might be usefully insulated thereby. The major thrust of debate, I think, and what
we should expect to happen is, on the one hand, greater nervousness about
social unrest, tackled in terms of administrative tightening, but, on the other
hand, a greater wish to get all the help they can in terms of either economic
advice or help or an engagement in re-fashioning global economic structures,
hence the proposal put recently of their own points, on which we should get
together and reform both institutions which already exist and create new ones. So I think the overall effect of the economic
crisis on Russia's external outlook is to be more engaged rather than less and,
to answer the precise question, to deal with their neighbours on more strictly
commercial terms, and to actually make sure that foreign policy is cost-effective,
and often cost-effective in economic terms.
Dr Allison: One effect of the economic downturn in Russia
could be the much more severe economic circumstances in particular localities
and regions which are in themselves potentially volatile, such as in the North Caucasus. As
this becomes possible, it would then, in terms of Russian official thinking, be
proper justification for a more rigorous security regime within those areas and
perhaps to introduce measures for control which go much further than those
currently existing. This in turn, of
course, would make it easier for the authorities to represent their policy,
including external policy, in a light favourable to them and, to the extent
that there is a sense of crisis which is securitised, it then raises
Prime Minister Putin's profile because he is seen as the man who can best
respond to security crises whereas there is considerable scepticism, I feel,
growing about his ability to respond to economic and financial crises. I do not think there is any reasonable
likelihood of frictions in the Crimea
deliberately being exploited to the point of a short, sharp war. First, I do not believe that such a war could
be carried out in this kind of blitzkrieg fashion, despite the presence
of Russian forces in Sebastopol associated with the Black Sea Fleet, and
secondly, because if the objective is to bring the Crimea under some greater
Russian influence, that can be done more easily through various forms of
leverage on Ukraine's roof directly, relationships with politicians in Kiev,
through re-bridging energy relations, as we have seen, and through taking
advantage of Ukraine's greater susceptibility to this financial crisis. However, I think there is a significant chance
that hostilities could recommence in South Caucasus, around the South Ossetia, this spring, which could be catalysed by
events on the ground which, if they involved Russian troops, would then provide
the causus belli for some further military action. I do not think that is the most likely
scenario but certainly I think there is a great deal of frustration in Moscow
that President Saakashvili remains politically there, even though there is
little serious thinking about who could replace Saakashvili, who would be more
tractable from the Russian perspective.
So I think the role of the EU monitors down in the South Caucasus is
particularly important because of the uncertain security situation around South Ossetia.
Russian troops are positioned now very close to Tbilisi and this in itself means that
political temptations could arise. I do
not think such a clash is probable but, if it did occur, it would no doubt
boost Putin's position within the power arrangements that exist in Russia. At the same time, I think that the notion of
a military coup is fairly far-fetched because the relationships between the
political and military authorities are now significantly different to those
that existed when this possibility arose in the early 1990s and I would say
possibly also in the mid-1990s. However,
reshuffling within elites is something that is perfectly possible, that in
fact, as the crisis builds up, there will be more intra-elite factional
struggles which would involve those in senior positions in the security
services and with backgrounds in the security services but I think the military
would be a background influence in that kind of factional in-fighting.
Professor McCauley: I did not want to give the impression that the military of their
own accord would intervene. The military
will, of course, intervene with the sanction of the silver key of the ruling
elite, and that group might then take over.
Chairman: This has been a very interesting morning indeed, and I am
particularly grateful to all the witnesses today for not having given us lots
of diplomatic-speak but telling us the story exactly as you see it. I apologise to members of the Committee for
having cut some of them short and to our witnesses for having cut some of the
short but time constraints forced me to do that. Thank you very much indeed. Most helpful.
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