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EU and Russia (EUC Report)

My Lords, I welcome this report. The EU Committee of the House of Lords has a well deserved reputation for well researched and well judged reports. I share the analysis that we are dealing with a country in a period of what I think that the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, called post-imperial angst. There is a real sense of grievance, a sense that it was humiliated in the 1990s, and now it is back and wishes to reassert itself. I think the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, also made the comparison with Suez: that Russia has reached the stage in post-imperial development where coming to terms with being less of a great power than it was is extraordinarily difficult. We have to remember that the British did not learn that after Suez. It was a great failure of post-Suez. I doubt whether Russia will learn that post-Georgia unless the oil and gas price sinks back down in dollars again, in which case it will have to. With some of my contacts in Moscow, I have found that they talk about the Georgians in the same way I imagine that Members of this House talked about Irishmen in about 1850. There is a real sense of superiority about the peoples around them—that they are part of the world—and a clear ambivalence towards Europe. In the 1980s, when I was secretary of the British/Russian round table, we found ourselves with Russians who insisted that Russia was a European power and had to be accepted as such. I remember causing offence at a meeting in Moscow by suggesting that many of us regarded Russia as at least as European as Turkey. I was told by an outraged senior member of the Community Party that one could not say that because ““Russia, after all, was a Christian country””. There are all sorts of ambivalences in that. Now we find Russians saying that they are not to be judged by European rules—that they are a great power to be compared with the United States. The whole concept of sovereign democracy is that Russia, like America, is allowed to play by different rules from smaller countries such as Britain and France, which is part of the problem with which we have to deal. I also share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, that part of our problem in dealing with Russia is the loss of the western moral authority that we have suffered in the past eight years and more. We have to recognise that some Russian actions now are deliberately saying, ““We can behave like the United States. Okay, they are going to send a fleet into the Black Sea; we will send ships into the Caribbean. They are going to supply the Georgians; we will send aircraft to Venezuela””. There is an in-your-face assertion that, ““If you want a sphere of influence, we will have one too. If you are going to influence us, we will do the same to you””. The summer before last, my wife and I cruised into Sebastopol harbour and, I have to say that the fattest I have ever been was returning from a Black Sea cruise because they feed you so well. The Russian naval base in Sebastopol is a great deal smaller than Guantanamo Bay. It has the same post-imperial echoes as that large base on sovereign Cuban territory. The American approach to Georgia has been irresponsible and provocative, which I regret, but that is only part of the set of issues with which we need to be concerned. The pace of NATO enlargement clearly has been too fast. Some of us were never happy entirely about NATO enlargement disregarding Russian sensitivities. I have to say that I attended the German Marshall Fund’s parallel conference in Bucharest to the NATO European Council. I was not sure which was worse, the aggressive expansionism of some Republican Americans or the arrogant nationalism of some of the Russians who were invited to answer them. The future of NATO is a very large question to which we in this House and elsewhere should return. If NATO is an anti-Russian alliance, there are large questions for us about how we see our future relationship with Europe. What are the objectives of NATO enlargement? Are we sure that we agree with the consensus in Washington about the purposes of NATO enlargement? However, the most important question is: what is to be done? I strongly agree with the committee’s statement in paragraph 320: "““The EU will always be more effective when it can agree a united approach in its dealings with Russia””." A common European policy towards Russia is clearly in the British interests. Sadly, we have seen a number of defections from solidarity. The most appalling was Mr Berlusconi’s action in inviting President Putin as his first foreign visitor when he again became Prime Minister. But we understand all the sensitivities and hang-ups which the Germans have, as well as their business interests, in their very special relationship with Russia. We have been very lucky that we have found ourselves with France in the presidency when the crisis with Georgia came up. One can think of a number of other presidencies that would have handled this much less successfully. But the British Government have not contributed enough. British policy on the whole has been passive. We want a British Government who engage in the debate here and in other European countries about why we share common interests in a stronger policy towards Russia. I also agree with paragraph 284, which states: "““The EU should resist any attempts to isolate Russia””." We need to engage with the Russians as far as we can, but—the report does not spell this out quite as much—we need to speak plainly and bluntly about our interests and theirs. Last February, I led a cross-party delegation from this House to Moscow. The memory I most enjoy is our discussion with the foreign affairs committee of the Duma in which the temperature and the noise level rose quite considerably as it told us what it most objected to about British policy and our welcome of particular Russians to whom it objected, and we told it what we thought about Russian neglect of the rule of law, murders of opponents, corruption in the armed forces, et cetera. One has to talk at that level, sadly, to make sure that one gets the Russians’ respect. We need a more active policy towards the EU’s eastern neighbours. In his reply, can the Minister give us the view of Her Majesty’s Government on the new Polish/Swedish initiative for an eastern partnership? I see that the European Council has asked for a report from the Commission in December, targeted as we know particularly at the western former Soviet countries of Ukraine and Belarus—that is not easy, but I see that the Finnish Foreign Minister has just been to Minsk—Moldova and the southern Caucasus states. We need action on these frozen conflicts. We have neglected Transdniestra at least as much as we did Abkhazia and South Ossetia. One of the things we can learn from this is that we need to engage with Moldova and Transdniestra as actively as we can. We also need to engage with the Ngorno Karabakh problem, which is very similar to the Abkhazia and South Ossetia problem, particularly given that the relationship between Turkey and Armenia, which is part of the jigsaw here, is at last beginning to improve. I hope that the Minister will also be able to tell us about what he expects to come out of the meeting in Geneva next Tuesday, 15 October, on how post-conflict Georgia should develop and what the role of the EU monitoring mission is going to be inside Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We cannot concede to the Russians that the EU monitoring mission, which I think includes a number of British officers, will not be allowed to operate inside Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As we know, there has been not just ethnic cleansing but looting in those countries. I was in both places four years ago and noted that there was clear indiscipline, with the local militias disorganised and even at that point conducting operations of ethnic cleansing. I recall vividly that I was there with Anna Politkovskaya, who was herself murdered not long afterwards, and that for her it was clear that what was happening in the south of the Caucasus and what was happening in the north was all part of the same problem—how the Russians mishandle the smaller nationalities to their south. The point was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, in his speech. Next, we have to negotiate on partnership, and we have to negotiate hard, and I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that. The rule of law is absolutely non-negotiable. However, the Russians do want to negotiate the rule of law. The rule of law that they think should apply here is not necessarily one that should apply there. In protecting the substantial Russian community we now have in the UK, this is a particular British interest. Yes, we may negotiate with the Russians on WTO membership, but we do not make any concessions on whether they are up to WTO standards. On the OECD, the Russians are a very long way from coming up to the standard to join. I was happy to see in the Government’s response to paragraph 294 with regard to the OECD the words: "““Accession candidates need to be aware that the political aspects of like-mindedness will also be raised””." I hope that they will be raised very robustly when it comes down to it. Incidentally, the idea of Russian EU membership is absolutely off the table. On my last visit to Moscow, one of my oldest Russian acquaintances said, ““We want to be offered EU membership so that we can turn it down””. There is a real sense of, ““We demand to be treated as equals, but sod it, we are not going to behave as if we’re like that””. The idea that the Russian elite would ever accept the disciplines of EU membership is way beyond the pale. We need also to grapple with energy security, and I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about a positive British attitude to investing in Nabucco and making sure that external energy security as well as progress towards a more integrated EU energy market is on the table. A common European Union policy on Russia ought to be the core of a common foreign policy. One of the real weaknesses of the whole process of a common foreign policy is that we have not made more progress towards this. It is clearly in Britain’s interest, and even some Conservatives recognise that that is the case. I argue that European interests and assumptions in its relations with Russia are closer than British attitudes and assumptions are to those of the United States. I know that the Governor of Alaska believes that if one sits in Alaska one sees relations with Russia much more clearly than those of us who are more distant, but I and members of this party think that it is very clearly in Britain’s interests that we should be working actively towards a more coherent European response of negotiating with the Russians and managing the relationship, but not allowing them to bully the West in the way they would like.