Events in different parts of the world in the course of this year have been forcing observers to question whether the period of détente, or relaxation of negative relations between leading powers, signalled by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of one party dominance of that state, is coming to an end.
The promise held out by the ending of communist rule in Eastern Europe which dominated European relations virtually since the Second World War now appears to be diminishing, as relations between the Russia and the Western powers begin once again to be characterized by division and confrontation, essentially over the future of the Eastern European states.
There, it apparently seems obvious that as the European Union (EU) has drawn many of these states into its geopolitical sphere through formal membership, Russia under President Putin appears to be responding with a discontent now most visible in the present contention over the future of Ukraine. For undoubtedly, Russia has had a sense of diminution of its influence and strategic positioning and therefore its great power status, in the wider European sphere in particular.
Thus over the years since the dissolution of the Communist international system, Russia has seen major Cold War allies like Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic (a part of the previous Czechoslovakia) adhere to NATO in 1999, followed by Slovakia (a product of the division of Czechoslovakia), Bulgaria and Romania, with the smaller states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, more geographically proximate to Russia, following suit in 2004.
It now seems to be the case that Ukraine’s decision to adhere to the EU seems, from President Putin’s perspective, to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as he witnessed the inability of a country which has had both sentimental and geopolitical significance for Russia to resist the inclination to formally join that system. And obviously Putin has perceived that, as has happened with other Eastern European states, it would be a matter of time before those states were induced to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the original Cold War military opponent of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact.
It would appear that Putin’s perception of this potentially emerging new geopolitical map is substantially the reason for the hard line which Russia has taken in respect of Ukraine. For before this, the signs were that Putin, now responsible for running an essentially capitalist state in Russia, was prepared to seek a relationship with the European Union as a whole, but more particularly with its major states, that would permit substantial inward investment into the Russian economy as it has sought to liquidate the negative aspects of the previous Soviet communist economy.
Thus the signs have been, until very recently, that Putin saw the post-Cold War reunified Germany in particular, as the central EU economic motor that could be of assistance to the reorganization of the Russian economy in terms of investment and trade. And it is undoubtedly the case that important political actors in Germany like former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and others previously of significance in German governments, have taken an active interest in assisting in enhancing economic relations between Russia and their country, apparently with the approval of current Chancellor Merkel, herself a former resident of communist East Germany.
Russia’s attitude to the EU initiatives in post-Cold War Ukraine (a country once governed by Nikita Krushchev as part of the Soviet Union from which position he acceded to the Soviet leadership) undoubtedly appears, from Putin’s perspective, to have had a certain level of sentimentality, something which would not have been the case in respect to Poland or Czechoslovakia, or perhaps even East Germany.
This kind of assessment also appears to have been responsible for what appears to have been a certain willingness on the part of Chancellor Merkel initially to go the extra mile in Germany’s relations with Putin, even as leaders of countries like the United Kingdom asserted a position of relatively negative clearheadedness towards the Russian leader as he seemed, to them, to be determined to establish a strong position in Ukraine. And this is not to speak of an increasingly beneficial position for Germany as the country’s economic position in Russia increased.
All the signs are that the apparent partiality of Germany towards Putin’s stratagems have ended, as Chancellor Merkel seems now to have aligned her country firmly with the wider EU view, that the perception of Putin attempting to organize a new sphere of influence in Ukraine constitutes a reality that can potentially spill over into the weaker Eastern European countries which are now a part of the EU. And in turn, the EU is now at one in imposing a strategy of economic sanctions designed to increasingly staunch Putin’s efforts.
The now firm allegiance of Germany, particularly as it has related to the exertion of economic sanctions, has, in turn, been welcomed by the United States, which has taken the position that to accept Russian claims of an historic relationship with entities like Ukraine, amounts to giving it a permanent foot in the European door, at a time when it would appear to the Europeans that Putin seems unlikely to be building a kind of private sector economy that is substantially similar to their own.
As can be seen from recent events, this attempt at the geopolitical isolation of Russia is inducing Putin to take a new look at the Far Eastern areas of his country that border on Asia, and in doing so to seek to ensure that relations with China are consolidated, not only in diplomatic terms, but in the context of the exploration of economic development strategies and investments in which both can have a mutual interest and benefit. And it therefore now appears that Putin’s initial strategy to have a degree of dependence on an enlarged Europe Union, as a basis for a rapid modernization of his country’s economy, will no longer have the significance that was intended.
European geopolitics, after a brief era of détente and political balance between an ex-communist Russia and the countries of the EU, now seems to be giving way to a period of contention, and a veritable struggle for power and influence on the wider European continent, with the Nato alliance regaining its geopolitical significance, even as its seems clear that Russia, in the face of pressure from the West, will be constrained to search for new, in particular economic, alliances as it seeks to modernize itself as an essentially capitalist state.
