Constantine Pleshakov - The Crimean Nexus

With Western sanctions still in place, in September 2015, European energy companies signed three major deals with Gazprom. These included an asset swap, joint development of Siberian oil and gas fields, and building a second Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea. This last agreement was equivalent to a geopolitical statement, as the pipeline would let Russia send more gas straight to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. [23] Judy Dempsey, “Europe’s Energy Companies Go Back to Business with Russia,” Carnegie Europe, September 7, 2015, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61207 (retrieved September 13, 2015).

In fairness to the Europeans, natural gas is a vital necessity, something that a nation might want to procure at all costs. But European trade with Russia is by no means limited to energy. At the time of the annexation, France was building two Mistral-class warships for Russia. Mistral is the amphibious assault ship that can carry up to sixteen helicopters, seventy tanks, and four landing barges. It is a perfect instrument of maritime aggression. When they signed the contract in 2011, the Russians had already decided on the names: one Vladivostok , another Sevastopol .

In 2014–2015, the deal became an embarrassment. The Russians had prepaid $900 million of the contract price of $1.3 billion. The Mistrals were being built at a shipyard in Saint Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire. The local unions insisted that the town needed the seven thousand jobs the Russian order had secured. A union representative expressed hope that the deal would be the “start of a sustainable cooperation with Russia.” The ships he said, were simply “big ferries” with a “few weapons.” [24] Thomas Erdbrink, “Despite Anger Over Downed Jetliner, Europe Shies Away from Sanctions on Russia,” New York Times , July 23, 2014; Maia de la Baume, “A French Port Welcomes an Intervention by Russia’s Military,” New York Times , July 22, 2014.

Several Eastern European E.U. members, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, objected to being dragged into a confrontation with Russia for strategic, economic, and status reasons. First, Russia was important economically; second, Hungary and the Czech Republic did not want the European Union to become a capitalist version of the Soviet-era COMECON, in which they, as junior partners, had to take orders from the headquarters; third, for Eastern Europe, Ukraine was a periphery, not necessarily deserving sovereignty, much less Western protection. In May 2014, the Hungarian government demanded from Kiev autonomy for the Hungarian minority in Ukraine—envisaging, one may assume, a little Hungarian Crimea. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is a vocal supporter of 3 million ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, whose ancestors ended up there after the Trianon Treaty of 1920. In 2014, Orbán started talking about “illiberal democracy,” praising the example of Russia, China, India, and Turkey. After Senator McCain called him a “neo-fascist dictator getting in bed with Vladimir Putin,” Orbán responded that he “would not be a viceroy in Hungary commissioned by some foreign state.” The president of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, called the U.S.-sponsored Kosovo an illegitimate state and said he wished the Czech Republic could take back its recognition. He defined the events in Ukraine as a civil war (a term most other E.U. countries refuse to use) and said Ukraine should become neutral. [25] “McCain Sparks US-Hungary Diplomatic Row over Orban,” BBC, December 3, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30318898 (retrieved December 8, 2014); Tom Porter, “Hungarian PM Viktor Orban Hits Back at John McCain’s ‘Fascist’ Accusation,” International Business Times , December 6, 2014, www.ibtimes.co.uk/hungarian-pm-viktor-orban-hits-back-john-mccains-fascist-accusation-1478364 (retrieved December 8, 2014).

In Ukraine, the European Union had followed the principle, “You break it, you run”: having disrupted Ukrainian politics with vain promises of a “European future,” after the first shots were fired in Kiev the E.U. all but disappeared, leaving it to the United States to clean up the mess. It took the Europeans a year to return—but not as the European Union. Two great powers—Germany and France—began the process of mediation, their leaders conferring with the Ukrainian and Russian presidents on neutral territory, in authoritarian Minsk.

With the European Union undermined by the migrants crisis, and Russia seen as a strong ally in the fight against ISIS, European leaders are now likely to relegate war in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea to the icebox of diplomacy.

Intervention in the east was unpopular with Europeans from the start. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy complained in the New York Times: “To see the European Union acting so pusillanimously is very discouraging. France wants to hold on to its arms contracts for the jobs they are supposed to save in its naval shipyards. Germany, a hub of operations for the Russian energy giant Gazprom, is petrified of losing its own strategic position. Britain, for its part, despite recent statements by Prime Minister David Cameron, may still not be ready to forgo the colossal flows of Russian oligarchs’ ill-gotten cash upon which the City, London’s financial district, has come to rely.” [26] Bernard-Henri Lévy, “Putin’s Crime, Europe’s Cowardice,” New York Times , July 23, 2014.

Some members of the American establishment tried to save Europe from itself. In May 2014, three U.S. congressmen, Eliot Engel, William Keating, and Michael Turner, sent a letter to NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, suggesting that NATO purchase or lease the Mistral warships being built for Russia. Five months later, Engel, Keating, and Turner, this time joined by four other members of Congress—Mike Rogers, Steve Chabot, Steve Cohen, and Gerry Connolly—repeated the idea in a letter to the new NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg. [27] Robert Myles, “U.S. Call for NATO to Buy French-Built Warships Destined for Russia,” Digital Journal , June 2, 2014, www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/us-call-for-nato-to-buy-french-built-warships-destined-for-russia/article/385327 (retrieved November 7, 2014); Matt Millham, “Lawmakers Again Urge NATO to Buy French Warships Slated for Russia,” Stars and Stripes , November 7, 2014, www.stripes.com/news/lawmakers-again-urge-nato-to-buy-french-warships-slated-for-russia-1.312864 (retrieved November 7, 2014).

But the French had decided to build the ships for Putin after Russia had already started a Reconquista by sending troops into Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. At that point, Putin’s aggression in the near abroad did not seem unacceptable to Paris. That should have been seen as a real challenge to U.S. diplomacy, not the financial loss France faced in 2014.

Quite tellingly, when after unrelenting pressure from Washington the French government eventually cancelled the deal, it immediately sold the ships to another problematic customer—Egypt, with very little regard for what the two powerful assault carriers would do to the naval balance in the Middle East. [28] Susannah Cullinane and Noisette Martel, “France to Sell Egypt Two Warships Previously Contracted to Russia,” CNN, September 24, 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/09/23/europe/france-egypt-warship-sale (retrieved September 24, 2015); “Egypt Agrees to Buy Warships Built for Russia from France,” BBC, September 23, 2015, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34335224 (retrieved September 24, 2015).

In a recent book, noted international relations specialists Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer warn that with the crisis in Ukraine the “consensus underpinning a European security order” has been torn apart, and that the “task facing Europe’s leaders now is nothing less than fashioning a new European political and military order.” [29] Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer, Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (Boston: MIT Press, 2015), xix.