Financial Times Editorial - Cheney's cold war
Financial Times Editorial - Cheney's cold war
Published: May 6 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 6 2006 03:00. Copyright by The Financial Times
Dick Cheney would have known his stern warning this week to Russia would go down well in Lithuania. He might even have remembered a speech two decades ago when George H. W. Bush went to Hungary, as Ronald Reagan's vice-president, to proclaim, wrongly, Russians had never really been part of European civilisation. But Mr Cheney's speech this week, rightly, served a wider purpose than playing to the east European gallery or that of his US conservative base. The vice-president exaggerated, as one would expect from someone with a richly deserved reputation as the current Bush administration's Lord Voldemort. But his message contained some plain truths that Moscow should heed.
One is the widespread nervousness about Russia abusing its energy supplies for political ends. Moscow may, in general, just be following the current worldwide wave of resource nationalism in adjusting its energy policy to higher world market prices and to rising alternative demand from Asia. But it needs to know that in some western quarters, this is seen, as Mr Cheney bluntly put it, as using oil and gas as "tools of intimidation or blackmail". Another foreign concern is about the creep by Vladimir Putin, Russian president, towards "a soft dictatorship" with progressive suppression of civil society and its outlets through non-governmental organisations and the independent media. Having awarded Russia membership of the Council of Europe, and this year the presidency as well as membership of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations, the west has grounds for complaint. Finally, there is the worry that Mr Putin remains unreconciled to the emergence of democratic movements in Russia's "near abroad", once part of a Soviet Union whose disappearance he laments.
However, it would be a crass mistake for western politicians to voice these concerns in a way that either gives Russians gratuitous offence (as Mr Bush senior did) or reinforces their latent siege mentality. Actually, in what he said, Mr Cheney did neither; "none of us believes that Russia is fated to become an enemy", he told the gathering of east Europeans in Lithuania. But there is an issue of consistency, especially for a Bush administration that is actively courting some fairly unsavoury ex-Soviet central Asian countries for their energy resources. This week, for instance, Mr Cheney flew on to Kazakhstan whose regime could have benefited from the same strictures the vice-president directed at the Kremlin.
Some European Union governments, particularly in western Europe, will not have appreciated Mr Cheney's cold war rhetoric. In a sense, however, they have only themselves to blame, by failing to speak up with sufficient firmness and unity about Russia. They would do well to listen as attentively to the concerns of their fellow EU members in east and central Europe as Washington has evidently been doing.
Published: May 6 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 6 2006 03:00. Copyright by The Financial Times
Dick Cheney would have known his stern warning this week to Russia would go down well in Lithuania. He might even have remembered a speech two decades ago when George H. W. Bush went to Hungary, as Ronald Reagan's vice-president, to proclaim, wrongly, Russians had never really been part of European civilisation. But Mr Cheney's speech this week, rightly, served a wider purpose than playing to the east European gallery or that of his US conservative base. The vice-president exaggerated, as one would expect from someone with a richly deserved reputation as the current Bush administration's Lord Voldemort. But his message contained some plain truths that Moscow should heed.
One is the widespread nervousness about Russia abusing its energy supplies for political ends. Moscow may, in general, just be following the current worldwide wave of resource nationalism in adjusting its energy policy to higher world market prices and to rising alternative demand from Asia. But it needs to know that in some western quarters, this is seen, as Mr Cheney bluntly put it, as using oil and gas as "tools of intimidation or blackmail". Another foreign concern is about the creep by Vladimir Putin, Russian president, towards "a soft dictatorship" with progressive suppression of civil society and its outlets through non-governmental organisations and the independent media. Having awarded Russia membership of the Council of Europe, and this year the presidency as well as membership of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations, the west has grounds for complaint. Finally, there is the worry that Mr Putin remains unreconciled to the emergence of democratic movements in Russia's "near abroad", once part of a Soviet Union whose disappearance he laments.
However, it would be a crass mistake for western politicians to voice these concerns in a way that either gives Russians gratuitous offence (as Mr Bush senior did) or reinforces their latent siege mentality. Actually, in what he said, Mr Cheney did neither; "none of us believes that Russia is fated to become an enemy", he told the gathering of east Europeans in Lithuania. But there is an issue of consistency, especially for a Bush administration that is actively courting some fairly unsavoury ex-Soviet central Asian countries for their energy resources. This week, for instance, Mr Cheney flew on to Kazakhstan whose regime could have benefited from the same strictures the vice-president directed at the Kremlin.
Some European Union governments, particularly in western Europe, will not have appreciated Mr Cheney's cold war rhetoric. In a sense, however, they have only themselves to blame, by failing to speak up with sufficient firmness and unity about Russia. They would do well to listen as attentively to the concerns of their fellow EU members in east and central Europe as Washington has evidently been doing.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 9:37 AM
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