We soon had a Russian reaction to a Bucharest Summit that gave the US broadly what it wanted. It was not good but not so bad. The chill between the old superpower rivals did not get worse. 

Russian Reactions

This stabilisation had something to do with the fact that both Presidents are preparing the ground for successors and are in no position to make positions and see them through. 

It also signalled that the posturing before Bucharest had now ended, even if it fooled no-one except journalists. The Russians had felt unfairly demonized with some justification, but that was then and this was now.

Putin made a criticism that has validity when you consider the substantial democratic deficits within the EU and amongst some of NATO's allies and new aspirant members. He said that NATO’s claims to be a ‘democratiser’ were ‘overblown’. He did this more in sorrow than in anger.

The Russian tactic is to have NATO rather than itself positioned as the party that is provoking a new Cold War. This is vital if Russia is to win over public opinion in Europe.

As we will see, despite the tub-thumping anti-Russian nonsense coming out of all three US Presidential candidates and from London, President Bush's team acted as if they were quite aware of the long term political purpose behind Russian rhetoric. They adapted accordingly.

Putin left room for substantive negotiations with the US on other matters than NATO expansion, including strategic arms limitation.

Russia knows that it is still not and may never be strong enough to match US power even under conditions of the latter’s relative weakness. It is playing a long game.

Bush & Putin Meet

The post-Bucharest meeting between Bush and Putin laid down an agenda for their successors and it seemed to go positively. Bush is turning into a statesman at almost the last minute.

They agreed to continue to talk on the US defence shield and about sharing international protection from rogue missile threats – a genuine common interest if they ever trust each other.

To be fair, the US President seemed to go out of his way to reassure his Russian counterpart. There is no reason to believe that this was not sincere (insofar as any world leader is capable of being sincere) nor that the Russian President would not like to be responsive.

Russian strategy includes improvement of relations with the US, but from as strong a position as possible, demanding respect and probably accepting that the Anglo-Saxons are just not capable of being anything other than self-interested working partners. There is too much baggage in the relationship.

From a basis of mutual respect, Russia can still use its economic power in a European context. Europe is what Moscow cares about, not the Atlantic. 

As the generations pass and Europeans feel more comfortable with Moscow, a Eurasian economic zone might emerge that does not need to consider itself necessarily Atlantic in orientation – a reversion to conditions before 1500. Given the current correction in capitalism, this outcome is more than possible.

System Rivalries

The old Atlantic Powers are going to do everything they can to resist this shift from West to East or, at least, try to ensure that Russia becomes more Atlanticist than the US becomes Eurasian.

Again, this is not a daft ambition under the right circumstances. There is everything to play for, decades of manouevring to come and no real need for it all to turn nasty.

Russia and NATO/EU have fed off each other in state-building. The negative rhetoric about each other and the posturing have created a stronger sense of identity within the elites of each.

Western elites have sidelined ‘realist’ criticism of EU integration and NATO expansion (to the extent that we have seen ‘purges’ of critics on a consistent basis from within Western institutional structures) much as Putin and the siloviki have sidelined and ‘purged’ their liberals.

This mutually reinforcing state-building, tempered by the internal resentments that naturally develop when one faction defeats another, will also continue for some time to come.

The Real Problem - Unstable Europeans

But Russia is only half the game for the US. The other is to keep the Europeans solid for the Atlantic. A certain balance of interest can exist between the old superpowers but Europe, like NATO, contains the potential for reverses and diplomatic anarchy.

The Anglo-Saxons have discovered that Europe is a 'good thing' because they have discovered a West that they want to stretch from Hokkaido to Kiev if they cannot get it to stretch to the Urals.  But the three top dogs of Europe cannot be said to be in total command of their own domestic situations.

Domestic and especially Socialist criticism of Sarkozy’s new Atlanticism found its focus in the decision to send French troops to Afghanistan. The wider European Left (unlike the official New Labour Party in the UK) will always have its resisters to the Atlantic model.

The very pro-European Charlemagne in The Economist pours scorn on the idea that Europe can be run on the basis of back door agreements between France, Germany and the UK. 

He is making an important observation about the sustainability of great power manipulation of Europe.

The US ‘coup’ in Bucharest was successful because three pro-US leaders [Sarkozy, Merkel and Brown] decided that it should be successful in the Atlantic interest. 

They also had the backing of the small Eastern European states nervous of the bear and of an EU technocracy looking at energy security and border completion as of paramount interest.

But this three-way 'fix' between the top dogs in Europe seems a very vulnerable basis for a long term strategic alliance. 

A change of leadership to the Left in any of these three countries (although least likely in the UK) over the next decade provides one source of threat to the project. 

Another lies in differences of opinion between the Big Three and other major states, such as Italy, Spain and the increasingly important Poland.

Russians have an interest in patient waiting for reality to intrude on Atlantic liberal idealism.  – whether that of domestic overstretch as the Americans demand more sharing of the costs of defence or arising from the dynamics of economic collaboration over access to Russian energy resources.

Charlemagne believes that there is an inherent tension between British irritation with the European Project and the Franco-German desire to lead it further forward. We think he misses the point.

The New Labour and British Establishment (even the largely euro-sceptic Tory Party and general population) have no objection to Europe if it is part of the Atlantic alliance, adopts liberal economics and gives the old 45 Powers (now plus Germany) the leading role.

Conversely, the post-Gaullist French Right and the Atlanticist German Right are not interested in the old corporatist model of Europe as super-state.

They are now looking for a functional organization that can integrate European economic needs along liberal lines with the regulatory capitalism of the US – and under the leadership of its biggest G7-level states.

The three big powers have been converging politically for some time. All three are riding roughshod over disorganized domestic criticism of their overall direction - whether eurosceptic or Leftist. And yet this race for Atlantic integration seems to be built on some very poor foundations.

Brown commands a Labour Party that is in the last stage of sclerosis and leads a Government that is hitting levels of unpopularity unparalleled for two decades.

Sarkozy may be secure in his Presidency but it is not only Socialists but old Gaullists who point out that his policies are mostly talk with very little action to demonstrate significant change in France.

Merkel seems secure yet this security is based on a coalition in which her partners are under threat from a revived Left. This is pulling them away from the liberal economic model and eventually the coalition must snap like an overstretched elastic band.

Three Leaders who are not entirely representative of the underlying moods of their country are cutting deals between themselves that are really squared to permit European deals with the US.

The Consequences of Being Supine

The sharp and recent right-wing pro-US turn on Iran is an example. There is no intrinsic reason for Europe to play hard ball with Iran unless it really believes that Iran presents a clear and present threat to Europe (frankly, an absurd proposition).

It is more likely that aggressive policies are acting as cover for something else.

Let us be blunt - the war on terror may exercise hysterical European intellectuals (largely for domestic policy reasons) but European foreign policy is far more driven by relations with Russia, Serbia and Turkey, with anomalies like Cyprus and Kosovo and with defining joint defence and energy policy than with insurgencies in the Muslim world and the Peace Process.

Just look at the half-hearted Mediterranean dabbling in Lebanon, the lack of commitment to first Iraq and then Afghanistan, and the wider European preparedness to leave the big powers to their idle dabbling in Africa (until, of course, it gets too close to home, as Sarkozy found with German resistance to his Mediterranean policy). 

Border definition and integration - that is what EU policy is centred on.

Those who trade with the Middle East and who bank in the region are puzzled by the odd policy of treating a significant and growing trading partner (Iran) as a pawn in a game that is really about about Western integration.

But Iran is important to the Bush Administration. In fact, it is central to the Bush Administration’s vision of geo-politics.

We are about to see Petraeus accuse Iran of tactically engaging in the recent Battle of Basra (although it beats us why it is wrong for Iran and right for the US and UK to give tactical support to one or the other side in what remains a failed state).

If it is central to the US, then it must be central to those who need to bargain with the US.

So ‘Europe’ (actually, these three very vulnerable but currently dominant European administrations) is tightening the screws on Iran for reasons which have nothing directly to do with the national interest or the interests of Europe.

Unless, that is, you believe that the interest of the US is the interest of Europe, much like people once said that the interest of General Motors was the interest of America.

But don't go there - that way diplomatic and political madness lies and some very awkward questions arise about sovereignty in Europe, American 'imperial' power and who really rules the roost in London, Paris and Berlin and why.

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