Introduction

Thank you for that kind, unique and thorough introduction, and thanks to the Moscow School for inviting me to speak to you today. I notice that most of your speakers talk about something in their own country, or in their own organisation, but I wanted to talk about something different today – your country, Russia .

Or more particularly, relations between Russia , the US , the EU and China in what used to be the Soviet Union, by which I mean the 14 republics other than Russia that used to be in the USSR . There is a problem in finding an easy term in English here. Some call the area in question the “Near Abroad”, but this term was actually coined by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and he seemed to think it included Alaska , so maybe this is best avoided. So for ease I will talk about the “former Soviet Republics ” or the “former Soviet Union ” or FSU.

So I will talk about how competition for influence in the FSU is a key part of global foreign policy – part defining it, part reflecting it.

What are my qualifications to talk today? I was flattered to see myself described as an “expert” in your brochure. I am a backbench MP, not representing the views of the UK Government or even the Conservative Party. My views are mine alone. I am the Treasurer of the All Party Russia Group, and the Chairman of the Central Asia Group, and a member of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee.

In terms of the specific topic, I have been to every one of the former Soviet republics, except Moldova .  I have been right across Russia , from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok . I have also spent a fair amount of time in the Russian Far East. My wife is half-Russian, from a former Soviet navy family in Vladivostok . Her grandfather is still alive in Moscow , and is one of a dwindling number of surviving veterans of the Great Patriotic War. My wife’s family are very proud of him, and so am I.

Nevertheless, I have my limitations. Many of you here will know more about some of these Republics, or even all of them. My Russian mother-in-law told me that me coming to talk to you today about the FSU would be like going to London to talk to the English about their relations with Scotland !

Worsening relations between Russia and the West

Russia ’s foreign relations are near crisis point. It is tempting to blame the US , that the breakdowns are due to Iraq , or US “adventurism”, and so on – but in my opinion, worsening relations are mainly due to Russia herself.

And relations are certainly worsening. For example, the Economist had a leader last week called “ Russia and the West – the big chill”. In February, the President Putin gave a controversial speech in Munich , in which he accused the United States of seeking to impose its will upon the world through an “almost uncontained, hyper use of force in international relations.” Peter Mandelson, one of the European Commissioners and another previous guest speaker here at the Moscow School , described only last month a “level of misunderstanding or even mistrust we have not seen since the end of the Cold War”.

And looking at the factors causing this decline in relations between Russia and the West, a great many of the disagreements are in the FSU states – the row over the war memorial in Estonia; over the direction of political change in the Ukraine; over energy supplies and transit in the Ukraine and Belarus; over Georgia’s bid to join NATO; over oil deliveries to Lithuania; over gas pipelines from Central Asia and so on. As Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform put it recently, “the list of disagreements is substantial and getting longer.” Not all of the rows are in the FSU – Kosovo and deteriorating relations with Poland for example, but more than half of the former Soviet Republics are currently giving rise to serious disagreements at present.

UK – Russian relations are particularly poor, probably worse than between Russia and any other Western country at the moment, and this is digressing slightly, as they have nothing to do with the former FSU, and everything to do with the assassination of Aleksander Litvinenko in November 2006. It is important that people in Russia understand quite how seriously this is being taken in the UK . Litvinenko was a British citizen, murdered on the streets of London with a rare and highly dangerous radioactive isotope, Polonium 210. The first duty of any state is to protect its own citizens, and that includes – if not especially – those who have been given asylum in my country fleeing from political oppression. Very few people believe that the assassination was directly the work of the Russian state, but Mr Litvinenko was not being robbed of his mobile phone, and that the radioactive element almost certainly had its origin at some point from government sources in Russia . We still don’t know all of what happened and why, but I have to say that the image of Russia in Britain has been very seriously damaged.

Having said all this, there are some positive signs in relations. The terms of Russia’s WTO accession have been agreed, : transit from Russia proper to Kaliningrad has been eased, t: the bilateral partnership and co-operation agreement has been extended to the new EU accession states; security and defence co-operation has been relaunched; a new European Institute has been opened in Moscow to train more Russian specialists in the EU, and co-operation between Russia police and Europol has been extended.

The common feature of almost all these successes is this, however: none of them involve the FSU.

Why relations with Russia should be better

I have two starting points in my own views on foreign affairs. First, I am strongly pro-democracy and second I believe in the threat posed by the twin dangers of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism. On the latter, I take the view that the two – terrorism and WMD will inevitably meet – jihadists will eventually get a usable nuclear, chemical or biological weapon or set of weapons that will threaten the world. As a teenager, I was a fan of science fiction, the classic stuff like HG Wells and John Wyndham, with their apocalyptic visions of the end of the world, seen in books like The War of the Worlds or the Day of the Triffids. My personal favourites were books by Wyndham like the Chrysalids, which sought to describe a post-nuclear Earth struggling with the effects of radiation poisoning, and The Kraken Wakes, which was a history written in the future of how the Earth became gravely imperilled by a twin threat of fireballs from outer space combined with a new form of life under the Sea.

This is straying somewhat from my brief, but my real fear is this – that in the future the history of the first part of the 21^st century will be written to describe how the two main threats to international peace and security – nuclear proliferation and Islamist terrorism – followed separate paths which were eventually to meet, with tragic consequences. Significantly, the history of the present written by those in the future will describe how the civilised world failed to take effective action against either.

So I see our main role in Western foreign policy as taking on terrorism and preventing the further spread of weapons of mass destruction. It is our job to slow the inevitable, and especially prevent the two from meeting, until such time as antidotes can be designed. One of these antidotes might be the missile shield, a subject I will return to later.

In these goals, Russia should of course be a key ally. This certainly was the case in the period 2001 – 2002, but due to a combination of Iraq and a more assertive foreign policy under president Putin, relations between Russia and the West are worse than they have ever been since 1989. There are signs of hope, of course, and the previously positive trend in 2001 and 2002 – so easily reversed in 2003 and since – could easily be reversed again. Indeed, another terror incident may be the cause, just as 9/11 brought a post Cold War high in relations.

Things can move quickly in relations with Russia – indeed, in 2000, it was Condoleeza Rice who wrote that America ’s security was “threatened less by Russia ’s strength than by its weakness and incoherence.”

But to do this, various foreign policy issues will need to be sorted out in the former Soviet states.

I have also thrown into the mix in this presentation the roles of the US , the EU and China . In foreign policy terms, “The West” is currently a difficult term, given the large differences of opinion between the EU and the US , and also within the EU of course. China does not belong to the West at all, but is a key player both in global foreign policy and in the FSU, and certainly as so far as competing influence in Central Asia and the Russian Far East is concerned.

Common Features of the Former Soviet States

I started by saying that I have been to all ex-Soviet republics since the break-up of the USSR . Other than the fact they were all previously in the Soviet Union , they have precious little in common. In fact, it is hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, Estonia and Tajikistan were in the same country.

The FSU are a set of 15 incredibly diverse countries, with seemingly little in common other than their Soviet heritage. Some have fought each other – Armenia and Azerbaijan . Some have had civil wars – Tajikistan . Some have faced breakaway states within them, like Georgia and Moldova . Some are very poor indeed, with most of their population living on less than $1 a day, like Tajikistan , Turkmenistan and parts of the Southern Caucasus, whilst come are already in the EU and like Estonia overtaking Portugal and Greece .

There are, however, many common features, and five principal ones:

(1)     There is a feeling amongst onlookers that Russia would want them back. During the Soviet Union’s accelerating break up in the period 1985 – 1991, there was never an intention from the top that the USSR should break up. The “Sinatra Doctrine” coined by Gennadi Gerasimov in October 1989 – that the countries of Eastern Europe could do it their way – was never meant to apply to the Soviet Republics, not even the Baltic States. The feeling of many in the West ever since has been that if a liberal like Gorbachev didn’t want their independence, then why would a more autocratic one like Putin?

(2)     There is often a nervousness linked to this, and this is more prevalent in Europe than in the US , about becoming too involved in the FSU for fear of offending Russia . If Czechoslovakia was “a far away country of whom we know nothing” in 1938, then what is Georgia in 2007? Indeed, for those who follow a foreign policy more driven by Realpolitik, who cannot be tempted by the argument that relations with Russia are more important than relations with Azerbaijan ?

(3)     All of the Republics have Russian minorities, a factor under-appreciated in the West, although this has been a key part of recent events in Estonia . The Baltic States have seen the Russian minorities wanting to stay put, whilst those in Central Asia in particular have spent the last fifteen years returning to Russia . When I was in Tashkent in 2002, the airline office had a number of Russians buying one-way tickets to Moscow , with big hold-alls full of the hyperinflationary Uzbek sum, in scenes that recalled the Weimar Republic .

(4)     Many of the Republics are linked in with the debate on Russia and energy security, whether as consumers (like the Baltics), producers (Central Asia and Azerbaijan ) or transit countries (like Ukraine , Belarus , Georgia and Azerbaijan again).

(5)     The proximity of much of the FSU to areas of international conflict and concern. Despite globalisation, geography remains very important. I lived for part of the 1990s in the US , and Americans were shocked to learn that London was closer to Baghdad than New York is to LA. Americans don’t always realise how much closer Europeans feel to the Middle East, Iraq and Iran . Similarly, with the FSU. I once took a one-hour flight from Vladivostok to Pyongyang . Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan border Afghanistan . Azerbaijan , Armenia and Turkmenistan border Iran , and are not a long way from Iraq either.

Looking thematically at the 14 countries and their effect on international relations, I wanted to look at four broad areas – energy, military, the situation of the Russian minorities and the whole issue of democracy and human rights.

Energy

I mentioned energy as a common feature. The EU’s efforts to diversify into Central Asian oil and gas via the Caucasus faced a dramatic setback earlier this month, with Russia signing a new agreement with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to route even more of their energy exports via Russia . Russia supplies about 25% of Europe ’s gas and a growing part of its oil.

The deal with the Turkmen and the Kazakhs adds to already huge doubts about the viability of US and European backed ideas to access gas and oil directly from Central Asia . Russia ’s energy minister, Viktor Khristenko, dismissed this earlier this month as a “political project” that was unlikely ever to materialise.

The US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodmin attacked the deal – but interestingly, his attack seemed more directed at Europe , and urged the EU to be more assertive. “ Europe needs to diversify its energy sources and Europeans should take due note of this.” Also seen as bad news by Georgia , which has a keen interest in supplies from any sources other than Russia .

The deal was signed in the geographically significant Turkmen town of Turkmenbashi , and was clearly designed as a way of cocking a snoop at the West, for Turkmenbashi is the port on the Caspian from which any pipeline over to Azerbaijan would likely go from. In other words, it would more logically be the place to sign a new pro-Western Caspian Sea pipeline accord, not a deal with Russia !

Prospects for the alternative route from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and then on to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline depend on so many variables. What few people know in the West is that Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have very bad relations. Why, I can’t remember, doubtless they can’t either.

Azerbaijan is keen to play ball with the West, and has explicitly said it will help Europe overcome its energy dependence on Russia , and was backing the possible pipeline from Turkmenistan , but that the EU needed to be more assertive in Central Asia to make a difference.

Russia bought about 42 million cubic metres of Turkmen gas last year at a price of around $100 per 1000 m3, well below the $250 price for sales to Western Europe .

Meanwhile, since Jan 2006 when Russia and the Ukraine entered into brinksmanship over gas supplies, the EU has cast a very nervous eye towards Russia . “Energy security” has raced ahead in the political agendas of EU capitals. It is even having a knock-on effect on other issues like the EU constitution and a desire to find a common EU energy policy – born mainly out of a feeling that Russia has divided and ruled when it comes to negotiating energy deals with Western Europe .

This has been most particularly seen over the proposed construction of a direct pipeline between Russia and Germany under the Baltic, bypassing Poland in particular. Gerhard Schroder has been signed up to promote it, and claims it will make Europe safer. Many disagree, notably Poland and even the Swedish Defence Research Agency which concludes that it will divide Europe and increase dependence on Russia . Certainly there is a strong fear in Poland , Belarus and the Ukraine that the deal will enable Russia to turn off the gas supplies to them without effecting deliveries to their more important customers in Western Europe, especially Germany .

Energy is also at the heart of tensions between Russia and Lithuania , which are now also spilling out onto the EU level, over the Mazeikiu refinery and the suspension of oil supplies from Russia since July 2006, when the refinery was sold to a Polish rather than Russian bidder. It takes some doing to make friends between the Poles and the Lithuanians, but recent Russian moved seem to have done just that.

Ownership of energy assets is also a keen area on contention.

Often, fears of Russian energy dominance in the EU are expressed through hostility to Gazprom. Gazprom now has a stake in 16 of the 27 EU countries. Last month I was in Germany and there happened to be a football match on TV, 2. Bundesliga, I think, where one of the teams was sponsored by Gazprom, emblazoned on its shirts. Remarkable, I thought, until I saw who was sponsoring the other team – also Gazprom!

Russia , however, has a big problem with foreign ownership of its energy assets. It has bullied Shell into conceding control of the Sakhalin II project in the Far East, and blocked BP’s plan to develop a gas field in Eastern Siberia and kept foreign countries out of the development of the giant Shtokmen field in the Barents Sea . For the EU and the US , the energy sector is all about markets and rules; for Russia it is about state control.

Gazprom has signed a memorandum of understanding with Sonatrach in Algeria , which has unnerved many in Southern Europe as Algeria is Europe’s third-largest supplier of gas, after Russia and Norway .

But is this all overdone? Sir Rodric Braithwaite reminded us recently that the US also criticised Europe in the 1970s and 1980s for being too dependent on Russian gas. Sir Rodric thinks Russia is bearing a huge amount of risk in being so over dependent on energy exports. “Basing national power and prosperity on an inadequate monoculture is as risky as basing them on rockets in the Cold War.”

There are also real fears that Gazprom won’t be able to deliver. Its dependence on Turkmenistan makes many nervous. A study by UBS speculates that Turkmenistan may have signed contracts to deliver twice as much gas after 2009 than it can actually produce. The International Energy Agency (IEA) suspects that Russia won’t be able to deliver. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising, considering that huge, monolithic state-owned enterprises like Gazprom have generally been very ineffective in the last 30 years of European experience.

China and the FSU

Whist on energy, it is time to digress slightly and look at China . China’s impact in the FSU is primarily in Central Asia, but Sino-Russian relations have an importance in their own right, not least in their effect on Russian relations with the US and Europe. Many observers say that relations between China and Russia are blossoming. President Putin’s visit to Beijing in March 2006 was a spectacular success. 29 new agreements were signed. The 4,300 km border was finally agreed. Official trade has gone up six-fold since 2000, and extensive joint military exercises were held in 2005. the two countries seem closely aligned on the big issues of the day – Iraq , Iran , North Korea and support each other’s position in their own troubled backyards of Chechnya , Tibet and Taiwan .

Officials on both sides are describing it as a high point of Sino-Russian relations. When they say this, they are implicitly comparing it with the benchmark in the past, the so-called “unbreakable friendship” in the 1950s, between Stalin and Mao. There were tensions then, however, and tensions now, and these centre on Central Asia and the Russian Far East. Russia has been promising a new Siberian oil pipeline to China for some years now, but she is also pledging the same to Japan , seemingly playing off one against the other. In Central Asia, however, there is a new pipeline from Kazakhstan to China , the only such pipeline from the five Central Asian states that does not go through Russia . Turkmenistan and China both seem serious, meanwhile, about a gas pipeline, via Kazakhstan , with a target date of 2009 for completion. There is also, despite the newly agreed border, some possibility of demographic and border tensions in the future. Parts of the Russian Far East were ceded from China in the 19^th century under duress, whilst the demographics in North East Asia are troubling for the Russians. The population of the Russian Far East has declined from 8.1 million in 1991 to 6.7 million today. This is against some 110 millions in the three Chinese provinces bordering the Russian territories – that’s about 16 Chinese for every Russian either side of the Amur River . Little noticed outside of the region, China is even buying territory – literally – from Kyrghyzstan.

Besides energy, there are also considerable trade tensions in Central Asia between China and Russia in particular. The Shanghai Co-Operation organisation members – Russia, the 5 Central Asian states and China itself - worry that Chinese goods could flood their markets. China has been actively promoting the idea of free trade within the SCO, but is opposed by Russia and the Central Asian states.

So as the competition for involvement in export routes and access to the region’s energy resources continues, the intersecting interests of China and Russia are becoming a large part of the competition for influence in Central Asia in particular.

Military tensions

Military tensions between the powers in the FSU are not direct, but mainly involve the manoeuvring for NATO membership, the stationing of foreign forces and their proximity to other conflict zones, most especially Afghanistan .

Georgia has been the most keen to join NATO, fearing a renewed Russian expansionism. This has been its clear course since the rise to power in 2003 of Mikhail Saakashvili.

Unusually, Germany has recently begun to back Georgian membership of NATO. Foreign Minister, Franz-Walter Steinmaier visited the 3 South Caucasian republics in February 2007, and said that “thanks to the current set of reforms, Georgia has a real chance of becoming a NATO member.” This is significant, as Steinmaier marks a departure from the policies of the Schroder government.

Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU this year has meant that the EU has reached the Black Sea for the first time. Georgia has its own Black Sea coast.

Georgia has not only spoken of joining NATO, but has even speculated about being the site of parts of the US missile defence shield. Gela Bezhuashvili, the foreign minister said earlier this month: “If (the US ) came and told us they want to, we would certainly be willing to talk about it.” Lieutenant General Trey Obering, the head of the US Missile Defence Agency, has said the US would like to place a forward radar in the Caucasus, to track missiles coming from Iran .

The biggest area of tension is, however, over the siting of facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic . This has also led to tensions within the EU. Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, said it was unacceptable for NATO infrastructure to be “creeping up to the Russian border”.

Returning to Vladimir Putin’s speech in Munich , he described the missile shield as making it “inevitable” that this would trigger “another arms race.”

At heart in this dispute is a lack of trust – the Russians don’t seem to believe assertions that the system will be directed against incoming missiles from Iran , North Korea or other rogue states. Returning to my starting point about the biggest threat to the world coming from rogue states, terrorism and the ilk, I think it is a leap that Russia will need to make, to back the system, even to take part in it. But there still seems to be a view that it is somehow the “Son of Star Wars” and the system would fatally undermine the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine that kept the peace in the Cold War. What used to be primarily a bilateral Soviet-American nuclear arms race during the Cold War already looks like a multilateral competition with a new wave of proliferators, which might make a real nuclear war more possible.

Russian fears might also revolve around the US using the stationing of these expert forces in Poland and the Czech Republic as a precedent for larger US forces in the future. Or it could be part of a general Russian policy to undermine the US wherever it is possible, almost like the old Cold War days.

Whatever the reasons, the arguments – and especially the Russian threat to withdraw from the INF treaty that removed the Soviet SS20s from Eastern Europe - are reminiscent for many Europeans – the Germans in particular – of the rows in the 1980s, when thousands of Europeans marched and protested against the deployment of US medium range missiles in Western Europe .

The merits of NATO expansion further East are unclear for me – is NATO really going to defend Georgia ? Estonia is a different case, due to geography and history, but a pledge for the common defence of Georgia can surely only be a symbolic gesture, unless Turkey were to take a leading role, which seems very unlikely in the near or medium term. One suspects that US support for Georgia ’s NATO membership may be traded off with Russia in return for Russian help somewhere else, like tackling Iran .

Russian minorities in the former Soviet states

This is an issue that is little understood in the West.

Russian minorities can make up very large parts of the population of the FSU, ranging from around 29% in Latvia to what seems to be a small but dogged community in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan . None of these communities is growing, and the ones in Central Asia are probably shrinking the fastest. In many of the FSU republics, the Russian minority lives very peacefully with the majority hosts – in Kazakhstan , Russian is even the joint official language - but in some, particularly the Baltic States , the Russians have been seen as symbolising their previous colonial status.

Recent events in Estonia illustrate the effect the minority problem can have on bilateral and multilateral relations. You will be familiar with the row over the Russian war memorial. My own view is that Estonia acted very insensitively in not seeking to consult with Russia about the memorial. By way of comparison, France has been talking in recent years about building a new airport near Paris . It happens that the site includes a war cemetery of British dead from the First World War. As I recall, the airport is just a concept at the moment, but already the French authorities have quite rightly sought out the views of their British counterparts on how to re-site the graves or in some other way find a solution acceptable to all concerned. Estonia might have followed a similar course. Unfortunately for Russia, however, its completely disproportionate response to the Estonian move –parts of the Russian minority rioting in Tallinn, seemingly with he blessing of the Kremlin, and the disgraceful harassment of Estonian diplomats in Moscow lost Russia whatever sympathy it might have deserved over the affair, especially from its old World War Two allies like Britain.

Russia ’s smaller neighbours are very sensitive to any feeling of Russian bullying. Russia is understandably keen on the rights of its minority populations in these former territories. Moscow accuses these states – notably Georgia and the Baltics – of stirring up anti-Russian attitudes in Western Europe , but the problem is that Russian actions give them good cause to.

Russia does, however, have rights towards these minorities. They may not be as big as they would like, but if the EU is to acknowledge, for example, that Hungary has a role in the treatment of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania, then surely a similar approach is needed with Russian minorities in, say, Estonia? Nevertheless, these rights are limited, and would not allow the Russians to meddle in foreign and defence policies. There needs to be a robust response if it appears that Russia is using their minority as a pretext for Russian interference. This appears to have been the reaction of the EU to recent events in Estonia , where after the EU-Russia summit in Samara, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said “We had an occasion to say to our Russian partners that a difficulty for one member state is a difficulty for the whole European community.”

Democracy, Human Rights and Civil Society

Another area of tension is over democracy in the new Republics. This is most prominent in Ukraine , with its current difficulties. Many believe the West didn’t do enough to secure Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, e.g. by expediting the country’s bid to join the WTO, the EU and NATO. Brussels , struck by what it sees as expansion fatigue, has been determined to dampen any Ukrainian hopes for membership. But President Bush last month backed NATO membership for five countries, including Ukraine . Ukraine remains itself very divided on joining either the EU or NATO, and current polls suggest both moves would be rejected, if put to a referendum. There isn’t time here to examine the whole Ukrainian crisis, which seems to be chancing on a daily basis as I speak, but it is symptomatic of how tensions with Russia are exacerbated by differing approaches to democracy.

Of course, much of the tensions on these matters are in relation to democracy and civil society in Russia itself. Looking back to the 1990s, it seems that both Europe and the US assumed Russia would go in the direction of democracy, like Central and Eastern Europe . The EU in particular hoped that by working together with Russia and by offering aid, advice and best practice, it could help the country on its way. But in the last ten years or so, Russia has moved rather in the opposite direction. Indeed, a survey by the EBRD last month shows that most Russians are optimistic and happy, but only 20% want both democracy and a market economy. The US has been quicker than the EU to realise that new Russia was not wanting to copy the West. The rhetoric heard in Samara, even from Angela Merkel, is not dissimilar to some heard from the US and to some extent the UK since 2003 in particular. Nevertheless, I believe that this can and ultimately will change, that Russia can and will become fully democratic within my lifetime.

In Central Asia, the criticisms from the USA and the EU of human rights in general, and Uzbekistan after the events of Andijan in May 2005 in particular, have changed what was after 9/11 a more positive relationship. The relationship was changing anyway – no Central Asian country won any reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan , after all, and there was a perception that the rewards of backing the US were never realised. Later still, the threat of colour revolutions elsewhere in the former USSR led many central Asian regimes to reassess and decide to draw closer still to Russia and China, which asked no such questions about human rights and democratisation.

There are divisions within the EU on Central Asia . On the one hand, Germany wants to extend ties and go some way to overlooking human rights abuses. It is the German presidency that wants to develop the EU’s new central Asia strategy, to increase co-operation in areas like terrorism, energy and migration. On the other hand, are Britain and the Scandinavian countries, for whom the human rights records of countries like Uzbekistan are repellent, and have successfully opposed the lifting of EU sanctions proposed by Germany in November 2006 and March 2007.

Could and should Russia join the EU?

So what is to be done about Russian relations with the Western democracies? I wanted to venture a few rather unconnected ideas.

The first is this – that Russia should join the EU. This is almost impossible to conceive at the moment, not least because of expansion fatigue on the European side, and huge uncertainty about Russia ’s direction. Vladimir Putin was asked this question a few years back, and answered that such a move would be in neither the EU’s nor Russia’s interests. The only people to have advocated such a move in recent years have been Silvio Berlusconi and Gerhard Schroeder, with less certainty. Both are now out of office, but the idea will come back again, in my view.

Could Russia join? Obviously big changes would be needed in terms of both politics and economics, but these changes would be for the better. Although I am deeply critical of the EU, membership of it has been a positive reason for change in many countries in central and Eastern Europe, and the same could happen in Russia . Russia is a European country. Are we to say that it is the only country in Europe that cannot join the EU? It would be the only Slav country stopped from joining, the only country with a Slavonic tongue, the only Orthodox Christian country not to join and so on. Surely, Russia is more European than Turkey ? I also happen to favour that country joining too, and indeed the two joining together might dampen some fears associated with Turkey becoming the EU’s largest member in the future, and about the accession of a large number of Muslims. My own vision of Europe as a free trade area of politically independent and strong nation states could be made to accommodate Russia – indeed, Russia ’s presence may well enhance it.

Intriguing here is President Putin’s own speech on the 27^th April of this year, when he appeared to my view to endorse a free trade approach to relations: “Our partnership with the EU is becoming more and more constructive…we need a serious discussion involving politicians, businessmen and scientists on ways to achieve free movement of capital, goods, services and labour in Europe and Asia.” The President said he would start such discussions at the World Economic Forum in St Petersburg in June 2007.

Change needed in Russia ’s diplomacy

I think Russia needs to change the way it deals with its foreign policy. Russia often appears belligerent, suspicious and uncompromising – the very behaviour likely to cause the hostile environment it says it is trying to avoid.

From the Economist again last month – “ Russia ’s more recent foot dragging – in part to show America it could – over a sanctions resolution for Iran is no more helpful. Such zero-sum thinking, seeing any plus for America as a minus for Russia , hardly engenders the respect Mr Putin craves.”

The clumsy bullying of Estonia , the assassination of journalists, plutonium in London hotels and restaurants – none of these are helping to create a positive image of the country.

EU & US to engage more positively in the FSU

At the same time, the US and European countries need to engage more in this part of the World. A good example of this is developing a more positive attitude to an organisation like the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation. This is an argument well made by Oksana Antonenko at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. The SCO is becoming an important regional organisation, which is as yet under-developed. It combines Russia , 4 of the 5 Central Asian republics and China , with observer status for other Asian countries like India , Pakistan and Iran . The EU next month is launching its Central Asia strategy, and this should be part of it. It includes key elements for the EU like counter-terrorism and drugs. The SCO has been criticised for being anti-Western, but that is not how the SCO sees itself.

There is also a risk that Iran – a far bigger enemy of the West – engages further with the SCO to shift it into a more anti-Western focus. The SCO’s charter does specifically allow for co-operation with outside countries and bodies, including potentially the EU and the US . It is also particularly helpful that the secretary-general of the SCO for the next 2 years is from Kazakhstan , which is probably the most pro-Western of the 5 central Asian republics. Observer status has also been given to India and Mongolia , which are generally quite Western oriented. ASEAN, which has significant difficulties with China , has seen the benefits of co-operation with the SCO, and has signed a deal encompassing a wide range of areas, including economic co-operation, tourism, and energy.

The EU and the US should engage with the SCO on areas like economic development, border management, Afghanistan , energy and governance.

As I mentioned earlier, the West should also do more to recognise some Russian rights in regards to Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics.

Conclusions

I have five broad conclusions:

1. That the greatest global threat is from terrorism and proliferation, and that the US , the EU, Russia and China can and must work together on fighting them.
2. That Russia and the EU should consider Russian membership of the organisation. Russia should remain a strong and sovereign Russia , but should have the same rights as Germany , Poland and even Estonia to the big European market and the right to travel freely without hindrance.
3. That Russia deserves more respect from the West, and its role in foreign affairs is seriously undervalued. Britain is an important test case – all the talk in my country is about problems in trans-Atlantic relations, our country’s unusual relationship with the European Union, with your military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq and trouble spots like the Middle East and Iran . With packed foreign policy agendas, Russia rarely gets a look-in, unless it is for the wrong reasons, like the Litvinenko affair.
4. That nevertheless a large part of the poor relations at present is caused by Russia itself. Almost every observer believes that the Russian state is not entirely innocent in the Litvinenko affair. On Estonia , if the Russian minority really were so persecuted, why is there no flood of refugees in Narva? And so the list goes on.
5. And finally, relations between Russia on the one hand, and the US , the EU countries and China are extremely important. It is in the former Soviet republics that the key tests of these relationships are found, and whether we can work together.