Moldova: An Old Hot Potato in European Security

Moldovan elections have once more put the country on our mental maps - for a moment. The country deserves to stay there for a while longer. There is indeed reason to fear that Mr. Putin will now help put it higher on Europe's security agenda, as Judy Dempsey suggested today in the Moscow Times (December 4, 2014). In other words, as we shall see, the election results of November 30 reflect more than a passing cleavage between East and West.

The background is this. Part of Moldova has been a de-facto Russian exclave since 1991, when the Soviet Union died and the Post-Cold War Russian Federation was born. The Republic of Moldova arose along with it. In hindsight its modern history might look like a plan conceived by Mr. Putin, only he wasn't there at the time. A combination of chance and foresight allowed ex-soviet loyalists in Moldova, with open and clandestine support from Russia, to retain a military foothold there on the pretext of guarding a soviet-era munitions depot and armaments factory.

Already before Moldova's independence was fully established, the region along the east bank of the Dniester river declared its secession from Moldova and after a short and bloody war managed to solidify its claim. Transnistria has since been run by old soviet army veterans and emigré politicos in the rebel capital Tiraspol, although no other UN member has ever recognized them. To calm the simmering conflict, the OSCE authorized a peace-keeping force to be stationed in the breakaway republic. Somehow this mission ended up consisting only of Russian military personnel. Russia does not need to invade Moldova. It is already there.

Moldova's divided condition is a nearly perfect example of what a relentless campaign of politico-military meddling and influence-mongering by Russia can produce - and apparently is producing in many other places between the EU and Russia.*

But, to be fair, there is also a strong element of pro-Russian feeling even in the population on the western side. This can be seen in the simultaneous victory of a pro-Russian Socialist party (21%), and the likely majority coalition of three pro-EU parties (jointly 45%, yielding a slim majority in the parliament). The Communists (18%) are not unequivocally pro-Russian, but have for some years declared in favor of closer relations to the EU. The present outcome, divided as it is, is nevertheless not new, it is similar to most previous parliamentary elections in Moldova in which blocs have been hovering around a 50/50 split, with the Communist Party previously in a dominating role it has since lost. Presidential elections, indirect through the parliament, were effectively stalemated for nearly three years from 2009 by political infighting and procedural issues.

Two additional problems add to Moldova's woes: endemic corruption, and near-total dependence on gas from Russia. When gas prices are disputed with Russia, the supply is shut off - always in winter, of course. A combination of these two problems recently showed up when Moldova opened a new gas pipeline from Romania to add an alternative, non-Russian source of energy supply: There was no gas in the pipeline. Surprise!**

In formal terms the Republic of Moldova is an independent state, member of the United Nations, the OSCE and the WTO. Moldova signed an association agreement with the European Union in 2014. The question of candidacy for accession to the EU is not yet on the table, however, and Russia has issued a warning against such a move - in itself indicative of the kind of unashamed pressure the Kremlin applies to presumably independent countries.

Informally, Moldova's political status is therefore a bit ambiguous. The EU, on the other hand, has a considerable presence via bilateral agreements to provide assistance to the reconstruction of key sectors of Moldova's public administration.

Among the multifarious pieces and fragments of the old Soviet Union, Moldova fits a broader pattern: footholds, or toeholds, for Kremlin remote control or influence. Partly on legal grounds, partly on military grounds, partly based on popular affinities. Kaliningrad, annexed in 1944, was perhaps the first of this kind; the annexation of Crimea the most recent. Despite the formalities, Moldova was in reality never released from Russian ties since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Endless talks in various formats, involving at different times the EU, the OSCE, Russia and Ukraine, have tried to untangle the security knot of the armaments depots and the political knot of the divided affections of the population. In the process Moldova's Chisinau government has entered numerous agreements with the breakaway government, many brokered by Russia and Ukraine. These agreements have subsequently tied its hands.***

Only the EU has the potential to drag the country out of Putin's clutches. After the elections the Commission issued a conditionally supportive statement on December 1, 2014 (excerpt):

"... A new impetus to key reforms will be crucial for the Republic of Moldova´s political association and economic integration with the EU. The EU will remain a reliable partner supporting the Republic of Moldova´s reform endeavours and working towards unleashing the full benefits of the Association Agreement in the interest of all its citizens, wherever they live."

It also said:

"The EU remains committed to work with the future government towards a comprehensive, peaceful settlement of the Transnistrian conflict based on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova with a special status for Transnistria. ..."

The issues are recognized, and the slow, patient route towards a solution agreed to by all is pointed out. In Moldova, the EU vs Russia is pedagogy competing with the power of money and weapons.

The big question for the EU is whether the 28 members really want to put the resources and serious effort into it that the problem requires. When it comes to spheres of influence, Putin is serious. In Brussels, spheres of influence are known only as ancient history.

*Judy Dempsey, "The Western Balkans are Becoming Russia's New Playground", November 24, 2014, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=57301&reloadFlag=1.

**"Empty Pipeline Shows Difficulty Of Breaking Moldova's Gazprom Addiction." By Liliana Barbarosie and Robert Coalson. RFE-RL September 29, 2014.

*** For more on this, see: "Executive Summary: Moldova’s Transnistrian Conflict." Prepared by Olav F. Knudsen, Swedish Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) with assistance from Andris Spruds, Latvian Institute of International Affairs and Barbara Kunz, SIIA.

http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/transatlantic-topics/Articles/friends-of-belarus/moldova_exec_summ.pdf

The New Russia - to the Dniestr?

Ukraine - Europe's first taste of blood in 15 years, but the first in 70 years to also bring a whiff of hitlerian tactics, as Putin smuggles incognito soldiers into Ukraine and boasts of his ability to wipe out European capitals at will. We have seen ground war, indiscriminate slaughter, a civilian airliner downed with 300 passengers dead and local populations caught up in war-gamers' mayhem. But don't complain: Collateral damage has to be suffered for the higher ends of local "sovereignty". Further west, in European capitals, there is secret relief that so far the conflict remains mostly within the Slavic family.

Security is divisible, in case you thought otherwise, and despite the 1990 CSCE declaration of Paris ("Security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is intrinsically linked to that of every other.") Of course, Russia and Ukraine were not there, in Paris. The USSR was. And the Europeans and North Americans, little knowing what was about to happen in Yugoslavia, the latter also present in Paris. Divisibility, yes, of states. Here is much of the problem we are facing in Europe today. Scotland's decision to remain in the UK was a healthy sign, an example for Spain's Catalonia to follow. The cracks in the present state construction are readily visible.

Looking back, it was only a year after that Paris declaration that the Soviet Union was chopped up, divided into its multiple constituent parts. Ukraine became independent, as did Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia ... And Russia. At that unique moment a wisely conceived multilateral treaty could have created a modern, democratic multistate union with a solid central core. No such thing happened. Instead, the Commonwealth of Independent States was created to replace the Soviet Union, substituting the uncertainties of free choice in politically immature republics for the familiar dictation of Moscow. Cooperation was initiated in many policy areas between CIS members, but Ukraine kept defense to itself. To Moscow - where politicians still thought of themselves as the Center - the new system was slow, cumbersome and unpredictable. So, if you think the idea of reuniting the empire was a Putin invention, think again.

As far back as 1990, many observers thought it only logical that the Soviet Union had to collapse - "what goes up must come down"! - while others among us had the additional thought (and expressed it, to the annoyance of some): "What goes down must come up". In other words: To political leaders and their aspiring successors in the superpower that was the USSR, the horror of watching it tumble like a house of cards must in itself have created a strong motivation to rebuild it, in all its former glory. Now - in 2014 - we have seen that begin to happen - or something along those lines. Still, the basic assumption of the "post-cold war" settlement was that the new Russia would be content to be "new", and would fit within the strictures of the CSCE/OSCE.

Signs of trouble came early on. One was when Russian Foreign Minister Kozyrev in December 1992 gave a scary speech that sounded exactly like the old Soviet line (it was soon retracted, but - he said - meant as a warning of the dangers represented by the Russian opposition he was facing at home). Other signs followed. I discover notes from a discussion with Russian colleagues at the Carnegie Moscow Center in 1997, the year of opening talks for NATO enlargement into Eastern Europe, and of the Russia-NATO Founding Act cementing the future collaboration between the two sides. Again the question was, would Russia really fit within the framework of such a "new normal"? There were both hawkish and dovish voices to be heard, but all thought the chances for a durable friendly coexistence were slight. A key problem was seen to be the emotionality of the issues to Russia. The Baltic states were, of course, at the center of the attention. Compare that to Ukraine today: "The Baltics cannot be members of a military alliance which is closed to Russia." One called the idea of an expansion of NATO a "preplanned crisis". "When the expansion of NATO is a fact, all other Russian-Western relations will deteriorate to a cold peace, maybe even a cold war." Nevertheless, later on Russia saw both the Visegrad states and the Baltic states join NATO and kept its cool (mostly). With Ukraine, there will be no such patience.

The Russian project is empire. By now there is nothing new in saying so. But there is a need for those of us on the responding side to make that a policy assumption, not just something that can be waved aside. We Europeans need to have a reasoned and united approach. So far it has been evasive and reluctant. Sanctions, yes, but not too strict. Russia celebrates our dithering by pushing the limits - military aircraft intrusions abound, border controls become difficult, etc.

Worse, some think a Russian empire restored is the Russians' right. What they had in 1917 then becomes the norm. Such views are common in Germany. And who knows? My crude guess is that the end of this conflict for the foreseeable future will be a negotiated agreement between Russia and Ukraine that acknowledges the "legitimate transfer" of Crimea to Russia, that outlines a future "union" of the two countries with a joint defense organization, and that pledges an arms-length distance in the relations of Ukraine to Western organizations. Moldova and its Transnistrian district will have to be handled in a separate agreement. All told, a power-package deal masked as a fair agreement between equals. Tell me whether that is right or wrong.

If Putin has a bit of statesmanship in him that he has not shown so far, he still has a chance of constructing that multistate agreement I described above - but not at gunpoint.

Confidence-Building: Oops, There Goes Another Basic Principle!

Recent developments between Russia and the West not only undermine a set of values previously thought to have been shared by the two sides. (See my blog on Russia last March.) It is now increasingly clear that confidence-building - the chief principle supporting conflict management between the Soviet Union and the West since the early 1960s - is no longer effective between the two sides. The notion of confidence-building was not very familiar in strategic military thinking when it made its appearance, and it has only gained widespread adherence in Europe. Asian political leaders find it illogical.

The main assumption is that the two sides confronting each other in an international conflict basically want peace, but have to overcome the problem that they have no trust in each other. Distrust between national (ethnic) groups is often historically based and therefore deeply engrained. Accordingly, the opposing parties need help to alleviate their lack of trust, to build confidence.

Notice how different this is from the most common competing idea, namely that in serious conflict there is only one winner. The winner takes all. The loser is obliterated. In this conception, trust is warranted only in one's own side. You must not trust the other side. You must be alert and suspicious. Just think of all the action movies and thrillers that start from this principle.

Confidence-building is an uncertain alternative, though ethically preferable. According to confidence-building, we can only resolve conflict by helping the parties to break out of the pattern of distrust. Suspicion can be dealt with by ensuring full mutuality in dealings, by openness and transparency. To allay suspicion, there is the proof of experience. Let the parties try in small ways at first, then let them decide what to do based on what they have experienced. If they were cheated, they can pull out. If small steps prove successful, more important ones can follow.

These ideas were essential to the negotiations that led to the main arms control agreements of the Cold War, starting in the 1960s. When even arms statistics were kept secret by the Soviet side, the US side suggested using US data instead, even for Soviet weapons. The Soviets accepted this as an experiment. Ultimately this led to agreement, and subsequently to a long series of other agreements. Probably the most prominent of these were the INF Treaty (intermediate range nuclear forces) and the CFE Treaty (conventional forces in Europe). Unfortunately, they are no longer the cornerstones they used to be in European security. One (the CFE) has been suspended by Russia several years ago. The other is currently being questioned by the development of new Russian missiles.

Russia is not the only one to blame here. The US suspended the ABM (anti-ballistic missile) Treaty under President George W. Bush in 2001 in order to develop a more modern anti-missile shield, thus also breaking the confidence built over the old agreement. In various arms control matters, Russian leaders claim to have experienced that their concerns have not been fairly dealt with. Doubtless, part of this has to do with the fact that Russians are culturally less trusting than many Westerners. Still, it might have paid off for us all if NATO had been more attuned to the prickly Russians. Trust needs to be nurtured. Clearly, Russian leaders, and Mr. Putin not least, are more at ease with the certainties of suspicion, than with the uncertainties of trust.

At present, confidence-building is in bad shape. The OSCE, once Russia's favored club, is no longer respected by Russia. The Ukraine crisis demonstrates what is missing without the CFE Treaty.* Israel and the Palestinians seem to prefer the fighting and the blind killing to the confidence-building option once offered in the Oslo accords.

Perhaps the way confidence-building has been construed in the West has taken the "building" part of the concept a little too seriously. What we should discover is the need for confidence-maintenance and confidence-nurturing, instead of being satisfied to have completed a "building". The job is never finished.

*See the article by Elisabeth Brocking in The National Interest,
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/remember-the-cfe-treaty-10203

Russia's Moment

With the Sochi Olympics successfully out of the way, President Vladimir Putin's main worry may likely be Ukraine. And at this particular moment, on Sunday, February 23, 2014, Ukraine is without leadership. The President has disappeared, there is no police, just the Parliament and its Speaker, appointed temporarily to assume presidential authority. Masses are still gathered in the streets of Kiev, still suspicious of any claim to authority, even from Yulia Timoshenko, former prime minister and unsuccessful presidential candidate, just released from prison on their demand.


So what has this confusion got to do with Russia? Not much more than Russia's power position in the world. With Ukraine part of Russia for centuries, Russia was powerful. Without it, so much less. When the Soviet Union fell apart, and Ukraine found itself independent, the expectation was they would soon find their way together again. That did not happen. And without Ukraine, Russia sees itself as so much less than in their former united position. Ukraine, the cradle of Russia.


Estonian politicians I interviewed before their country was accepted to join NATO still said Russia was no threat to them - "not as long as Ukraine stays independent". Other Baltic leaders echoed this view. Without Ukraine, Russia is perhaps a great power, sort of. United with Ukraine, Russia will once more be a superpower. Or so they think.


Leaders of other leading powers think so, too. US policy on Ukraine has been consistently supportive, no matter what. EU policy has been lined up in a similar effort. Both see a tottering giant and struggle to keep it from collapse. Keeping Ukraine afloat is as much about keeping Russia weak as about securing Ukraine's freedom.


If Ukrainians can sort out their troubles and disagreements, chances are they will be okay. But those troubles are not likely to disappear quickly; they have been on display for years and have much to do with the divided nature of their country's identity, but also much to do with a rather chaos-prone political culture. United they stood in the Orange Revolution of 2004, divided they were, nevertheless, soon thereafter when their leaders fell out. United they have been standing in Freedom Square, Maidan, for months until their oppressor fell. Can they stand up to the vacuum that follows?


Russia's possibilities are legion. Deposed president Yanukovich will seek their backing. With Ukraine without leadership, military or manipulative steps need not be drastic to tip the scales once more in the other direction. Watch Russia during the coming weeks! And watch the game between the great powers as well.

My Anti-Russian Bias

Is Russia a bunch of good guys manipulated by a bad guy? Or is it more complicated than that? Let's start at the simple level. Why is it that I get this feeling of uneasiness whenever a Russian crosses my path? I tell myself it's silly, there is no rational reason for this, but it keeps recurring. Worse, too often my suspicions are confirmed. Let me give you an example.

In my neighborhood, many houses are just for vacation use, owners are absent for long periods, and neighbors often use their parking spaces. So it happened one day a year or two ago that a Russian-registered car, a nice new BMW X6 SUV, turns up in this absent neighbor's car port. “Good going”, I thought, “Russians doing well and establishing themselves in our area. - Still,” I thought, “what a long drive!” But after a couple of weeks, as I'd been walking my dog past the Russian car every day, it occurred to me I hadn't seen any Russians, and the car hadn't moved, it was just sitting there gathering dust, more by the day. A month goes by, two months, no change, just more dust. So finally I ask the German lady in the next house if she knows who owns the car. “Someone I know,” she says vaguely, and leaves me standing there. The next day the car is gone; I've never seen it since. (It may be added that, as far as I know, there are no Russians living in our neighborhood, only other expatriates and the odd Spaniard, including this surly lady friend of the BMW “owner's”. She now has an E-minus in my book.)

There has been a steady stream of emigrants from Russia in recent years. Not merely to the Greek-orthodox EU tax haven Cyprus (where they tend to bunch up), but also to the US and Canada and parts of Western Europe (Britain, France, Spain, and Greece among them). Of course, retirees seek the sun more than anything. And they are welcome in the south, bringing their money to the wobbling Mediterranean economies. But then there is this curious fact about them: most of the recent Russian arrivals seem to be young swingers, not exactly retirement age. And they are always well supplied with cash. A local businessman tells me he has more and more Russian customers - “--- they pay cash for everything, leafing their bills out of big wads of money,” he says. “And they gladly pay everything in advance.”

I am curious as to how it is that these young folks are not back home in Russia helping Mr. Putin run his (their?) country – or simply working at an ordinary job in the roaring raw materials economy of the beloved Motherland, instead of working at shipping money out of it. In the new post-Cold War international environment in which Russians are free to do things they never could before, they have a few favorite activities: foreign investment (often in somewhat odd activities); bank accounts abroad; freewheeling spending as they travel. Western financial commentators are drawn by the money flow to pay attention to such facts, less to asking where all this money comes from. I can only guess.

During a year I spent in Paris 1997-98 I always passed a Russian restaurant on my way to and from work, a small bistro elegantly decorated, attractively lit. During that year I never once saw a guest in that place, except for a Christmas party. Obviously it was part of a money-laundering scheme. Of course, this is just anecdotal. Yet, somehow I believe repeated random examples are to some extent indicative of a larger phenomenon. Russian business abroad is in no small measure about money-laundering.

Of course, I am biased. Because, if you lift your glance from the personal-anecdotal to a broader view of international politics, Russia is doing well, back in positions of power, rebuilding its influence after the soviet breakdown. In its own eyes, if not in those of others, Russia is playing the role of a great power the way Russians always wanted and felt entitled to. The once powerful soviet military – which turned out to be a potemkin village of rusting equipment - is now being restored to a more usable (Russian) version of its former glory. The export of raw materials is obviously what pays for this, but that extractive business is also what Putin is using to bait his trading partners into long-term relationships of supply and dependency.

Diplomacy is a central part of this offensive. In the old days, Soviet negotiators were hard to beat, brought up as chess players, able to sit for hours and hours without a break, and - according to a Norwegian Russia expert of that period - without saying a word either, if that was required. In Russian, he said, the expression of approval was “steel ass”.

Today, with international law less beholden to power plays, Russian negotiating skills and steel asses are less productive. Also, Putin's government has little patience for negotiations. The priority is for Russian gas and oil exports to get to their markets without delay, and especially without the delays of dealing with transit countries for pipelines or transshipment. Trouble-making intermediaries (such as, especially, Belarus) have been cut out without mercy. Old gas and oil pipelines from soviet times have been carefully rerouted to escape bothersome transit partners like Latvia, Belarus, Poland and Estonia. Oil shipments through Latvia were quickly done away with when the Latvians faced down angry Russian expat pensioners in Riga in 1997-98. By an incredibly rapid effort the Russians built several large new oil transshipment terminals near St Petersburg. After those started operating from 2001, the Latvians were left sitting there with nothing to show for their previous precious asset, the old soviet era oil terminal at Ventspils, once the biggest on the Baltic.

The subsequent project to build a gas pipeline along the seabed of the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany (“Nord Stream”) was a stroke of geopolitical genius – all the intermediaries, potentially 3-5 bothersome governments, were swept aside at one go. Who could object to such a convenient routing scheme? Of course, the neighbors did their best. When the Russians asked permission (as they legally had to) for their pipeline to cross the others' maritime exclusive economic zones, the neighbors pulled out all the stops, throwing up legal objections to the best of their ability. But if this “harassment” of the Russians had some success, it was only passing. Eventually the Russians tackled the obstacles, one by one. After that, when the pipeline had been built, there was no longer anything to protest.

Elsewhere, there are projects for Russian oil, and especially gas, moving both westward and eastward, in several gigantic projects. Gas exports to China have been under negotiation for a number of years, and the first major Russian oil pipeline to China has been operating since 2011. (China is not self-supplied with oil and gas.) To the west, the South Stream project towards southwest Europe is a copy of the Nord Stream pipeline, similarly stretching across the ocean floor, in this case the Black Sea. The project is a competitor to the simultaneous (non-Russian) Nabucco pipeline project, offering gas to Europe from Azerbaijan piped via Turkey and Bulgaria. In geopolitical perspective, Russia seeks to tie the EU to Russia for the long term, while Nabucco is designed to relieve the EU of such Russian dependency.

These projects show that Russian policymakers have learned something important from the failures of the Soviet system: Economic ties don't have to be kept in place by military means; in fact, things work much better without the clumsy tools of violence; economics has its own incentives and its own sanctions.

Still, behind all of these projects is the same old geopolitical thinking. Geopolitics is a Russian favorite worldview, an idea that makes sense to them, more than to most other nations, except perhaps the Chinese, who seem lately to have discovered it too. Power is linked to territorial control, in whatever way you can achieve it. Russia discovers, now that the receding Arctic ice is opening a new, shorter sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there are new geopolitical advantages becoming available to them all around. The Northern sea route drastically shortens the maritime connection between Europe and East Asia. Also, of necessity it passes close to the Russian coast all the way from Northern Norway to the Bering Strait, close enough to check or block transits on demand. The same goes for the Trans-Siberian Railway, now functioning as a major cargo link between east and west.

Of course, you and I would never think about trade in terms of control and blocking potential. But if you think the Russians don't, you should think again. The thing is, it's not just the blessed little father in the Kremlin who does all the geopolitical thinking and scheming. It's a major bureaucratic undertaking. And it's everyman's pipe dream. We are not talking democracy here, it's not as if the State Duma invents these schemes based on popular opinion of geopolicy. Rather, the public – minus the still vigorous anti-Putin opposition (bless them) – are the cheering spectators, loving every minute of the carousel ride Mr. Putin offers them.

What Russian democracy under Boris Yeltsin never achieved, a stable economy and regular payment of pensions, has been achieved by Vladimir Putin, not because Mr. Putin is more honest, but because he understands the risk of not performing on these scores. Besides, he has much more efficient control of the cleptocracy centered in the FSB that runs his regime than Mr. Yeltsin had of the cleptocracy that ran his.

So much for the country that many of us had high hopes for in 1990 or thereabouts. We have learned, not just from the Russian case but from others even more complex, the dangers of thinking a deep culture of governance can be turned around just by a snap of the fingers (say, an election), or just by helping them throw off existing fetters.

The deep culture of voluntary authoritarian government is well chained and anchored wherever it's found, and it is widely spread around the globe. Hence, my anti-Russian bias is misdirected; it is too narrow. But Russia is a heck of an example of things that are wrong in the world. So I suspect my anti-Russian bias - like Russia itself - won't change in the foreseeable future.