Transatlantic Politics

So Biden is on tour again in Eastern Europe, in a bid to soothe the pain and humiliation brought about to Poland by the not-very-diplomatic way to announce that the promised missile defense shield will be scrapped, precisely on the day when Poles were commemorating 60 years since the Soviet attack on their soil. A bit like Pearl Harbour to the Americans, really.

True, the man seems genuinely attached to the pleople of the former Soviet bloc, and holds mesmerizing speeches in  Poland, Romania and Czech Republic, just the way he did a couple of months ago in Ukraine and Georgia.

But one can’t get rid of the feeling that Biden is used as a consolation prize, as a nice grandpa who will soothe your parents scolded you or - even worse - completely ignore you. Or, to be more precise, Mother Russia and Uncle Sam. Who are now feeling very cosy to each other. And despite all the reassurances of good ol’ Joe, Eastern Europenans are stil a bit jittery when it comes to the Big Bear.

When Biden talks to Romanians about their 20-year anniversary of the fall of Communism, which was the only bloody revolution among peaceful transitions in the region, when he says he brought his daughter and grand-daughter along "to see and understand first-hand the story of this region and of this continent", people are of course impressed. But some of them wonder.. what does this mean, what does it mean that it is this nice old man who is the Vice-President of the US, not the President, who comes here and tells us this. Is it because Obama doesn’t care much for history? Or is it because his priorities are now to get friends with Russia again? Or is it simply that he doens’t really connect with Europeans? Or maybe all of the above..

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So Biden has made quite an impact with his "hit the reset button" with Russia remark at the Munich security conference over the week-end. But this comes as bad news for Eastern European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania - hailed as "special partners" by the previous Bush administration. Not to mention Georgia and Ukraine.

On the planned missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Biden said the US would "continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven to work and cost effective."

"We will do so in consultation with our NATO allies and Russia."

Well, since Russia has consistantly opposed this project and with Germany and France not very keen on the project either, chances are pretty slim that the shield is ever going to be installed, despite serious political damages to the Eastern European governments involved, after they put their credibility at stake with the Bush-backed plan.

Here’s some background from the Wall Street Journal:

In advance of Mr. Biden’s speech, White House aides had said the vice president would announce that the U.S. was prepared to reconsider plans for a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe. Moscow has long opposed such plans. Mr. Biden’s actual remarks appeared vaguer. A senior administration official traveling with Mr. Biden said the administration toned down the language because of unease in Washington that Moscow was behind last week’s proposed eviction of the U.S. from an air base in Kyrgyzstan used to support the military in Afghanistan.

So the Obama administration would have no problem in scrapping the missile defense shield and it is probably a matter of months until they will do so, the moment Moscow signals some opening.

Already the Russian envoys reacted warmly to Biden’s statements.

"The U.S. sent a very strong signal, and the signal was heard," Russian foreign minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters. "It’s obvious the new U.S. administration has a very strong desire to change, and we’re ready to cooperate with this administration on all levels."

Sad day for Eastern Europe. A new entente between big European countries - France, Germany, UK - Russia and the US could only come at the expense of Eastern Europe, still seen by Moscow as its own backyard.

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Romania’s top anti-corruption prosecutor Daniel Morar was awarded  as "European inspiration of the year" in an Oscar-like ceremony on Tuesday night. The awards are a must to the Brussels "creme de la creme", although Mr Morar could not attend himself, but was represented by his spokeswoman.

The European recognition comes at a crucial time for the beleaguered prosecutor, whose mandate expired in August and was temporarily prolongued until the end of December. He has few supporters among the local politicians, who have gathered against him and his highly performing unit which has investigated and prosecuted high level corruption for the first time since the fall of Communism.

Corruption is still a major problem in Romania and it was thanks to Mr Morar and a reformist justice minister, Monica Macovei - ousted just three months after the country joined the EU and her presence in the government was no longer seen as necessary to convince Brussels that the Romanian politicians were committed to fight corruption.

Also highly bullied at home, Ms Macovei recently received the "Woman of Europe" award from the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, who expressed his deepest admiration for the reforms and fight against corruption she led at home, urging Europeans to follow her example.

How many more recognitions from abroad must come for the Romanian politicians to finally get it? Their impunity is an offence to the rule of law and respect for citizens. Yet some of the blame has to go also on the Romanians’ high tolerance for corruption. Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, charged with several counts of corruption, has just been elected as MP on Sunday, in the new direct voting system.

But this is also why reformists and anti-corruption fighters should be promoted and let to do their work, not bullied and sacked. They should be able to set an example and lead their country forward. Mr Morar should stay on as a top prosecutor and Ms Macovei maybe return as a justice minister in the new cabinet to be formed next month.

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"A dream president", "what a great victory for democracy", "the hope we needed" - were some of the lines you could hear on the night of Nov. 4th in Brussels, where over 2000 expats and internationals partied in a posh hotel as the results from overseas were coming in.

Great expectations, and false ones, as some might argue, meaning that the disappointment is set to hit Europe accordingly.

Just a recent example of this utopian approach: A talk show  on the Belgian national tv earlier today was entitled "Will president Obama change the world?" On the show were US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker (speaking in great French, by the way) and Belgian politicians.

From the debate it became pretty clear that the moment president Obama will "pick up the phone and call up" European leaders to ask them to commit more troops to Afghanistan, the EU-Obama honey moon will end.

In Belgium "the army must first and foremost seek peace", as one Socialist lady senator put it. Quite some ally there for the US…

"Diplomacy first", meaning "talking to the Talibans" was the idea advocated by former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel, currently an EU commissioner for development and humanitarian. Yet Mr Michel would back a decision of sending more troops to Afghanistan if the decision was taken within NATO after a "real dialogue" of the Europeans with the US, he said, acclaiming that the "leadership" of the US in world affairs was over and "multilateralism" was dawning again.

Interesting were also the remarks on EU-Russia and US-Russia relations. The announcement of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that he would deploy short-range missiles in Kaliningrad - a Russian enclave on the shores of the Baltic Sea squeezed between Poland and Lithuania - was presented by the host of the talk show as just an "odd way to congratulate the new US president on November 5th".

Mr Michel stressed that for the EU it’s "a matter of priority" to resume talks with Russia - suspended after the Georgian war - since this was the "bigger and very important neighbor" of Europe. As to the fears of the Baltic states and Poland - these were only "fuelled" by the outgoing Bush administration and Barack Obama would certainly adopt a more "flexible" attitude towards Russia, he argued.

The Green senator went even further, claiming that the Bush administration had played Eastern and Western Europe against each-other (not Russia!!!) and that all this would soon be over once president Obama takes over.

The Belgian politicians seemed also already disappointed with Mr Obama’s nuanced stance on Iran lately and still hoped he would sit down and talk to the mullahs and Ahmadinejad, as diplomacy was, in their view, the only solution to stop Tehran from aquiring nuclear bombs. And here, again, Mr Michel said the EU should "speak on one voice" and show more initiative.

The hypocrisy of EU "initiative" and "soft power" as opposed to the alleged blunt "hard power of the US" can be seen in Georgia: Russia has basically taken over for good the two breakaway provinces - although the war was only about one of them - has massed up thousands of troops on these territories and meanwhile everybody in Western Europe is happy to go back to business as usual with the Kremlin. Lithuania’s opposition to this move is expected to be silenced tomorrow at a meeting of the EU foreign affairs meeting, ahead of an EU-Russia summit this Thursday.

Rembember that op-ed in the WSJ entitled  "Stop! or we’ll say stop again!"? This is how the EU acts towards Russia. And this is how it acts towards Iran as well.

Luckily, president Obama will not take onboard his team day-dreaming, tree-hugging European politicians. And he should not fear to disappoint them.

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Liberal politicians are the worst kind everywhere in the world. With parliamentary elections coming up on November 30, Romanian Liberal Party - currently in government - is flirting with the idea to get a lucrative deal with Gazprom and a quick gain, even if it means to sacrifice the country’s energy independance on the long run.

Liberal minister of economy and finances, Varujan Vosganian said on Thursday that Romania is open to South Stream, a Gasprom pipeline project designed to discourage European attempts to build a pipeline known as Nabucco, that would bring Caspian gas directly to the EU market via Turkey, thus bypassing Russia.

Romania has been the last country involved in Nabucco so far resisting Russian pressure to sign up for South Stream. Yet a Gazprom delegation is expected in Bucharest next week, amidst various media reports that the Russian monopoly is about to offer Romania to join its project.

While the Romanian president Traian Basescu still declares his backing for Nabucco and calls upon European leaders to speed up the process, the liberal government it is at odds with signals "openness" towards Gazprom, with the Ministry of foreign affairs mediating a meeting last week in Moscow between Romanian gas officials and the Russian monopoly.

Now, the economy minister’s wording suggest that gas politics might shape up the electoral debate in the run up to the elections.

The social-democratic opposition already called upon the Government to hold "direct talks" with Moscow in order to get a better gas price and dismissed the president’s "deep freeze" policy towards the Kremlin which was "disastrous" and only drew prices up.

Yet it is at least naive to think that direct talks with the Russian giant will put Romania in a better position. The debate is false, because unlike Hungary and Bulgaria, both Nabucco countries which signed up for South Stream as well because they are  over 85% dependent on Russian gas, Romania imports only a third of its total gas consumption from Gazprom, the rest being produced internally.

As Vladimir Socor from the Jamestown Foundation puts it, Romania is "only the latest addition to Gazprom’s list of candidate countries for the proposed South Stream."

The offer to Romania appears designed to increase Russia’s leverage vis-à-vis countries that have already signed up for South Stream and are now negotiating the commercial and financial terms separately with Gazprom. The Russians propose to include more countries in South Stream than the pipeline could possibly reach. By the same token, Russia offers to include more countries than it could possibly supply from Russian gas reserves in the years ahead.

Gazprom is tempting the maximum possible number of countries, playing them off against each other with the prospect of individual package deals around South Stream. Package deals would include supply contracts, transit revenue, and storage sites that could confer on this or that recipient country the coveted status of a gas-trading “hub.” Mostly aware of Gazprom’s limited gas export potential in the years ahead, the countries are vying to wrap up supply contracts ahead of their neighbors and to make the most out of any possible transit and storage opportunities.

For The Economist, all this works only because the European Union "is asleep on the job".

Bizarrely, Europe’s leaders publicly maintain that the two pipelines are not competitors. They have given the task of promoting Nabucco to a retired Dutch politician who has not visited the most important countries in the project recently (or in some cases even at all).

The main reason for the lack of private-sector interest is lack of gas. The big reserves are in Turkmenistan, but Russia wants them too. Securing them for Nabucco would mean a huge, concerted diplomatic push from the EU and from America. It would also require the building of a Transcaspian gas pipeline.

Yet as long as EU countries still give in to the temptation of bilateral deals with Russia, Nabucco, though twice cheaper than South Stream, has increasingly less chances to be completed.

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