(Orietta Moscatelli, head of the Italian Information Agency APCOM 'New Europe' project)
It’s interesting these days flying to Moscow: from the taxi driver to passport control, everybody wants to know “what is going on with the war”. They spot your ticket, they ask: “is it threatening Europe? Are we going to have gas shortages next winter?” People in Rome, as in other parts of Europe, I suppose, are confused about the Russian-Georgian conflict. A confusion reflecting the uneven, picky, divided approaches of European governments and media towards the events. A confusion that also suggests Moscow should work for an ‘image upgrade’, if we want the Russia-European story to have a happy ending. Because Mikheil Saakashvili has lost the war – and the trust of several European leaders as well – but has certainly won the media fight. And because after France, led by its determined and balanced Nicolas Sarkozy, the European rotating presidency will pass to the Czech Republic, a former USSR satellite with a completely different mood towards the newly found Russian power.
Last week, European Union nations called for an international probe to find out who was responsible for starting the war. This might help to answer the most frequently asked question in the West: “why did Russia attack Georgia”. When you point to the fact that actually Georgia started bombing South Ossetia, your average interlocutor’s face becomes puzzled: “Really?” Really. But if an international inquiry will help bring some light into the dynamics of the August war, in its eternal search for political and diplomatic balance Europe will come out with its traditional conclusions full of ‘but’ and ‘though’ and ‘nevertheless’. And this won’t radically change public perception of what has happened in the Caucaus while most Europeans were on holiday.
The fact that Saakashvili pushed the red button on August the 8th got lost in the complicated alchemic mix of international media coverage and political declaration. The conflict quickly became the story of a small country victim of an aggression, with Russia to blame. The often exaggerated claims from the Georgian side – such as “Russia has taken Gori” or “the Russians are bombing Tbilisi” and oil infrastructure – circulated for hours, unchecked, on 24-hour channels. A super-active Saakashvili, flanked by European and Georgian flags, was denouncing round the clock the Russian invasion, and blaming Europe for failing to prevent the war by denying Georgia the first step towards NATO, the Membership Action Plan. Meanwhile, no pictures from Tskhinvali, very difficult access to South Ossetia, reports for a while only from the Russian military: the PR contest was definitely lost by the Russian side.
Today Nicolas Sarkozy is in Moscow. Independently from the outcome of his mission as head of the rotating European presidency, his action since the start of the Caucasus war has shown to what extent a strong leadership can count in the eternal struggle to have the EU speaking with a single voice, succeeding in keeping the 27 countries’ positions on a ‘minimal’ common ground. This story of European balance might change soon, though, when the ‘heretical’ (in European terms) Czech Republic takes on the presidency, in a few months.
Though at odds with its internal political divisions, Prague has sided with the ‘hardliner group’ on how to handle relations with Russia. Poland and the Baltic States are the most active European countries in this sense, together with the ‘Old European’ Sweden and Britain. This team is not satisfied – and will not be for a while – with mere condemning Moscow, but pushes for a punitive approach. On the other side of the fence, France, Germany, Italy and Spain reject an uncompromising policy, call for dialogue and have probably exhausted their dose of trust in Saakashvili. This will influence their positions when sitting again at the NATO table, in December, to decide whether Georgia and Ukraine should be invited to NATO Membership Action Plan. U.S. vice president Dick Cheney has been advocating these days from Italy the need of early NATO membership for the two former Soviet Republics. Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini has indirectly answered that Europe counts as much as America when it comes to deciding about the Atlantic Alliance and that new memberships should not be “artificially” put on a faster or slower track.
A couple of weeks ago Pasos, a group of think tanks from the former communist bloc, sent out thousands of e-mails with a message to Brussels, hoping for – and maybe anticipating - a wind change with the next Czech EU presidency. Starting from next January, the six Czech months will inevitably focus on the ‘Eastern dimension’ of the European Union and will take into greater consideration such messages as the Pasos argument that the 27 countries “should make Georgia’s early membership of NATO a top priority and press for it”, as well as working for the settlement of the frozen conflicts in the Black Sea region. Europe has been warned and Russia as well: the first half of the next year might be more troublesome than it needs to be on the good, old, always divided continent. And Sweden will take care of the second half.
