This is a very good question i feel, and one that Alexandros and myself have decided to attempt to answer. Not entirely successfully i feel, and anyway the issue still is for those Russkies to decide what game they are playing. But if the EU were to start figuring stuff out, we would be in a good spot. For those who don’t know the EU Observer, it is a respectable website that has remarkable penetration into the Brussels community.
http://euobserver.com/9/26073
[Comment] What does Europe want from Russia?
30.04.2008 – 17:48 CET | By Alexandros Petersen and Raffaello Pantucci
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – In the aftermath of the divisive NATO summit in Bucharest, there is a growing sense in the European policy community that for the continent to effectively deal with its biggest neighbour, everyone needs to sing from the same song sheet. However, there is little clarity about the words of the song – we know we should be unified on the subject, but we do not seem to know what to do.
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I have co-written a couple of pieces for the Moscow Times (http://www.moscowtimes.ru/indexes/01.html) with my friend Alexandros Petersen (whose title has oscilated somewhat). Unfortunately, they charge to see them, so they are reproduced below. Both were also re-treaded in the St Petersburg Times. The most recent was written at around the time of the G8 Summit and chided Russia for fixating on the U.S. when their main issue should be their relations with the EU, and the older one instead examines the EU’s growing role in Eurasia, specifically Central Asia – a pet fixation of mine.
Bypassing Europe is a Mistake
June 6, 2007
Here are a couple of op-eds that i wrote for the European Voice (http://www.europeanvoice.com/) an off-shoot of the Economist. Can’t link to them directly, as they have a charge on their website. The most recent looks at China’s march on Africa while the EU fiddles around, and the second calls for the Europeans to come together with some semblance of a coherence strategy on Russia.
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