Timothy Snyder on the EU, the US and Russia

Earlier this month, at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, American historian Timothy Snyder hosted an international conference called “Thinking Together.” Intellectuals from the United States, Western Europe and Eastern Europe gave lectures and participated in small-group discussions over what the events in Ukraine mean for Europe and the rest of the world.

Excerpts from Timothy Snyder’s remarks:

For a long time, the United States and, most of all (President) Barack Obama, believed that Russia wouldn’t make any moves, that Europe was extremely stable and that China was the difficult country it had to deal with. Now Putin has changed that. The United States probably isn’t sufficiently involved at the moment, but the US government is interested in Europe again. This is a fundamental shift. Three things have changed internationally: the EU is being confronted with a fundamental threat for the first time, America once again values the transatlantic partnership, and Ukrainian identity has been strengthened. Anyone who thinks Putin is a strategic genius should take a look at what he’s achieved. If he had allowed things to continue as they had, America would gradually have drifted away from Europe, (former) President Viktor Yanukovych would have continued to ruin Ukraine and the Europeans would have kept doing what they were doing….

Putin is also attacking the EU in an unconventional way. He’s going to buy politicians. Take Bulgaria, for example, which Brussels views as a Trojan horse for Russia. A vast amount of money has flowed into the country, both clean and dirty. If Russia pulls out the money, Bulgaria will have serious problems. Russia also invests in Serbia, as well as other countries in the Balkans….

I think it’s important for us to understand what Russia is currently capable of doing. The country has a lot of money from the sale of its natural gas. It might be a different story in 10 years, and Putin knows that. He can still exert this influence today, and in that sense his game is actually reasonable. He also isn’t under the illusion that Russia could become bigger than the EU. Its economic output is only roughly comparable to that of France. But Russia can win by weakening the EU. Destroying is always easier than building. And Europe knows how difficult it was to construct this entity….

We have to acknowledge that Russia has altered the status quo. In my opinion, there is now only one alternative: either the Americans and Europeans reconcile, and finally forget about their dispute over the disastrous Iraq war and set aside their differences over the Snowden affair, and the EU invests a lot of money into an energy policy based on renewable energy. Or Europeans and Americans drift apart and the EU falls apart, so that each country has to see to its own energy supply. Then Russia can continue selling oil and gas, to Europe and to China, and will become more powerful than it is today. But we won’t be getting the old status quo back.

Source: Spiegel On Line International