Lisbon to Vladivostok Revisited: Europe’s Impending Rapprochement With Russia.
As a tumultuous decade comes to a close, a young Western head of state contemplates his country’s future and how best to navigate its place in an uncertain world. Looking to the East, he laments how relations have deteriorated with the world’s largest country, Russia, amid an outcry over its intervention in a neighboring country, formerly one of the republics of the Soviet Union. Amid suspicion from some in his own party and some of his country’s allies, in speeches and policy pronouncements he lays the groundwork for a diplomatic rapprochement with the Russian Federation.
Many in the U.S., particulary in the liberal camp of politics, forget that the above paragraph could perfectly describe Barack Obama as he came into the White House, launching his “reset button” of relations with Russia in 2009. Ten years later, those words apply now to French President Emmanuel Macron, who earlier this year called for a new beginning in Europe’s relationship with its neighbor to the east. He laid out his vision of rapprochement while hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin in the South of France, notably on the eve of the G7 summit (the G7 had been the G8 before Russia was expelled following its annexation of Crimea), perhaps most notably saying that he believes in a Europe that stretches “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”
This phrase is a direct echo of Putin’s pre-2014 rhetoric, before events in the Ukraine put relations between Russia and the West in a deep freeze. However, this vision owes just as much of its intellectual lineage to Paris as well as Moscow. In fact, it was French President Charles De Gaulle, in a 1959 speech, who spoke of a shared European community “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” Over the course of the following decade, this speech would serve as a guiding lodestar for De Gaulle as he pursued a foreign policy that distinctly cut its own path between the two camps of the Cold War, including detente with the Soviet Union and withdrawing France from NATO’s unified military command.
Russia’s leadership understands this well, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cited De Gaulle’s speech in a 2016 article about Russia’s relationship to Europe. Macron bringing this up is simultaneously an acknowledgement of at least part of Russia’s geopolitical vision as legitimate, while also a reminder of the intellectual debt they owe to France (and by extension, Europe itself) for this vision.
As far as European leaders go, Macron is likely to be a trend more than an outlier. Italy, historically one of the friendlier Western European countries towards Russia, is on board for a reset as well. Progress continues on the construction of Nord Stream 2, a critical gas pipeline that is set to deliver Russian gas to Germany and other European countries in greater quantities than ever before. The tiny Baltic state of Estonia, one of the European nations most hostile to Russia ever since it broke free of Soviet rule thirty years ago, has seen the start of a thaw in relations with Moscow. Even Ukraine itself completed a prisoner swap with Russia in September, raising hopes for a peaceful solution to the years-long conflict between Kiev and the Russia-backed separatist forces in its eastern regions.
Why are all of these European countries and leaders doing this? And why now? Predictably, the explanation is likely due to a combination of factors. It has been five years since both Europe and the West imposed the harshest economic sanctions on Russia since the Cold War, but it is clear that they have not had the desired outcome. Russia’s political leadership has if anything solidified its grip on power, even as its trade with Europe has decreased. In their place, it has increased its ties with China to unprecedented levels, constructing a new pipeline, the Power of Siberia, to deliver Russian gas to the world’s most populous nation. Furthermore, military cooperation between the two countries has deepened.
Furthermore, the uncertainty in U.S.- European relations has also increased since President Trump took office- he has repeatedly disparaged NATO and the E.U., but his administration has simultaneously increased tensions with Russia, withdrawing from the INF arms control treaty (which Macron’s government opposed) and attempting, unsuccessfully so far, to promote American natural gas as an alternative to the Russians, despite it being a worse deal economically for Europeans. And not only has Trump publicly backed Brexit, he has also championed the U.K. replacing it with a trans-Atlantic trade deal, which casts the U.S. as an economic rival to the E.U. rather than a partner.
Emmanuel Macron is a staunch believer in not just a Europe united through the E.U., but one that remains a preeminent player on the world stage. However, that vision cannot be realized if Europe is caught between an increasingly unpredictable and anti-European America on the one hand, and on the other hand a bloc between the world’s largest country by size and its largest by population. In order to maintain Europe’s preeminence, Macron likely feels that the only option is to incorporate the entire geographic continent- including Russia- back into the European sphere. It is perhaps the only issue on which he and Europe’s populists such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini and his own domestic political rival Marine Le Pen see eye to eye.
Macron surely has no illusions about the risks of a renewed period of openness to Russia, but he likely judges that their cold self-interest is, perversely, a more reliable option to make a deal with than the turbulent and unstable United States of today. In almost exactly one year from today, the United States will have an opportunity to change the political leadership that has engendered such an unfortunate situation with our European partners. The would-be Democratic nominees have all spoken of the need to renew relationships with our European allies, but it remains to be seen if they understand the underlying geopolitical factors at play. If one of them comes to occupy the White House, they will have to adapt quickly as these events are already in motion. If they don’t, then the road connecting Lisbon to Vladivostok may as well have been paved in Washington, D.C.
