Europe is too divided to resist the new evil empire
The common resolve of the West helped to bring down the USSR. There is no unity over Russia now
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europeans will celebrate the anniversary of that seismic event in the knowledge that it did not, in fact, mark the end of the Kremlin’s malign influence over their lives.
I remember vividly the scenes of jubilation I witnessed back in 1989 when I travelled the length of the Iron Curtain – from the grandeur of Trieste in the Adriatic to the run-down port of Stettin in the Baltic – as the Soviet era met its inglorious end.
In Hungary, where the desire for democracy had prompted Moscow’s brutal suppression of the 1956 uprising, I found peasant women toasting Moscow’s demise by drinking pints of foaming local beer with their breakfast. A few days later, I attended a rally in Bratislava, in what was then Czechoslovakia, to witness the wild scenes of celebration that erupted as Alexander Dubcek, the inspiration of the anti-soviet Prague Spring in 1968, made his first public appearance in more than two decades.
Throughout the entire length of the 4,300-mile Soviet border, there was a palpable sense of relief that, finally, millions of Europeans were free to live their lives without being subjected to intimidation by the Kremlin.
It is a sentiment, I suspect, that will be noticeably absent as the continent marks the destruction of the Berlin Wall this coming weekend. Instead, the concern uppermost in the minds of many Europeans will be that, three decades after Moscow suffered the humiliation of losing its empire, the Kremlin today poses just as much of a threat to their wellbeing as it did at the height of the Soviet Union.
Relations between Russia and the West may no longer constitute the open hostility that characterised the Cold War, but they are not far off. As Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who oversaw the collapse of the Iron Curtain, remarked in a BBC interview earlier this week: “It’s a cooled-down one, but it’s a war. The atmosphere is all wrong.” Of particular concern for Mr Gorbachev is the prospect of a new arms race between Russia and the West that threatens the entire planet. “Nuclear weapons must be destroyed. This way we will be saving ourselves and the planet.”
Mr Gorbachev was reticent about explaining who was responsible for creating this alarming state of affairs, no doubt because he did not want to antagonise Vladimir Putin, whose insistence on developing a new generation of ballistic missiles has caused the crisis. Nato says the missiles are a blatant contravention of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the agreement signed between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War to reduce their respective nuclear arsenals. This has prompted the Trump administration to withdraw from the treaty in protest.
Nor is Mr Putin’s appetite for confronting the West confined to the traditional spheres of Cold War rivalry. His tenure at the Kremlin has seen the Russian military benefit from a significant upgrade in its capabilities, while Russian spy agencies are embracing a new range of technologies to unsettle their opponents, including cyber attacks and social media. Claims that Moscow was behind the murder of a former Chechen insurgent in Berlin in September suggest that the Kremlin is not averse to resorting to Cold War-era tactics, either.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Russia rediscovering its appetite for causing mischief is that, unlike during the Cold War, the West appears singularly ill-prepared to offer a robust defence.
One of the key factors in the West’s ultimate triumph over the Soviet Union was its ability to present a united front. Today the enemy remains the same, but it can hardly be said that the US and its European allies have a similar approach to dealing with Mr Putin.
In Washington, US President Donald Trump, whose own dealings with Russia have been under intense scrutiny, seems intent on pursuing an isolationist policy, one that, in relation to his involvement in Syria, has handed Moscow the advantage. Moreover, there are concerns that Mr Trump still believes he can forge an alliance with Mr Putin to counter the growing influence of China.
Europe, meanwhile, remains bitterly divided over how best to handle Mr Putin. Germany, for example, appears more interested in securing the completion of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to meet its future energy needs than making adequate provision for European defence.
Meanwhile, the ability of Britain, which under Margaret Thatcher played a leading role in defeating the Soviet Union, to be in the forefront of European efforts to keep the Russians in check has been diminished by the Brexit saga – so much so that the Government even seems reluctant to publish the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russian meddling in the UK.
For the Western alliance, therefore, the Berlin Wall anniversary is hardly a cause for celebration. For Mr Putin, by contrast, it marks a moment when the Kremlin’s standing could once more be in the ascendant.