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Notes for a Speech in Baku to the Russia-West Relations

English Pages, 29. 4. 2015

Thank you for inviting me to attend the 3^rd Baku Forum and for including me in this panel. I find its topic highly relevant. With the exception of the present Middle East problem, so vividly demonstrated by the sudden appearance of the Islamic state and all its atrocities, the deteriorating West-East or, perhaps, Western Europe and America and Russia relations represent the most dangerous development we are confronted with just now, especially we in Central and Eastern Europe.

We are, and we must be, worried. For many reasons. To interpret it correctly, we should start with the undisputable fact that the relations between Russia and the West should not be reduced to the current Ukraine crisis. We should take a long-term perspective. We shouldn´t lose it by paying too much attention to daily political news and media headlines.

The rational interpretation requires getting rid of Cold War prejudices and accepting the post-1989 realities in our part of the world. We should also stop fighting the old, no longer existent wars. I am very frustrated to see that many, otherwise intelligent and thoughtful, people are victims of this fallacy.

The present-day, fully artificial and not authentically developed conflict between the West and Russia is not a confrontation of two fundamentally distinct political and socioeconomic systems as it used to be in the Soviet Union era. It doesn´t mean that there are no differences in the efficiency of the Russian economic system and of the Western European or American one but from the point of view of the economic systems, Russia is part of the West. Its economic system is, of course, very far from a textbook model of a market economy, but Europe is very far from it as well. Not only that. Even though many of us have a different vision of an efficient, just and democratic political system than the one we see in Russia now, even politically Russia is neither China nor Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

Russia is a traditional European power. It was for centuries part of the European history.  We should be happy that its 70-year-long communist tragedy is over. It would be a mistake to push Russia out of Europe just now. Russia deserves to have a chance to define its new history, to find its own way and to be an active player on the international scene.

The fall of communism and of Soviet Union went easier than anybody expected but the problems repressed and partly hidden in the silence of the communist era remained to these days. They create new tensions, new hostilities, new feelings of mistrust, new crises. Problems in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Moldova and now especially in Ukraine are here and must be addressed in a rational way.

They are not the consequence of a Russia-West conflict and can´t be solved by the increasingly hostile confrontation between the West and Russia. It is surprising that some people pretend that this is the case. I consider the tragic situation in Ukraine a Ukrainian problem, not a Ukraine-Russia problem, and definitely not a West-Russia problem.

The current crisis in Ukraine has been home-made. It is the consequence of the evident failure of this country to make successful transition from communism to the system of freedom, pluralistic parliamentary democracy and market economy, from passive role in Soviet imperium to its own statehood and sovereignty.

Ukraine failed in this respect more than almost any other Central and East European country. Partly due to the fact that it was artificially created, it was and is deeply divided, and it used to have and had even before November 2013 very weak internal coherence.

On the other hand, the current Ukrainian crisis turned into a problem heavily influenced if not dominantly masterminded from abroad. The Ukrainians have been trapped in a situation where they are only instrumental and in many respects passive objects.

I always had the unpleasant feeling that to force Ukraine into making a premature decision whether the country belongs to the West or to the East is a certain and guaranteed way how to destroy it. I formulated it more than a year ago, in February 2014, quite resolutely: “Giving Ukraine a choice between the East and the West means destroying it… It leads the country into an insolvable conflict that cannot have but a tragic ending.” This is exactly what we see developing in front of our eyes right now.

To my great disappointment, the dominant political forces in Ukraine keep relying on some future external intervention and are not searching for an internal political solution. They haven’t come up with any compromise proposal they could offer to the people of the Eastern part of their country to win their confidence. They rely on repression and on unrealistic expectations of Western economic and military aid. It will not come.

An important part of the current East-West problem is connected with the situation in the West, with the state of the West, with its loss of identity, with its cultural and civilizational demise, with its economic stagnation. The West and especially Europe should face up to the unpleasant fact that the new era in the international relations is heavily influenced by the growing weakness of Europe. The whole continent is more and more endangered by the non-efficient and freedom and democracy weakening form of European integration and by the political, economic and social model behind it. (More about it in my recent speech in Milano: “Looking at Europe and Its Stagnating Economy from Prague”, https://www.klaus.cz/clanky/3716.)

In spite of all the existing problems we see around us, we shouldn´t lose hope. We see some positive tendencies as well. The softening of relations between Cuba and the United States, some changes in the attitudes between the international community and Iran, etc. should serve as an inspiration for the relations between the West and Russia as well.

Václav Klaus, Speech at the panel “Future of Russia-West Relations”, Forum Baku 2015 “Building Trust in Wider Europe”, Baku, April 28, 2015.