The EU can prove more useful in cooperation with Russia

Alexandre Adler, a well-known French historian and columnist at Le Figaro and France Culture, for the first time participates in the Valdai Club Summit and shares his thoughts on the topics discussed this year.

RIA Novosti: It's become quiet fashionable today to talk about the return of the Cold War, and to ask whether it's over or not. First, what is your answer to this question? And second, do you think it brings anything to the better understanding of the Russia and the West relationship?

Alexandre Adler:  At least I see one useful thing in this question: as soon as one thinks seriously about it, we understand how far we've gone from the Cold War and how distant the concept and the attitudes of that period are now.  We've inherited a world far better in terms of liberty and autonomy for subjects, market economy has developed, wealth also has come by bounds, not always definitive but at least something's being achieved. On the other hand during the Cold War some stability was achieved, when today more instability is being created in the system, both economic and political. If we consider the former Soviet Union, the crisis there is far from over and this was unthinkable twenty years ago. So sometimes these realities create a sort of nostalgia for the Cold War, but of course this nostalgia is ill conceived. We have progressed enormously in terms of mutual understanding, cooperation and even creating wealth. So I think after all it's good to be without a Cold War.

RIA Novosti: What is your assessment of the issue of new challenges affecting Russia and the West relations (climate, energy, terrorism, etc)? In which of them the cooperation is the most crucial, and in what concrete manner Russia could cooperate with the West or the West could cooperate with Russia on them?

Alexandre Adler: Well, my answer will be very simple. Because we have left the Cold War, there's no such a thing as the West. There's America, there's Europe, they have of course common values and they may agree on some items, on some they are very different. Take for example cooperation with Russia. For Europeans cooperation with Russia is vital, because gas and oil are there and necessary for our development. And conversely the Russians are interested in our industrial know how and in exchange of goods of various sorts. So there's a growing mounting cooperation between Western Europe and Russia. No such thing can be said about United States. They have no needs of gas or oil, they have no cooperation with Russia, they have just a strategic relation. We have a much more intimate one. That is a reason I think why in the near future Europe and Russia will be confronted with the necessity of establishing an institutional cooperation of some sort that is between the European Union and perhaps the Confederation of Independent states that could be rewarmed. But something of a sort must occur. Then of course there're global problems like climate change where of course cooperation is necessary on a wider scale. And it's obvious we should help Russia get away with its coal production or make it cleaner. Whereas we should probably use more of Russian forests to fight CO2 emissions. For instance it's been understood that Brazilians should keep equatorial forests. But taiga is also very useful to withstand the increasing gazes in the atmosphere. We can also fear tundra foundering and in that case the only solution to is to plant more trees. That could be a European undertaking, not only a Russian one.

RIA Novosti: As far as a nuclear reset in Russia-US relations is concerned, do you think a solution can be found in the near future between two countries?

Alexandre Adler:  Absolutely. I think technically it's easy to solve. First of all because the nuclear deployments are things of the past. It has to be managed. There're risks of course of various sorts that can be compensated by reducing the number of rockets, but basically it's not a big problem. If Russia and United States meet at the table together, they will find, they have to find an agreement on the numbers, but basically we can reduce arsenals on both sides. Although this being said Russia is a land country with a lot of borders, and thus needs to keep more arsenal than the United States. Obviously the United States aren't fighting with nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. When you have fights like you have in Afghanistan and Iraq, you need money for conventional forces not for nuclear material which is completely useless.  I think the democratic administration is probably eager to arrive at a symbolic agreement with Russians which could also spear money. Then of course the second delicate issue is the one of what goes after the Americans have denounced the ABM treaty. Are we going to have space defense on a national basis, or could we envisage, as Condi Rice was saying in the very beginning of the Bush administration, that a space defense could be conceived as a mutual undertaking that is sharing technologies with Russia, perhaps even have a few experimental attempts at common space defense like the one Russia proposed in Azerbaijan as a replacement for the Polish Czech deployments.  This is still on the table. And I think the Europeans themselves would be interested in participating in such a program. And it makes a lot of sense. Of course the first proposal of that sort was made by Reagan in Reykjavik now more than 25 years ago. It's still valid. There's no reason why technologies that would prevent let's say unknown enemies to deploy and use dangerous weapons could not be developed in a cooperation between Russia, United States and Europe.

RIA Novosti: How is the Russia's proposal on a new European security architecture perceived in Europe? How do you see possible developments of this initiative in the near future?

Alexandre Adler: For the time being Europeans don't perceive it, we don't understand exactly the importance of all this. Besides we have disappointing experience with the OSCE, organization which was meant to replace NATO and the Warsaw pact with a sort of mutual assembly of all participants. It mounts next to nothing. So the problem is that we should not build an institution which will become useless. We should have a process of mutual understanding and consultation that would allow everyone to be represented and prevent crisis of the kind we had in Georgia, long before they arrive. That of course entails a very serious mechanism and I think that before hastening that issue we should look between Europeans what can be done for regional conflicts. And from then on we could build something. I think the Europeans have their word to say, because I'm hostile to a structure that would be dominated by the United States. During the Georgian crisis Nicholas Sarkozy behaved in a way that proved useful. I think in the future the European Union can prove even more useful in the dialog with Russia.


Interview with Alexandra Kamenskaya, RIA Novosti France Bureau Chief