By Stavros Lygeros
The construction of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline may have encountered endless obstacles and seemed at times to have been a mere illusion, but at long last is heading for completion.
Its strategic significance has diminished over time since the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, yet the project, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Athens this Thursday, is an opportunity to add a material dimension to the rhetoric about cordial Greek-Russian relations. The fact that bilateral relations have a very positive historical foundation offers great potential for development, not only on the political but also on the economic level. But that potential has remained largely untapped, which has had the effect of weakening relations.
Strategic importance
By contrast, Russian-Turkish relations, historically burdened by lasting geopolitical antagonism and several wars, are in the process of strikingly rapid development – above all in the economic sector, but that is not unconnected to the political side. Now, in particular, with the construction of the underwater pipeline to the Black Sea, Turkey will be of strategic importance in conveying Russian natural gas to Europe.
Unlike Athens, Ankara was quick to realize the meaning of its relations with Moscow and has worked systematically to upgrade them. The Turkish general staff’s website carried the entire speech Putin made at the Munich meeting, where he harshly criticized American policy.
A powerful Turkish lobby has formed in Moscow: Politicians, entrepreneurs, journalists and academics are promoting the idea of a Russian-Turkish strategic relationship or even an alliance. Some sources say that even the former defense minister and an aspiring successor to Putin, Sergei Ivanov, views the idea favorably.
So far, however, Russia’s traditional policy on our region has not changed. It still maintains an even-handed stance toward Greece and Cyprus. But the Russian president has made repeated statements about the need to put an end to the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, for which he received the thanks of Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Though Moscow did later give Nicosia some clarification, and avoided taking any action, these statements were clearly in the nature of a warning. And they certainly reflect what is albeit a minority trend in Russian diplomacy toward a more balanced stance toward the Greek and Turkish side.
The fact that this tendency has not been imposed is due chiefly to the fact that Russian interests still clash to a large degree with Turkish interests, above all in the Caucasus and Central Asia. On the other hand, Turkey’s intense anti-Americanism and its overtures toward Iran and Syria (because of the Kurdish question) indicate possible ground for convergence.
In that fluid political environment, Athens sees the Russians more according to typical Western criteria than through the prism of special Greek interests. One blatant example was the recent announcement by the Foreign Ministry on the anti-missile shield that the Americans are installing in Poland and the Czech Republic.
For the Russians, Washington’s act was the last straw. It had been preceded by NATO’s eastward expansion, the inclusion of former Soviet republics in the USA’s sphere of influence and the encirclement of Russia by American bases.
Excuses that the anti-missile shield was intended to protect Europe from possible attack by Iran added a dash of mockery to the provocation.
In official US rhetoric, Russia is no longer referred to as a partner. But the rivalry of the two superpowers has become the rivalry between the one superpower and a great power that wants to regain its lost place on the global chessboard.
Washington wanted to see the Russian bear on its knees, trapped in domestic problems, economically dependent on the West and unable to play the international role suited to its stature. By using state power, however, Putin has slowly but methodically “denationalized” politics and the economy. The rising price of oil came to his assistance.
For years, Moscow has avoided clashing directly with Washington except when it was necessary. It was helpful to have cooperative relations with Beijing. The shared need to balance the American empire forced those two major powers to shelve their mutual rivalry.
Now Russia is reacting to American machinations, and it is on that that the Greek Foreign Ministry turned, without provocation, against Moscow. As well as it being an issue on which the most pro-American Europeans kept their distance from Washington. This move caused a rupture in Greek-Russian relations, which was finally healed over only after corrective statements by both Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis himself, who had not even been informed of his minister’s initiative. Some attribute the initiative to Bakoyannis’s endeavor to serve her own political agenda, more precisely, to her keen desire to secure a meeting with her American counterpart when she visits the USA on March 25. Whatever her motives, her action harmed Greece diplomatically.
The occasion had another, very worrying side. It shows the inability of the Foreign Ministry’s leadership to assess the international environment and to predict Moscow’s reaction. This reaction forced Athens to apologize. If it had been able to predict the obvious, the instinct for political self-preservation would have overruled the tendency to fall in line behind American policy.
Needless to say that on nearly all of our national issues, Washington’s views are at best indifferent and at worst run counter to Greek interests. This obliges Athens to do its best to use developing relations with Russia to help balance unfavorable circumstances in the Aegean and, above all, on the Cyprus question. That may happen, but only if Moscow sees that Greece understands legitimate Russian interests – especially now that the bear is on its feet and is trying to re-emerge politically and diplomatically in the broader region so as to put a check on American pressure.
(Kathimerini, 12/03/2007)