STEPHEN GLOVER: Yes, Putin's a bad man. But if it wasn't for the blundering EU, that airliner might not have been downed
By
Stephen Glover
24 July 2014
Daily Mail
Not since the darkest days of the Cold War have the security and well-being of Europe been as threatened as they are today.
The lesson of the past week is that the Russian Bear is on the loose, and no one is able or willing to tie him down.
And whose fault is it? In a court of law, the pro-Russian separatists who shot down Flight MH17, killing 298 innocent victims, would be convicted of straightforward mass murder.
President Vladimir Putin stands accused of encouraging these separatists, of aiding and abetting them, and almost certainly of supplying them with the missile system that was used to shoot down the plane. He’s a bad man, and a dangerous one, too.
But in the dock of history there will be another defendant — the European Union. Morally speaking, of course, it towers far above Putin and the separatists.
Yet it is guilty of precipitating this crisis, and arguably of causing it.
A fatal combination of vanity, hubris and naivety characterised EU policy towards Ukraine before its elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed in a popular uprising earlier this year.
Now the same EU, which recklessly attempted to lure Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence, reveals itself as being feeble and divided, and utterly incapable of dealing with the alarming consequences of its actions.
The key to understanding this crisis is the EU’s generally benign, though ill-conceived, imperialism. Its membership has expanded at an astonishing rate as new countries, some of them very poor, have been admitted in recent years.
The EU, David Cameron promised last year, will one day stretch from ‘the Atlantic to the Urals’.
Without doubt, membership of the organisation has brought great benefits to the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
No one would seriously argue, I think, that the European Union was wrong to embrace Poland, the Czech Republic, or even the Baltic States.
But the expansionist impulses of the EU extended further to the Ukraine, which Russia regarded as being in a different category to other Eastern or Central European post-Soviet states which had joined the European Union as well as Nato, the western military alliance.
Ukraine has a large Russian-speaking population, and was the cradle of Mother Russia.
Until 1991, it and Russia were part of the same country, the Soviet Union.
Any attempt to absorb Ukraine into the EU was bound to be fraught with great dangers even if undertaken with enormous diplomatic skill.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is pictured taking off from Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands on its fateful flight
As it was, the wooing of Ukraine was largely spear-headed by Baroness Ashton, the so-called High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, a former middle-ranking Labour minister who has never stood for office and knew very little about foreign affairs or Ukraine.
To be fair to Baroness Ashton, she was interpreting EU policy, not making it. Nonetheless, she threw herself into the task, visiting the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and, as recently as last December, remarking favourably on the demonstrators who were soon to topple the pro-Russian President Yanukovych.
Her purpose was to open the path for Ukraine eventually to become a full member of the EU by offering an Association Agreement. An alluring trade deal was dangled, which Yanukovych at one point seemed likely to sign before having second thoughts for fear of offending the Russians.
His ousting gave President Putin a pretext for seizing the Crimea, which until 1917 had been part of Russia. Meanwhile separatists in eastern Ukraine, encouraged and supported by Putin, took up arms against Kiev.
If Putin were really as crazy and militaristic as Adolf Hitler, as some commentators including Prince Charles have suggested, he would presumably have sooner or later helped himself to the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine.
But I doubt he is another Hitler. It seems much more likely that he is a nationalist and an opportunist who regarded the wooing of Ukraine by the EU, and the removal of President Yanukovych, as a sufficient provocation.
Without the European Union’s energetic courting — part presumptuous, part galumphing — it is possible, if not probable, that Yanukovych would still be in his vulgar, opulent mansion in Kiev, Ukraine would not be in the process of being torn apart —and Flight MH17 would not have been blown out of the sky.
Until Russia effectively seized Crimea in March, the European Union had displayed all the arrogance of a great power, albeit not one with very developed diplomatic gifts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sits in an aircraft cockpit at the Progress State Research and Production Space Centre in Samara, Russia.
At US$18.4 trillion, the EU's economy is the largest in the world, nine times that of Russia, yet many EU states are scared to impose economic sanctions on Russia
After Crimea, the ‘great power’ was soon revealed as divided, cowardly and unprincipled. It soon became clear that most EU nations were opposed to more than the most cosmetic sanctions targeted at friends and close associates of Putin.
Countries which had signed up to Ukraine being shepherded towards EU membership while being showered with financial goodies suddenly realised that significant sanctions against Russia would cause their own nations considerable financial pain at a time of economic sclerosis.
The story is being repeated this week, with the list of individuals who face travel bans and the freezing of assets merely being lengthened.
There seems to be no prospect of a swingeing trade ban against Russia such as might make President Putin think again.
Even the sale of armaments and weapons — surely the first items to be put on any trade ban against a ‘rogue state’ — seems likely to go ahead. France remains determined to sell two warships to Russia.
An OSCE investigator with a body during a visit to the MH17 flight crash site in the village of Grabovo, eastern Ukraine.
Although this has drawn forth lectures from Mr Cameron, Britain has sold Putin arms — although No 10 claims none since March — including rifle parts and pistols, which could theoretically find themselves in the hands of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
Hypocrisy comes hard on the heels of pusillanimity.
The EU has been exposed as a wayward toddler passing itself off as a world power.
The truth is that most European countries do not want to jeopardise their trade with Russia. Many of them are reliant on Russia for their oil and gas supplies, Germany in particular. Some 35 per cent of its oil, and 42 per cent of its gas, are imported from Russia.
Their reluctance to enter a trade war during economic recession is understandable. What is contemptible — or perhaps pitiful would be a better word — is that such a timid response comes after the needlessly aggressive provocation of Russia.
Now that it is blatantly misbehaving, the same European nations that thoughtlessly baited the Russian bear are running for cover in the most undignified way.
The EU has been exposed as a wayward toddler passing itself off as a world power.
For Eurosceptics there is some comfort in seeing the myth of European solidarity shattered, and the dream of a united Europe held by Euro-fanatics such as Jean-Claude Juncker, the recently appointed President of the European Commission, exploded.
He and others like him would doubtless say that the fractious behaviour of EU nations only shows how they need to be properly united. But will that ever happen?
The evidence of this week confirms that at times of crisis these countries think of their own self-interest first.
If it’s true that there is cheer for Eurosceptics in all this, what a tragic mess clumsy diplomacy, and unbridled EU expansionism, have helped to create!
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STEPHEN GLOVER: Yes, Putin's a bad man. But if it wasn't for the blundering EU, that airline might not have been downed | Mail Online
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