Europe’s ‘new world order’ is letting Vladimir Putin run riot

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[/audioplayer]If Vladimir Putin’s invasion and occupation of the Crimea brings to an end the Pax Americana and the post-Cold War world that began in 1989, what new European, or even global, order is replacing them? That question may seem topical in the light of Russia’s seemingly smooth overriding in Crimea of the diplomatic treaties and legal rules that outlaw aggression, occupation and annexation. In fact, it is six years behind the times.

To understand the situation in the Ukraine, we need to go back to the Nato summit in Bucharest, in April 2008. There, Putin stated Russia’s opposition to the proposal from President George W. Bush that Nato should take the first steps to inviting Georgia and Ukraine to become members. He found unusual allies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, joined by France and Britain, led the opposition to it. The proposal was kicked into touch.

Five months later, Georgia, provoked by Russia’s creeping annexation of its break-away territory, launched an attempt to recover South Ossetia. Five days later, it lost the war to Russian forces — ‘on manoeuvres’, naturally, just across the border. Two Georgian provinces are now sovereign states or, more candidly, de facto Russian provinces.

The moment the Pax Americana’s evaporated was when President Nicolas Sarkozy, representing the French presidency of the EU, jumped on a plane to Moscow to negotiate a ceasefire with Putin on terms that essentially ratified the Russian occupation and annexations. This stopped Bush and Nato from helping to shape the West’s response, which might then have been at least rhetorically tougher.

This shift of power within the alliance from Washington to Berlin-Paris-Brussels was not unwelcome to Bush’s successor. Within six months of taking power, President Obama had cancelled plans for US anti-missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, whose governments had spent much political capital to accept them.