UK Foreign Secretary William Hague is in Moscow. Some thoughts.

 

One of my earliest blog postings from back in 2008 described some of the issues arising from the Russian authorities’ beastly treatment of the British Council. It recorded something said to me by a senior Russian diplomat in 1996 when I argued against Moscow linking Russian minority rights questions in Estonia to energy supplies:

 

"Nothing is linked. But everything is linked…"

 

Delivered with the best laconic yet humorous Russian cynicism, this is a profound insight into the diplomatic condition. Why? Because it goes to the heart of the role of precedents in international relations, and the reasonable expectations which precedents create. Or not.

 

Take Kosovo. What precedent if any has been set by its declaration of independence?

 

Those governments supporting the independence of Kosovo insists that the case is sui generis. The arguments for Kosovo’s independence arise solely from the history of the territory and the strange facts surrounding the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, itself a unique phenomenon. The ICJ itself has concluded that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not breach international law. No precedent here for wider purposes, folks. Move along.

 

Those governments opposing the independence of Kosovo brush aside such arguments, pointing out that of course each case is different — the point is to identify which general principles apply to all these very different cases. Why at that level of argument is Kosovo so different from Abkhazia, Transdniestria, Quebec, Scotland, Tatarstan and so on?

 

Russian diplomats are up with the very best when it comes to banking those precedents they like and rejecting those they dislike. See for example the way Moscow has managed to play upon EU and wider Western disagreements to carve a couple of slices out of Georgia.

 

Plus Russian diplomats are armed with hard-nosed negotiation training:

 

Russian diplomats’ First Rule of Negotiating is simple and profound: "Never move position, even when you agree with someone, without trying to extract something first."

This attitude gives them all sorts of advantages. Above all they usually convey the impression (a) that they are tough, and (b) that they move only on their terms. Plus they come over as (c) ready to take considerable pain in defending their principles, while (d) being ready, nay keen, to hit you harder (and if possible below the belt) than you hit them.

Which is why Russian diplomats are rarely kidnapped or humiliated. Even the dimmest terrorist out there knows that if he does something bad to the Russians, they will not hesitate to something Very Bad, and preferably very personal, to him – and his family.

In other words, Russian diplomacy is damn good, so a new British Foreign Secretary landing in Moscow has to be on top form to make any impact.

 

In general policy terms Russian leaders like the idea of "partnership" with leading Western governments. Western governments in turn wonder what it takes to get Moscow substantively lined up with "Western" positions, especially in the areas of serious security policy where (one might think) there ought to be plenty of interests in common (Terrorism, Middle East).

 

Thus we see a familiar pattern of events, something like the corny kiss/fight/make up/kiss again/fight again plot-recycling in soap operas. After the latest long bout of bickering high-level meetings go well. New pages are turned. Re-set buttons are pressed. But soon disillusionment sets in anew.

 

Partly it’s because Western governments assume that the Russian side is more ready to cooperate than in fact is the case, and/or they run up against contrariwise opposition in Washington which stalls everything. On the Russian side there is a deeply ingrained bureaucratic suspicion of freewheeling practical cooperation which goes on between Western governments, so Russia ends up feeling "left out" ,even when Moscow’s lack of operational nimbleness was to blame.

 

But much more importantly Russia gets global leverage by standing apart from — and preferably opposing — Western positions, regardless of the merits of those positions.

 

Which is why Russia cosies up to almost any miserable dictatorship or nasty demagogue around the world. Moscow despises such people but is happy to nudge them along, since anything which is seen as causing a problem for Western governments and positions (and even better challenging them — see Climate Change) slows down Western diplomacy and helps Moscow gain a bit of ground in its decades-long battle to catch up with Western standards of living.

 

Russia‘s attitude towards the UK?

 

Moscow is always glad to see the back of a British Labour government and its faux milquetoast socialists who (thinks Moscow) failed miserably to establish any serious position of principle between Capitalism and Communism despite for decades preening themselves on their supposed progressive credentials, particularly when they arrived in the Kremlin. A Conservative government said to be full of privileged public-school boys? Much better: authentic people, comfortable in themselves, who can be expected to understand power.

 

Moreover, as Moscow sees it any Conservative-led British government will be towards the Eurosceptic end of things, which helps Moscow in its centuries-long game of playing off one European capital against the rest. On the other hand, a Conservative-led government in London is unlikely to be impressed by Russian ideas of some sort of new European security space from which the Americans largely withdraw. For that sort of thing the Russians look to Paris and, on a good day, Berlin. Plus London gets on well with those pesky Poles, and supports EU enlargement in Russia’s general direction. Plenty of scope for some crafty nuanced discussions in all that?

 

What might we expect from William Hague’s first official visit? Exactly what has happened.

 

The cycle duly begins again. A genuinely pretty good atmosphere in the confidential meetings themselves, no doubt with some fairly frank exchanges on such subjects as Georgia, Kosovo and Belarus, but no real breakthrough on eg the Litvinenko case.

 

There the entrenched positions on both sides are too entrenched. The British side for the foreseeable future will have to insist that prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi is handed over to face British justice. The Russian side for the foreseeable future will insist that that is not going to happen.

 

Nevertheless there comes a point when a problem ceases to be a Problem and transforms itself into a Fact of Life instead: a sizeable rock is heaved into the stream of events and creates a splash and blocks the stream, but sooner or later the water busily flows past it again. That appears to be what is now happening.

 

All in all, both William Hague and the Russian leadership in Moscow will be happy enough. The inept Labour government has slunk away into history. Mutual sulking and bad temper get boring after everyone has made their point. It makes a welcome change to see about doing a few modest things in common and focusing on them, rather than looking mainly at what isn’t working.

 

The long view?

 

London watches Moscow step-by-step — and with various steps backwards — come to terms with life after Soviet communism. Moscow watches London cutting back on its diplomatic network and getting bogged down in EU consultation meetings at the United Nations.

 

Which side looks to the future with more confidence that, broadly speaking, things are going their way?