Present at the demise
Dean Acheson’s ‘Present at the Creation’ is due for a sequel: ‘Present at the Demise.’
Like the 51st US secretary of state who watched a new world order emerging from the ashes of the Second World War, we are the witnesses (and architects) of its demise.
For the last seven decades the West has enjoyed the peace dividends of the order deftly described by Acheson in his Pulitzer-prize winning book, blissfully oblivious that war, and not peace, had been the rule that underpinned human history.
The joy that we, Eastern Europeans, felt in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell bringing the promise of freedom after decades of fear, terror and poverty, was a fleeting ray of sunshine before heavy clouds began to gather again.
Blinded by the prospect of unimagined riches awaiting for us in the East, we failed to heed the signs.
The alarm was first sounded 30 years ago when Estonia’s famous president Lennart Meri warned the West had little understanding of what was ‘brewing in the vast expanses of Russia.’
The speech delivered just three years after the fall of the Soviet Union at the Matthiae Mahl, the world’s oldest banquet held in Hamburg, might not have struck a chord with the guests, too euphoric over Russia’s promising riches to pay attention to Lennart Meri’s prophecy: the Soviet Union was dead, but Russia’s colonial ambition will soon rear its head.
One man, though, fully grasped Meri’s words and stormed out of the room.
Thirteen years later, as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin would launch his first full-frontal attack on Western-led institutions, signalling that his country was no longer prepared to accept the US-dominated international order.
The speech was dismissed with contempt by Western elites as ‘smacking of Cold War’ rhetoric or as the ‘blunt talk of an old spy.’
A year later the West watched passively as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia.
Instead of responding firmly to a blatant breach of international rules, the West proposed a new strategic partnership with Russia, underpinned, of course, by the promise of generous energy deals. (For comprehensive insights into the West’s naive reading of Russia’s intentions following the Georgian invasion see Sylvie Kauffmann, ‘Les aveuglés: Comment Berlin et Paris ont laissé la voie libre à la Russie,’ Stock, 2023)
The years that followed saw an intensification of hybrid attacks and vast campaigns of disinformation mounted by Putin’s troll factories followed by the invasion of eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.
But that didn’t bother us either, opting instead to reward Putin with our blessings for two new gas corridors - TurkStream announced in December 2014 and Nord Stream 2 announced in January 2015.
The impunity with which Russia was behaving was only equalled by the West’s sense of invincibility which continued undisturbed even in 2016 when alarm bells should have flashed red as three pivotal events happened in quick succession: Brexit, the 2016 Turkish coup d’etat which led to a purge of the Turkish army’s pro-NATO top echelons and the election of Donald Trump as US president.
There is no official evidence to suggest Russian involvement in all three events but each signalled the first obvious cracks in the institutions that have underpinned the postwar order: the EU, NATO and the transatlantic alliance.
Brave journalists such as Jessikka Aro, from Finland who defied death threats to expose Russia’s vast networks of trolls and cyber crimes striking at the core of western institutions were met with ridicule while those who criticised Putin’s corrupt pipeline projects were derided for not seeing Gazprom as a ‘reliable commercial partner.’
While Eastern Europeans understood that opposing Russia’s corrupt energy weapon and political interference in our lives was part of an existential fight, some of their Western colleagues saw themselves as edgy champions of a ‘misunderstood’ partner.
It took the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to awaken some of us from our slumbers, even though alarm bells have been ringing all along.
But let us be under no illusion. It wasn’t the sight of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being tortured, raped, killed or deported that cut us to the quick.
It was Russia’s decision to slash most of its gas supplies to a Europe addicted to its fuel, sending our bills sky-high and depriving us of cash.
Since then, Europe spent over €800bn in subsidies to protect consumers from Putin’s gas weapon, nearly eight times more than the money allocated by the EU to Ukrainians shielding us from Russia’s murderous missiles.
Have lessons been learnt?
Instead of joining Ukrainians in mourning their human losses, we now complain about the loss of cheap Russian gas that has deprived us of our ‘economic competitiveness,’ swallowing hook, line and sinker the well-oiled Russian propaganda that Russian gas was, errr…, cheap.
Some sweet deals with old buddies signed under the cover of respectable names may have offered chunky discounts in recent months, arguably helping to line some individual pockets but as the graph below shows, Russian gas was not cheap for Western buyers and it was certainly no bargain for Eastern Europeans.
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House we are finally beginning to understand that the world which brought peace, prosperity and freedom in the West is falling apart brick by brick. Our complacency and appeasement of Russia have been chipping away at its foundation.
The first wake-up call should have come with Lennart Meri’s speech in 1994.
Thirty-one years on, the security risks we blindly ignored are beginning to sink in (somewhat) as Europe is preparing to rearm and the spectre of war has never been this close.
Yet even now, as we stand on the verge of a precipice, we are once again scrambling to return to business as usual with Russia.
We are arm-twisting Ukraine into resuming the transit of gas and considering the revival of the sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines, fully aware that helping Russia to replenish its coffers means greater threats to our lives and livelihoods.
We have become so addicted to the Russian energy fantasy that even the prospect of a few more molecules of gas entering our pipelines triggers erratic price movements on markets which will ultimately be felt by each one of us.
The sad reality is that even now as we watch our world of comfort collapse, we understand nothing about the part we have been playing in tearing it down.