UK Edition
Diplomats try not to think in terms of morality. When I was in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office the portrait that hung over the permanent under-secretary’s desk was of Sir Henry Wotton, the 17th-century ambassador who defined a diplomat as a “good man sent to lie abroad for his country”. This didn’t mean we left our consciences at the door but that we tended to focus on cold issues of power rather than mistier matters of morality.
The absence of public morality in Russia has however become a serious problem. The sports doping scandal says it all. This is not a few bad apples; Russia, using the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, has created a pervasive state-backed system to flout the rules. The key whistleblower, Grigory Rodchenkov, has fled the country, and two of his colleagues have mysteriously died.
Even faced with total exclusion from the Olympic Games in Rio, the official reaction has in effect been “everybody does it; it is pure politics to pick on Russia”. The Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, conspicuously remains in office; and the real blame almost certainly lies well above him. George Orwell once described international sports as “war minus the shooting”, and all Russians, from President Putin down, see sporting success as a barometer of national strength.
Nevertheless the mind boggles at the level of contempt for international rules that the episode reveals. It is depressing (and will simply encourage more of the same from the Russians) that the IOC has not chosen to impose the total ban Russian behaviour deserves.
Sports doping is just one example. Others abound. I was British ambassador in Moscow in 2006 when, in London, the FSB mercilessly poisoned another Russian whistleblower, Alexander Litvinenko. Russia’s seizure of Crimea and fomenting of civil war in Ukraine in 2014 were the clearest possible breaches of international law, and led to the felling, almost certainly by Russian-backed dissidents, of flight MH17 with the loss of over 300 innocent lives. Russia is now playing a central role in keeping the unspeakable President Assad in power in Syria. And so on. A leading 19th-century Russian politician, Count Benkendorff, once said “laws are for people, not governments”. It is a doctrine Russia still lives by.
The Russians argue that their approach mirrors the duplicity and humiliation administered to them by the West. Wasn’t their economy ruined and their politics poisoned by a spate of Western neoliberal economic advice in the 1990s? Were they not mendaciously assured, also in the 1990s, that Nato expansion was a very distant prospect? Wasn’t Nato’s 1998 war in Kosovo just as illegal as the annexation of the Crimea? Don’t other great powers kill their enemies overseas – eg with drones? Assad may be awful but wasn’t he preferable to the most likely outcome of his overthrow – an Islamic State takeover?
This dialogue of the deaf is leading us towards what many are calling a “new Cold War”. Russia, knowing it is overshadowed in every material way by the West (which has six times Russia’s population, 20 times its national wealth and 10 times its military expenditure), has set about rebuilding its armed forces, putting on shows of military strength, and regularly reminding us of its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, the West, persuaded that the Russian bear is on the prowl again, is rearming: the US is quadrupling defence expenditure in Europe and Nato has significantly stepped up its presence in those states which feel most directly at risk.
In this depressing situation it is important to understand that there is no evidence of a revanchist Russia. Opportunists they may be, but insane they are not. Crimea was a very special historical case. Russia could have taken East Ukraine and didn’t. The disparity in power between Russia and the West is too wide for Putin to risk anything which might bring Nato’s guarantee of mutual defence down on his head. And even the much-touted alternative of “hybrid war” invites a devastating technological and economic Western response.
There remains the concern that with tensions at their present level some small accident could escalate dangerously. But the deeper worry lies in where our relationship is going in the longer term. Those relishing a new Cold War need to recall what the old one was like. Forty years of deep political hostility, an arms race based as much on overhyped military fears as on any objective reality and the odd unnerving trip to the nuclear brink.
How can the West, dealing with a country so ready to bend international rules to its advantage, walk back from such an outcome? First, we need to be absolutely clear in our support for the international standards which Russia is so ready to ignore. There must be no question about Nato’s mutual defence guarantee or our support for the alliance’s most exposed members. On Litvinenko and flight MH17, we should continue to press for justice – however remote that may seem. And on the Olympics, Russia should be banned until they comprehensively and verifiably clean up their act.
But if we are to get tensions down we also need to be looking for areas of cooperation. On Ukraine, the so-called Minsk Peace Process is stuck; it needs a good push from both sides. In Syria, there is more common ground than the rhetoric suggests. Neither we nor the Russians much like Assad. But neither we nor the Russians want to see him replaced by Isil. There is enough commonality for a joint initiative to try to improve the fate of that deeply unhappy country.
Crucially, we should be working too for much better links with the Russian people. Encouraged by their official media, they see the West as threatening and predatory. We need to step up contacts of all sorts – trade, investment and education – to get a naturally European minded populace to see us as the good neighbours we want to be. A big step towards that would be to begin to lift Western sanctions which fan resentment with zero beneficial policy consequence.
Our new Foreign Secretary has made very clear his dislike of Russia’s behaviour. His opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, is among the longest serving, toughest and most intelligent of those he will meet on the foreign ministers circuit. But Lavrov will want to learn what post-Brexit role Britain sees for itself. Mr Johnson should find an early opportunity to make it clear that if Russia breaks the rules we will be among those who insist it pays, but we are also keen to reverse the slide into long-term confrontation.
Sir Tony Brenton was UK ambassador to Russia 2004-2008
The doping scandal shows Russia is a rotten state – but we must not seek a pointless confrontation