The arc of danger requires pragmatism
By Douglas Hurd, published: September 19 2005 on www.ft.com
A few weeks ago, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was seen in Baghdad talking uneasily about the need for compromise in Iraq.
There could be no more striking proof of the difference between the first and second terms of the current Bush administration. Of course neither George W. Bush nor Tony Blair, the prime minister, will admit any fundamental mistakes. We shall have to be content with a change of approach disguised in familiar rhetoric. That change is clear enough.
In Iraq, the emphasis is indeed on urging political compromise through the country's new constitution. The aim is to isolate the insurgents and so weaken them to the point where, with luck, the new Iraqi security forces can cope and American forces can withdraw. In Iran, the Americans, having no alternative policy of their own, have so far accepted the need for European diplomacy, despite their scepticism. In both crises the gap between US and European views has notably narrowed.
The Middle East is just the starting point. It forms the central segment of an arc of danger that stretches north and east through Afghanistan to the Chinese border, and north and west through Ukraine to Belarus.
Terrorism is rife all along this arc and the potential for conflict is great. The components of crisis, already familiar to us in the Middle East, reappear here. There are disputes between nations over territory, for example between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and between Russia and Moldova. There are tensions between dictators and their suppressed peoples, as in Uzbekistan and Belarus. There are tensions between opposing versions of Islam, as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are tensions because of the huge sums to be made out of heroin - and out of oil and oil pipelines. Sometimes, as in Chechnya, several of these components combine in a deadly mix. We can expect a series of conflicts along this arc, for which we are ill prepared.
Russia is much more heavily engaged along the two ends of this arc than in the Middle East. Most of the republics along the arc were once part of Russia; some still are. President Vladimir Putin does not wish to regain lost sovereignty, not even in Belarus. But as seen from the Kremlin, these countries are part of a Russian sphere of influence. Russia joins China in rejecting the idea that the US, Europe or any international organisation has the right to encourage democracy or analyse the quality of elections in these parts.
With truly Soviet-era clumsiness, the Russians have mishandled their relationship with Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states; and that is only the beginning. They expect the west to treat as terrorists any group that may challenge the status quo in Russia's backyard. We have been collecting strange allies under the banner of the war against terrorism; that is one reason for welcoming the slow death of the phrase.
We cannot rely on phrases to provide policy. Too much is made of the contrast between stability and freedom.
In the Middle East, it sometimes suits the administration in Washington to talk as if it was abandoning the old regimes in its new enthusiasm for spreading freedom. This is not what is happening. The US and Europe are rightly encouraging reform in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan but theyare not about to abandon President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah or General Pervez Musharraf. They need Mr Mubarak for the Palestinians, King Abdullah for oil and Gen Musharraf for Afghanistan.
The same pragmatism should prevail along the whole arc of danger. The difference between Mr Putin and the Chinese government and ourselves is not that we want to see violent revolutions across the world and they do not. No one wants to see Belarus or Uzbekistan become another Chechnya or Iraq. The difference is that we Europeans see the slow growth of home-grown freedom as the best road to stability, whereas the Russians and Chinese prefer authoritarian rule, in which they believe themselves expert.
Each of the crises emerging in this area will need its own combination of public and private pressure and negotiation. Europe has to act as one in all of these. It is frivolous to chatter in terms of separate British, French or German policies - unless we are interested only in chatter. A single European foreign and security policy will not emerge from clauses in a constitutional treaty, but from facts on the ground.
This has already happened in our dealings with Iran; on the nuclear issue Britain, France and Germany have been negotiating on behalf of Europe with US approval. Our relationships with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are now, in substance, European relationships, which means that we have to pay more attention than hitherto to the views and interests of Poland and our Baltic partners.
As new leaders take over the European Union (to name but three potential leaders: Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown), old extreme positions towards the US should melt away, particularly in London and Paris. The answer lies neither in obedience nor in rivalry but in partnership. In Mr Bush's second term, Europe working together should find that partnership easier to achieve.
The writer was UK foreign secretary 1989-95. Lord Hurd is senior adviser at Hawkpoint and is working on a biography of Sir Robert Peel
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