Don quixote in moscow | thearticle

There have been three European Union foreign policy supremos since the post of High Representative for Europe’s Foreign Policy was created after the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. Of all the big

name EU title holders – President of the Commission, President of the Council, or President of the European Parliament – the head of the European External Action Service has had the closest

to mission impossible. The job was first offered to David Miliband when he was British Foreign Secretary. He turned it down, telling friends his task “was to save the Labour Party”, and

Gordon Brown instead nominated Cathy Ashton. None of Europe’s foreign ministers had the faintest idea who she was, but she had made no enemies as one of the 28 European Commissioners and

since the UK had not held a top EU post for two decades she got the job. Baroness Ashton, a competent, self-effacing New Labour functionary, did her best but quickly hit the iron reality of

European foreign policy. It does not exist and cannot exist because, despite the myth that the EU emasculates national sovereignty, the one area no national capital will share with Brussels

is foreign policy. Ashton’s Italian successor, Frederica Mogherini, also hailed from the Left but had no more success in forging a European foreign policy. The current holder of the post is

Josep Borrell, Spain’s former Foreign Minister. He is a Catalan Socialist who bravely resisted the fanatics of Catalan nationalism. They rewarded him with insults and menaces as a traitor to

the Catalan independence cause. But on Europe it was the Spanish Socialists who, years ago, delivered a fatal blow to a key element of EU foreign policy. Under them, Madrid destroyed all

hopes of a final settlement in the West Balkans, after the long war in the 1990s unleashed by Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb nationalism, notorious for its genocidal massacre at Srebrenica and

murderous ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The Spanish Socialist government sided with Serbia and Moscow in refusing to grant recognition to Kosovo. This brought a dead stop to all hopes of a

peaceful settlement based on mutual recognition, agreed borders, open trade, and gradual incorporation into Europe of the small successor states to the defunct Yugoslav federation. The

European Council on Foreign Relations has just produced a report explaining why Europe’s absence in the region has turned the West Balkans into a new zone of influence and presence for China

in the heart of Europe.  Spain’s insistence that its national sovereignty meant it could not help in the Balkans is matched by Germany’s refusal to take any measures against Russia that

would threaten German exports and economic interests. All the major parties in the European Parliament have called on Berlin to drop the NordStream2 gas line project, which will strengthen

Russian dominance as the controller of Europe’s energy supply. But Berlin vetoes any such action. The EU cannot agree a common line on Turkey, on Libya, on China. Donald Trump declared the

EU to be “a foe”. President Biden is friendlier, but is stepping up the protectionist Buy America policy which hits exports from Europe, including the UK. President Macron made a

wide-ranging intervention in English last week, urging European “strategic autonomy”. But France has also undermined efforts by EU foreign policy officials to find a settlement in the

Balkans. When Philip Hammond was Foreign Secretary, he boasted that “Brexit would light a fire under Europe”. Yet all Brexit has done has been to remove a serious foreign policy player from

Europe, as Britain is reduced to denying the EU Ambassador in London normal diplomatic courtesies. This is part of the obsession of Brexit-fixated ministers, including the Foreign Secretary,

Dominic Raab, to prove to the Tory party base that Britain can treat the EU with contempt. Josep Borrell’s visit to Moscow last Friday was also a humiliating moment. The veteran Russian

Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, treated the Spaniard, who at 73 is just three years older than his host, like an ageing Don Quixote coming to tilt at Russian windmills. While Lavrov was

meeting Borrell, Moscow ordered the expulsion of  German, Swedish, and Polish diplomats who were observers at protests about the sentencing of Alexei Navalny – a normal thing for diplomats

to do. Lavrov rudely lectured his guest about Catalan nationalism, but, on Navalny, Borrell was told to mind his own business. Observers of EU foreign policy joined in criticising Borrell,

with pro-Brexit British pundits especially joining in. London, of course, is Putin’s favourite Western capital. His oligarchs have a free run here, as long as they make judicious

contributions to the Conservative Party and keep London lawyers in business, laundering money and arranging expensive divorces. Yet Borrell may have done us a great service in showing up

just how hostile the now openly decaying Putin regime is to any relationship with Europe, including Britain, based on some mutual respect. As Borrell wrote after his visit: “Russia is

progressively disconnecting itself from Europe and looking at democratic values as an existential threat.” He also threatened large-scale Magnitsky-type sanctions against named Russians,

which is now written into EU law. This should be welcomed by Tom Tugendhat MP, chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and writers like Edward Lucas, Roger Boyes and Luke Harding,

who diligently warn about Russian aggression towards the UK. But in the end Borrell, like his predecessors, has to operate a lowest common denominator foreign policy. National sovereignty

trumps and keeps trumping any hopes of a common European foreign policy. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

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