Yes, Europe can be even more craven

From The Brussels Journal:

In 1863, at the height of Tsarist Russian imperial expansion, the French polemicist Alfred Mercier wrote in Du Panlatinisme that “Russian domination, a benefit for ignorant and savage peoples, or ones corrupted by the vices of decrepit civilizations, would be a calamity for Europe.” Mercier would not object to Russia’s incursions into Central Asia, and was confident that “as long as Europe remains what it is today, that is, strong and disciplined, the czars’ cannons will knock at its doors in vain.” Europe, Mercier reasoned, would be preserved by its “vitality.”

Presently, Europe’s vitality is being questioned by many, on geopolitical, economic, social, and demographic grounds. At the same time, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, despite facing similar challenges, is geopolitically resurgent. NATO expansion, the UN’s plans in Kosovo, and US plans to expand missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic have all drawn the Kremlin’s ire, and at the recent Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin spoke troublingly of unspecified “asymmetrical” responses. Although some European leaders responded appropriately to such veiled threats (for instance the Swedish and Czech foreign ministers and NATO Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer), the comment most indicative of Europe’s current predicament vis-à-vis Russia came from a Green MEP from Germany, Angelika Beer. “We need Russia for energy and Kosovo. He [Putin] knows that – but perhaps he is going over the top.” Even that statement would seem too strident for many Russophile European policymakers.

This candid willingness to acknowledge dependence on Russia, specifically energy dependence, is discomfiting. After all, recent news out of the Republic of Georgia indicates that Russia ’s foreign policy aims can indeed be deflected effectively. Late last year, in response to tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi, Putin recalled his ambassador to Georgia, closed border crossings between Russia and its Caucasus neighbor, and banned importation of three of Georgia’s biggest exports – wine, mineral water, and tangerines – on spurious health grounds.

Instead of buckling under Russian pressure, tiny Georgia, led by Rose Revolution leader President Mikheil Saakashvili, managed to hold firm. Georgia diversified its natural gas imports, expanded its trade relations with nearby states, began to set up an innovative free trade zone on the Black Sea, and exploited Russia’s client de facto states (e.g. Abkhazia and South Ossetia) to facilitate black market exports of Georgian tangerines, considered a delicacy in Russia. Russia, realizing that the blockade was hopeless, has ratcheted down its sanctions and returned its ambassador.

The lesson of the so-called “Tangerine Crisis” is that even a diminutive republic in the Caucasus can stand up to Russian pressure, provided it exhibits the sort of vitality Alfred Mercier spoke of in 1863. Surely the European Union, and its constituent states and their representatives, need not preface responses to veiled Russian threats with assurances of dependence. But, repeatedly, Russophile elements within Europe have done precisely this. Perhaps European policymakers would be surprised by how many of the threats they face would be mitigated or eliminated by acting in a manner consistent with the strength, discipline, and vitality that Mercier proposed and that Georgia, for example, has lately exhibited.

In order for Europe to respond forcefully and firmly to this kind of threat it would be necessary for the Eurocrats to have confidence in Europe. They would need to have the kind of faith their civilization that Europeans used to have, but for the most part, no longer do.

European elites, at least the majority of them, no longer believe in European exceptionalism. For all too many Europe's colonial past leaves it permanently tainted with the stains of racism and exploitation and for this reason it does not really deserve to survive. This explaines why they are so willing, if not eager, to see their cultures buried under a tidal wave of Muslim immigration.

For others there is simply too much money to be made by selling out their nations as was the case with France and Germany's leaders who were found to have been on Saddam Hussein's payroll.