From a new op-ed by Dmitri Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, on the “abduction of Europa”:
Today, the identity of the west is being challenged by colossal cultural and spiritual pressure from the south. Nations conquered in the past are now invading Europe, changing dramatically not only its external but also its inner world. Europe can no longer assimilate huge inflows of alien cultures. Misinterpreting the sage principle of ‘tolerance’, the west has abandoned the fight to preserve values inherent in European civilisation. Instead of instilling European culture in their new compatriots, the west’s elites have concealed the problems in closed communities. This cowardly escape from the realities of globalisation will lead to the demise of Europe and its culture.
Western elites have sought to substitute the process of globalisation with plans of salvation for European civilisation. But new projects, such as NATO’s enlargement to the east and the Eastern Partnership, pose a greater threat to Europe than if the west took no action at all. The wider that NATO’s and the EU’s areas of responsibility become, the weaker they become. Taking up the problems and disputes of Europe’s eastern half is wearing out its spirit as a civilisation.
Whether Brussels likes it or not, Russia is becoming the centre of the European tradition. It is steadily imparting European culture to eastern territories. José Manuel Barroso and Javier Solana, who in May visited the grand European city of Khabarovsk in the Russian far east, could see for themselves how outdated is Charles de Gaulle’s slogan of a “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”. The Russians have expanded Europe to the shores of Alaska and the Kurile Islands.
Whatever Russia’s developmental problems, they are insignificant compared to the threat to the survival of European civilisation. The west may be procuring eastern European countries for itself, but, in a genuine cultural and spiritual sense, western Europe is shrinking rather than growing.
Thus, the paradox today is that Europe’s western half is shrivelling, while its eastern half is expanding. Russia is now Europe’s spiritual guardian, as Byzantinum prolonged the ‘cause of Rome’ for a millennium after Rome collapsed under the onslaught of barbarians. The writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky argued that, for Russians, Europe is a ‘second fatherland’. Fear of the new Russia is simply unjustified. Russia is the west’s most natural and reliable ally. The sooner the west realises that, the greater the chance of speaking of our common European fate not just in the past tense.
I know that Russia wants to be taken seriously as a great power and all, but it would help if its policy pronouncements didn’t read like they were based on a second-hand copy of the Decline of the West and half a bottle of old-time vodka.
