TOO RUSSIAN TO HANDLE ?

Joseph Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief met on February 5  with Sergey Lavrov, Russia's formidable minister of foreign affairs. The meeting flopped, as Borrell looked unprepared and almost pathetic.

Lavrov knows how to wring the unfathomable out of his interlocutors. Suffice to remember how he made Trump act like a fool in the inner sanctum of the Oval Office. He is a master diplomat and he is truely Putin's Talleyrand.

Meeting Russians is never easy. Napoleon understood the risks. Great personnalities like Stalin, Molotov, Doubinine only continued a grand tradition of pride and shrewed power-play. Their counterparts never had it easy. Too often they bungled their performances badly.

It is too easy to attack Borrell.  After all, Kennedy's performance in Vienna didn't match his ambitions. He was perceived as weak but then the Russian overplayed his hand too.

The EU has to address its own faultlines before it can hope to be taken seriously. Brexit was the UK's loss but did not become the EU's win. The EU is a family too divided to reclaim the high moral ground, while accomodating partners like Poland  & Co. in its midst. The handling of the Corona crisis is another trademark for non-visionnary policy-making.  The Russian Federation rolls out vaccines and can play medical largesse for all to see.

The WunderEU from Jacques Delors belongs to the past. The personnalities in the Commission are no longer the best and the brightest. Member states look like tired Bridge players competing for playing dummy. Obviously the pandemic continues to further weaken creativity and consensus. A chance for a European strategy was missed, yet again.

The new US administration might give the EU a wake-up call. After four years of neglect, President Biden might rescue Europe from becoming irrelevant. The Paris Agreement, trade, Iran, the Middle East and most of all China could create an  urgency, wherein the Europeans will be forced to become pro-active again.  Russia can still play a constructive role, but it needs to feel that it is not wasting its time with "underlings". Napoleon (again) met the Tsar on a raft en tete a tete, confident in the powers of his own argument and personality. When his judgement failed him, Russia swallowed him mercilessly. Hitler followed suit. Reagan might not have been the brightest but his confident arrogance won the day. The Russian bear only falls for honey after all. In Western Europe it is in short supply.

Borrell might look like a curate but he was wrong to talk like one.