The telephone conversation between Prime Minister Cameron and President Putin last month was a good place to start the resumption of our political relationship. We’ll always differ on some issues, which is precisely why we need to keep in close touch, to maintain weatherproof channels of communication. But we shouldn’t leave it till we miss the other party badly.
After the Crimean War, our Foreign Minister, Alexander Gorchakov, wrote in his famous dispatch that Russia was not cross, she was just mustering her forces. The same is true now, as President Putin has said on several occasions.
If we accept the so-called Heartland theory of that great 19th-century strategist Sir Halford Mackinder that, in a continuous struggle between land and sea powers, the ultimate victory will go to the land power, Russia is in the right place geographically and geopolitically – she occupies the global Heartland. What else need we aspire to?
None of our interests is fundamentally incompatible with Europe’s common good, in 21st-century terms, when it comes to regional security. The other day, the British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, spoke of “the fragility of the EU’s democratic legitimacy”. Indeed, you can see this in how Brussels bureaucracy acted in Ukraine, without public debate, real talks, honest assessment of the costs and consequences – trying to get its expansionism on the cheap.
What is more, the reported American intention to deploy nuclear missiles again on the European continent will recreate a Dr Strangelove moment, destroying the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to which the United States and Soviet Union signed up in 1987, and fastening Europe once more to the ball and chain of Cold War politics. The Russo-German reconciliation, one of the pillars of peace in Europe, is also America’s target.