It would also be a particularly difficult time for London to stand alone on Russia, Mary Dejevsky writes. With the Trump administration still an unknown quantity, despite all the talk of the “special relationship”, and negotiations on leaving the EU about to start, the UK needs, if not new friends, then fewer enemies.
Boris Johnson’s on-off trip to Moscow is finally, definitively, off. And so, for the time being, is the hope of any new start in the notoriously difficult relationship between the UK and Russia. But the reasons why this first visit to Russia by a British foreign secretary for five years has been shelved are not at all clear, and the reasons will largely dictate how much can be salvaged from the wreckage.
The UK defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, said that Russia had to be held responsible, by proxy, for the presumed chemical weapons attack on civilians last week. Earlier, Mr Johnson himself had issued a statement, saying that his priority now was to work with the G7 for a Syria ceasefire.
It would appear, however, that the real reason for the sudden cancellation was mainly to do with not detracting from US diplomacy. Fallon said in his Sunday Times article that Johnson’s visit was shelved by “agreement” with the Americans that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would carry a single Western message to Moscow later in the week. Johnson and UK-Russia could wait.
This is doubly, even trebly, regrettable. First, because the UK had - after much agonising, it seemed, finally decided that it was time to attempt a thaw with Russia and had made efforts to set a different tone. Second, because there are compelling reasons why the UK needs a better relationship with Russia especially now. And, third, because it is bound to reinforce the view that the UK is no more than a very junior partner or, as some UK papers had it, a “poodle” of the United States.
And that was, indeed, Russia’s scornful reaction. Having mostly refrained from any harsh language when Johnson’s planned visit was cancelled first time around, Moscow gave no quarter now, using the UK perhaps as a surrogate for its unhappiness about the US “one-off” strike on Syria’s Shariat airfield.
There is also the uncomfortable feeling among some in London that, with hindsight, the only reason why the UK government was interested in a re-set with Russia at all was so as not to be left behind by Donald Trump’s hoped-for US-Russia rapprochement, and that now this appears to be - at best - delayed, the UK is following the US back to its preferred Cold War ways.
Even if British Russia policy is not - despite appearances - actually in hock to that of the United States, the fate of Boris Johnson’s Moscow trip is acutely embarrassing. It suggests at very least indecision, if not outright incompetence in policy-making.
Yet there are reasons to hope that the UK U-turn on Russia may be delayed rather than abandoned. While there is certainly opposition to any change of policy in Whitehall, there is also impetus for a change - as seen from the recent parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee report - and support for change appears to start at the top.
Theresa May made a phone call to Putin very soon after she unexpectedly became prime minister. In talking tougher than the Cameron government on China, she also appeared to address the charge - made by myself and other commentators - that the UK has been far tougher on Russia than on China in questions of civil liberties and human rights.
It could even be argued that she chose Boris Johnson as foreign secretary not only because she needed a supporter of Brexit in that job, but because she understood from his prolific journalistic writings that he was more of a realist than an values-driven idealist in foreign policy, including towards Russia.
That argument is not conclusive. In his early months in government, Johnson was as hawkish on Russia as any recent foreign secretary, speaking of air strikes on eastern Aleppo as “war crimes”, calling for demonstrations outside the Russian embassy in London, and excluding any compromise over Crimea or relaxation of sanctions. It is hard to believe that this approach was, as some have speculated, designed to placate hardliners and “buy” the diplomatic space to “re-set” relations, but amid the strong words, Johnson also started to talk of dialogue with Russia, insisting that dialogue and criticism were not incompatible.
But the most compelling considerations for a “re-set” are practical. The EU’s united front on sanctions might have been maintained, but EU foreign ministers have progressively stopped ostracising Moscow. There was a full turn-out of Nordic ministers - some of the harshest critics of Russia - for instance at the recent Arctic Forum at Arkhangelsk. The UK position - inside or outside the EU - was becoming harder to sustain, with the British, rather than the Russians looking isolated.
It would also be a particularly difficult time for London to stand alone on Russia. With the Trump administration still an unknown quantity (despite all the talk of the “special relationship”) and negotiations on leaving the EU about to start, the UK needs, if not new friends, then fewer enemies.
Executing a U-turn on Russia policy, though, was never going to be easy. Even talking about sending the Foreign Secretary to Russia, let alone an actual visit, marked an enormous shift. The UK and its diplomats have been among the most uncompromising towards Russia over Crimea and Ukraine, and less inclined even than members of the last US Administration to try to understand how the world looks from Moscow. The British led calls for EU sanctions, and took pride in how they were observed.
Nor did this hard line come out of nowhere. There is a context of official ill-feeling towards Russia that has been reinforced through Vladimir Putin’s years in power. Relations got off to a difficult start when the UK granted refuge - and an anti-Putin platform - to the oligarch and former Yeltsin adviser, Boris Berezovsky. The atmosphere further soured over Chechnya, with many in the British intelligentsia embracing the Chechen separatist cause. Relations were just starting to recover when the Russian exile and former FSB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, died of radiation poisoning in London, soon after being granted UK citizenship. A long-delayed inquest into his death blamed Russian state interests, but stopped just short of pointing the finger at Putin directly.
On the Russian side, the refusal of UK courts to extradite Russians wanted for such crimes as embezzlement and fraud in their home country has been a constant source of resentment, with UK judges arguing that those accused would not be given a fair trial or that custody conditions were substandard. This latter objection was recently lifted. But the impression prevails at a more grassroots level that Russia’s not always legitimately rich and powerful swan in and out of the UK, buy expensive property and send their children to elite British schools, while artists, scholars and ordinary people can struggle to get a single-entry visa.
Any attempt at a re-reset in relations will bring all this ill-tempered legacy into play. And yet... If anyone can do it, it could be Boris Johnson. Bombastic, clever, and with a keen sense of history, an international lineage and a quintessentially Slavonic name - he could establish the rapport that British officials have found so difficult. Let’s hope so. When Boris finally makes that trip to Moscow, there will be a lot of catching up to do.
