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The Herald Scotland

Yes we should stand firm, but let's not make Russia our implacable foe

It is always dangerous to confuse leaders with countries since all of the former are mortal. Trump is not America. Netanyahu is not Israel. Putin is not Russia. In every case, the channels have to be kept open to a different future, rather than entrenched in assumptions of mutual assured hostility. Indeed, Russia offers the best possible example of that. Somehow, out of the Cold War madness, it produced Mikhail Gorbachev who saw that the system he presided over was unsustainable. That opened the way to co-existence and I feel fortunate to have lived through that interlude in history. At the moment, such reconciliation seems a pious hope. The objectives of the strategic defence review, with talk of 'immediate and pressing danger' are pretty Russia-specific. The threat may no longer be of Soviet hordes appearing with snow on their boots, but the message is much the same. Read more by Brian Wilson It is difficult to dissent from the premises on which this rhetoric is based. Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine are deplorable with no guarantee that he will stop there. Cyber attacks and destruction of energy infrastructure are among the new weapons of war in which Russia is prominent. On these grounds alone, it seems prudent to enhance our defensive capacity, which quickly translates into more money. Three per cent of our national wealth does not sound unreasonable, so long as it is spent on the right priorities. If the rest of Europe is doing it, then so should we. There is a difference, however, between sensible preparedness and an entrenched state of mind which refuses to recognise the perspective of the assumed enemy or prioritise diplomacy over polarisation. If nobody in government is recognising mistakes of the past, then they are missing a large part of this story. One of my Russian memories was created on a very specific date: August 17, 1998. As Trade Minister, I was in St Petersburg to open what was billed as the largest-ever UK trade show in Russia. Unfortunately, nobody came, apart from schoolchildren to pick up the freebies at the deserted exhibition stands. For it was also the day that the rouble collapsed. At that moment, the Russian economy was apparently in a state of terminal crisis. Under the Yeltsin regime, corruption had been rampant, state assets were stolen wholesale and vast sums were finding their way into western banks while Russia's coffers ran dry and the poor paid the price. Far from being treated as the criminals they undoubtedly were, the newly-minted Russian oligarchs and their ostentatious wealth were welcomed with open arms in the West. On the basis that it took a thief to catch many thieves, Vladimir Putin stepped into that void and, in what seemed a miraculously short time, restored economic order. In short, the West treated the break-up of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to be exploited rather than a very fragile new reality to be nurtured with care and respect. That was also the approach taken on foreign policy with an immediate push to extend the boundaries of the EU, and more significantly, Nato, as close as possible to the borders of Russia when it might have been prudent to apply a little more circumspection. This is an impossibly complex subject to be definitive on. The rights of former Soviet republics to seek collective security had to be balanced against Russia's fears of encirclement. As Putin's reign in the Kremlin continued, it became increasingly likely that he would exploit the latter whenever the occasion demanded. I saw some of this behaviour in negotiations over routes for pipelines which would carry oil and gas out of the former Soviet republics to the West. Short of having CIA stamped on their foreheads, it could not have been more obvious that some of those involved certainly did not have Russia's interests at heart – or indeed have any regard for them at all. There was far too much interference in what Russia still regarded as its own rightful sphere of influence. The more that perspective was disregarded, the more likely it became that nationalist sentiments would come into play, under a leader who knew exactly how to exploit them. Ukraine was always likely to be in that front line. In 1954, when dissent was not encouraged, Crimea was transferred from one Soviet republic (Russia) to another (Ukraine), which flew in the face of prior history. Once the Gorbachev genie was out of the bottle, Russian hostility to this arrangement soon emerged. Diplomacy might have forestalled the potential for trouble. Mikhail Gorbachev (Image: PA) In an upheaval as traumatic as the break-up of the Soviet Union, it was inevitable that not all the borders of new states which emerged would be clear-cut. Continuous international support for resolving these incipient conflicts peacefully, without becoming partisans in them, might have saved a lot of subsequent trouble and without a war based on what Kruschev and the Supreme Soviet decided for whatever reason in 1954. None of this in any way excuses the war that Putin has prosecuted in Ukraine though it might imply that negotiation is the only route to a solution. Neither does it call into question the need to defend our own population against the ambitions of any potential foe. The danger is that, around that objective, narratives are created from which it then becomes difficult to escape. We should be sure they are being written with due regard to past history and also future potential for peaceful co-existence. Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.