Yugoslavia. Now there is peace, not perfect har-
mony. In 2004, Kosovo and flared into violence
to oust Serbian remnants there, NATO peace-
keepers continued to ensure stability in Bosnia.
The 17,000 strong force in December 2004 was
taken under the command of the EU after a
decade of peace keeping. Serbia post-Milosˇevic ́
has not moved forward and is politically unstable,
and relations with the West are soured over the
one-sided war crimes trials they perceive. But
nowhere in Europe in the new millennium is there
war. The one war in which a European country is
engaged is Russia’s conflict in Chechnya.
Putin had declared it to be over but in reality
peace has not come to Chechnya and Chechnyan
militants have staged spectacular terrorist attacks
in the heart of Moscow in revenge. The conflict
spread to the Caucasus. Apart from Chechnya
Russia has changed remarkably under the strong
lead of President Putin. Putin’s handling won him
popular support and a second presidential term
in March 2004 against weak opponents. The
imprisonment of the Yukos oil magnet Mikhail
Khordorkovsky and control of the media show
that he will allow no rival power basis and in the
Duma Putin’s United Russia Party had won
control in elections in December 2003. The world
was reminded of the brutal struggle in Chechnya
when terrorists occupied a school massacring
children and teachers. In the aftermath Putin
tightened his hold on Russia by insisting on far-
reaching constitutional changes: members of the
Duma will be elected from party lists and not
directly from constituencies and the eighty-nine
regional governors will no longer be elected either
but appointed by the Kremlin. With the rise in
the price of oil and better budgetary controls the
economy has recovered and stabilised. Relations
with the West are good, and many contentious
issues lie in the past, peace is essential if Russia
is to continue to progress.
Events in the Ukraine in November 2004
showed that differences, west and east, had not
been totally overcome and could suddenly cloud
relations. The Ukraine is a country with a popu-
lation of more than 35 million, geographically
and culturally split between the west and east; the
west looking to the EU and the east to contin-
uing close ties with Russia. The elections for the
presidency underlined this division with Putin
backing the pro-Russian candidate against the
opposition. To ensure the victory of the pro-
Russian candidate there was massive electoral
fraud and he was declared the winner. People took
to the streets in Kiev; people power prevailed once
again. Compromise and unity are the most likely
outcome after new elections; the opposition can-
didate won the rerun elections in January 2005.
There is a long way to go to overcome Russia’s
health problems, security with peace in Chechnya,
ending the corruption, strengthening business
law, and lifting all of the people out of poverty.
Russia, though its democracy is flawed by Western
standards, requires strong leadership and is
moving in the right direction. For the great major-
ity of Russian people decent standards of living,
security and civil liberty are more immediately
important than democracy.
The continental European countries are all strug-
gling to maintain the expensive burdens of a
welfare state, the prospect of having to fund the
pensions of an ageing population, and unem-
ployment at around 9 per cent is too high in
France, Germany and Italy and even higher in
Spain. To regain more robust growth painful
changes are needed. Britain stands out among the
bigger European countries with low unemploy-
ment and reasonable growth. The policies of the
centre-right government in President Chirac’s
France, Schröder’s social democratic Germany,
right-wing Berlesconi’s government in Italy and
the new socialist government of José Zapatero in
Spain do not differ that much, nor do the chal-
lenges facing them.
In foreign relations they had parted company
from Blair’s Labour Britain which had backed
Bush’s policy in Iraq and shared its aims. In 2004
Blair’s reputation suffered from the difficulties
the coalition ran into in Iraq and from the loss of
credibility for going to war in the first place when
no weapons of mass destruction were found or
believed to have existed after the first Gulf War.
Over closer union with Europe the majority of the
British electorate remained sceptical and Blair’s
belated conversion to allowing the electorate a say
1
INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM 951
