Sputnik discussed this with Dr. Paul Sanders, associate professor at the NEOMA business school.
Sputnik: Obviously there's a climate right now with the US imposing sanctions on steel and aluminum, that affected so many countries, the US pulling out of the JCPOA and European countries under threat of having sanctions placed on their companies that will continue to deal with Iran; this is actually quite an interesting time in history. Do you think that this could actually bring some kind of change in the policies that the Europeans have as far as sanctions against Russia?
Dr. Paul Sanders: It's definitely a possibility, the conflict, I wouldn't say it's history-changing, because the Russian Revolution of 1917 was history-changing and the Second World War was history changing, but there is a lot of dynamism at the moment in international relations that hasn't really been seen for quite some time.
Things are slowly moving along, and slowly there is some structure emerging and the main structural feature for us, me living in the European Union — France, Germany, the Western countries, is that we can no longer trust in the solidity of the transatlantic relationship; because, basically, President Trump has been opening his mouth, making deals repeatedly, and then reneging on deals.
READ MORE: Salehi: Iran to Remain Committed to Its Promises if EU Can Keep JCPOA Alive
The really big thing here is the increasing unpredictability of the American administration; the American administration has a deal with Iran and the Iran deal is being reneged on, the North Korea summit is being canceled, so I think Europeans, they were giving President Trump a chance, he had his chance, but slowly now they are quitting this game and trying now to get involved in other games, which, of course, now involves Russia, but also, let us not forget, China.
Chancellor Merkel was in China last week and the message she brought to China was similar to what Macron was doing in Russia. The Europeans now are trying to develop other options because they can see now where it is going, they may have a trade war with the United States in the future, they also want to, of course, maintain the Iran deal and that would bring them into conflict with the Trump administration. At the same moment, right now, some European politicians have also gone to Washington already in order to negotiate whether something can be done to save the deal, or at least the European participation in the Iran deal.
Sputnik: Do you think we're going to see a shift in relations, in unions and allies commercially, or is it going to be in a broader political sense — new relationships that form in the vacuum that's created by the very uncertain Trump administration?
Dr. Paul Sanders: I can see that already happening between China and the European Union. China is very interested in cooperating very closely with Germany, and I think Macron is trying to do the same thing for France and Russia, because for a French president to go to Moscow is much less of an issue or risk than for a German Chancellor to go to Moscow.
By the way, Chancellor Merkel was in Sochi last week as well, but, of course, she can promise a lot less because then she would come under a lot more criticism back home, she has to justify herself a lot more than a French president would have to do, that's why President Macron was given more liberty to talk the way he did in St. Petersburg on Friday. There is definitely something going on right now but, of course, it's always difficult to say what the end result will be. Of course, the Americans are not really playing a very transparent game at the moment, one really doesn't know what's waiting around the next corner.
READ MORE: German FM Says US Exit From JCPOA Damaged Transatlantic Relations — Reports
Sputnik: How significant is the actual presence of French President Emmanuel Macron as well as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the forum?
Dr. Paul Sanders: I would see it as one more sign of the Europeans really trying to develop other options than just relying on the US. They've known this for a long time that this day of reckoning would come.
Russia has been surprisingly successful over the last couple of months because the sanctions are not hurting Russia as much as they are hurting Europe, and, probably, a lot of French businesses, in particular, are very keen to have the sanctions lifted and we have a new Italian government that already during the election period said that lifting the Russian sanctions was really at the top of their agenda.
We have a war in Syria that's basically finished and where now politicians who were very hardline or very hawkish before, now they've changed their music, like Ursula von der Leyen, who's the defense minister in Germany, she was saying (last week) that she couldn't see how Syria could maintain President Assad in the long-run or even the mid run, but thinks it's still preferable to have a functioning Syrian state rather than a Libyan scenario, Libyan chaos; because now the European Union now is still working on Libya and they're still no stability in Libya, so this is, for the first time, this is really happening that European politicians are saying anything positive at all about the fact that the Syrian civil war hasn't completely destroyed the Syrian state. So there is a lot of really interesting stuff going on at the moment.
READ MORE: EU Extends Sanctions Against Syria for One Year
The views and opinions expressed by Dr. Paul Sanders are those of the expert and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.