Underestimating Yourself: The EU and the Political Realities of the Eastern Neighbourhood

Abstract

European leaders were taken by surprise by the Ukraine crisis and Russia's response to the Eastern Partnership. They should not have been: all questions raised by the Ukraine crisis first emerged with the 2008 war in Georgia. European leaders appear not to have grasped the fundamentally different forms of integration that the EU and Russia have proposed–-and especially the fact that voluntary European integration in the Eastern Partnership effectively negates Russia's need for weak, authoritarian states to form part of its restored empire. In responding to the crisis, EU leaders face a challenge from Russia that is asymmetric: Russia uses direct threats to the sovereignty of the EU's eastern neighbours, especially through unresolved conflicts, matters the EU is ill-equipped to handle. Finding ways to remedy this gap will be an important task for the EU in the immediate future.

Introduction

The role of the EU in the Ukraine crisis has generated substantial criticism and commentary, which has gone so far as to blame the crisis on the EU's alleged mishandling of its eastern neighbourhood. Such an assessment is considerably overblown and unfair, as the crisis has been created entirely by Russia's hostile behaviour towards former Soviet states and its leadership's pursuit of a Eurasian empire. Yet there is a serious argument to be made that the EU is less than fully equipped to handle the political realities of the eastern neighbourhood.

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) has been subjected to much ridicule; but given the circumstances of its creation, it has been a very successful instrument. In some ways it is this success–-and Russia's inability to provide anything close to its attractiveness–-that has forced the Russian leadership to take unprecedented measures to halt it, measures that carry dire consequences for Russia's place in the world. This outcome appears to have taken European leaders by surprise.

The writing on the wall

It is legitimate to ask why European leaders failed to foresee that Vladimir Putin's Russian government would be ready to use military force to prevent Ukraine from going down the road to European integration. Both Ukraine's importance to Russia and Russia's willingness to use force in its neighbourhood have been widely documented. Indeed, as far back as the fateful NATO Summit in Bucharest in 2008, Vladimir Putin told US President George W. Bush that ‘Ukraine is not even a state’, and that ‘part of its territories are Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us’ (Marson 2009). He then added that if Ukraine joined NATO, ‘the very existence of the state could find itself under threat’ (Goodman 2014).

A few months later, Russian forces invaded Georgia, the other country that had sought closer ties to NATO at the Bucharest summit. This invasion took European leaders by surprise, and prompted the rapid intervention of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to negotiate a significant, yet flawed, ceasefire. Initially, many European leaders were willing to give Georgia at least a significant share of the blame. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was viewed by many European leaders–-especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel–-as an unpredictable hothead, and Saakashvili's decision to launch a defensive strike against Russian forces moving into Georgian territory led to a long debate on whether Georgia, rather than Russia, had started the war. Research carried out since then shows unequivocally that the invasion had been planned and provoked by Russia (Asmus 2010; Cornell and Starr 2009). Just as in the case of the Bucharest conversation, however, Russian intentions are best described by their leaders. In 2011, then President Dmitry Medvedev told Russian troops that ‘If the war against Georgia had not happened … several countries would join NATO’ (Caucasus Regional News 2011). If that did not make matters clear enough, in 2012 Vladimir Putin himself stated that the invasion had been planned since 2006, and that Russia had trained South Ossetian militias for the conflict (Felgenhauer 2012).

The potential implications for Ukraine were understood much earlier than that. A week after the Russian invasion of Georgia, US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker sent a cable to Washington recalling Putin's statements in Bucharest and what they portended for Ukraine if the invasion of Georgia did not lead to significant consequences: in such a scenario, ‘this may only embolden Russia to increase its bullying behaviour towards Ukraine and others in the neighbourhood’ (Goodman 2014). In 2009, Ukrainian officials were already speaking of the increasingly harsh Russian rhetoric on Ukraine, including ‘aggressive conversations … concerning Ukraine and the dividing of its territory … at various levels of the Russian political, military and secret-service leadership’ (Marson 2009).

This, then, was known in Western capitals, as was the increasingly assertive Russian plan to build a Eurasian Union on the foundations of the Eurasian Customs Union that includes Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The centrality of Ukraine to any such plans was equally well understood. If these facts were all known, why did Western leaders fail to foresee the evolution of events in Ukraine?

This is all the more relevant since the events in Ukraine were preceded by the capitulation of Armenia. In August 2013, Putin, along with six ministers and a portion of Russia's Caspian Fleet, visited Baku. The next month, clearly capitalising on Armenian fears of a change in Russian policy on the unresolved Armenian–Azerbaijani territorial conflict, Putin welcomed Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to the Kremlin. At that point, Armenia had recently successfully concluded negotiations on an Association Agreement (AA) with the EU, and was planning to initial it in Vilnius. Without consulting anyone in his capital, Sargsyan came out of the meeting with Putin pledging to join the Eurasian Customs Union–-thus destroying three years of work negotiating the AA with the EU. Clearly, the European integration drive threatened to reverse Moscow's tacit endorsement of Armenia's military conquest of Azerbaijani territories. As one analyst put it, ‘the implication is that the Russians threatened to end military aid to Armenia and sell more weapons to Azerbaijan’, as well as threatening Sargsyan's own position in power (Danielyan 2013). Sargsyan would have taken such threats very seriously given that Moscow had helped to overthrow Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in 2010 when the latter reneged on a pledge to expel the US from the Manas air base outside Bishkek (Blank 2010).

One simple answer to Western surprise lies in the unforeseen developments in Ukraine. Even before November 2013, cynical observers did not believe Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was sincere about his stated intention to sign the AA with the EU at the Vilnius Summit of the EaP. Many believed he was simply seeking better terms from Moscow by courting the EU. Few expected that Yanukovych's decision not to sign the AA with the EU would lead to massive demonstrations in Kyiv, lasting for weeks in sub-zero temperatures. It would be credible to suggest that European leaders were prepared to allow Ukraine–-like Armenia before it–-to submit to Russian control, and that only the determination of the Ukrainian people to live in a normal, European country halted that scenario. Indeed, had the second Ukrainian revolution not occurred, Moscow would have had neither a reason for nor an opportunity to make its land grab in Crimea. And had Yanukovych signed the agreement in Vilnius, Russia would certainly have retaliated, but it is less certain that its response would have included military action.

Incompatible: the Eastern Partnership and Russian spheres of influence

Yet the question still remains of whether European leaders understood the political and ideological ramifications of the EaP they were gradually building. Indeed, many commentators have noted the contrast between the Euro-fatigue in European capitals and the young Ukrainians who were willing to risk death for the idea of Europe. Similarly, there appears to have been a widespread misreading of Russian perceptions of the EU. Indeed, the traditional under-standing–-in both Russia and Europe–-had been that NATO enlargement was a red flag for Moscow, but that Russian leaders cared considerably less about the EU. Indeed, to many Europeans, this perspective was a remnant of Moscow's territorial and Cold War attitude: NATO meant US security guarantees, and therefore was seen as directly hostile to Russia; the EU was seen as being focused on ‘soft issues’, and therefore less problematic.

Once again, the statements of Russian leaders are telling. In March 2009, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rhetorically asked ‘what is the EaP, if not an attempt to extend the EU's sphere of influence?’ (Pop 2009). This statement was prescient in indicating that Moscow no longer saw the EU as a soft politics actor, but increasingly as a force threatening Russia's own ambitions in its neighbourhood. This requires a more detailed discussion of what these ambitions are.

The Russian ambition for integration in the post-Soviet space is diametrically different from that of the EU. Whether through its Collective Security Treaty Organization or the projected Eurasian Union, Moscow's clear aim is to restrict the sovereignty of Soviet successor states, and ensure that their foreign as well as domestic policies are indexed on Moscow's approval and consent. In other words, Russia aims to create a ‘sphere of privileged interests’, as President Medvedev declared following the invasion of Georgia–-and which was the gist of the ‘Draft Treaty on European Security’ that Medvedev proposed to NATO in the aftermath of the war (Clover 2008; Socor 2009).

This reality is what has precipitated the current crisis and what European leaders have failed to react to. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the EU's EaP and the Russian plans for a Eurasian Union. The EU's EaP essentially offers the EU's eastern neighbours support and assistance in the event that they choose to reform their political and economic systems on the basis of the EU's acquis communautaire. These reforms are not easy and in some cases are likely to be unpopular, but carry the promise of building accountable and democratic state institutions, based on the rule of law–-and inclusion in the EU's common market. While the EaP does not preclude eventual EU membership, it does not promise it either: it is entirely silent on the matter. And despite this absence of a membership prospect–-which means states could implement reforms, but fail to gain a seat at the table determining the rules of the game–-it has acted as a powerful force of attraction for the states in the region–-save Belarus and oil-rich Azerbaijan.

The vision of the EaP has far-reaching implications. A state integrating with the EU and building stable institutions would have a government accountable to its people rather than to Moscow; entailing that where the interests of the people and Moscow do not coincide, the government would necessarily choose the interests of the people.

As a result, such a state could not be part of a Russian sphere of influence, which would require subjugation to Moscow. Indeed, for a country to be part of the Russian sphere of influence it cannot have strong, accountable and legitimate state institutions. Instead, it must be authoritarian, weak, corrupt, fragile and, if possible, have deep internal or external tensions that give Moscow the opportunity to manipulate social forces against one another, and the ability to maintain control. Political scientist Thomas Ambrosio (2009) makes this point clearly in his book Authoritarian Backlash: Russian Resistance to Democratization in the Former Soviet Union, in which he outlines what he considers Russia's strategy in the post-Soviet space: one focused, among other factors, on ‘bolstering’ authoritarian rule in post-Soviet states, and ‘subverting’ efforts at democratic state-building in those, such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, going down such a path.

Thus, the Russian sphere of influence is incompatible not only with the form of European integration envisaged by the EaP, but at a more fundamental level with the type of countries that the EU's instruments would help to create. Where European leaders want a stable neighbourhood, Russia seeks an unstable one; where Europe seeks to develop accountability, Russia undermines it. Thus, the competition between Russia and Europe is not only geopolitical; it is fundamentally ideological.

This fundamental ideological incompatibility between European and Russian aims is an element that European leaders have failed to internalise: that is, that the very notion, not of EU integration, but of the internalisation of the EU acquis by the states in the eastern neighbourhood constitutes a mortal threat to the imperial ambitions that lie at the heart of Putinism. Indeed, European leaders often not only state but appear to believe in the rhetoric that stable and democratic countries in the ‘shared neighbourhood’ with Russia would be in Russia's interest.

Yet while that may objectively be the case, it is not in the interest of the Putin regime, or what it defines as Russian interests. Instead, the Putin regime views the stabilisation and democratisation of these countries as a threat not only to its foreign policy ambitions, but to its domestic system of governance. This is particularly the case for Ukraine and to a lesser extent Georgia, countries that occupy an importance place in the Russian identity and imagination. The Baltic states were considered ‘Western’ and could be let go without any direct implications for Russia. But if Ukraine, in particular, were to develop into a modern, stable and democratic state on the European model, this would have enormous reverberations for Russia itself. If the closely related Ukrainians were living in such an environment, why would Russians accept the kleptocratic authoritarianism of the Putin regime? Thus, it is a matter of priority in Russian foreign policy to ensure that Ukraine–-and Georgia–-do not become democratic states, and that, instead, their ‘colour revolutions’ are portrayed as failures that have exacerbated the poor living conditions of their citizens.

Europe's problem: dealing with Russia's asymmetric challenge

Even in the aftermath of the Crimea crisis, the Weimar Triangle foreign ministers (Germany, France and Poland) issued a statement in March 2014 that proposed ‘EU–Russia talks with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia about the consequences of the EU-Association Agreements with Eastern European Partners for both sides’ (Poland 2014). This statement masks the fundamental incompatibility of European and Russian aims, and offers little scope for success.

European leaders also misread another element of the politics of the eastern neighbourhood: the unresolved conflicts, often called the ‘frozen conflicts’. When Europeans think of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, although they may accept that Russia is meddling in these conflicts, they view them as fundamentally local conflicts that have to be resolved locally, involving the ‘parties’ to the conflicts–-and Russia has not traditionally been seen as a party to them. However, even if these conflicts indeed began as local conflicts, they rapidly transformed into primarily geopolitical conflicts, as Russia's policy has been the decisive force in maintaining their lack of resolution through controlled instability. Furthermore, since at least 2004, Moscow has invested considerable resources into taking direct control of the separatist authorities in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As for Nagorno-Karabakh, Moscow has, through its influence in Yerevan, mainly worked to achieve the same objective. The implication of this is that the conflicts are no longer solvable on the local level, and that Russia is not an arbiter but a direct party to them. Yet European powers still pay lip service to mechanisms of resolution that date to a different reality, that of the 1990s. The one exception is Georgia: following the 2008 war, the EU and the US defined Russia as a party to the conflict, and thus to the Geneva discussions meant to manage it. Russia, of course, strenuously denies being a party to the conflict, which it argues is between Georgia on the one hand and Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the other (Cornell 2011).

Yet the EaP is virtually silent on the unresolved conflicts. This stems in part from a desire by the EU not to get embroiled in these conflicts; yet the consequence is that the EU is trying to contribute to the development of its eastern neighbours without addressing the single most important issue halting their development, which provides Moscow with ample instruments to undermine their development and Western integration. Indeed, one clear reason for the invasion of Georgia was that Moscow believed Western powers would never admit countries with disputed borders and unresolved conflicts on their territories into their organisations (Wilson 2014). Thus, Moscow thought that the invasion of Georgia had killed Georgia's NATO aspirations, and statements by some European leaders seemed to corroborate that view. In the same vein, it is likely that Moscow manufactured the crisis in Crimea with exactly the same purpose, but this time to stop Ukrainian EU membership.

In sum, while the EU promises ‘more for more’ in terms of assistance for reforms, Russia offers another incentive: it essentially tells the countries of the eastern neighbourhood that if they opt for European integration, Russia will not only wreck their economies, but physically tear their countries apart. This threat has been made in private but is also increasingly being made in public. To note only a very recent example, Putin ideologue Alexander Dugin reacted to Azerbaijan's pro-Kyiv vote in the UN General Assembly in April 2014 by noting that ‘an Azerbaijan hostile to Russia will instantly cease its existence’ (Goble 2014). To clarify the point, Dugin explained that ‘the only guarantee of the territorial integrity of all the post-Soviet states is Russia itself … In a confrontation with Moscow, not one post-Soviet state will exist in its current borders’ (Goble 2014). Simply put, European leaders have not been able to think up a response to this type of threat. In a sense, the EU and Russia are operating on different frequencies, in ways that prevent the EU from effectively mitigating Russia's actions.

Conclusion

If the EU is to succeed in its aims in the EaP, it will need to find ways to rise to this challenge. The inherent problem is that hard security and deterrence is not the EU's mission; thus the response cannot be exclusively an EU one.

To begin with, therefore, the future of the EU's eastern neighbourhood depends on effective institutional cooperation between the EU and NATO, and on the revitalisation of the transatlantic link. Indeed, a hard power response to Russia will be needed, and only NATO can provide that, given US backing.

Any response must begin with recognition that European aims in the eastern neighbourhood cannot be achieved while the most serious challenges to the survival and development of partner states there are ignored or neglected. Instead, Europe and the US must engage on the very core issues of sovereignty and security that the unresolved conflicts have created.

The response to Putin must be regional: it must be focused on shoring up the fledgling states along Russia's periphery, particularly those affected by unresolved conflicts. While providing security guarantees for these states is not realistic at present, the EU and NATO might begin by making it clear that the unresolved conflicts will not be held against these states if they fulfil criteria for membership. There is an obvious precedent for this: West Germany, of course, had a sizeable unresolved conflict that did not prejudice its membership of either organisation, and similar arrangements were made for the overseas territories of several European states (Wilson 2014).

The EU has levers at its disposal. It is a party in some form to the negotiations of all the unresolved conflicts–-except Crimea, where such mechanisms have yet to be established. The 5 + 2 format over Transnistria, the Minsk Group over Nagorno-Karabakh and the Geneva discussions over Georgia's conflicts all provide avenues for clear and concerted European engagement. This will not magically lead to a resolution of the conflicts, but would indicate that Europe is now taking these issues seriously.

In cooperation with the US and NATO, the EU also has the capability to engage more deeply in the security sector with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Such steps would reassure these countries, and ensure that Moscow understands that there is no implicit acceptance of a Russian ‘sphere of privileged interests’, to use Medvedev's terminology.

Practical measures are also of key importance. In Georgia, the deployment of an EU Monitoring Mission following the 2008 war helped to counter Russian provocations and neutralised Russian efforts to manufacture local crises or throw unfounded accusations at Georgia. It has done little to address the unresolved conflicts, but it is a powerful tool in containing these conflicts and reassuring the Georgian leadership. Similar missions could be deployed in Moldova and could feature in Armenian–Azerbaijani negotiations. Moreover, the population of the unrecognised territories lives in an information vacuum, dominated by the propaganda of Russian official news. Countering that information monopoly and providing unbiased news coverage of regional and international developments for these populations is an important long-term goal.

In the final analysis, a key element in any effort to contain Putin's expansionism is to counteract his manipulation of unresolved conflicts. That means taking the victims of his policies seriously and helping to shore up their sovereignty and security. Taking steps to address frozen conflicts would register at least as much as any freezing of assets–-and by making Eastern Europe safer, it would also help to prevent the next Crimea crisis.