Ponars memo 2014

International Relations and Diplomacy, 2015

This article discusses whether the European Union (EU) has engaged in a geopolitical approach when it comes to its Eastern neighbors, now included in the EU's Eastern Partnership. The paper concludes that the EU has not engaged in a geopolitical approach when it comes to its policies towards its Eastern neighbors. Instead, it has approached them through the prisms of inter-connectedness and interdependency. The main reason for that rejection of geopolitical approach lies in the role that the EU has assigned to itself as an international actor, i.e. as a civilian and normative power. Finally, the use of civilian instruments would avoid the EU falling into a geopolitical trap that would lead to a zero sum game situation for its Eastern neighours in their relationships with Russia.

2014

The November 2013 Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Vilnius played a key role in the transformation of the concept of the EU as a normative power. The summit was not only a focal point for developing the EU’s eastward policy, it has repositioned the EU as a geostrategic actor. Even Germany, which is usually cast as an “advocate” for Russia, joined other EU member states in support of the “European choice” of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. The urge to counter Russian aspirations in these countries has created a rare period of European foreign policy unity. At the same time, the ability of the EU to effectively adopt a geopolitical approach in Eastern Europe is limited because of a series of structural and institutional factors. In the end, the outcome of these contemporary East-West tussles will depend more on actions on the ground than on various balances of power between Brussels and Moscow.

2017

A general and strategic effect of EU's Association Agreements and DCFTAs with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine has been the extension of the concept of Europe and its wider opening to neighborhoods and margins. It is on this basis that a European normative order can be differentiated from both the 'Russian world' and Eurasian geopolitical space. However this paper argues that the process of association is not a unilateral move, but a multilateral and reciprocal development; it is a way for Europe to know more about itself, and to politically redefine itself. The neighbourhood policy causes controversial effects on the EU. On the one hand, it consolidates the liberal-minded groups within European societies eager to see the EU as a promoter of values of freedom and civic liberties to be projected eastwards and defended in EU's neighborhood. On the other hand, the problems of practical implementation tend to solidify sceptical groups in both the EU and its associated neighbours that contest not only the deepening of EU's engagement with Ukraine, but EU's normative project as a whole. The implementation of the joint strategy of the EU and its close neighbours faces a challenge of finding a proper balance between two dominant-yet to a large extent contradictory-approaches. One consists of capitalizing on these countries' status as victims of Russia's policies, countries whose very existence is under threat, which implies support and help from the EU. Another, requiring much more consistent efforts, is for the associated neighbouring states to emerge as positive showcases of transition, and useful partners contributing not only to the transformation process in post-Soviet area, but also to EU's and NATO's security. The recent three years made clear that the former alone does not guarantee to Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova a fully-fledged European voice.

PonarsEuarasia - Policy Memos, 2014

Geopolitics, 2019

Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, the idea that the EU and Russia are engaged in a geopolitical contest over their common neighbourhood and that the Eastern Partnership (EaP) is Brussels’ instrument in this context appears ‘common sense’. Yet, the reality of the EaP as a policy pro- gramme hardly corresponds to such representation, whether in its original purpose, actual content or effects on the ground. To unpack this discrepancy, this article presents a genealogy of what is conceptualised here as the geopoliticisation of the EaP, a notion set forth to designate the discursive construction of an issue as a geopolitical problem. While Russia’s actions in Ukraine certainly contributed to deepen and reinforce this dynamic, the article shows that the geopoliticisation of the EaP was neither merely exogenous nor simply reactive. It was also carried forward from within the European policy commu- nity by a discourse coalition which, based on its own political subjectivities and policy agenda, came to frame the EaP as an endeavour aimed at ‘winning over’ countries of the Eastern neighbourhood and ‘rolling back’ Russia’s influence.

2011

The EU-driven initiative called the Eastern Partnership (EaP) is expected to bring about, inter alia, regional co-operation among the six post-Soviet – WNIS (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine) and the South Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia). Thus, the EU hopes to “Europeanize” them also within “A new framework for multilateral co-operation” (along with a simultaneously running bilateral track of the Eastern Partnership) with the aim to form stable, democratic, secure, prosperous and more predictable neighbourhood. Direct Europeanization in a multilateral setting “beyond Europe” (Schimmelfennig, 2009) beyond the EU-member, “quasi-member”, candidate and potential candidate states is a new phenomenon. The intended regional co-operation is supposed to serve as “a natural forum” to share information and experience on partners’ steps towards transition, reform and modernisation, on further developments of the EaP (Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and th...

2019

It seems the history is getting repeated, proving the thesis that “each new is well forgotten old”. Actually, the current disguised war between Russia and the West over the CIS territory resembles the Cold war between the USA and the former Soviet Union.54 The process may continue, by dismantling the CIS and the rest in the newly promoted Eurasian Union. Factors of revisionism are evident between the new and old structures. To the point, the CIS encompasses the space, which the former Soviet Union had taken over from the Russian Empire, excluding the territory of the Western Ukraine.55 In its turn, the set-up of the forthcoming Eurasian Union shows that foremost it intends to meet a kind of Russia’s imperialistic ambitions and integrate at least the CIS countries (in the ideal version wholly, if not some of them) and adopt structurally the European Union like, yet, but functionally a Russian-dominated body. Of course, the structural as well as functional analogies of the forthcoming entity with the Former Soviet Union is not worded by the initiator of the project, contrary, he states that the Soviet Union is already in the past56. The well-known expression: “He who does not regret the passing of the USSR has no heart; he, who wants to restore it, has no head” comes.57 In his book “The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border between Geopolitics and Globalization” Dmitri Trenin stated that all over the history Russia had experienced failures, which were accompanied with territory losses. Yet, it dealt with the difficulties and became bigger and mightier. The author quotes Ivan Ilyin: “With each attempt to divide Russia and after each disintegration it restores itself again by the mysterious ancient power of its spiritual identity.” At the same time he doubts, whether this will be the case also in the future58. In this context, the current paper tries to find out to what extent, if any, the CIS can serve as a tool for the successful reintegration and implementation of the “Eurasian Union” project, initiated by then Russian Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin in his attempts to restore Russia’s control over the CIS countries and resurrect the country’s erstwhile image of an “uncontested power” in the world.

2015

This thesis explores EU borders and bordering in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the context of the 2004 EU enlargement, the 2007 extension of the Schengen zone and the 2004 Eastern Dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) that, in 2009, was upgraded to the Eastern Partnership (EaP). The thesis links borders with identities and governing orders to argue that while the EU has successfully included, inter alia, Czechs and Poles, it has excluded Ukrainians sufficiently to impact negatively on their lives and on the achievement of EU goals in the neighbourhood. The de-bordering and re-bordering inherent to enlargement, Schengen, ENP and EaP have (partially) displaced CEE borders from traditional locations at state frontiers. Bordering activities still take place within the supposedly borderless Schengen zone as well as at external frontiers with neighbouring states, but the EU has also exported border practices onto the territories of its neighbours. These processes prom...

The article looks at geopolitical transformations in Europe and globally that affected the European Union’s Eastern Partnership policy. The article concludes that although this policy originated as a low-key instrument designed for dealing with the EU’s eastern neighbours, its effects had geopolitical implications which provoked counter reaction from Russia. Although the military conflict in eastern Ukraine is a major challenge to the EU’s foreign policy, it is also a possibility for the EU to devise a more coherent and strategically oriented foreign policy. To defuse the crisis in Ukraine and to build more secure and prosperous neighbourhood, however, the EU should work more closely with the United States.