Russia, the EU, and the Eastern Partnership

Chapter 1

A Clash of Two Worldviews?

Introduction

The EU-Russian relationship has never been simple or smooth. The two partners often found their cooperation dominated by mutual distrust and divergent interests. Accusations of violations of democratic rules and values from one side and of using double standards from the other side have often poisoned the relationship between the two actors. The present chapter argues that the roots of disagreements between Russia and the EU should not be seen primarily in the Kremlin’s leaders’ authoritarianism and ‘pragmatism’ or the EU’s insistence on norms and values, but rather in the more fundamental difference of the very nature of the two actors.

Locked in a realist worldview, based on concepts of balance of power and zero-sum games, Russia does not understand the win-win principle of the EU’s political philosophy, fiercely opposing any sovereignty transfer and watching with scepticism the promotion of democratic rules and values beyond its neighbours’ western borders. On the other side, the EU, a promoter of liberal institutionalism, finds Russia’s policy to trend against the stream of the 21st century international system’s order and sees the interdependence and sharing of common universal values as the key for stability and prosperity.

Neither Russia nor the EU has been content with this relationship. Despite economic interdependence, strategic partnership, official declarations of belonging culturally and historically to the same ‘European family’, or Russia’s interest in participating in the integration process of the continent and creating a ‘harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok’ (Putin 2010), the two actors have found it difficult to agree on important issues, be it democratic values, the ‘common neighbourhood’, or energy relations. There has not been a single major treaty between Russia and the EU that has not been preceded by difficult negotiations and infringements of the accepted terms during its implementation. Whether the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, the Common Spaces or the commitments Russia made upon accession to the Council of Europe, the EU has frequently accused Moscow of not respecting, reinterpreting, or challenging the agreed rules. Furthermore, critique of Russia’s growing authoritarianism, violation of free market principles, energy blackmail, or attempts at re-creating the Soviet empire is heavily present in Western analytical briefs and academic literature.

From Moscow’s point of view, however, it is the EU that applies rules in a discretionary way, uses double standards, interferes in Russia’s internal affairs and attempts to deprive Moscow of ‘legitimate’ spheres of influence for its own benefit. The Kremlin keeps emphasising that the West took advantage of its weakness in the 1990s and intends to do the same nowadays to the detriment of Russia’s national interests. Hence, its scepticism towards Brussels’s enhanced cooperation with the former Soviet republics and promotion of democratic values and standards beyond the EU’s borders.

How should one interpret these contradictions between the EU and Russia? Is it a competition for influence, a confrontation between authoritarianism and democracy, a question of different values? According to Krastev (2008) the frictions between the two actors can be explained through the political clash between a modern state—Russia, and a post-modern entity—the EU. Starting from this point, we proceed further and will argue that the EU-Russian relationship is jeopardised by contradiction between two concepts underlying the two actors’ worldviews: neorealism and liberal institutionalism.

1. A realist power in a post-modern world

In a 2005 article, the Russian analyst, Dmitry Trenin summarised the essence of the current Russian worldview as such: ‘the elites have left the 20th century behind—to go back to the 19th century’ (Trenin 2005: 1). In other words, instead of adapting their policy to the post-Cold War international order, dominated by concepts of integration and globalisation, Russian political leaders reshaped their visions according to the pre-Cold War or even to the pre-World War I order, continuing to see the international arena through the lenses of Realpolitik. To better understand what Trenin’s statement implies, we begin with a short assertion of the basic principles of (neo)realist theory.

From a (neo)realist perspective, the international system is anarchic, and comprises equally sovereign states that are the system’s units. ‘The equal of all the others, none is entitled to command, none is required to obey’ (Waltz 1979: 88). There is no global government. The states act according to their own interests and they differ ‘primarily by their greater or less capabilities for performing similar tasks’ (Waltz 1979: 97). (Neo)realists assume that the main concern of the international system’s units is security and survival. Therefore, states are rational actors that make strategic calculations. Facing the threat that other states may use force to harm or conquer them, the system’s units are compelled to improve their relative power positions through arms build-ups, unilateral diplomacy and mercantile foreign economic policies (Karagiannis 2012: 2).

Realists understand international relations primarily as a struggle among the great powers for domination and stability: ‘struggle for power … whenever [states] strive to realize their goal by means of international politics, they do so by striving for power’ (Morgenthau 1965:27). National interest plays an important role within this context. For realists, it is the basic guide for responsible foreign policy (Jackson and Sørensen 2003: 87).

(Neo)realists argue also that great powers manage the international system so as to maintain international order. For classical realists, this is possible through the balance of power mechanism that prevents hegemonic world domination by any one great power, while for neorealists it is more likely to be achieved in a bipolar system than in a multipolar system. Mearsheimer (1993) claimed that the end of the Cold War bipolar order and the emergence of multipolar Europe would lead to instability, to the bad old ways of European anarchy and even to a renewed danger of international conflicts. With such assumptions, neorealists are arguably missing to properly account for an important post-Cold War process: the integration of European nation-states into the European Union—a new international relationship between the major and minor powers of Europe which the juxtaposition of bipolarism versus multipolarism does not fully reflect (Jackson and Sørensen 2003: 91).

Mearsheimer (1994/95) also argues that as long as the international system is anarchic, the system’s actors are interested in maintaining their freedom of manoeuvre. Therefore, states are averse to any legally binding normative entanglements that would jeopardise their sovereignty and autonomy. Thus, for realists, institutions do not really make a difference, on the international level (Haukkala 2010: 25). Instead, they are the ‘mere surface of reflections of underlying processes that involve the dynamics of power’ and are important mainly for ‘gauging the evolution of the structure of power in international society’ (Young 1989: 60, 61). There should not be any international obligations in the moral sense of the word between independent states. The only fundamental responsibility of a system’s unit should be to advance and defend its national interest.

Considering the above theoretical arguments and overviewing the last 25 years of Russian foreign policy, one can notice that, except for a short ‘deflection’ at the beginning of the 1990s, when—at least, on the surface—Moscow sought to integrate itself into the community of Western democracies and institutions, realism has characterised the Kremlin’s post-Cold War foreign policy. What varied was the degree of persistence in following its goals. This variation was determined by the capabilities and resources Moscow had at its disposal, at a certain moment in time.

In fact, even the short period of international liberalism of 1992–1993 raises some questions. As Haukkala (2010: 173) argues, worldviews do not change quickly, and, therefore, it would be naïve to think that the Soviet worldview would have just disappeared along with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Suspicions concerning the honesty of Russian commitments to the values of international liberalism are also supported by Rumer’s (2007: 14) assertion that Moscow, highly dependent on support from the US and Europe, did not have the luxury of pursuing a foreign policy in contradiction with the policy priorities of its principal donors, and had to make the impression of sharing the same political philosophy.

This is confirmed also by the domestic events of 1993 and the foreign political patterns that followed it—i.e. an attempt to balance the competing goals of establishing diplomatic and security hegemony throughout the CIS area as well as regaining great power status in international councils, while at the same time cultivating its ties with the G7 states, collectively as well as individually. Thus, a more credible explanation seems to be that, during Kozyrev’s tenure as Russian foreign minister, Moscow’s policy was ‘subordinated to the need to maintain at least appearance, if not the substance, of partnership with the West’ (Lynch 2001:8, 15), while after the events of 1993, the Kremlin was unable any more to maintain the appearances of liberalism.

The appointment of Evgenii Primakov, a former deputy chairman of the KGB, as foreign minister, in January 1996, removed remaining appearances of liberalism in Russian foreign policy. The zero-sum pragmatism rooted in a highly traditional understanding of realism, characterised by anti-Westernism and the call for ‘multipolarity’ has marked the aftermath. With declarations like ‘Russia has been and remains a great power, and its policy toward the outside world should correspond to that status’, and ‘Russia doesn’t have permanent enemies, but it does have permanent interests’, Primakov clearly promoted ‘pragmatic nationalist’ and ‘Eurasianist’ viewpoints (Donaldson and Nogee 2009: 116). However, the weak economy led to a ‘fatalistic dualism’ in Russia’s foreign policy, a contradiction between aspiration and capacity, between what Moscow really wanted and what it was forced to do. Thus, Primakov’s so-called pragmatism led to few positive results, alienating instead Russia’s friends and confirming the hostility of those traditionally suspicious of its intentions (Sakwa 2008: 242).

Putin’s era was marked by a new form of realism. With the advantage of Russia’s economic recovery, the new leader combined Russia’s traditional orientation of foreign policy towards Realpolitik. In other words, Vladimir Putin asserted Russia’s national interest, seeking at the same time to integrate the country into the international community, but on its own terms. Stressing the fact that Russia is part of European civilization, the Kremlin insisted that Russia should be accepted as an equal of the international community and integrate itself, in its own way. This new realism did not imply that Russia abandoned its aspirations to global influence, to be a great power, but that it was pursuing a ‘far more conscious attempt to match ambitions with resources’ (Sakwa 2008: 242, 244–245).

Putin’s realism distanced Russia from some elements of Primakov’s traditional thinking and borrowed several features of Kozyrev’s foreign policy vision. Russia is seen as an important pole, one of the handful of gravitational great powers that determine the shape and direction of the international system based on a balance of power. In order to be a voice heard and a presence to be reckoned with in world affairs, Putin sees integration into the international system as an important objective of Russian foreign policy. However, compared to Kozyrev’s vision of an integration based essentially on common values, this time values and principles should play a minor role, if any at all. Considering the realist perspective of the international order determined by the balance of power and interests among countries, Russia should not indulge to be a passive member of the system but should participate in formulating the global agenda. Instead of accepting the guidance of other powers, which have their own selfish national interests, Russia should protect and follow its own goals by actively involving herself in world affairs (Rumer 2007: 23–24).