Английский язык для специальных и академических целей: Международные отношения и зарубежное регионоведение. Часть 1 - [86]

Both sides have unique instruments at their disposal in the struggle over their joint neighborhood. Russia can attract states mainly by offering low energy prices in return for closer relations. It can also threaten states with trade restrictions and bans as well as with military force (in traditional and “hybrid” forms, as it did in Crimea). And it uses a sophisticated propaganda apparatus to paint the EU and, even more, the United States as enemies who are threatening Russia.

The EU, meanwhile, attracts its neighborhood mainly by offering access to its huge common market and a joint space defined by principles of liberal democracy. The bloc has, however, long been hesitant to develop forceful instruments to bring its Eastern neighborhood into closer association. It was not until 2009 that the EU — reluctantly — agreed to put a bit more energy into its European Neighborhood Policy by adopting the Eastern Partnership initiative.

The eastern partnership

The Eastern Partnership, in which partner states are meant to eventually sign a free trade agreement and a wide-ranging association agreement with the EU, was conceived of by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in 2008. It was built as an offer of closer relations with six countries of Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine — following the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008.

Sikorski had proposed the Eastern Partnership to Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister from 2005 to 2009 in a grand coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel (and in the same position again since December 2013), but Steinmeier declined to make it a joint initiative. Sikorski then decided to launch the initiative with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. Together they managed to convince the EU to give the project the green light.

But the Eastern Partnership never had the full support of the strongest member states. They were reluctant to engage because of various fears — of increasing their financial burden and the perspective of opening up markets (especially the labor market) to new and economically very weak entrants, of another heated debate within the EU over further enlargement, and of a confrontation with Russia.

Indeed, one reason Steinmeier declined to join Sikorski was that he had just proposed a modernization partnership to Moscow. Engaging with EU neighbors in the post-Soviet space appeared to threaten the German attempt to deepen relations with Moscow.

Germany's support for the Eastern Partnership was always halfhearted at best. Merkel provided some rhetorical backing before the November 2013 Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, calling on Russia to accept Ukraine's sovereign right to choose its alliances. But neither Berlin nor other big member-state capitals sent clear signals to the Kremlin that the EU was ready to confront Russia over the right of countries in the post-Soviet space to associate themselves more closely with the EU.

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When Moscow began to put pressure on Ukraine and Moldova in summer 2013 using embargoes and bans, the EU failed to respond in a resolute way that might have convinced Russia that the union and its powerful member states were ready to make Russia pay a price for sabotaging the Eastern Partnership. When Armenia suddenly stopped its process of EU association in September 2013, apparently under pressure from Moscow, EU leaders just shrugged; no EU government made an effort to change Yerevan's mind. And the promise of EU accession — the strongest carrot — has never explicitly been offered to Eastern Partnership states (it hasn't been excluded either, though).

Meanwhile, Central European EU member states were much more eager than their Western neighbors to move ahead with the Eastern Partnership. Poland was the main driver. Warsaw found a strong ally in the European Commission, especially in the person of Stefan Fule, a Czech diplomat and European commissioner for enlargement and neighborhood policy. And Germany was willing to support Polish initiatives to a certain extent in the context of the Polish-German rapprochement that has taken place in the last year.

The maidan as the trigger

From a “postmodern” EU perspective the Eastern Partnership looked like a win-win project to all sides concerned. For years, the EU hoped that it could indeed have both: a closer association with the Eastern neighbors and unshaken relations with Russia. Moscow would profit as well from a stabilized neighborhood. And Eastern countries could continue to engage with both sides equally, becoming a kind of bridge between the EU and Russia.

Yet, Russia has never shared this view. For Moscow, the Eastern Partnership always looked like a hostile takeover. It set up a counterinitiative, a Eurasian customs union — later to become the Eurasian Union — and confronted the countries of Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus with an either-or choice. Membership in the customs union is per definition incompatible with the deep and comprehensive free trade agreements that the EU has sought to sign with Eastern states.