EU Foreign Policy and Post-Soviet Conflicts

TABLE OF CONTENT Chapter 01: Why is there a Need for New Approaches to EU Foreign Policy? (Ireneusz, Pawel Karolewski/Maciej Wilga) Part I: Internal Perspectives on EU Foreign Policy Chapter 02: The EU's 'External Action' According to the Lisbon Treaty: Institutional Choices and Their Explanations (Finn Laursen) Chapter 03: Approaches to Delegation in EU Foreign Policy: the Case of the Commission (Hylke Dijkstra Chapter 04: The High Representative the European External Action Service: Towards the Institutional Coherence in the Case of the Eastern Partnership (Monika Sus) Chapter 05: Committee Approach to the CFSP/CSDP: Characteristics, Profiles and Working Habits of EU Diplomats (Nicola Chelotti) Chapter 06: The Practice of Diplomacy and EU Security Policy (Mai'a K. Davis Cross) Chapter 07: Parliamentarisation Approach: Parliamentary Control in EU Foreign Policy (Kolja Raube) Part II: Challenges and Choices in External Perspectives on EU Foreign Policy Chapter 08: Normative Power and Military Means: the Case of the EU in FYR Macedonia (T. P. Palm) Chapter 09: A Post-Modern Foreign Policy: Can EU Foreign Policy Make a Difference in World Politics? (Dieter Mahncke) Chapter 10: Solving the Puzzle of EU Eastern Enlargement: Rhetorical Action in Diffuse Decision Contexts (Thomas Mehlhausen) Chapter 11: External Democracy Promotion as a Means of EU Foreign Policy (Irene Hahn-Fuhr) Chapter 12: Turkey and the European Union: Partners in Foreign Policy Cooperation in the South Caucasus (Meltem Muftuler-Bac/Aybars Gorgulu) New Approaches to EU Foreign Policy: Conclusions Chapter 13: EUFP Empirical Complexity, Theoretical Plurality and New Approaches to EU Foreign Policy: Conclusions (Maciej Wilga/Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski)

ABSTRACTIn this article I enquire into the sources of legitimacy of the European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy. I suggest that as the EU has moved beyond intergovernmentalism in this policy field, it cannot derive its legitimacy solely from the national systems of the member states. It must establish an additional channel of legitimacy, which is derived directly from the EU. Challenging the conventional position on the legitimacy of global governance institutions, I further suggest that EU institutions can only make a reasonable claim to prevail over the member states in this policy field if they contribute to enhance the normative status of the foreign policy. That the co-operative endeavour is mutually beneficial is not a sufficient basis for the legitimacy of EU foreign policy. Drawing on a deliberative perspective, I suggest that we may expect to find two mutually reinforcing sources of legitimacy at the EU level. However, these would mainly contribute to enhance the external legitimacy of the CFPS. Paradoxically, they may at the same time constrain the internal legitimacy of the EU's foreign policy.

This chapter provides a critical discussion of the mediatization of policy in general, and of EU foreign and security policy in particular. A common argument in public debate and research is that the media logic is increasingly affecting how policy is formulated. Brommesson and Ekengren are critical of this (as they see it) oversimplified perspective, and they analyse EU foreign and security policy from the opposite point of view in this chapter. Foreign policy is usually described as a conservative policy area, in as much as it is informed by a long-term perspective, and foreign policy is not the subject of public debate to the same extent as other policy areas. Based on this reverse perspective, the authors ask whether policy actors are actually taking advantage of the opportunities provided by mediatization to strengthen long-term policy objectives. The chapter sheds light on the relationship between policy and mediatization through a comparative analysis of two important strategy documents of EU foreign and security policy: the European security strategy of 2003 and the EU global strategy of 2016. The authors discuss the overarching question of whether the formulation of EU foreign and security policy is dominated by media logic, in other words, whether this policy has been mediatized.

This chapter assesses the compatibility of Turkish and EU foreign policies between 1959 and 2020. Based on the analysis of key international developments and Turkey’s alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the chapter identifies four periods that were characterized by different degrees of convergence and divergence. In the period between 1959 and 1998 compatibility was relatively high as Turkish foreign policy was guided by the goal of remaining part of the Western community of states throughout the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Between 1999 and 2002, Turkish foreign policy became regionally more active, in a similar way to that of the EU, but produced few results. The period between 2003 and 2010, up to the Arab Spring, is identified as the ‘golden age’ of compatibility between Turkish and EU foreign policies. Turkey’s prevailing ethos of this period, i.e., relying on soft power and cooperation with neighbors, was generally in line with the EU’s foreign policy approach. Since 2011, divergences between the EU and Turkey have increased, in particular with regard to Syria, Cyprus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. As Turkey defined its norms and interests differently from the EU, its rate of alignment with the EU’s CFSP decreased remarkably. The chapter concludes by looking to the future, arguing that cooperation between the EU and Turkey is likely to focus on issues where there is strong compatibility in selected areas only, such as pandemics, counterterrorism, migration, and energy, and will be primarily based on ad hoc mechanisms.

The Anti‐Coercion Instrument (ACI), the most powerful tool in the EU's geoeconomic arsenal, has its origins in the first Trump US presidency and has recently been brandished again as a potential response to Trump's coercive tariffs. Its centrality to the EU's ‘geoeconomic turn’ and the twists and turns of its legislative history have been extensively studied. However, the ACI is also significant because its making highlights the crucial role of European foreign policy think tanks and presents an opportunity to theorise the role of these consistently overlooked yet omnipresent actors in European Union foreign policy. Using elite interviews and qualitative content analysis, this article first reconstructs the prehistory of the ACI through the work of the European Council on Foreign Relations, whose task force brought together policy‐makers and corporates from six member states. Its work contributed substantive input, agenda‐setting and in‐advance consensus‐building. Second, by synthesising the existing literature, I theorise the three central analytically distinct but mutually reinforcing functions that think tanks perform in EU foreign policy (EUFP): providing politically original ideas, convening and policy entrepreneurship. Besides offering a new history of the ACI, the article, therefore, provides a meso‐level analytical framework for understanding what think tanks do in EUFP applicable across different theoretical approaches. In the case of the ACI, it also shows that accounting for the role of think tanks in EUFP has important implications for the scholarly debates about the ‘power of ideas’, decision‐making processes and business power in the EU's geoeconomic turn.

In the 30 years since the emergence of the post-Soviet conflicts things have both changed and remained the same – continuities and changes in post-Soviet conflicts are the primary themes of this volume – it addresses all major wars, civil wars, and rebellions in the former Soviet Union. The volume focuses on factors that have contributed or may contribute to the resolution of the post-Soviet conflicts, most of which have represented rather long and damaging crises. In all conflict cases Moscow has been guided by Russian state interests – some have been instigated or fueled, others driven to a frozen state, and still a couple of others have been constructively resolved due to Moscow’s intervention. Russia has used a long-term strategy for the resolution of those conflicts that have taken place on its soil, but in regards to the conflicts in other post-Soviet states, there is no long-term solution in sight. As such, the conflicts in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Nagorniy Karabakh, remain unresolved involving not only the named states, but Russia as well. They may represent localized national or regional crisis impacting only the states involved, but for the Russian Federation they epitomize one huge post-Soviet crisis with no obvious end.

The article examines the multivector foreign policy of Georgia during the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze (1992–2003) in the context of the complex geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus. During this period, the country faced numerous challenges, including ethnopolitical conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, economic difficulties, and the need for recovery after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In response to these challenges, Georgia pursued a balanced foreign policy strategy aimed at developing relations both with the West and with Russia. The article analyzes the key directions of Georgia’s foreign policy, including its attempts to integrate into Western international structures such as NATO and the European Union, while maintaining pragmatic relations with Russia, the traditional regional player. Shevardnadze employed a multivector approach to minimize dependence on any single external actor and to strengthen Georgia’s position in international affairs. The author highlights how this strategy affected the country’s internal and external stability, as well as its role in regional geopolitics. The article focuses on the complexities of implementing a multivector policy amid growing competition between global powers in the post-Soviet space.

The Caucasus region represents a clear example of an area of unresolved ethnic and religious problems that thread throughout the region’s historical development. During the Soviet era, due to Kremlin’s strength and ability to control the processes, these issues were suppressed by the socialist ideal of a conflict-free society and remained swept under the rug. However, the Caucasian republics in particular represent an area of preserved ethnic and religious contradictions during the nearly seventy-year period of the Soviet Union. The paper aims at exploring the genesis and development of the ethnic and religious conflicts in the South Caucasus during the Soviet times, which after the disintegration of the USSR turned into permanent conflicts in this post-soviet space such as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (between Armenia and Azerbaijan) and the ones in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in Georgia. The study also seeks to explore the interstate aspect of those regional conflicts and the Russian role in them. Stalin’s consistent policy of active territorial redistributions deteriorated the situation, especially in the Caucasus region. Proof of the impossibility of consolidation in the region are the conflict points, South Ossetia and Abkhazia within the borders of Georgia, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, which instigated an armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been on Georgian territory for many years. Nagorno-Karabakh, despite being inhabited by over 90% Armenian population, was part of Azerbaijani territory during the Soviet era. The Soviet policy failed to create conditions for an effective integration of the separate ethnicities. Evidence of these problems in the Caucasus still echoes in the Nagorno-Karabakh military conflict in the autumn of 2020.

Populism defines numerous political movements with heterogeneous ideological platforms within the EU, but they share the self-definition as being the true representative of the ‘the people’ versus the national and EU ‘elite’. European populist parties have consolidated as an element of the political landscape in Europe, however, the positions of populist parties towards EU foreign policy remain understudied. This chapter asks how European populist parties contest EU foreign policy in the European Parliament. It argues that the populist approach to EU foreign policy in the European Parliament defies the organising principle of consensus and seeks to normalise the contestation above any substantive considerations. To illustrate this argument, this chapter analyses the practices of contestation of far-left (European United Left–Nordic Green Left/GUE-NGL) and far-right (Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy/EFDD) populist parties during the plenary debates and in motions for resolution on the Ukrainian and Syrian crises. Even though both the left-wing and right-wing populist parties continuously oppose the mainstream approach taken by other EU institutions and dominant EP political groups, they promote very heterogeneous alternative approaches. Therefore, the influence of populist parties on the European Parliament role in the EU foreign policy has been limited so far.

The dismemberment of the Soviet Union prompted a very unstable decade of decline for Russia, and generated numerous conflicts in the post-Soviet space. Russia regained influence at global and, chiefly, regional level from 2000, after Vladimir Putin became president and the price of hydrocarbons rose. Arguably, energy policy played an essential role. The South Caucasus, where three secessionist conflicts took place, leading to Russian political, diplomatic and military intervention, was crucial for the Russian geo-energy interests. This article examines and discusses the impact of intervention on Russian geo-energy interests, in particular since Putin came to power. The working hypothesis proposes that Russia’s involvement in the three secessionist conflicts in the South Caucasus has considerably benefited the many Russian geo-energy interests.

This paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of EU policy towards the South Caucasus in the framework of the CFSP and CSDP along with perspectives of further development, taking in to consideration Russia’s military and ideological intervention in this region, and to address the issue of the EU’s role in shaping Common European Security. Methodologically, the research is based on qualitative techniques of analysis, key assumptions are raised through a comprehensive review of existing studies/primary sources and, more specifically, presents a case study of August 2008’s Georgia–Russia military confrontation and creeping occupation. The comprehensive review continues with Russia’s disinformation campaign and series of anti-government protests in Georgia (after the so-called “Gavrilov’s Night”), testing several theoretical explanations such as the democratic peace theory and the Europeanization Conflict concept concerning the EU’s confl ict resolution instruments’ evaluation and offensive realism to explain Russia’s involvement/intervention in South Caucasus territorial conflicts. As for its structure, the paper includes an introduction, with two important stages of model building – conceptualization and operationalization, an interpretation part – an overview of EU Foreign and Security Policy instruments, relationships with other global/regional actors, conflicts in the South Caucasus, specifi cally the, Georgia case, and, finally, a summarizing part, where key findings are highlighted.

This article argues that the study of EU foreign and security policy has been hampered by its conceptualization of the sovereign state. Realist and constructivist scholars share Stanley Hoffmann's formulation of states as either ‘obstinate or obsolete’. EU foreign and security policy is puzzling in this respect as it corresponds to neither. Drawing on two examples – the EC's role in the Conference on Security and Co‐operation in Europe (CSCE) in 1973–75 and the contemporary workings of the Political and Security Committee (PSC) – this article suggests that we think of EU foreign and security policy as driven not by the obstinacy or the obsolescence of the nation‐state but rather by its transformation. In line with this claim, the article proposes a social theory of EU foreign and security policy with democracy and bureaucracy as two competing political forms within the framework of the modern state. It is the changing balance between these two political forms that drives forward closer foreign and security co‐operation in Europe.

Images of Europe and the Myth of Exceptionalism

The article focuses on the transformation of the European Union’s policy in the South Caucasus after the NagornoKarabakh war of 2020. Before the war, the foreign and security policy in the region had depended on the OSCE Minsk Group, Georgia’s role in the Russian-Georgian confrontation, and the Eastern Partnership program for the South Caucasus. After Azerbaijan won the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Turkey’s support, the previous line of policy stopped being effective. It failed to unite the countries of the South Caucasus, to remove the Russian Federation from the region, and to make the European Union a real mediator in the conflict zone. The democratization of the local political regimes also failed, despite the proEuropean position of Georgia and the velvet revolution in Armenia. As a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war of 2020, Russian and Turkish troops entered the South Caucasus, and Russia, Turkey, and Iran started acting as peace mediators. The European Union failed to strengthen the role of the OSCE Minsk Group and the mechanisms of the Eastern Partnership in the region. Ever since 2020, it has been trying to develop a common policy for all ethnic and inter-confessional conflicts in the postSoviet space. The European Union keeps failing in its competition and partnership with Russia, while Turkey is getting more active and independent in the region. Thus, the European Union will have to develop a new model of influence in the South Caucasus and the whole post-Soviet space. In the current global confrontation, it is very important to find an international actor able and willing to interact with all parties. The European Union seems to be the one, and its actions in resolving regional conflicts require a detailed research.

ABSTRACTThis article applies the concepts of linkage and leverage as developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way and elaborated by Gwendolyn Sasse in the introduction to this special issue of East European Politics to Russia’s involvement with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two quasi-independent states in the South Caucasus. Through this re-conceptualisation of the developments in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, combined with new empirical insights, the article aims to increase our understanding of the conflicts in the region, of the involvement of the Russian Federation in particular, and consequently of the prospects of international conflict resolution. Compared to other political entities in the former Soviet Union, Abkhazia and South Ossetia represent an extreme case of Russian linkage and leverage. This article focuses on the period after the Russian–Georgian war in 2008, when Russia recognised the regions’ independence and effectively turned them into Russian protectorates. The economic, intergovernmental, technocratic and social linkages between Russia and the two regions are extraordinarily deep, and they directly undermine the autonomy of the regions. The post-war delegation of Russian cadres and institutional and legislative diffusion creates additional linkages underpinning Russian leverage.