Russia's Attitudes towards the eu: Political Aspects

6. CESDP: horizons of the Russian perception

'We welcome the progress achieved in the common European Security and Defence Policy'. This remarkable statement appeared in the text of the Joint Declaration summarizing the results of the European Union—Russia Summit held on 30 October 2000 in Paris. Vladimir Putin's signature on the document meant that for the first time ever Russia, officially and at the highest political level, expressed its positive view of this new and lately fast growing dimension within the European Union. Noteworthy, even stronger words were used in the official text in Russian ('we note with satisfaction…', and not just 'we welcome…') ⁶⁷.

It could be seen as something more important than just a routine diplomatic formula. In Russian political perception satisfaction with regard to CESDP is by no means self-evident, certain and alternative-free. Furthermore, the problem of how to deal with CESDP is a mirror reflection of some of Russia's foreign policy key dilemmas closely related to a difficult process of searching for its national identity.

What should a fundamental political project of new Russia be and how would it fit in the changing world around the country? Through which foreign policy benchmarks should it be guided and what criteria should be used to select them? How to secure for Russia a worthy place on the international arena and what does this notion of 'worthy place' mean? All these questions, still pretty much at the core of the ongoing conceptual discussions, appear in Russia's debates on what CESDP means, how it fits into the overall policy context and relate to the real or eventual interests of Russia.

While pointing to numerous questions that are of primary importance to Russia, the issue of CESDP does not make answers to these more easily available. Against this background, the fact that it is a matter of considerable interest in Russia is worth noting. One might even argue that there is more interest than the CESDP deserves, and that there is something irrational in this interest. Indeed, on the one hand, the CESDP does not touch upon the most important aspects of Russia's foreign policy agenda. On the other hand, Russia is not a member of the European Union and will probably not join it soon, and in any case, the CESDP does not concern Russia directly.

Nevertheless, on the political level and within the professional academic and diplomatic community there are numerous manifestations of Russia's interest (statements, interviews, articles in newspapers, seminars, discussions, and so on)⁶⁸. There are three major reasons to explain this phenomenon.

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  The first one is obvious: the EU is a 'big partner' of Russia, and there is a feeling that it is turning into a more significant actor in the international arena, not least because of the growing importance of the CFSP and CESDP.
  
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  The second reason concerns NATO. Because NATO has been in the focus of Russia's nervous and over-dramatized attention during recent years, the temptation to consider the CESDP as a possible alternative to it was perhaps irresistible.
  
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  Finally, the CESDP is regarded as a possible means of Russian engagement in Europe. Against many the background of many worrisome indications a certain 'de-Europeanization' of Russia, the CESDP might be a project that would allow Russia to return to the European track.
  

Yet, Russia's interest towards CESDP goes in parallel with quite a number of old and newly born complexes, uncertainties, illusions, reservations and ambiguities.

Legacy of the past

It would be quite helpful and useful to look at this problem from the historic perspective. When in the Soviet era discussions would flare up on the issue of western military and political integration, two opposing views were usually expressed. Or, to be correct, three views, the first being that it was a totally senseless discussion since there was no true European military and political integration. However, the remaining two perceptions were based on logical premises, which were directly at odds with each other.

One of them stated that an evolving or eventual military and political integration—either within the framework or on the basis of the European Community (the forerunner of today's European Union)—was nothing else but a consolidation of NATO's European base. That logic was almost genetically linked to a wary and hostile attitude towards the phenomenon of integration in the western part of the continent as a means of strengthening the position of the West in its struggle against the USSR and world of socialism—the struggle which was spearheaded by the United States and the American-controlled NATO. The underlying thesis of traditionally hostile attitude towards the European Community boiled down to viewing it as NATO's economic power base in Europe. Consequently, any attempt of military and political integration within that entity would mean creating additional military possibilities for NATO and the United States. Insofar as NATO was the embodiment of everything that was extremely evil and hostile and under American guidance, any signs of Western European integration gravitating towards military and political union or even just a talk about that could not but provoke Moscow's extremely negative reaction.

Even when the perception of the integration processes in Western Europe slowly started to change, it primarily related to the economic side of the whole thing. Soviet analysts began to highlight its objective character, and for that time (in the 60-s) it was a genuine breakthrough in terms of intellectual conceptualization of the integration phenomenon⁶⁹. However, it was only in the era of Gorbachev when the European Community was finally recognized as a political entity and actor. At the same time, his 'new political thinking' did not go as far as recognizing the military and political aspect of European integration. In part, this was due to the fact that at that time the issue itself was very vague; it was viewed more as a certain potential area of development rather than something tangible and feasible.

There were, however, other views on the military and political side of the integration processes taking place in Europe. They were shaped within the framework of two post-Stalinist models of Soviet intellectual perception of international relations: peaceful coexistence and intra-imperialistic contradictions. The theory of peaceful coexistence aimed at engaging the countries of the so-called 'socialist camp' in constructive cooperation with the West, while the second model presupposed that the West should not necessarily be viewed as a single consolidated whole. The overlapping of these two paradigms brought about a relatively logical and well-knit postulate: a negative attitude towards NATO should not necessarily be 'translated' into attitudes towards eventual military and political integration with European parameters. Indeed, such integration tendency is the result of the deepening contradictions between the United States and Europe; it testifies to the erosion of NATO's solidarity and represents a challenge to the American domination in the military and political sphere. Thus, from the point of view of the Soviet military, political and foreign policy interests, it was probably not that bad and at least deserved more thorough and unprejudiced analysis.

It should be noted here that such a view was unquestionably a marginal one. As early as in the 1960s and through the 1980s, the dominant idea was that it was very unlikely that the existing contradictions between the Americans and Europeans would spread to the military and political area. The depth and the scope of these contradictions should not be overestimated; they were mostly latent in their nature and in any case could not even be compared to the major East—West confrontation. The latter would inevitably outweigh intra-imperialist contradictions in the military and political sphere. The conclusion was that there were no grounds for any 'illusions' with respect to eventual military integration in Western Europe, and Moscow should energetically oppose even the slightest signs of the EC expansion into the military sphere.

This basic intellectual structure underlying Moscow's past perceptions of the military dimension of Western European integration has been recalled here only to be aware that much of that ideology was still present in Russian post-Soviet political thinking. Paradoxically (or ironically), while Russia engaged in a hard process of adjusting itself to fundamental alterations in its overall external environment, this relatively small fraction of its foreign policy thinking seemed to persist almost unchanged, pushing to consider the CESDP mainly from the angle of rivalry between the EU and NATO.