Russia's Attitudes towards the eu: Political Aspects

Focus on NATO

The attitude towards military and political processes within the European Union as an explicit function of the attitude towards NATO—this was the paradigm-invariant which survived the collapse of the USSR.

It manifested itself in the beginning of the 90-s when many in Russia were in the state of euphoria about potential prospects of strategic partnership with the West and temporarily abandoned their wary and watchful attitude towards NATO. At that time Moscow did not react in any way to attempts to intensify the movement to military and political cooperation in the western part of the European continent. For instance, everything that related to the creation of the Eurocorps or efforts to reanimate the Western European Union (WEU) were viewed as not worthy of any attention—something that would have been unthinkable for the defunct Soviet Union with its obsessively suspicious vigilance towards such kind of developments that were invariably attributed to the intrigues of war-mongers from NATO.

By mid-1990s, the paradigm of Russian attitude towards NATO changed. As it was already hypothesized earlier, the extremely negative reaction of Moscow to the idea of NATO's expansion eastward was counter-balanced by Russia's increasingly benevolent attitude towards the European Union as the incarnation of an alternative project.

This attitude was extended to those aspects of European integration that had traditionally been a matter of Moscow's concerns in the past, including its military-related dimension. Suffice it to compare a wary attitude towards WEU in the Soviet time with the heightened interest in it generated in the middle of the nineties. It looked as if this interest was growing alongside the campaign against NATO's enlargement. There was time when Russian politicians and analysts as near as cajoled the candidate countries to join WEU hoping that it would make them change their mind about becoming part of NATO. More than that, when three Baltic states were accorded an associated partnership status with WEU, Moscow did not react at all—in contrast to the deep stress it fell into each time when someone mentioned their possible joining NATO, and with apparent ignorance of the fact that mutual military assistance provisions under Article 5 of the Brussels Treaty (as modifies by the Paris agreements of 1954) are way tougher than similar provisions in the North Atlantic Treaty.

All this can logically lead to one conclusion—as it was the case before, the differentiation between 'Atlantic' and 'European' parameters of the military interactions within the continent is still the cornerstone of Moscow's policy. Sometimes this approach is openly highlighted as almost an official position. But more often it appears at the subconscious level shaping politicians' discourses and analysts' theorizations. It is interesting to note that political and conceptual issues that are concurrently being debated are basically the same ones as before. It should be also added here that many of them are surprisingly similar to those debated by western analysts and politicians when they discuss CESDP.

Occasionally, discussions give rise to clearly exaggerated perception of what CESDP's objectives are and what it would look like in the foreseeable future. In such cases lack of knowledge about the real state of affairs brings about an image of a 'united Europe' which is about to acquire a fully-fledged military mechanism. Few in Russia seem to realize that it actually boils down to creating crisis management instruments to implement the so-called 'Petersberg missions' rather than moving from national to 'European' means of ensuring military security. Many think that the EU has engaged in a full-scale project of building a 'European army' (which is reminiscent—to those who know the post-World War II history—of European Defence Community plans in 1952–1954).

As a variant of this approach, the developing military dimension of the EU is regarded as fulfilling the same functions as provisions on security guarantees in NATO. Within such pattern, the membership in the EU, with its on-going and increasing 'expansion' into traditional military security area, is considered to be a substitute to a membership in NATO for those countries that, for whatever reasons, either cannot afford the latter or deliberately refrain from such option.

Opinions differ on whether the membership in the EU is to be viewed as a 'full-fledged' substitute to the membership in NATO or just a 'reduced' and 'imperfect' surrogate of it. Russia, when trying to promote the idea of the Baltic states' accession to the WEU as an alternative to their NATO membership, definitely proceeded from the former assumption. The same could be said about the Baltic states themselves when they declined such 'trade-off' on the grounds that the 'European' guarantees provided by the EU/WEU would by no means have the same effect as guarantees provided by NATO⁷⁰.

Yet, Russian debates also generate the alternative approach with implicit warning on eventual implications of the 'militarization of the EU'. Thus, a well-known Russian analyst, director of political programmes at the influential Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP) Andrei Fedorov, when analyzing debates in Finland on eventual accession to NATO, writes: 'Proponents of membership [in NATO] aim at entering NATO not through a main door, as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary did in 1999, but through a back door, via reinforcing military cooperation in the framework of the EU'⁷¹.

Distinguishing between political and analytical elements in Russian assessments of the CESDP-related developments is not always possible. Perhaps, 'warnings' and alarmist messages are more often inscribed into the former category whereas the latter one tends to pay more attention to difficulties of the process and its inherent contradictory elements. Then, traditional analytical skepticism based on half a century of monitoring European integration may gain the upper hand: how serious is all that and isn't there too much ado about nothing? Even if there is 'something', it is absolutely clear that the way from common policy to common defense is very long, whereas its ultimate point may turn out unreachable at all. Noteworthy, Russian military elites—at least until recently—seemed rather uninterested in considering the CESDP as a serious issue requiring adequate assessments and thinking on Russia's eventual reaction⁷².

Thus, Russians are uncertain in their evaluation of the CESDP, its real substance, scope and prospects. Even greater uncertainty concerns the correlation of EU's military dimension with NATO's one and how Russia should view this aspect of the problem. As was the case in the past, it is possible to distinguish the emergence of two intellectual and political trends in this regard, one represented by 'Euro-enthusiasts' and another one promoted by 'alarmists'. The former would talk about creating a military and political potential with a certain measure of independence from the United States and NATO—which is not only 'understandable' and 'justified'⁷³, but also attractive to Russia (especially for carriers of the allergic instincts towards NATO—instincts either inherited from Soviet times or acquired because of events in Kosovo). And, again as before, this approach would be rejected by those who put a strong emphasis on very close links between CESDP and NATO and suspect that the former is just an additional tool of the latter.

'Euro-enthusiasts' would logically appeal Russia to establish and develop interaction with the emerging EU military structures that would hopefully push NATO to the background. The 'alarmists' would view these attempts with skepticism. Or they would try to make the possibility of Russia's cooperation with those structures conditional on CESDP's radical break from NATO. Senior officials within Russian military establishment were disarmingly candid about their position: we stand for cooperation with CESDP but not with the one that has been shaping so far. The reason is obvious: we are against the EU's security potential becoming 'an appendix to NATO's military machine'. If the CESDP is built up as something within, linked with, or additional to NATO, we cannot accept it. In other words, the problem is whether and when the CESDP moves out from under NATO's umbrella⁷⁴.

A new interesting element is introduced in this constellation by those who politically or intellectually stand for prioritizing Russia's relations with NATO and the United States. This approach would explicitly or implicitly oppose Russia's cooperative interaction with the EU in the area of CESDP because favoring the development of military and political relations with the EU would mean to be against NATO and the United States. According to this logic, it can only be done by hawks from the Ministry of Defense or General Staff as well as by anti-American and anti-NATO 'civilian strategists'⁷⁵.

As a result, red-hot anti-NATO people, on the one hand, and passionate pro-NATO activists, on the other hand, unexpectedly find themselves in one and the same camp. Both argue against any cooperation with the emerging mechanisms of military interaction on the basis of and within the European Union. Of course, there is a certain simplification in distinguishing these two categories; however, one can not but notice the extreme polarity of arguments and motives that in fact point in the same direction. But in one case, cooperation with CESDP is rejected due to its complete 'subordination' to NATO while in another case a potential Russian cooperation with CESDP is viewed as leading Russian policy astray from its major would-be direction.

By and large, Moscow's obsession with NATO, when developing Russia's attitude towards CESDP, could turn out counter-productive and misleading from the point of view of Russia's own interests.

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  It creates a distorted picture of the CESDP.
  
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  It generates ungrounded (and erroneously oriented) hopes about the extent to which the EU is moving away from the USA.
  
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  It offers wrong criteria for evaluating the CESDP.
  
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  It suggests inadequate arguments for approaching the EU in this sphere.
  

One can assume with a fairly big measure of certainty that the enthusiasts of military and political cooperation of Russia with the EU who are guided primarily (if not exclusively) by anti-NATO, anti-American logic are bound to be somewhat disappointed. If Moscow vigorously starts to offer itself to the EU as a contracting party for CESDP, insisting explicitly or implicitly the appropriateness of this model as an alternative to NATO, the effect would be directly opposite: instead of attracting the Europeans, Moscow will scare them off.

Indeed, on this matter, the EU member-countries have a lot of troubles to deal with even without 'the Russian factor'. The nervousness of the United States about CESDP pushes Washington to use every opportunity to remind that the EU's military dimension should be shaped only within the framework of the Atlantic system of coordinates and through close cooperation with it. This is one of the major priorities for the Europeans—to remove the US concern that CESDP may weaken or marginalize NATO. To emphasize this particular theme when offering Russian 'support' to CESDP is like pouring oil into fire. This will almost certainly make the EU extra cautious about the idea of partnership with Russia in this area.

A parenthetical comment seems appropriate in this regard. When observing Russia's inclination to look at CESDP primarily through the prism of NATO, one can see an amazing parallelism with the uneasiness of the United States about this development in the EU. Washington also tends to assess the CESDP according to NATO-related criteria. In this respect, the Russian and US approaches have different vectors, but the methodology seems to be almost the same—and almost similarly erroneous.