Amelia Hadfield

EU-Russia Strategic Energy Culture: Progressive Convergence or Regressive Dilemma?

ABSTRACT This article argues that strategic culture, long consigned to the margins of broader, more substantial IR theories, offers a novel mode by which to explore recent developments in EU-Russia energy relations. Approaching seminal strategic policies from the perspective of institutionalised norms and cultural value-sets, strategic culture explores the power of the past and its ability to produce and influence national attitudes in governments and societies. This enables analyses of strategic energy relations between actors like the EU and Russia to move beyond obvious polarities to nuanced insights about the national value sets by which energy security is itself rendered strategic. Beginning with the individual strategic cultures of both the EU and Russia within the area of contemporary energy security policies, the article then appraises the range of bilateral EU-Russia energy security policies, suggesting that in many ways, these shared policies constitute a sector-specific strategic energy culture that includes both the EU and Russia. Areas of ongoing intransigence and policy convergence in EU-Russia energy security approaches constitute the case studies, illustrating that both sides are essentially motivated toward the same goals of energy security, market prosperity and actor-based prestige, but on the basis of vastly different visions, using widely diverse modes of implementation, and with dissimilar standards of evaluation. The analysis then appraises whether this co-constituted area is progressive or regressive in terms of the cooperation or conflict generated between the two sides, concluding that a basis of acknowleged commonalities – made available through strategic culture perspectives – both sides retain the impetus to cooperate to the point of complete agreement on some areas, whilst simultaneously remaining in conflict to the point of aggression in others.

Vocation or vocational? Reviewing European Union education and mobility structures

ABSTRACT This article examines the role that education plays in European Union (EU) integration. We ask whether efforts which historically have been designed to endow European students with a ‘knowledge of Europe’ in terms of an understanding of culture, politics and sensibility have been circumscribed by, or augmented, by the recently inaugurated Europe of Knowledge project. We argue that the renowned Erasmus mobility programme, a flagship of European higher education innovation, may, in light of critical challenges to the Eurozone and the EU project, be recasting itself along its initial 1987 objectives: enhancing a sense of European identity amongst participating exchange students while endowing them with transferrable skills designed to strengthen current weaknesses in the European internal market. We suggest that the initial, integration-fostering, identity-building goals of Erasmus concomitant with ‘growing a Union’, have since 2009 and in the continuation of the Eurozone financial crisis, been progressively replaced by the acquisition of transferable skills necessary to boost employability and drive economic recovery through enhanced labour mobility. As the majority of European labour markets struggle to regain their momentum, we question whether European students participating in the Erasmus programme emerge as merely ‘skilled’ rather than ‘schooled’ in a wider knowledge of Europe intended by the programmes founders. Surveying students regarding their perceptions of European and national identities, this article concludes that education through mobility remains a highly significant and viable means of constructing and reconstructing identity and European integration, even in a time of economic crisis.

Trump, Trudeau and NAFTA 2.0: tweak or transformation?

President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first meeting was bound to make waves. Social media was fixated by which of the two statesman best managed the handshake. The prime minister was generally applauded for avoiding being hauled into thepresident’s physical sphere of influence. Images showed the two leaders at press podia and in armchairs by the Oval Office desk: separate but generally comfortable. It was not exactly the chummy camaraderie Trudeau enjoyed previously with President Barack Obama. And while there was no high-vaunting rhetoric to match John F. Kennedy’s 1961 encomium that ‘geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made uspartners, and necessity has made us allies’, the focus on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) certainly accentuated the challenges of geography and economics.

Maple Leaf Zeitgeist? Assessing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Policy Changes*

Abstract In the October 2015 elections, the charismatic Justin Trudeau led the Canadian Liberal Party to its first majority government in 15 years, overturning nearly a decade of conservative government. His premiership is generally considered to have begun well. This article examines Trudeau’s conduct of the election campaign, his choice of a young and diverse Cabinet, his courtship of the media and image making, and assesses changes in foreign and domestic policy. These have yet to prove substantive but Trudeau has signalled a reversal of Stephen Harper’s conservative policies and especially in regard to migration has tapped into images of ‘compassionate Canadians’. In foreign policy, this has been evidenced in relations with the United States and with a re-engagement with the Commonwealth especially in its soft power aspects. Trudeau’s green credentials and stance on Climate Change are a contrast to those of his predecessor but he has yet to confront the different environmental profiles and policies of the Canadian states. Canada’s Strategic Partnership with the European Community and the ratification of CETA are priorities and he has to come to terms with the implications of Brexit.

Commune consensu: a soft power comparison of the Commonwealth and the European Union

Abstract The post-war heritage, institutional similarities, and policy motivations shared between commonwealth entities and contemporary international organisations, and their subsequent impact on soft power represents a wealth of unexplored potential. As will be explored in this article, both the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Union represent different facets of contemporary multilateralism, have a markedly different impact on their respective members, and yet are both formidable ‘hybrid’ actors that can contribute to, and even constitute, global governance, while simultaneously defying easy description. Examining the concept of ‘soft power’, the structural and normative challenges facing both entities, the manner by which ‘house values’ are used to define the home institution, and the specific role of development policy, this article offers a series of pragmatic policy reforms that both organisations must perforce undertake if each is to tackle successfully the 21st century challenge of maintaining both structural and substantive integrity.