Margot Light

A Wider Europe: the View from Moscow and Kyiv

The expansion of NATO and the enlargement of the EU will produce outside states in which perceptions and policies will be influenced by feelings of exclusion and isolation. Russia and Ukraine are two important examples. In Russia the sense of exclusion results from NATO expansion and it was exacerbated by the air strikes against Serbia. Although Ukraine also responded negatively to NATOs attack on Serbia, Ukrainian perceptions of exclusion are caused primarily by disappointment that EU membership is proving so difficult to attain. Based on elite interviews, opinion surveys and the analysis of focus group discussions, this article compares and contrasts the attitudes towards NATO and the EU in the two countries.

Enlargement and the New Outsiders

The enlargement of the European Union will establish a new relationship between the Union and the ‘outsider’ states that lie outside that process. Surveys in the first half of 2000 in four of these states — Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine — found that attitudes towards the Union and the prospect of their own country’s admission were generally positive. At the same time there were high levels of uncertainty, and levels of knowledge about EU institutions were very modest. Focus groups confirmed these findings, with frequent confusion between the EU and other international organizations, and considerable doubt about whether their own country was itself ‘European’. But there was evidence that more committed democrats were more enthusiastic about the EU, and their own country’s admission; and more generally, that ‘Europeanness’ was understood in terms of the kinds of cultural and living standards that were characteristic of EU Member States. If enlargement widens those differences, it is likely to open new divisions within a continent that had apparently been overcoming the differences that were a product of the cold war.

In search of an identity: Russian foreign policy and the end of ideology

A number of ‘concepts’ and ‘doctrines’ relating to foreign policy have been articulated in Russia since 1993. Their initial purpose was to establish Russia’s new identity and fill the vacuum left by Marxism-Leninism. They also served to establish a consensus about the main principles of Russian foreign policy. Later concepts responded to perceived changes in Russia’s internal and external environment. They provide a map by which one can chart the evolution of Russian thinking about the world and Russia’s place in it. Although they reflect Russia’s current national values and fulfil important roles, they represent an attempt to deal with the end of ideology, rather than an endeavour to create a substitute ideology.

A wider Europe: the view from Minsk and Chisinau

The expansion of NATO and the enlargement of the EU will produce outside states in which perceptions and policies will be influenced by feelings of exclusion and isolation. Building on an earlier article published in International Affairs (January 2000) on Russia and Ukraine, this article analyses two countries ‘inbetween’ in which these feelings are particularly strong. Belarus and Moldova, two classic borderlands, are small, new states with borders not of their own choosing and little sense of identity. Their economies are in dire straits and each has a large problem that hampers European integration. For Belarus the problem is its president; for Moldova it is the separatist regime controlling 12 per cent of its territory. Based on elite interviews, opinion surveys and the analysis of focus group discussions, this article compares and contrasts the attitudes towards NATO and the EU in these two countries.

Belarus between East and West

Belarus has a historically divided identity and presently finds itself ‘in between’ the European Union member states and Russia. An analysis of official statements, focus groups and survey results suggests that foreign and security policy is made overwhelmingly by the countrys powerful presidency, and that it is often more pragmatic than at first sight appears. Official statements avoid an unambiguous commitment to ‘east’ or ‘west’. This duality is also apparent within the foreign policy community, and at the popular level. Western governments have for the most part condemned the Lukashenko regime as ‘Europes last dictatorship’ and reduced official contacts to a minimum; a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ might be less likely to push it towards a ‘Slavic choice’ including a greater degree of integration with the Russian Federation and the CIS.

The Response to 11.9 and the Lessons of History

The attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were abhorrent but the response may exacerbate terrorism rather than eliminate it. The lessons of history suggest that using military force against terrorists creates as many terrorists as it destroys, and that intervening in civil wars can result in foreign forces turning into the enemies of those they have come to save. Declaring a war to eliminate terrorism is self-defeating because complete elimination is unattainable and the use of massive military force might make it difficult even to reduce or contain it.

Conclusion: Foreign Policy as the Continuation of Domestic Politics by Other Means

Analysts and policymakers alike were largely caught by surprise, if not by the Ukraine crisis itself, then at least by its form and magnitude. The crisis was influenced by various causal factors (both internal and external to Ukraine) and went through different phases (political, economic, military), but by many accounts it was Moscow’s decision to annex Crimea that appears in retrospect to have been the most crucial development. The active use of political, economic and even military levers by Moscow to secure its interests in its immediate post-Soviet neighbourhood does not constitute a new feature in Russia’s post-communist foreign policy. However, the absorption of territory into the Russian Federation does. In that sense, it could be argued that, in analysing Russia’s foreign policy course, the organization of the referendum in Crimea is even more significant than the military manoeuvres deployed to secure the naval base in Sevastopol. It has certainly constituted a thread line for the present volume and a backdrop against which the authors test their hypotheses.

'You no longer believe in us and we no longer believe in you': Russian attitudes towards Europe

Ten years after Hungarian border troops started cutting the Iron Curtain, new borders are emerging that threaten to create dividing lines almost as forbidding as the old. For several decades, barbed wire prevented the citizens of communist states from leaving for the ‘capitalist abroad’. The Curtain was the ultimate frontier, a ‘territorial based code of obedience in a binary form’.1 Now freshly installed barbed wire and ‘Schengen’ borders again prevent them from entering our prosperous Europe. With central and east European states at various stages of transition, three groups are emerging in relation to the entry to NATO and the EU: the ‘ins’, the ‘pre- or perhaps ins’ and the ‘definitely outs’. For the third category, the prospect is that a prosperous and impregnable ‘Fortress Europe’ will rise up with steep, unassailable walls at the western frontiers of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova’s inhospitable wastelands.

Moscow's retreat from Africa

Soviet policy‐makers knew that the costs of further involvement in Africa were too high long before Gorbachev came to power. Already doubting whether poor African countries could become proper socialist states, by 1985 they understood that their policy in Africa hindered the achievement of higher priority foreign policy goals. But it was perestroika itself that affected policy in Africa most profoundly. Foreign aid and military involvement became a controversial issue and, as the domestic economy deteriorated, the Soviet Union ceased to have the means to pursue an active policy in Africa. What had begun as deliberate retrenchment turned into forced retreat.

Russian–American Relations under George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin

Compared to the first decade after the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian-American relations have been tense since the turn of the century. This is usually attributed to an increasing belligerence on the part of the Putin leadership, particularly since the increase in oil prices has given Russia a powerful instrument in international affairs. The different principles on which Russian and American foreign policy are based and American attitudes towards Russia are also responsible for the deterioration in the Russian-American relationship. This paper points out that there were already problems in the relationship in the 1990s and examines how the war on terrorism has exacerbated the tension between Russia and the US. It argues that there is unlikely to be a great improvement in their relationship under President Medvedev and the next American president.