Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern Flanks

After a forgotten but easy enlargement in 1990, the European Community/European Union has moved itself ever east, and southeastwards. By 2007, it had come down to the western coasts of the Black Sea. This chapter analyses how the EU moved eastwards and how it sought to cope with the challenges that have arisen. This is done through an analysis of the EU’s Global Strategy and its major EU outreach, including its concepts of ‘Wider Europe’, the European Neighbourhood and the Eastern Partnership.

The chapter aims at contributing to the conceptualisation of the EU’s security role and of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as a regional security policy. We argue that there have been shifts in the EU’s approach towards regional security in the framework of the ENP and that a clear trend towards a more systematic combination of structural and hard security elements is visible, reflecting both new EU institutional capabilities and a propitious international environment, demanding integrated and comprehensive approaches to security. We argue that the EU’s security actorness in the neighbourhood has benefited from this developing comprehensive approach, ingraining a mix of normative and geopolitical aspects reflected in the EU’s self-perception and its international image.

Through the use of a metaphor of a four-headed eagle, this chapter argues that the multiple ways by which the Russian Federation engages with Europe, including both with other post-Soviet states and with the European Union, identify the core challenges for dealing with Moscow. Russian foreign policy operates on bases that wrong-foot the EU and attempt to oblige the Union to accept both values and practices that are anathema to it. The chapter simultaneously recognises that EU-Russian relations have been particularly exacerbated by the EU’s Eastern Partnership, which unintentionally but nevertheless powerfully signalled to Moscow that the EU had itself become an aggressor. The chapter argues that the EU must still export its value system and that doing so will be in its, and wider Europe’s, long-term interests.

What is distinct about the US approach to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia? Since these states gained independence in 1991, the US has maintained an uneasy balance between its idealistic impulses and its realistic national interests. Viewed from outside the Eastern Partnership perspective, the US has developed very distinct relations with each member this collection of countries in Eastern Europe for country-specific reasons. The nature of each relationship is understood through identification of the foreign policy actors and constituencies in each. After NATO proved an imperfect institutional instrument for the promotion of Liberal Democratic values and regional stability, the US supported the EU’s Eastern Partnership. Whether the Trump Administration breaks with previous policy remains unclear, although Americans’ self-conception of themselves and the superiority of their own norms is unlikely to change.

By structurally analysing the interactions between international organisations, including the European Union, and conflict parties in the Eastern Partnership on what this chapter calls a symbolic level, the factors that have facilitated and impeded conflict resolution are identified. Four reasons explain the status quo: the zero-sum thinking of the conflict parties, the undermined efforts of IOs from the perspective of conflict parties, the principles that guide the objectives of IOs as well as their interests. The focus is on the EU as one of the main actors since 2003 because of the inauguration of the ENP and 2008 as a consequence of the Georgian-Russian war. Based on a model for success and failure, this chapter focuses on the symbolic level to determine that threat perceptions have been much stronger in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict than in Moldova-Transnistria. Despite the low profile of the EU in Georgia prior to 2008, this analysis still shows the existence of symbolic influence of the EU as well as a pronounced role of the EU in Moldova.

That the Russia Federation poses a security threat to the European Union has gained greater credibility after the 2008 War in Georgia and the Ukrainian Crisis since 2014. This chapter argues that Russia plays an accelerating role in reinforcing EU-Georgia relations. The EU has successfully answered Georgia’s aspiration towards the EU via the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the Association Agreement including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, and the visa-free Schengen Area regime. Russia has in turn been putting pressure on Georgia by means of a belligerent rhetoric, adding new fences for demarcation at the administrative boundary lines of the breakaway regions, that is, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and militarisation in these two regions. Thus, the EU maintains its gravitational pull on Georgia, whereas Russia undoubtedly pushes Georgia towards the Euro-Atlantic realm. The EU welcomes this development, although it is not pleased with Russia’s moves due to security concerns. Georgia is delighted with the ENP and the EaP, yet it does not necessarily mean that Georgia is fully satisfied with the signals from the EU as it aims at becoming a member of the EU, which cannot come to fruition in the near future. Although Georgia will not gain EU membership in the short term, this chapter analyses how Georgia can be regarded as a successful case of the EU using its foreign policy to deepen ties and how Russia’s actions push the EU and Georgia closer to each other.

The chapter assesses the security situation in Ukraine and the current NATO partnership with Kyiv with a view to offer new options for cooperation and security sector reform–driven initiatives. The aim of this study is to investigate possibilities for increased EU-NATO cooperation in relation to Ukraine in the fields of cybersecurity, strategic communication and security sector reform, with the objective of further embedding the country’s security. The research is supported by primary sources (EU official documents), secondary literature and semi-structured anonymous interviews with EU and NATO officials based in Brussels and in Kyiv.

The chapter examines European conceptions of threat emanating from Iraq, with a particular focus on the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). It looks at Turkey’s recent role in Northern Iraq from the mid-2000s onwards and up until the 2017 referendum, while also examining regional cooperation from the perspectives of the US, the European Union (EU) and Russia. It looks at the EU’s new development role and economic support inside of Iraq and the KRG, including the importance of migration, de-radicalisation, energy projects and local alliances. The research is supported by secondary legal literature on trade agreements and interviews with EU and Turkish policymakers, including Kurdish political representatives from Iraq and Syria.

How security cooperation is portrayed publicly indicates the message one actor wants its counterpart to receive. Public discourse following terrorist attacks, inter alia, constitutes a great resource for promoting a state’s agenda utilizing an emerged international attention. Looking at security cooperation discourse can reveal how states pursue their agendas by connecting them to the shared theme, and how their discourse evolves if perceptions of a common threat changes. This chapter examines official Russian discourse towards security cooperation with the European Union in fighting terrorism. It finds a continuous pattern of linking transnational terrorism threats by the Russian government to Russian domestic security matters and establishing Russia’s standing in opposing irregular actors through promoting domestic counterterrorism campaign.

This chapter takes a critical look at the EU-Central Asia cooperation since the 1990s until now. It argues that although this partnership has always stood out as smooth and balanced, and thus less fraught with major political controversies and abrupt U-turns compared to other external partners of the Central Asian region, one sees important limitations that call for revisiting of institutional and ideational aspects of interaction. The chapter analyses three aspects which reflect the nature of the real challenge: the burden of asymmetric power relations between the EU and Central Asian states; neglected differences and complexities of cooperation by the two parties; and the ‘project’-logic that mixes up cooperation with development assistance, and prioritises the continuity of engagement over the purpose of cooperation.