Eastern Partnership and the Eurasian Union: bringing 'the political' back in the eastern region

Drawing on the post-structuralist traditions and especially Jenny Edkins’ (1999) interpretation of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, this article sets to conceptually rethink the geo-strategic dynamics of the EU-Russia relations in the context of the eastern region. It argues that while the EU’s and the Russia-led Eurasian (EEU) projects may be appealing in their own right, their visions for the ‘shared’ eastern neighbourhood remain self-centred and exclusionary. The root of the problem, as this paper contends, is that the EU and the EEU struggle to imagine a new social order, which would give a relational value to the Other as pari passu, and assume cooperation as an interplay of differing normalities rather than subjection to one’s norms and authority. Presently, the EU and Russia find themselves locked in parallel rather than complementary relations with the ‘shared’ region, each attempting to institutionalise their respective political orders, and not by way of contestation – ‘the political’ – but rather by a depoliticised means of technocracy or compulsion. This, if anything, is likely to destabilise the region further, if ‘the political’ is not back on the agend

Towards a European military culture?

Recent discussion of the Common Security and Foreign Policy has focussed on the international relations between European member states. Such a focus is entirely valid since the project is being driven forward by nation states. However, the success of the Common Security and Foreign Policy and especially the development of a specifically European military capability under the European Security and Defence Policy will depend not merely on the will of the participating nation-states. Above all, it will depend on the development of a common military culture at the level of weapons development and procurement and at the level of doctrine. The problem is that at neither level is the development of a European culture remotely in sight

The EU’s ontological (in)security: stabilising the ENP area … and the EU-self?

The 2016 EU Global Strategy and the 2015 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) review have made stabilisation of the ENP area one of their main priorities. Our argument here, however, is that the Global Strategy and the ENP review not only seek to mitigate the numerous crises currently affecting the neighbourhood; they also aim to address a set of intra-EU vulnerabilities linked to events in the ENP area that are threatening the EU’s own ontological security. We employ narrative analysis to explore how insecurity in the EU and in the ENP area is affecting the EU’s relation to the neighbourhood-other and its understanding of the EU-self. Our main findings point to the Global Strategy and the ENP review providing ample measures to stabilise the neighbourhood. However, whether they have provided a sufficiently compelling narrative to enable the emergence of new emotional structures for the EU and its member states to make sense of themselves and their relation to the neighbourhood-other remains an open question