Approaching EU-Russian Conflicts: Beyond Transitionalism and Traditionalism

Abstract

A book on conflict between the EU and Russia might arouse curiosity on the part of the reader both in Europe and in Russia. A cursory recollection of almost two decades of EU-Russian relations inevitably brings to mind a long series of enthusiastic proclamations of cooperation and partnership, from Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous call for the creation of a ‘Common European Home’ to the contemporary process of establishing ‘common spaces’ between Russia and the EU in the economy, external security, justice and home affairs, research and education. Even given the fact that few of such integrative designs have to date materialised in a mutually satisfying way, one might wonder whether EU-Russian relations would be better characterised as ‘insufficiently cooperative’ rather than conflictual. Curious as it may be, a book-length treatment of EU-Russian conflicts is also overdue. While on the surface of political discourse EU-Russian relations are still conceived of in terms of ‘strategic partnership’ since the late 1990s there has been a veritable upsurge in the Russian political and academic discourse on the negative effects of EU policies that may give rise to conflicts between Russia and the EU and a similar increase of highly critical assessments of contemporary Russian domestic and foreign policies in the European discourse. One need only list a few of the problematic issues in EU-Russian relations to demonstrate the increasingly conflictual policy environment: the military operation in Chechnya, the problem of Kaliningrad after the 2004 round of EU enlargement, the concerns about democracy and freedom of speech in Russia, the divisions over the developments in the post-Soviet space, etc.