Courcy's Special Alerts

On 28 January, we published an Intelligence Brief under the title Russia, and the beam in Europe’s eye.  This briefing looked at how the European Union has vigorously denounced the attempt by Russia to define a sphere of influence in its near abroad as illegitimate, and an unwarranted throwback to earlier less civilized times, while itself arguing for an extensive EU sphere of influence.  The European Union (not unlike the US, China, Britain, and many other major powers over time) justifies this apparent anomaly by seeing itself as special.  It argues that a European Union sphere of influence is not a sphere of influence because those who would be a part of it are voluntary adherents.  But there are two problems with this.  The first is that it is only partially true, and the second is that even to the degree that it is true that fact does not make the policy any the less threatening when viewed, for instance, from Moscow.  Occasionally, however, the EU does show signs of self-awareness on this issue, as a new paper from the European Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) shows, but this partial self-awareness has not so far led to any great understanding of what the long-term consequences will be or discussion about how they might be reversed or mitigated.

The EUISS describes itself as “the Union’s agency for dealing with the analysis of foreign, security and defence policy issues”, and it is on occasions startlingly candid.  For instance, it was the EUISS that was so open about arguing for an extensive EU sphere of influence in its early 2013 paper entitled Enabling the Future – European Military Capabilities 2013-2025.  It was in this paper that the EUISS argued for EU “zones of privileged interest”, which it described as “the eastern, northern, and southern neighbourhoods – the Caucasus, the Wider North, the Middle East and North Africa – and, importantly, the regions bordering them, from Sub-Saharan Africa to Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific”.  This would seem to encompass far more countries than those that can be said to be voluntarily seeking to be part of a EU sphere of influence.

Among the policies that the EUISS advocates for these “zones of privileged interest” are “protecting supplies of energy and raw materials…[from] exploitation or annexation by foreign players” and the maintaining  of regional balances of power [another concept that EU politicians usually declare to be from a bygone age] “which favour European values and requirements”.  The word “values” may be a nod towards modernity, but the concept of ensuring the protection of “European requirements” has a much more robust flavour.

The EUISS’s latest contribution comes in a March 2015 paper entitled The EU in a multiplex world.  This paper is published ahead of a report to be delivered to the June 2015 EU summit assessing the “changes in the global environment” and “the challenges and opportunities arising for the Union”.  The EUISS is helping to prepare this report.

The central message of the EUISS’s latest paper is the oft-expressed EU complaint – aimed principally at Moscow – that that the EU’s “vision of an open society based on national self-determination is now challenged by a vision of the world based on spheres of influence”.  Yet the same paper describes to the EU’s enlargement strategy as “its most successful security policy” and boasts that it was “carried out, à la Clausewitz, ‘by other means’”  - in other words that a goal that might traditionally have been carried out by military means has been achieved by “other”, political, means.  Defining European Union expansion in Clausewitzian terms is a candid admission, but what is missing is any acceptance of why this might be a cause for concern in Moscow.  Equally missing is any understanding of what the consequences might be of this failure to take account of Russian concerns.

Of course the European Union is a new type of power, and a much less threatening one than, say, Germany in the first half of the 20^th century.  But its failure to anticipate how its expansionary policies would be perceived in Moscow is already having far-reaching consequences that will be difficult to reverse.  The most important of these has been to clarify the choice for Russia between becoming a Westward-oriented Eurasian power or one that looks primarily towards China, not just for economic advancement but also for strategic alignment.  Russia has now had that choice made for it, and China is enthusiastically embracing it.

This is not something that worries the former Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe, or the Baltic states, who are happy to see a hardening of Western European attitudes towards Russia.  Germany is also content, as its price for supporting the Eastern European view on Russia is to secure Eastern European support for Germany’s pre-eminence within the European Union.  The European Union itself might also be happy, as a more clearly defined external enemy will be seen to help the cause of ever closer union, particularly in defence and foreign policy.  But there are also some clear losers, mostly in Asia.  The primary one is Japan, which has been hoping for a full rapprochement with Russia to help balance the threat from China, but the roster of losers includes all the lesser powers of Asia that feel threatened by China’s rise.  The Western powers have inadvertently helped China to secure its northern flank and deprived countries such as Japan and Vietnam of a potentially valuable ally.  This also, of course,, makes the US’s position in the Asia-Pacific more burdensome, which in turn is likely to add to the pressure on the US to reduce its commitments in Europe.  As we said, far-reaching consequences that will be difficult to reverse.

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