Pami Aalto

1. Europe’s North: Historical Geopolitics and International Institutional Dynamics, 2-5 ECTS4. Russian and Atlantic influence: limits of integration?Autumn 2011 Pami Aalto Jean Monnet Professor/Director, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on European Politics and European-Russian Relations, University of Tampere pami.aalto@uta.fi <http://www.uta.fi/jkk/jmc/index.html>

2. Russia’s great power resources: • Possession of almost one third of the world’s natural gas resources, and substantial amounts of oil and uranium • Possession of a large nuclear weapons arsenal • Seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council • Infrastructural and economic ties with Central Asia, the Caucasus and Europe • Vigorous claim to be recognised as a great power and its relative acceptance by the other great powers Starting points • Russia one of northern Europe’s great powers for three centuries; today the second most determining state actor for northern Europe • But for Russia, northern Europe is just one sub-region among Russia ’s foreign policy priorities; this aspect often poorly understood in Russia’s neighbourhood and also in Finnish scholarship, the majority of which in the social sciences and even IR tends to take NW-RUS as an example of Russia on the whole! • In the 1990s a pure regional approach had more import than in the contemporary more centralised RUS

3. Definition of international society: “…a group of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political communities) which not merely form a system, in the sense that the behaviour of each is a necessary factor in the calculations of others, but also have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations, and recognize their common interest in maintaining these arrangements” (Bull and Watson 1984) Russia was one of the powers that contributed to the development of the originally European society of states during its later stages Watson (1992): since Peter the Great’s reforms in the late 17th century, Russia has been striving to become an equal member of European society. At the 1815 Vienna congress Russia was with the UK the most influential player, and helped to spread European ideas into Central Asia and Siberia This pattern was interrupted by the birth of bolshevist Russia; yet, Soviet Russia in a few years started soon active diplomacy and claim an influential role within the society of states, which had by then become global in nature To get at the contemporary patterns I will focus mostly on institutions – i.e. Searlean primary institutions understood as social facts/organising principles -- as the glue of international society. I will, however, also postulate that a degree of what, in the English school, is often termed world society is necessary for the stability and demarcation of thick versions of international society (see Buzan 2004) English school approach: Russia and international society

4. Degree of integration Interstate integration Pluralism Solidarism Cooperative Coexistence Power political Convergence Asocial Confederative Low High Citizens and their groups Companies IGOs and other transnational actors International financial institutions (IFIs) Types of international society and its actor components applied from Buzan (2004) and Aalto & Korkmaz (forthcoming)

5. Primary and secondary institutions supported by Russia • As for primary institutions of contemporary international society: • Russia’s political tradition characterised by obsession with sovereignty • A derivative of sovereignty, international law, helps to maintain the society of states and receives a pivotal place in Russia’s foreign policy concept, as does non-intervention without UN approval • Great power management and its derivate institution, balance of power is a long-standing trait of Russian policies; The historical need to catch up with more advanced or stronger powers; consequently Russian foreign policy makers generally support creation of a multipolar system of the great powers • Diplomacy, both in its bilateral and multilateral forms • Territoriality and the maintenance of boundaries has more sharply emerged during the post-Soviet era; smaller territory than at any time since the seventeenth century • The market, or trade liberalisation and market access, emerged during the late Soviet era, and strengthened afterwards with EU/WTO ties • As for secondary institutions: • EU-relations offer best prospects for realising this set, the market most promising policy area • Predominantly pluralist/Westphalian set of institutions • The market institution creates some solidarist contradictions to this pattern (solidarism is a more deeply internalised and institutionalised variant of international society; sets the classical test of enforcement of rules on its members so as to measure how committed they in fact are)

6. EU-centred international societies, northern Europe and Russia

7. Sovereignty institution and geopolitics in the case of the Nord Stream gas pipeline • Connecting Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, declared to be operational by 2011-12, with 27/54bcm a year to central EUR and UK market • In POL, it revived memories of the ‘Molotov-Ribbentrop pact’ which at the eve of WWII divided the northern European region into Soviet and GER orbits. • POL, LIT protests on the maritime routing bypassing them with three times higher costs than an overland option through their territories, and could make the existing Yamal-Europe/Northern Lights pipeline via BEL, POL redundant. Hence it would endanger their own supplies, with implications to overall European security of supplies • Estonia refused permission to explore routing the pipeline through its own 12-mile exclusive economic zone. • Some SWE, FIN (military) analysts declared the pipeline to provide a pretext for Russia to increase military presence in the Baltic Sea • In traditional geopolitical analyses, the pipeline is politically motivated at the expense of economic calculations; it cements Europe’s dependence on Russian energy; and by partly divorcing eastern Europe’s supply from western Europe, it ‘grants Moscow the ability to manipulate the European market more effectively’ (Baran 2007: 135) • Here Russia is presumed to view energy as a geopolitical weapon in zero-sum international games: well seen in the Russian preference of doing one-to-one business with European leaders rather than meeting the EU as a regional bloc • Said to express Gazprom’s expansionist activities throughout Europe

8. Sovereignty/geopolitical approach: evaluation • The conceptual focus point in the geopolitical literature on energy policy is the institution of sovereignty. Thematically geopolitics focuses on pipeline disputes, energy shortages and crises as actors struggle for relative economic gains and for maximizing one’s own power. Accordingly, geopolitical approaches situate the EU-Russia energy relations ‘into the context of global geopolitics, interstate and interregional competition’ (Aalto and Westphal 2007: 3). • Overall, geopolitical literature approaches EU-Russia energy relations from the perspective of a particular actor – either as a question of the security of supplies of individual EU member states, the whole EU, or Russia’s security of demand concerns in a Europe that is elaborating the prospects of diversification (see Monaghan 2007). • On the western side, for former US diplomat Keith C. Smith, ‘the energy policies of the Kremlin are a danger to Europe and particularly to the independence of the Central Europeans’ (Smith 2007: 1). • The spreading of such a thinking (Closson 2009: 89), even a consensus, within the EU and the West in general (Goldthau 2008: 687), sets clear political limits to expanding EU-Russia energy relations. • Further, that for some member states dependence on Russia represents a national sovereignty problem, for some not, whilst for some Russia relations are not actual at all (Aalto 2009: 175-6), further complicates any efforts of establishing common energy policy rules and extending those in the Russian direction.

9. The market institution works against the institution of sovereignty, accentuating business alliances and interdependency between the EU and Russia: EUR investment for Russian energy resources IEA: Russia’s oil industry needs 328 bln USD in 2001-2030, and its gas industry 330 bln USD (Bahgat 2006: 969) In the industrial economics analysis of Finon and Locatelli (2008), EU-Russia gas trade is ‘determined by market principles and the need for Russia for stable long-term contractual arrangements based on credible commitments’ They deem it unrealistic to expect Russia to ratify the ECT, but ‘challenge the idea that Gazprom is not a reliable supplier, that it could abuse an alleged monopoly position, and that it can easily play an oligopolistic game’. There are always many stories to be told about any energy political process while the technical facts on the ground are unchanged. The same goes for the Nord Stream gas pipeline project: Alongside the RUS Gazprom and GER BASF/Wintershall and E.On Ruhrgas, the Dutch Gasunie has a 9% stake. Partners in the planning and building consortium from 5 further EU countries + many sub-contractors. Part of the gas is contracted by the Danish DONG, French Gaz de France and Gazprom’s UK subsidiary – bilateralism turns into multilateralism and geopolitics starts looking like normal profit-driven business operation However, the economic perspective does not on its own explain why the pipeline is to be built along the more expensive sea route, for the first time cutting off transit states for Russian gas on its way to western European markets Towards an ES perspective of multiple institutions: the market institution and the Nord Stream case

10. Or: the Baltic states as ‘new Europe’, between EU and US/NATO (M. Lehti 2007, JBS) • First mention of ‘new Europe’: at a round the end of WWI, the New Europe review was published in London to propagate for peace agreements that would note national principles in the territories of the former empires • Then the term used quite differently by the Nazi regime in WWII • Background for the US making the Balts its protegees since the Cold War: 1) the non-recognition policy of Soviet annexation; 2) allowing Baltic diplomatic representations on US territory during Cold War; 3) strong Baltic lobby in the US during and after the Cold War • However, the first official mention of the Baltic states was in the 1998 US-Baltic charter where the US committed itself to Baltic independence even in the absence of immediate NATO enlargement perspective • Rumsfeld’s use of the term: to refer to the new EU members in the CEE that feel comfortable with US foreign policy (911, Iraq) during Bush junior’s reign in contradistinction to the ‘Franco-German’ axis • Voice of America’s New Europe Review (2004-6), published in English and 16 other languages found between Moscow and Berlin: to overcome the divisions within the European part of ‘west’ with Baltic support • After the 1997 NEI initiative, the e-PINE programme offered Balts the role of missionaries of democracy vis-à-vis Europe’s new eastern neighbourhood after EU’s CEE enlargement of 2004 • The Balts themselves have felt uncomfortable with the ‘new/old’ Europe distinction; ‘new Europe’ seems to group them with Ukraine, Georgia, etc. • For the Balts, transatlantic ties mainly mean taking distance from Russia whereas for the US ‘new Europe’ was a tool to test Europeans in ‘war on terror’ • ‘New’ also connected with the idea of ‘Baltic tigers’ and neo-liberal economic policy, weak welfare state thinking; but financial collapse since then • The unavoidable continuance of Soviet legacy in visible traits and perceptions somewhat distorts the ‘new Europe’ image!