Russia and its shared neighbourhoods: a comparative analysis of Russia-EU and Russia-China relations in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood and Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article examines the conditions under which great powers succeed or fail to shape a cooperative security agenda in their shared neighbourhoods. It compares Russia's interactions with the EU and with China in their respective shared neighbourhoods: the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood region and Central Asia. The article applies a synthetic framework. It analyses how the interplay between three factors – ideas, capabilities and circumstantial factors such, as the personalities of leading politicians, – shape the process of interaction between great powers. It starts from a comparison of the images of the two regions in Russia's mind-set because such images provide cognitive lenses through which powers make sense of political developments in shared neighbourhoods. The article then moves to show how change in the balance of power (soft and hard) created enabling conditions for competition/collaboration. Finally, the article shows how specific circumstantial factors led to or shaped the Russian-European conflict. At the same time, similar factors prevented Russian-Chinese conflict in Central Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• European Union
• shared neighbourhood
• identity
• foreign policy
• China
• Central Asia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Dr Vsevolod Samokhvalov gained a BA in International Relations (Odessa, Ukraine), a MA in South-East European Studies (Athens) and PhD in International Relations (Cambridge). He worked as a Research Fellow at the International Center for Black Sea Studies and the European Union Institute for Security Studies. He is currently Marie-Curie Lecturer at the University of Liege, where he runs a project on Eurasian integration.

Notes

1 The ‘impressionable years’ hypothesis argues that human attitudes and beliefs are mostly formed in the teenage years and early adulthood and do not change thereafter (Krosnick & Alwin, 1989; Alwin & Krosnick, 1991; Osborne, Sears, & Valentino, 2011).

2 For more details on this met hodology and the role of the Black Sea region in the Russian identity, see Samokhvalov (2017).

3 The heading makes reference to the first line of “Sources of Soviet Conduct”, in which G. Kennan claimed that it was ideology and circumstances that shaped Soviet foreign policy (X, 1947)

4 Alternative scenario had actually taken place ten years before the Euromaidan when European mediators managed to hammer a compromise during the Orange revolution.

5 I would like to thank Timofei Bordachev for this comment.

6 Even though leading European scholars sought to draw attention to such an important factor as different interaction codes pursued by new powers (Narlikar, 2010), this has not made its way into mainstream political discourse.

7 Russia did not move against Ukraine in a very similar situation during the Orange Revolution and launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy in 2003.

8 This strategy of informal interaction – labelled as ‘sauna-negotiating’ – worked when German chancellors Schmidt and Kohl negotiated sensitive issues with the Soviet Union (Schmidt & di Lorenzo, 2010). I would like to thank Marc Ozawa for bringing this episode to my attention. For more on cultural aspects in energy negotiations, see Ozawa (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Seventh Framework Programme: [Grant Number EU BeIPD-COFUND].