Suturing the Neighborhood? Russia and the EU in Conflictual Intersubjectivity

Abstract

In this article three arguments are key. First, we deem that the conflict conventionally described as “a battle over Ukraine,” under a close constructivist scrutiny, reveals its much deeper roots, which ultimately boil down to the unfinished process of mutual readjustment of two identities-in-the making, that of the post-Soviet Russia and thatof the post-Lisbon EU, respectively. Second, we claim that, in spite of the depth of contradictions between them, the two identities are constitutively dependent oneach other. Third, the EU and Russia, being in deep conflict, have come to grow more akin to each other in many respects. Conflictual intersubjectivity results in both differentiation and convergence, mutual adaptation and mimicry.

Notes

1. Thus, in 2008 Radosław Sikorski declared: “To the south, we have neighbours of Europe. To the east, we have European neighbours …. They all have the right one day to apply” (Goldirova 2008).

2. See the country ratings for the Eastern Partnership Index at http://www.eap-index.eu/.

3. Geostrategy in this context is referred to as an ability to think in terms of big spaces (Eastern Partnership, Caspian energy routes, etc.) and not only in terms of norms and history (saving oneself from repeating one’s own past through the peace project).