Brexit, President Trump, and the Changing Geopolitics of Eastern Europe

290 Pages·2018·2.61 MB·English

by  Theodor Tudoroiu

BREXIT,
PRESIDENT TRUMP,
AND THE CHANGING
GEOPOLITICS OF
EASTERN EUROPE
Theodor Tudoroiu
Brexit, President Trump, and the Changing
Geopolitics of Eastern Europe
Theodor Tudoroiu
Brexit, President
Trump, and the
Changing Geopolitics
of Eastern Europe
Theodor Tudoroiu
Political Science Department
University of the West Indies
St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
ISBN 978-3-319-77919-5 ISBN 978-3-319-77920-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77920-1
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A
cknowledgements
I would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan and the Assistant Editor for
Politics, Imogen Gordon Clark, for supporting this project.
I would also like to thank Amanda Ramlogan, Gabriel Popescu, and
an anonymous reviewer for their useful suggestions.
I am grateful for the moral support provided by my colleagues in the
Department of Political Science at the University of the West Indies at
St. Augustine, with special mention to Prof. Ann-Marie Bissessar and Dr.
Bishnu Ragoonath.
Finally, I want to thank Taylor and Francis for the permission to
use small parts of my articles ‘Communism for the 21st Century: the
Moldovan Experiment,’ Journal of Communist Studies and Transition
Politics, 27(2), 2011, pp. 291–321; ‘Democracy and State Capture in
Moldova,’ Democratization, 22(4), 2015, pp. 655–678; ‘Structural
Factors vs. Regime Change: Moldova’s Difficult Quest for Democracy,’
Democratization, 18(1), 2011, pp. 236–264; and ‘Unfreezing Failed
Frozen Conflicts: a post-Soviet Case Study,’ Journal of Contemporary
European Studies, 24(3), 2016, pp. 375–396.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Geopolitical Approaches, Regional Security
Complexes, and Political Psychology 7
3 East European Interactions: Russian Foreign
Policy as Structural Constraint 37
4 The European Union and Eastern Europe
Before and After Brexit 91
5 The USA and Eastern Europe 129
6 Europe’s Great Powers and Small States 183
7 Domestic and Geopolitical Factors: Moldova
as a CIS Case Study 217
8 Concluding Scenarios 267
Index 285
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
One day in November 2016, a Russian MP stormed an uneventful
session of the State Duma in Moscow to shout that Donald Trump
had won the US presidential election. President Putin’s ‘lawmakers
spontaneously leaped to their feet and delivered a raucous stand-
ing ovation’ (Weir 2016). Europeans had good reasons to be in a very
different mood as they began to ‘wait in fear of the next Trump tweet’
(Ischinger 2017). Soon, there was ‘an insurgent in the White House’
and Washington found itself ‘in the grip of a revolution’ (The Economist,
February 4, 2017). In addition to Russia, China, and Iran, another ‘hos-
tile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the
Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world’ (Ikenberry 2017: 2).
Under its influence, the USA would dismantle the international lib-
eral order it has constructed since Bretton Woods, support dictators all
over the world, and betray its allies. In Eastern Europe, it would seek a
grand alignment with much admired President Putin. If invaded, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) eastern members would first be
checked if they ‘fulfilled their obligations to us’ (Sanger and Haberman
2016). Accordingly, a period of ‘geopolitical recession’ was announced
(Bremmer and Kupchan 2017: 2). Alarmed East European leaders sent
a letter to the President-elect explaining the dramatic regional conse-
quences of his intensions to end sanctions on Russia and to accept ‘the
division and subjugation of Ukraine.’ Aptly, their supreme argument
was flattery: ‘Putin does not seek American greatness. As your allies, we
do’ (Băsescu et al. 2017). To the general surprise, during the following
© The Author(s) 2018 1
T. Tudoroiu, Brexit, President Trump, and the Changing Geopolitics
of Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77920-1_1
2 T. TUDOROIU
months everybody noted that ‘Donald Trump’s foreign policy looks
more normal than promised’ (The Economist, April 15, 2017). ‘More
normal’ does not mean ‘normal;’ the behavior of the new President
remains as atypical and unpredictable as ever. Still, at least in Eastern
Europe, the US foreign policy does not look very different from what
it used to be during the last period of the previous administration. Some
prefer to take this as a strong indication of the fact that, ultimately, noth-
ing is going to significantly change in that region. This book is based on
a very different view. On the one hand, the Washington-Moscow rela-
tionship can develop in a number of very different ways, which include
the unlikely but not impossible grand alignment desired by President
Trump. On the other hand, East European geopolitics will be consider-
ably influenced by the major changes in the EU integration process trig-
gered by Brexit and by the Union’s identity crisis the latter illustrates.
Consequences might not be obvious today, but their medium- and long-
term impact on Eastern Europe and on the entire European continent is
likely to be dramatic.
The theoretical approach used in this book is presented in Chapter 2.
It is based on Stefano Guzzini’s view of neoclassical geopolitics enriched
with elements from the Regional Security Complex Theory. The result-
ing thin cognitivist approach accordingly combines materialist and idea-
tional elements. Its object of study is the East European regional security
complex, which is defined as incorporating post-communist EU mem-
ber states, the rest of the European Union, western Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) republics, and Russia. Two external powers,
the USA and the post-Brexit UK, penetrate this complex.
Chapter 3 analyzes in what way the need for domestic legitimacy of
President Putin’s authoritarian regime and the deep impact of neoclas-
sical geopolitics on the development of Russia’s identity as an interna-
tional actor have turned Moscow into an aggressive revisionist power
that seriously endangers the stability of the East European regional secu-
rity complex through the use of effective instruments that range from
cyberwarfare and energy blackmail to hybrid wars and frozen conflicts.
The Kremlin’s actions have already led to the ‘militarization of thinking’
in Eastern Europe and increasingly threaten European Union’s Kantian
geopolitical vision. Russian cooperative projects such as the Eurasian
Union or the Greater Europe proposal also exist, but they are indica-
tive of the Kremlin’s willingness to adopt a non-antagonistic attitude in
Eastern Europe only on its own terms, which are inspired by neoclassical
1 INTRODUCTION 3
geopolitics and require a never-ending series of Munich-type concessions
from its partners. Due to Washington’s and Brussels’ rejection of such
concessions, Russian aggressiveness has come to represent a sort of struc-
tural constraint that will impact considerably the future trajectory of the
entire regional security complex.
A very different actor is scrutinized in Chapter 4. The ‘civilian power’
European Union is a mature tightly coupled security community that
lacks a fully ‘communitized’ foreign policy. Brussels’ efforts to export
its Kantian, win-win geopolitical vision to the Eastern neighborhood—
which include the Eastern enlargement, the European Neighborhood
Policy, and the Eastern Partnership—have resulted in conflict with
Moscow. Institutionally and intellectually unprepared, lacking effec-
tive instruments and experience, the EU was unable to face the Russian
neoclassical geopolitical offensive, as illustrated by the Ukrainian crisis.
Even more importantly, inside the Union the populist wave and a
number of overlapping serious economic and political crises have led
to a ‘dynamic of disintegration’ and to an ‘existential crisis.’ Brexit rep-
resents the starting point of a process of change that might lead either
to deeper integration or to the dominance of the Franco-German axis,
which in turn could eventually evolve toward the geopolitical irrelevance
of the EU accompanied by the transformation of Germany into the most
important West European actor.
The role of the USA and its probable future evolution are analyzed
in Chapter 5. Simplifying this complex topic to an extreme, at the sys-
temic level of analysis there is the key linkage between the ‘pivot to Asia’
required by China’s geopolitical rise and the ‘reset’ of the relations with
Russia needed in order to transfer resources to the Pacific. At the individ-
ual level, there are President Trump’s personality traits (that I examine
using Aubrey Immelman’s psychology approach) and ensuing worldview,
which includes hostility to China and admiration for President Putin.
In between, at the state level of analysis, there are the opposition of
Republicans and US foreign policy establishment to a Kremlin-friendly
foreign policy and the critical issue of the Russiagate scandal, which
greatly constraints the President’s pro-Moscow actions. Four possible
scenarios ensue that include moderate US-Russia tensions, limited coop-
eration, a short-lived grand alignment, and a genuine one allowing for a
complete American pivot to Asia leading to major tensions and possibly
to a Cold War with China.
4 T. TUDOROIU
Chapter 6 examines the European states and identifies a hierarchy
among their ability to influence geopolitical interactions within the East
European security complex. The Franco-German axis will likely acquire
unprecedented influence by taking control of the European Union. If—
or rather when—both the axis and the Union decline for reasons related
to the lack of balance between France and increasingly hegemonic
Germany and to their opposing views on a number of issues that include
the critical EU common commercial policy, Berlin will become the prime
West European actor. Post-communist EU member states as well as the
CIS republics will try to use US and British support in order to avoid
joining Berlin’s or Moscow’s spheres of influence. Moreover, they will
have to deal with major domestic challenges related to the rise of popu-
list nationalism and to the ensuing development of authoritarian regimes.
However, this does not mean that East European states will passively
be subjected to great power actions and structural factors. Chapter 7
shows the importance and complexity of small state agency within the
CIS using the case study of Moldova. This tiny post-Soviet republic is
marked by poverty, corruption, state capture, the frozen conflict of
Transnistria, and the failed frozen conflict in Gagauzia that was almost
reignited during the 2014 Ukrainian crisis. Moscow has instrumental-
ized all these issues and has made considerable efforts to bring the coun-
try within its sphere of influence. Paradoxically, in recent years, this has
failed because of the strong pro-EU attitude of the corrupt and highly
unpopular oligarch in control of the Moldovan Parliament and govern-
ment. But in response to his undemocratic practices, the electorate has
become largely pro-Russian. A Kremlin-friendly President was elected.
His vocally pro-Moscow party will win the fall 2018 parliamentary elec-
tions unless they are rigged or otherwise distorted by the imaginative
pro-European strongman. Between these two camps, there is the dem-
ocratic pro-European opposition fighting a quixotic battle that it can-
not win. If de facto independent Transnistria and resolutely pro-Russian
Gagauzia are added, it is clear that in Moldova—as elsewhere in the
CIS—domestic politics and geopolitics cannot be analyzed as separate
realms anymore.
The concluding chapter analyzes the most likely future trajectories of
the East European security complex. Four main scenarios are identified;
however, three are less probable because they are based on either a suc-
cessful Washington-Moscow grand alignment or on the deepening of