The EU’s Neighbourhood Policy towards the South Caucasus: Expanding the European Security Community

270 Pages·2018·2.538 MB·English

by  Licínia Simão (auth.)

THE EUROPEAN UNION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
THE EUʼS
NEIGHBOURHOOD
POLICY TOWARDS THE
SOUTH CAUCASUS
EXPANDING THE EUROPEAN
SECURITY COMMUNITY
Licínia Simão
The European Union in International Affairs
Series Editors
Sebastian Oberthür
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
Knud Erik Jørgensen
University of Aarhus, Denmark
Philomena B. Murray
University of Melbourne, Australia
Sandra Lavenex
University of Geneva, Switzerland
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Licínia Simão
The EU’s
Neighbourhood
Policy towards the
South Caucasus
Expanding the European Security Community
Licínia Simão
Faculty of Economics and Centre
for Social Studies, University of Coimbra
Coimbra, Portugal
The European Union in International Affairs
ISBN 978-3-319-65791-2 ISBN 978-3-319-65792-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-65792-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955220
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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To my colleagues at the International Relations Department at the
University of Coimbra, for their continuous inspiration,
support, and companionship.
F
oreword
This book offers a comprehensive and insightful historical analysis of the
EU’s security policies towards the three countries of the Southern
Caucasus – Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan – and the breakaway territo-
ries of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Licinia Simão
builds here upon the concept of an enlargement of the security commu-
nity to explore why, how and with what degree of success the EU has
engaged and developed positive forms of integration with this region. The
‘security community expansion’ concept does not appear in any of the
EU’s policy documents on the South Caucasus, but it does help give us a
better understanding of its policies – in particular the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Simão’s research is inspired by the con-
structivist tradition, and she therefore looks at the role of ideas, norms and
practices in shaping policies and identities.
The book deals in particular with the first twenty years of the post-
Soviet period, focusing on the reconfiguration of the European security
order in the aftermath of the EU’s enlargement in 2004. It was during
this period that the EU actively began to promote a security community
– here conceptualised as a normative model that still informs present-day
policies and developments within the framework of the ENP, such as the
EU-Georgia Association Agreement. Simão argues that the ENP
addresses the internal threats emerging from the South Caucasus as a
fragmented region, but that the need to expand the European security
community through the ENP was not a direct consequence of the
increased interaction between the European Union’s core and its frag-
mented external periphery: rather, the community was conceived as a
vii
viii FOREWORD
normative centre-periphery model designed to strengthen peripheral
regions like the South Caucasus by allowing them a certain amount of
integration with the core, but without offering them full EU accession.
Simão treats the South Caucasus as a region in its own right. Each of
the countries constituting the region is analysed in a separate chapter,
which also covers the secessionist or irredentist conflicts it is involved in.
Such a comprehensive analysis of regional fragmentation is one of the very
strong points of her work, contrasting with the prevalent focus on a single
country or conflict generally to be found in the literature on the South
Caucasus. She points out how, for all three countries, the policy instru-
ments put in place by the EU are too weak to overcome manifestations of
regional divisions such as open confrontation, closed borders and the lack
of infrastructural projects that bedevil all the countries in the region. Each
of these three countries, moreover, uses the difficult regional context as an
argument for avoiding necessary internal reforms.
Simão further demonstrates that the idea of an expanding European
security community has proved relatively effective as a normative model
guiding EU reform policies in the South Caucasus, and she describes its
implementation and positive outcomes in detail. The model was, however,
also based on certain assumptions that proved to be illusory. The ENP was
intended to overcome the basic asymmetry and the exclusionary practice
typical of European integration according to the EU model. It further
aimed to create a balance between a regional approach to security and the
need to negotiate reforms in a bilateral relationship. For these reasons the
EU introduced the principles of common ownership of reform policies,
and a necessary differentiation between partner countries. But with little
prospect that the South Caucasian countries could become EU members
in the foreseeable future, it proved impossible either to overcome this
asymmetry or to strike a good balance between a multilateral and a bilat-
eral approach. This had a serious impact on the geopolitical attitude of the
countries involved, especially Armenia and Azerbaijan, and on their orien-
tation away from the EU. And it likewise lessened the effectiveness of
conditionality policies in relation to Georgia, which sees its future as that
of a full member of the EU and NATO.
Licinia Simão has based her research on extensive stays in all three states
of the South Caucasus and in Brussels. These sojourns allowed her to
conduct extensive interviews and to discuss her views with representatives
of all the actors who have been involved in the formulation of the ENP
and in the first experiences of its implementation. Her interviewees in the
FOREWOR D ix
South Caucasus and Brussels took an optimistic view of the creation of a
common European space, but they also expressed deep scepticism regard-
ing the EU’s capacity to overcome the divisions within the South Caucasus
region. The book has gained tremendously from this immersion in the
formative debates on the ENP, and readers, in turn, will benefit greatly
from Licinia Simão’s skilful theoretical guidance on the EU’s policies in
the South Caucasus.
Brussels, 5 September 2017 Bruno Coppieters
P
reFace
This book started as a personal journey into the worlds beyond the borders
of the European Union (EU), into the regions where European identity is
continuously redefined after the end of the Cold War. Being a Portuguese
PhD student at the University of Coimbra, I was very much determined
to research a topic that was detached from the Portuguese colonial past
and, at the same time, would help me learn more about these borderland
regions at the edges of Europe. The European Neighbourhood Policy
(ENP) emerged as the perfect lenses, through which I could address
regional dynamics and could understand better the transformations occur-
ring in the post-Soviet space. In fact, as I came to learn through this jour-
ney, the South Caucasus, like Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus have many
identities, and the post-S oviet one is becoming less relevant as a concep-
tual tool in our analysis.
My first trip to the Caucasus was in 2006. I travelled alone to Georgia,
knowing little about the country of the Rose Revolution. This was an
exploratory trip, aimed at increasing my knowledge of the area and map-
ping the main agents and perspectives regarding the EU. It became quite
apparent to me that there was a generalised interest in the ENP among
policy makers and civil society alike. Moreover, there was a great eagerness
to challenge the conceptual geopolitical representations of Georgia in the
minds of the Europeans, since that was perceived as the first step towards
integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures. Georgia was a nation with
great expectations and vibrant in the revolutionary flurry that ensued the
Rose Revolution. My hypothesis was that certainly there were great pos-
sibilities for closer cooperation in this setting.
xi