The second argument, used by Putin in his Izvestia article to justify the Eurasian Union, was that the new Union would be built on shared values. He mentioned as such democracy, freedom, and the principles of the market economy. The reader will probably rub his or her eyes: whatever positive things one may say about Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, one can certainly not say that these three countries are shining examples of freedom and democracy. All three have “lifelong” leaders kept in place by organizing fake elections. All three have repressive regimes that suppress opposition voices and violate fundamental human rights. All three also lack an important condition of a functioning market economy: impartial courts.
The most amazing argument, however, is Putin’s third argument: a choice to join the Eurasian Union does not exclude integration with the EU, but, on the contrary, “will leave each of its members in much stronger positions to integrate more quickly into Europe.” Putin is playing here a game of words with the concept “Europe.” As members of the Eurasian Union these countries do not integrate into the EU, but in “Greater Europe,” a name he gives to the Eurasian Union and the EU together. In fact Putin is referring here to trade negotiations between the EU and the Eurasian Union and the eventual benefits for the member states of the Eurasian Union if they negotiate with the EU as a bloc. However, this has nothing to do with integration into “Europe” or the EU. It is a formulation intended to conceal that membership of the Eurasian Union implies an unequivocal geopolitical choice that excludes membership of the EU.[21]
The Ultimate Goal: The Creation of a “Big Country”
Putin’s article is a textbook case of active disinformation. What is at stake for the Kremlin in the project for a Eurasian Union remains carefully hidden. However, one week after the signing ceremony by the three presidents in Moscow it was possible to get a clearer idea of the way of thinking of the Russian political elite. On November 24, 2011, they came together to discuss the new project in the building of the Federation Council, the Russian Upper House. The title the organizers had chosen for this roundtable was in itself interesting. It was called “Big Country: Perspectives of the Integrative Processes in the Post-Soviet Space in the Framework of the ‘Eurasian Union.’”[22] Big country! The first catchword used to describe the new Union was not “economic modernization” or “economic cooperation,” but “big country.” One cannot but think of the centuries-old Russian fixation on territorial expansion. Had not Putin already said in 2009 in a speech before the Russian Geographical Society: “When we say great, a great country, a great state—certainly size matters. . . . When there is no size, there is no influence, no meaning.”[23] In the same vein, on the occasion of the signing of the treaty, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said: “Yes, we are all different but we have common values and a desire to live in a single big state.”[24] “A single big state”? It is not sure that the CIS countries, after having been reassured by Putin that their autonomy would not be jeopardized in the Eurasian Union, would welcome the prospect of living in “a big state.” And certainly they would appreciate even less the prospect of living in “a single big state.”
Expansionism Even Beyond Former Soviet Frontiers?
However, for some Russian analysts Moscow’s integrationist fervor should not stop at the frontiers of the former empire. Dmitry Orlov, a political scientist, wrote that the Eurasian Union should not only bring together the countries of the former Soviet Union, but should equally include “Finland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mongolia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, as well as two countries not in either Europe or Asia, Cuba and Venezuela.”[25] For Orlov, the Kremlin should not satisfy itself with reuniting the parts of the former Soviet Union, but it should aim higher, trying to restore the whole former communist bloc—and even beyond (Finland). Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister and former ambassador to NATO, was quoted as saying that the project was designed “to unite not so much lands, but rather peoples and citizens in the name of a common state body.”[26] Rogozin, a Russian ultranationalist, who always wanted to activate the Russian diaspora abroad and even create new Russian diaspora (he was, for instance, in favor of responding positively to the request of the estimated twenty thousand Serbs in Kosovo, applying for Russian citizenship), went even further than Orlov. He wanted not only to assemble a maximum number of countries into the Eurasian Union, but also the Russian diaspora “in the name of a common state body.” It led Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to declare that the project represented “the most savage idea of Russian nationalists,” adding that when Russia announces such ideas, “as a rule, they try to implement them.”[27]
During the “Big Country” conference former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov was more prudent. According to him the Eurasian Union should start with building a Belarusian-Russian-Kazakh Union. “For the time being one should not go beyond this framework,” he said, [notwithstanding the fact that] Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are knocking on the door.”[28] According to him one should not repeat the mistakes of the EU, which was in crisis because of its too rapid enlargement process. In the same vein a Chinese expert warned that building a Eurasian Union “is an uphill road. . . . Former Soviet republics are unlikely to go for integration with Russia gratis. . . . The accession of former Soviet republics to the Eurasian Union will hardly be a boon for Russia. The Belarusian economy is highly unstable and if such poor countries as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan join the Eurasian Union, Moscow may face even bigger problems than the EU does over Greece.”[29]
The Eurasian Union as the Ultimate
Integration Effort
Despite these warnings and despite the fact that “the Eurasian Union has only little integration potential and has few attractions to offer the newly independent states,”[30] the Kremlin does not shy away from spending money—a lot of money—on this project. While in 2009–2010 Russia still refused to transfer loans to Belarus when that country failed to privatize and sell industrial companies to Russian companies, in late 2011 the situation had changed fundamentally. Russia began to provide billions of dollars in oil and gas subsidies and allocated $10 billion for loans for a nuclear plant in Belarus. It also paid $2.5 billion for the second half of Beltransgas shares. In addition, it also signed on November 21, 2011, an agreement in Moscow on a loan for $1 billion.[31] The willingness of the Kremlin to subsidize Lukashenko’s rickety economy was a clear sign of the political importance it attached to the Eurasian project.[32]
In fact, the Eurasian Union is for Moscow the ultimate integration effort, crowning and superseding all earlier integration efforts. The Eurasian Union is not just some new integration project alongside the other existing integration projects created by Russia in recent years. The Eurasian Union is something different. This new structure is like the crowning synthesis in a Hegelian dialectic: it is not only the most complete realization of earlier Russian attempts at integration, but—while keeping these other structures in place—it absorbs them over time. (Hegel calls this process aufheben, which means both “to preserve” as well as “to bring to a higher level.”) We can, therefore, expect that the Eurasian Union will gradually take over functions from other existing structures, such as the Russia-Belarus Union State, EurAsEc, the Customs Union, and the CSTO. Belarusian President Lukashenko hinted at this when he declared that the Russia-Belarus Union State may disappear if the project of the Eurasian Union were to develop further.[33] This hidden function of the Eurasian Union, to replace and absorb already existing integration structures, is also recognized by Uwe Halbach, a German expert who wrote on the Eurasian Union that “a piece of integration theatre is being played out on multiple stages and levels, which ultimately calls for an ‘integration of the integrations.’”[34]
The centerpiece of this intended “integration of the integrations” is, undoubtedly, military integration. Putin did not mention this in his Izvestia article, but Ruslan Grinberg, director of the economic institute RAN, hinted at this at the “Big Country” conference. Grinberg mentioned �
�the necessity to build supranational structures, [also] partly, military.”[35] “The Eurasian Union is primarily an economic project accompanied by Russian efforts toward integration within security policy areas,” wrote Uwe Halbach. “The main recipient here is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an ‘alliance’ of seven [now six, MHVH] CIS states.”[36] Halbach is right. This hidden ambition of the Kremlin, however, is not trumpeted too loudly in order not to frighten away potential candidate members of the Eurasian Union.
The Eurasian Union, this ultimate integration project of Russia and pet project of Vladimir Putin, has to be taken seriously. It is the last product of the Kremlin’s funnel strategy in which countries are invited to participate in an integration project on the basis of a manifest agenda that is different from the Kremlin’s hidden agenda. The hidden agenda behind the Eurasian Union is twofold. In the first place it is the creation—over time—of a military arm of the Union, similar to the defunct Warsaw Pact. This military arm (the CSTO) will reserve for itself the exclusive right to intervene militarily in the post-Soviet space. Such an exclusive right of military intervention that excludes the intervention of external powers (the United States, NATO, but also China) has found its theoretical elaboration in the Grossraum (big space) theory of Carl Schmitt, which was already at the core of Medvedev’s proposal for a pan-European security pact.[37] A Russian droit de regard over the post-Soviet space would further imply that Russia wants to introduce qualified majority decision to replace the consensus rule of the CSTO (Article 12 of the CSTO Charter) for substantive decisions on peacekeeping operations or interventions.
Bringing Ukraine Back into the Russian Orbit
The second and most important point of the Kremlin’s hidden agenda is the incorporation of Ukraine into the Eurasian Union. For the Kremlin the Eurasian Union is a new instrument to bring Ukraine back into its orbit.[38] This is also the reason that the Kremlin has a great interest in attracting Moldova, which, in March 2012, was promised lower consumer prices (of up to 30 percent) for gas and oil, and a “big market (comparable with the EU) for Moldovan products.” It was also offered more beneficial conditions for Moldavan workers in countries of the Customs Union if it would adhere to the Customs Union, which functions as the entrance to the Eurasian Union.[39] Moldova’s membership of the Eurasian Union would, in fact, see Ukraine encircled by three member states of the Eurasian Union: Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, thereby making Ukraine’s membership of this organization more logical and an eventual future membership of Ukraine of the EU more problematic. The Kremlin’s Moldova policy is, therefore, an integral part of its Eurasian Union project. There seems to exist a clear will in the Kremlin—in case the Moldovan leadership cannot be convinced to join the Eurasian Union and is opting instead for EU membership—to split the country and make the breakaway province of Transnistria independent along the lines of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On July 31, 2012, speaking in the Nashi Seliger camp, Putin said that Transnistria is entitled to self-determination. This “reference to self-determination is a novel one in Moscow’s rhetoric about the Transnistria conflict,” warned Vladimir Socor.[40] Putin’s declaration was followed by the reappointment on August 2, 2012, of deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin to the additional post of special representative of the Russian President for Transnistria (Rogozin had already been appointed in March 2012 to this post by Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev). On the same day, Rogozin received Transnistria’s leader Yevgeny Shevchuk in Moscow. When Rogozin and Shevchuk made a declaration after the meeting, Russia’s flag and Transnistria’s “state flag” were displayed on an equal footing—a clear sign of Russian support for Transnistrian separatism. “Moscow’s July 31 and August 2 statements,” wrote Vladimir Socor, “add further elements of de-recognition [of Moldova’s territorial integrity], firming up suggestions for Transnistria’s ‘self-determination’ and acknowledging its ‘state’ attributes (territory, flag).”[41] Moscow’s support for Transnistrian separatism is directly linked with the Kremlin’s Eurasian project. “Moscow declared its intention to build a ‘Eurasian economic region’ in Transnistria aiming to prevent the weakening of Moscow’s control over Tiraspol, in a direct response to EU and Moldova’s efforts to attract Transnistria through economic cooperation.”[42]
Notes
1. Vladimir Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya,” Izvestia (October 8, 2011).
2. “Professor Igor Panarin: Gosudarem postsovetskogo prostranstva stanet Vladimir Putin,” Izvestia (April 1, 2009).
3. On Panarin’s grandiose visions see also Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putinism: The Slow Rise of a Radical Right Regime in Russia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 82–83.
4. Igor Panarin, “The Information War against Russia: Operation Putin. Part 1. Eurasian Integration: A Pathway Out of the World Crisis.” Lecture in the International Conference Securing Mankind’s Future (February 25–26, 2012), organized in Berlin by the Schiller-Institut. http://www.schiller-institut.de/seiten/201202-berlin/panarin-english.html (accessed June 28, 2013).
5. Panarin, “The Information War against Russia: Operation Putin.”
6. New Zealand has expressed an interest in creating a free trade zone with the Eurasian Union, but this is, of course, nowhere near becoming a full member. (Cf. Letter of Dmitry Shtodin, Minister Counsellor at the Russian Embassy in Rome, published as an appendix to Mauro De Bonis, “Urss? No grazie, Putin sogna l’Unione Euroasiatica,” Limes (September 3, 2012). Shtodin corrects the statement of De Bonis that New Zealand would become a member.) More viable candidates—mentioned by Panarin in another article—are Cuba and Venezuela. This “might sound like something out of a novel today,” he rejoiced, “far more than my own idea about Serbia joining, but we are living in very dynamic times” (Cf. Igor Panarin, “Eurasian Union: Stage 1,” RT (November 18, 2011)). In another article even war-torn Syria is mentioned as “seeking a free trade zone” with the new emerging Union. (Cf. Svetlana Kalmykova, “Eurasian Union Idea Takes Shape,” The Voice of Russia (October 20, 2011).)
7. Dugin quoted by Marlène Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 117.
8. Dugin, Konservativnaya Revolyutsiya, 1994. http://anticompromat.ru/dugin/3put.html.
9. Cf. “Evraziyskie komissary poluchat status federalnykh ministrov,” Tut.by (November 17, 2011).
10. “Vstrecha prezidentov Rossii, Respubliki Belarus i Kazakhstana,” Official Website of the President of Russia (November 18, 2011).
11. “Vstrecha prezidentov Rossii, Respubliki Belarus i Kazakhstana.”
12. “Vstrecha prezidentov Rossii, Respubliki Belarus i Kazakhstana.”
13. Marlène Laruelle, “When the ‘Near Abroad’ Looks at Russia: The Eurasian Union Project as Seen from the Southern Republics,” Russian Analytical Digest no. 112 (April 20, 2012), 9.
14. “Evraziyskiy tamozhennyy soyuz i ego vliyanie na Tsentralnuyu Aziyu,” Analiticheskiy Forum Tsentralnoy Azii no. 4 (February 2013), 2.
15. “Evraziyskiy tamozhennyy soyuz i ego vliyanie na Tsentralnuyu Aziyu.”
16. “Evraziyskiy tamozhennyy soyuz i ego vliyanie na Tsentralnuyu Aziyu.” Putin, in his speech, said: “The combined GDP measured in purchasing power parity of countries such as India and China is already greater than that of the United States. And a similar calculation with the GDP of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—surpasses the cumulative GDP of the EU. And according to experts this gap will only increase in the future.” (Cf. “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at 43d Munich Conference on Security Policy,” The Washington Post (February 12, 2007).) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021200555.html.
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