Andrei Yahorau: Until Europe changes its “view settings”, influence will be substituted by reaction

photo reuters.com

For many years the EU has been successfully ignoring Russian anti-European policy in our region, and the “European Partnership” project never became a geopolitical initiative.

The global transformation, which the whole world is experiencing now, apart from influencing the construction of international relations touches upon total basic transformation, noted Andrei Yahorau, the Director of Centre for European Information, in his statement during the public discussion “EU foreign policy in eastern Europe”, which took place within the frames of the European intercultural festival 2014.

“EuroMaidan in Kiev and the events that followed mark these global changes. The whole world, the whole system of world order is under the attack of diverse crises, some of which are relevant both for Belarus as well as for all developed countries in the world”, - Andrei Yahorau believes.

Thus, according to him, now the world is experiencing the crisis of national states’ system. The concept which was founded in 1920s, i.e. the formation of statehood within the territory where the nation lives, is “gradually unwinding and collapsing due to globalization processes and inclusion of the country into a global system of interrelations. Countries lose monopoly on ruling over their own territories, losing some of their functions to supranational structures”.

“Besides, the world is finally turning into a global world, where no local decisions and no local conflicts are closed. Russia-Ukraine conflict is a world war. Basically any local conflict outreaches the frames of a local conflict, drawing world players into it as well. Civic consciousness and identity are being transformed”, - notes Andrei Yahorau.

“As to the international system of relations, now we are obviously undergoing a security crisis. Someone disrupts conventional norms of the international law, as Russia did with the inviolability of borders, which, in its turn, disrupts the whole system of international agreements that used to exist. The institutions that guarantee security – OSCE, UN – can do nothing about it. The use of power on a global scale after the World War II is inadmissible, too, - said the Director of Centre for European Information. – Where is the center of power shifting now? To unipolar, multipolar world… to China. Answers of the US and the EU to the challenges are not always clear. I would say that the system is undergoing attacks from different sides. It is unclear whether it will be able to stand up to it and be reformed is unclear”.

As to the EU and its foreign policy instruments for influencing the situation, they are “extremely limited”. “We can say that in our region we see traditional system of geopolitical centers and stretching. Russia cannot be called a progressive country or a point of civilizational attraction. The EU has also lost its geopolitical magnetism, which, on the one hand, disrupts our traditional orienteers – where shall we go now? We are unable to decide on our direction – to the East or to the West. On the other hand, this situation gives certain chances to finally understand our role in this region, the role of our politics and our influence”, - Andrei Yahorau assumes.

According to him, a well-known formula “The European Union is an economic giant but a political midget” was largely confirmed after the events of 2014, especially in the sphere of EU foreign policy.

“The construction of European foreign policy is very complicated, very consensual, there are a lot of contradictions there – not only between the countries, but also between the structures. On the other hand, it is not a momentary emerged crisis that we are observing now; it has been going on since the EU finished its policy of enlargement, - Yahorau believes. – All attempts to reform the EU enlargement policy to the European Neighborhood Policy program, or to the “Eastern Partnership” project were mostly unsuccessful, as they were based on the same principles, without any reflection. And everything started falling to pieces. Russia has always been leading anti-European policy in the region, and special European “view settings” were needed to ignore it up to the moment when aggression against Ukraine started, which Europeans have been doing for many years”.

Besides, “the fact that European Neighborhood Policy and “Eastern Partnership” were not defined as geopolitical initiatives” also played its role.

“Europeans were ignoring inner political situation in the post-Soviet countries and have merely transferred the political model of enlargement to this region. But it is not only that the EU doesn’t know anything about Russia; it doesn’t know anything about us, too, though it is well aware that something is happening within these countries. The situation repeated in Ukraine. Until Europe rethinks political situation in our region and understands geopolitical meaning of our initiatives, until it starts restructuring and redefining a new political goal of the EU, it won’t have any leverages, only reaction to the external circumstances”, - emphasized Andrei Yahorau.