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Tapani Kaakkuriniemi,
Coordinator, Professor,
Alexander Institut (Helsinki)
In Maastricht in 1992, the European Communities were decided to form an ever-closer union of the twelve member states, aiming at the formation of a West European super-power that in economical and trade field could compete with Japan and even with the USA, and that could stabilize European political space by harmonizing rules, principles and legislation on several areas of society. This happened shortly after the end of the Cold War, and it was quite easy to understand the reasons why Central European former socialist countries, one after another, started to explore the possibilities to get along to the process towards a union of federation. Something had to be done, just to find away to deal with several very different states that had expressed their willingness to come along.
A couple of years after Maastricht, there was a hot debate inside the union about the strategy for the future. On the opposite sides one could find two camps, one demanding a closer and deeper cooperation between the existing member states, the other demanding the enlargement of the membership of the union. At the same time, negotiations were in good pace with three applicant states, which were adopted as members since January 1995. The Christian democrats in Germany and the Gaullist party in France launched a statement in 1994, in which they developed the idea of a hard nucleus of the union, which could comprise six member states (the original EEC) and which could proceed in harmonization faster than the members of the outer crescent. They had joined later and they thus had still quite much to do until they would reach the high level of this hard nucleus. More difficult would be to nominate who formed the other camp that demanded to extend the number of member states, but there were socialists, greens and some liberals there.
This crucial question was decided as it should not have been. One could illustrate these two options by imagining an attempt that your left leg proceed to the left and by your right leg to the right. The two first steps will go just fine, even the next two still. But sooner or later, the natural limits will prohibit this attempt to go on, and you either fall down or hurt your legs or both. But in the EU, the decision was done of both deepening the cooperation among existing member states by new elements (such as the three pillars of the new architecture of the union) and the acquirement of new members among Central East European states.
Since that, the European Union has felt some kind of a Drang nach Osten, as the Germans put it, referring to their nation's feeling of a painful necessity to penetrate to the east already a couple of hundred years ago. The enlargement has become a must. Расшириться надо. It has become an art as such.
For some years, the Central East European countries were categorized in different groups according to their readiness to join. The first five candidates proceeded well in negotiations, and the next five-to-seven countries were still waiting at the outdoor of the commission, so to say. Then, at the summit in Helsinki roughly two years ago, all the countries were declared to be equal applicants. Now, the preparation of membership is going on with ten-eleven countries. Only Turkey is deemed to stay on the waiting-list.
Why is the EU willing to expand its area? Is it because of creating a security zone in the middle of the European continent, as has officially been stated? Or is it in order to modernize the ex-socialist countries and assist them to leap 50 or 100 years ahead? Or finally, is it just in order to give the European/multinational corporations an opportunity to get a footstep in these countries both in the form of a larger market area and an area of production at low costs and scarce investments? So far, it seems that all these motives have been playing an important role in the enlargement.
From the other side, the Central East European countries have largely utilized the phrase of a return to the West, although it is questionable if they sometimes were there before or if now the West would be somehow better than something else. More thoroughly speaking, the question might be about the difficult, even painful transition to market economy and the adoption of the Rule of Law there. But at least in the beginning, the image of the "West" was too rosy: the people imagined that life in the West would automatically be easy and abundant, that bananas were for sale everywhere at a descent price and all the people can easily find a nice apartment to live in. This misunderstanding concerns even Russian society, and it was effectively spread by the Western propaganda to overcome the pro-communist propaganda in the east.
What kind of an interim report could we today give of the enlargement? The assistance programmes, such as Tacis or Phare, have been good levers (рычаги) in turning the development towards the rule of law. Millions and again millions of German marks, ecus and euros have been spent on miscellaneous development projects. Sometimes the consultants have earned a fortune from their projects, and very often the controllers have reported about a scarce, even lacking impact of the programmes. At the level of values, one could also ask, whether the western countries have tried to make new becoming democracies to adopt the same principles than they have, and to make the same mistakes they have done in the recent history. If this can be proved, then it has been more a question of an invasion instead of enlargement of the union to the east. Thus, the attitude of the contributors has been the same as was the case in the golden age of colonialism of the 19 century, when the West European master countries enlarged and ensured their markets to their colonies.
Now it seems that quite serious negotiations are being conducted with all the former socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the three Baltic republics, plus with Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus - which is not even a European country geographically. It is too early to foresee the timetable of this process, and the final outlook of the union in, say, ten or twenty years ahead.
So far, I have been discussing only the Central and East European countries and their attitudes to the European Union - and vice versa. This is only a part of the picture concerning the new political geography of the union. We must remember that there are two quite different cases that have become very important to the EU. I mean Turkey and the Russian Federation. One of them is waiting for the membership negotiations at the door, or to be strict, it has been on the waiting list since the mid-1960s. The other one has been a target country of massive assistance projects, both civilian and military, both commercial and non-profit type public sector projects. The core of the problem is that these two countries are treated in quite different ways.
The motives of the European Union as well as the USA and the International Monetary Fund have been very much similar in assisting Russia. The former global super-power must be saved and 'modernized', and the rule of law and market economy must have been set in this wide country with a very thin democratic tradition. Should this not succeed, then Russia would probably be moving to a deeper chaos and political and economical uncertainty. And still, the profound changes that Russia has experienced in the recent 10-15 years can be compared to any revolution. In many Central East European countries, several analysts have used the term "refolution", a combination of a reform and a revolution, but in the case of Russia the existence of a reform can be questioned.
Towards Russia, the EU has no duty to adopt it among its 'family of brotherly nations', but the policy of granting Turkey a status of an eternal applicant may be seen as a result of the influence and press of the USA towards great West European countries. Since 1952, NATO has felt it uncomfortable that Turkey is their member state, and that it has been in some kind of a war with Greece upon the domination on Cyprus. Now, the Washington view is to make both Cyprus and NATO join the European Union and hope that the whole set of problems would be solved in a civilized way by the Europeans. For NATO, the membership of Turkey is purely a geopolitical issue: the domination of the Dardanelles is so valuable that it must be guaranteed this way.
My core question is: why the European Union treats Turkey and Russia in different ways?
Moreover, what is the EU policy towards Russia in a longer run? Let us now compare these two
countries and their relation to the values that the EU underlines.
All the other applicants belong more or less to the same cultural sphere as the existing European Union. They have long historical roots in what is called European civilization, and I mean that tradition that was born in ancient Greece some 2500 years ago. The languages vary, as well as religions, but the same basic human values are shared by almost all the applicant nations. Turkey is a different case with its semi-Asiatic culture, that several times was about to overcome the Greece-based European cultures but only a hundred years ago was doomed to lose the competition. Probably Islam among a population of 64 million people makes the EU hesitate in proceeding with the negotiations. Russia then, it shares the Greek-European cultural history, although with its own version of a civilization and religion, but it is a product of Christianity, of multicultural tolerance and European geopolitical tradition of expansion to any direction. Russian language belongs to the same language group as Czech, Slovak or Serbo-Croatian. And despite of that, Russia is different. It is a huge country both in space and in population. But just therefore it is a multi-ethnic country with a long history of tolerance of minorities, that today comprise some 18% of the population.
Here, the west-based European Union seems to meet the Other, the different culture that is eastern but still European. Perhaps therefore it is so difficult to proceed in anything concerning Russia. As we have learned and heard here, too, the EU has signed the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 1994, which entered into force in 1997. According to this agreement, a further document on free trade should have been signed already. It seems that this project has stopped totally for now. Perhaps the EU waits until Russia enters the World Trade Organisation, or perhaps it just hesitates in signing a treaty with such a huge country as Russia. But Turkey only waits for the beginning of the membership negotiations.
Let us shortly compare Turkey and Russia from the standpoint of the European organisations. Human rights are the core concern of the Council of Europe, as well as the rule of law [правовой порядок, правовое государство]. Turkey is a founding member of the CoE, and it signed the European Protocol of Human Rights in 1950, as all the founding members did. Since that, Turkey has been among the first member states to sign any document, be it on banning of torture of prisoners or the child labour in enterprises. It is a state that seems to be willing to sign protocols and join declarations. After a negotiation process, the Russian Federation entered into the Council of Europe in 1995, and has slowly proceeded with its human rights policy. In both countries, there are ethnic conflicts, and Turkey has become well-known of the cruel policy towards the Kurdish population. This way, it continues the Ottoman tradition. Russia has had on its own soil since 1988 several ethnic conflicts, out of which the Chechenian one is most severe. In all the conflicts, human rights have been violated by the government troops.
In both countries, there is the rule of law [in the sense of "правовой порядок"], which differs greatly both from the German and British type of an order. And in both countries, this order of law is only partially implemented. Civic freedoms are more limited in Turkey because of ethnic origin than is the case in Russia. The equality of citizens before law is more questionable in Turkey than in Russia. In a multi-cultural Russia, tolerance towards the Different is more commonly shared than in Turkey. Border control is at the same time tight but also leaking. In both countries, and no doubt that Russia has, due to its size, more difficulties in guarding the borders than Turkey, although it also has crucial defects in its border control in its south-eastern regions.
The short comparison proves that there are no rational causes to set obstacles to Russia in coming closer to the Union, but there may be some cultural factors. Russia is more "European" than Turkey, although it has spread its influence across the Asian continent, too. But on the other hand, if one of these two would some day become a member, then the union would no more be what it used to be. 64 million Turkish citizens or 140 million Russian citizens would radically affect the balance and the decision-making order in the union and thus demand thorough mink-tanks in order to develop new quota and new methods for adopting decisions.
The European Union declares to be attractive to the Central and Eastern European nations. That may be true, but we must remember that the Russian (exile) Eurasianist tradition also tended to see Russian culture attractive to minor nationalities who would follow it by assimilation and uniting themselves and thus creating an Eurasian super-culture that would be overwhelming in large area. The Ottoman imperialist tradition does not fall far away from these mentioned ideologies, either, but the contemporary Turkey has officially abandoned this way of thought. Still, Kremlin regards Turkey as a security threat among Central Asian states with Turkic languages.
Thus, we come to security questions. Let me conclude by asking, what is the role of the EU in guaranteeing security in the eastern regions of Europe. It is at least partially a misbelief that the nucleus of European security would be in Brussels, nor in some of the numerous US military bases in Germany, nor in Novy Sad at the Danube river. The most important city that has an essential role for a safe Europe is in the easternmost area of Europe, and that is Stalingrad. If in 1942 and 1943 something would not have happened there, who knows whether the western powers would have succeeded in Normandie and all the allied in Berlin. From this point of view, it is extremely important that Russia in one way or another could participate in the security architecture of contemporary Europe.
How to make it possible, is difficult to say. I have only thought about one new model both for the EU and NATO. For the EU, it would be fruitful not to follow the same mechanical model in the association process with all the countries. Instead of it, the EU could follow the model of the Commonwealth of Independent States at least in one case, although it might not sound so feasible: I mean that it could develop, around the hard or soft nucleus, a network of different-level ties or agreements so that some countries would come along only partially, according to their abilities. All the countries, nevertheless, should sign a protocol of some basic principles that would be included in the common charter. Thus, Russia could have some role of a partner and semi-member already in a short run. In NATO, the problem is more complicated and has to do with the command systems, weapon technology and economic capability.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stop here the development of a brave new Europe and politely leave the others also some role in this important work.