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The EU Trade-Security Nexus and the Ukraine Crisis

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The Trade-Security Nexus in EU External Action

Part of the book series: Contributions to International Relations ((CIR))

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Abstract

Ukraine and the five other countries of the Eastern Partnership form a region where the EU has both trade policy as well as foreign and security policy interests. Precisely how the EU has defined and pursued its interests in the realms of trade policy as well as foreign and security policy, respectively and how the two relate to each other will be the subject of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lawrence Freedman (2014), Ukraine and the Art of Crisis Management, Survival, 56(3), p. 8.

  2. 2.

    Roy Allison (2014), Russian ‘Deniable’ Intervention in Ukraine: How and Why Russia Broke the Rules, International Affairs, 90(6), p. 1255.

  3. 3.

    Sten Rynning (2015), The False Promise of Continental Concert: Russia, the West and Necessary Balance of Power, International Affairs, 91(3), p. 551.

  4. 4.

    Jeffrey Mankoff (2014), Russia’s Latest Land Grab: How Putin Won Crimea and Lost Ukraine, Foreign Affairs, 93(3), p. 60.

  5. 5.

    Neil MacFarlane and Anand Menon (2014), The EU and Ukraine, Survival, 56(3), p. 95.

  6. 6.

    Taras Kuzio (2017), Ukraine between a Constrained EU and Assertive Russia, Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(1), p. 103.

  7. 7.

    See James Sherr (2015), A War of Narratives and Arms, in: Keir Giles, Philip Hanson, Roderic Lyne, James Nixey, James Sherr and Andrew Wood (eds.), The Russian Challenge, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, p. 23.

  8. 8.

    Derek Averre (2016), The Ukraine Conflict: Russia’s Challenge to European Security Governance, Europe-Asia Studies, 68(4), p. 699.

  9. 9.

    Richard Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis: The Geopolitics of Asymmetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 41. See also Dmitri Trenin (2014), The Ukraine Crisis and the Resumption of Great Power Rivalry, Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

  10. 10.

    See, for example, John J. Mearsheimer (2014), Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin, Foreign Affairs, 93(5), pp. 77–89; Stephen M. Walt (2014), The Perils of an Itchy Twitter Finger, Foreign Policy, 21 July.

  11. 11.

    Nicholas Ross Smith (2017), EU-Russian Relations and the Ukraine Crisis. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 126.

  12. 12.

    Sergei Prozorov (2006), Understanding Conflict between Russia and the EU: The Limits of Integration, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 14.

  13. 13.

    Hiski Haukkala (2010), The EU-Russia Strategic Partnership: The Limits of Post-Sovereignty in International Relations, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 2. See also James Greene (2012), Russian Responses to NATO and EU Enlargement and Outreach, Chatham House Briefing Paper, June 2012, pp. 18: “This is a direct challenge to the EU […] underlining a conflict of divergent identities, values and politico-economic systems.”

  14. 14.

    Hiski Haukkala (2015), From Cooperative to Contested Europe? The Conflict in Ukraine as a Culmination of a Long-Term Crisis in EU-Russia Relations, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(1), p. 33.

  15. 15.

    Prozorov (2006), Understanding Conflict between Russia and the EU, p. 5.

  16. 16.

    Scott Nicholas Romaniuk (2009), Rethinking EU-Russian Relations: ‘Modern’ Cooperation’ or ‘Post-Modern’ Strategic Partnership?, Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 3(2), p. 71.

  17. 17.

    Graham Timmins (2002), Strategic or Pragmatic Partnership? The European Union’s Policy Towards Russia Since the End of the Cold War, European Security, 11(4), pp. 78–79.

  18. 18.

    Michael Emerson et al. (2009), Synergies vs. Spheres of Influence in the Pan-European Space, Report prepared for the Policy Planning Staff of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, pp. 13–14.

  19. 19.

    Michael Leigh (2014), The European Neighbourhood Policy: A Suitable Case for Treatment, in: Sieglinde Gstöhl and Erwan Lannon (eds.), The Neighbours of the European Union’s Neighbours: Diplomatic and Geopolitical Dimensions Beyond the European Neighbourhood Policy, Farnham: Ashgate, p. 205.

  20. 20.

    Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk (2012), Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU: Cooperation, Stagnation or Rivalry?, Chatham House Briefing Paper, August, p. 1.

  21. 21.

    See Tom Casier (2013), The EU-Russia Strategic Partnership: Challenging the Normative Argument, Europe-Asia Studies, 65(7), pp. 1377–1395.

  22. 22.

    Derek Averre (2009), Competing Rationalities: Russia, the EU and the ‘Shared Neighbourhood’, Europe-Asia Studies, 61(10), p. 1708.

  23. 23.

    See ibid., p. 1691.

  24. 24.

    Kristi Raik (2019), The Ukraine Crisis as a Conflict over Europe’s Political, Economic and Security Order, Geopolitics, 24(1), pp. 57, 65.

  25. 25.

    David Cadier (2014), Eastern Partnership vs Eurasian Union? The EU-Russia Competition in the Shared Neighbourhood and the Ukraine Crisis, Global Policy, 5(1), p. 77.

  26. 26.

    See Averre (2009), Competing Rationalities, pp. 1696–1697; Elena A. Korosteleva (2016), The EU, Russia and the Eastern Region: The Analytics of Government for Sustainable Cohabitation, Cooperation and Conflict, 51(3), pp. 365–383. See also Freedman (2014), Crisis Management, p. 28: “[T]he heart of the issues was the political economy of Ukraine.”

  27. 27.

    For an account of the Ukrainian perspective, see Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  28. 28.

    All data are sourced from Eurostat: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/home.

  29. 29.

    As a comparison, the EU’s five biggest trading partners by volume in 2004 were the United States (EUR 395.0 bn), China excluding Hong Kong (EUR 177.6 bn), Switzerland (EUR 137.4 bn), Russia (EUR 131.0 bn) and Japan (EUR 118.4 bn).

  30. 30.

    Interview #37.

  31. 31.

    Interview #39.

  32. 32.

    Interview #36. Also interview #10: “it is an important, it’s a big country. I mean we’re talking about 40–45 million inhabitants. It’s quite a large market, by far the largest in the Eastern Partnership region. And, I mean, offensively, of course, it is a market which is quite developed—if you compare also to other partners—where there are prospects for our exporters to take, to use the opportunities on that market.”

  33. 33.

    Interview #13.

  34. 34.

    Interview #11.

  35. 35.

    http://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/ukraine/eu_ukraine/political_relations/index_en.htm [06.04.2018, emphasis added].

  36. 36.

    See David Cadier (2019), The Geopoliticisation of the EU’s Eastern Partnership, Geopolitics, 24(1), p. 79: “The will to shape domestic markets towards the approximation of EU norms and standards partly reflects a desire to make them more amenable for EU businesses; thus the EaP does entail an offensive component in that sense, but a geo-economic one.”

  37. 37.

    Interview #10.

  38. 38.

    See European Council (2013), Remarks by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy at the Press Conference of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, PRESSE 526, Vilnius, 29 November.

  39. 39.

    Interview #20.

  40. 40.

    Interview #25.

  41. 41.

    Interview #18.

  42. 42.

    Interview #37.

  43. 43.

    Interview #39.

  44. 44.

    Interview #6. Also interview #12: “Ukraine is still a very good example of an agreement that was done for broadly mostly political reasons.”

  45. 45.

    Interview #43.

  46. 46.

    See European Council (2003), European Security Strategy, p. 8.

  47. 47.

    See Leigh (2014), European Neighbourhood Policy, p. 204.

  48. 48.

    See ibid.

  49. 49.

    See Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi (2008), Geostrategies of the European Neighbourhood Policy, European Journal of International Relations, 14(3), pp. 520, 524. See also European Council (2003), European Security Strategy, p. 8: “The integration of acceding states increases our security but also brings the EU closer to troubled areas.”

  50. 50.

    European Commission (2004), European Neighbourhood Policy, COM(2004) 373 final, Brussels, 12 May, p. 2.

  51. 51.

    European Commission (2003), Wider Europe—Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours, COM(2003) 104 final, Brussels, 11 March, p. 4.

  52. 52.

    Interview #13. Also interview #18: “It’s a mix of trying to have societies which are resilient, which are democratic, which are stable, which means economic development, which means rules of law, which means stability, which means a society which is as little divided as possible, which means avoiding state grabbing by some, which generates frustration by others—that kind of things. And then there is the general idea that the EU interests in terms of security is to have a stable environment, because [an] unstable environment means wars, can lead to migration crises, can lead to refugee problems, can lead to mafia because if there is no solid state or democratic state or rule of law, there is mafia, there is organized crime, there is all these things which in one way or another end up here.”

  53. 53.

    This assessment has arguably changed since the Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, after which many EU member states have re-focused on territorial defence.

  54. 54.

    Smith (2017), EU-Russian Relations and the Ukraine Crisis, p. 112. For in-quote citation, see Jan Zielonka (2008), Europe as a Global Actor: Empire by Example?, International Affairs, 84(3), p. 476. On the geopolitical vision underlying the ENP, see Christopher Browning (2018), The Construction and Deconstruction of the EU’s Neighbourhood, in: Tobias Schumacher andreas Marchetti and Thomas Demmelhuber (eds.), The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighbourhood Policy, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 119–129. See also Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis, p. 59: “The EU would work to reform the economic and governance structures of eastern partners; this was assumed to be synonymous with the latter drawing closer and embedding themselves within an EU-centred security community.”

  55. 55.

    Raffaella A. Del Sarto (2016), Normative Empire Europe: The European Union, its Borderlands and the ‘Arab Spring’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(2), p. 221. See also Raffaella A. Del Sarto and Tobias Schumacher (2005), From EMP to ENP: What’s at Stake with the European Neighbourhood Policy towards the Southern Mediterranean?, European Foreign Affairs Review, 10(1), p. 19; Steve Marsh and Wyn Rees (2011), The European Union in the Security of Europe: From Cold War to Terror War, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 87; Iain Ferguson (2018), Between New Spheres of Influence: Ukraine’s Geopolitical Misfortune, Geopolitics, 31(2), pp. 285–306.

  56. 56.

    Interview #37.

  57. 57.

    Interview #25.

  58. 58.

    See European Commission (2004), European Neighbourhood Policy, p. 5: “The European Neighbourhood Policy’s vision involves a ring of countries, sharing the EU’s fundamental values and objectives, drawn into an increasingly close relationship, going beyond co-operation to involve a significant measure of economic and political integration. This will bring enormous gains to all involved in terms of increased stability, security and well being.”

  59. 59.

    Interview #22.

  60. 60.

    Schimmelfennig (2001), The Community Trap, p. 66.

  61. 61.

    See Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis, pp. 63–64: “[T]he EU focused mainly on reproducing itself in quasi-technocratic fashion on its own periphery.”

  62. 62.

    See Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, p. 45.

  63. 63.

    Nicu Popescu and Andrew Wilson (2009), The Limits of Enlargement-Lite: European and Russian Power in the Troubled Neighbourhood, London: European Council on Foreign Relations, p. 21.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., p. 18.

  65. 65.

    Interview #25: “Ukraine was always and is still the main element of the Eastern Partnership. Of course, we respect all of our neighbours, but the South Caucus for example is farther away from us than Ukraine and Ukraine of course is the biggest country. So, yes, it is the most important country we have in the Eastern Partnership. And also some of the actions of Russia towards other partners can be explained by Russian interests in Ukraine.”

  66. 66.

    Interview #47.

  67. 67.

    Interview #22: “Ukraine is an essential swing state. If Ukraine goes one way, you know, it would be disastrous for our stability. If it goes the other way, it would be fantastic for Europe.”

  68. 68.

    Interview #22. See also The Economist (2016), A Hollow Superpower, 19 March: “If Ukraine can become a successful European state, it will show Russians that they have a path to liberal democracy.”

  69. 69.

    See EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council (2009), EU-Ukraine Association Agenda, UE-UA 1056/2/09 REV 2, Brussels, 23 November. See also EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council (2005), EU-Ukraine Action Plan, Brussels, 21 February.

  70. 70.

    See Smith (2017), EU-Russian Relations, pp. 112–114.

  71. 71.

    See Del Sarto and Schumacher (2005), From EMP to ENP, pp. 27–28. See also Smith (2017), EU-Russian Relations, p. 57: “[T]he EU used its attractiveness as a trade partner with Ukraine to pursue broader strategic foreign policy goals.”

  72. 72.

    See, for example, Martin Nilsson and Daniel Silander (2016), Democracy and Security in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood? Assessing the ENP in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, Democracy and Security, 12(1), pp. 44–61.

  73. 73.

    See Smith (2017), EU-Russian Relations, p. 58.

  74. 74.

    See Richard Sakwa (2015), The Death of Europe? Continental Fates After Ukraine, International Affairs, 91(3), pp. 569–570; Richard Sakwa (2015), Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. XII, 49.

  75. 75.

    See Glenn Diesen (2015), EU and NATO Relations with Russia After the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 71.

  76. 76.

    Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, p. 47.

  77. 77.

    See Guillaume van der Loo (2016), The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area: A New Legal Instrument for EU Integration without Membership, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, pp. 191–193.

  78. 78.

    Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland all joined NATO prior to becoming members of the EU. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia joined NATO the same year as the joined the EU.

  79. 79.

    Van der Loo (2016), EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, p. 193.

  80. 80.

    See Gunnar Wiegand and Evelina Schulz (2015), The EU and Its Eastern Partnership: Political Association and Economic Integration in a Rough Neighbourhood, in: Christoph Herrmann, Bruno Simma and Rudolf Streinz (eds.), Trade Policy between Law, Diplomacy and Scholarship: Liber Amicorum in Memoriam Horst G. Krenzler, Heidelberg: Springer, p. 336.

  81. 81.

    See Council of the European Union (2003), EU-Russia Summit: 300th Anniversary of St.-Petersburg—Celebrating Three Centuries of Common European History and Culture, JOINT STATEMENT, 9937/03 (Press 154), Saint Petersburg, 31 May.

  82. 82.

    Interview #14.

  83. 83.

    See Averre (2009), Competing Rationalities, p. 1694; Hiski Haukkala (2016), A Perfect Storm; Or What Went Wrong and What Went Right for the EU in Ukraine, Europe-Asia Studies, 68(4), p. 659; Stephan Keukeleire and Irina Petrova (2014), The European Union, the Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia: Competing Regionalisms, in: Mario Telò (ed.), European Union and New Regionalism: Competing Regionalism and Global Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era, Farnham: Ashgate, p. 267; MacFarlane and Menon (2014), The EU and Ukraine, p. 96; Marsh and Rees (2011), Security of Europe, p. 139; Nilsson and Silander (2016), Democracy and security, p. 55; Raik (2019), The Ukraine Crisis, p. 63; Susan Stewart (2009), Russia and the Eastern Partnership: Loud Criticism, Quiet Interest in Cooperation, SWP Comments 7, May, p. 1; George Christou (2010), European Union Security Logics to the East: The European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership, European Security, 19(3), p. 415.

  84. 84.

    European Commission (2008), Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council: Eastern Partnership, COM(2008) 823 final, Brussels, 3 December, p. 15.

  85. 85.

    European Commission (2009), Eastern Partnership, MEMO/09/2017, Brussels, 5 May, p. 1.

  86. 86.

    Keukeleire and Petrova (2014), Competing Regionalisms, p. 267.

  87. 87.

    Stewart (2009), Russia and the Eastern Partnership, p. 1. See also Council of the European Union (2008), Presidency Conclusions of the Extraordinary European Council held in Brussels on 1 September 2008, 12594/2/08 REV 2, Brussels, 6 October.

  88. 88.

    See European Commission (2009), Eastern Partnership, p. 2.

  89. 89.

    Dmitri Trenin (2014), Ukraine is not the only Battlefield between Russia and the West, Carnegie Europe, 21 March.

  90. 90.

    See Freedman (2014), Crisis Management, p. 18; Stefan Lehne (2014), Time to Reset the European Neighbourhood Policy, Brussels: Carnegie Europe, p. 7. See also Akardy Moshes (2012), Russia’s European Policy under Medvedev: How Sustainable is a New Compromise?, International Affairs, 88(1), p. 23; Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, p. 46; Stewart (2009), Russia and the Eastern Partnership, pp. 2–3.

  91. 91.

    See Haukkala (2015), From Cooperative to Contested Europe?, p. 32; Greene (2012), Russian Responses, p. 18; Jolyon Howorth (2017), ‘Stability on the Borders’: The Ukraine Crisis and the EU’s Constrained Policy Towards the Eastern Neighbourhood, Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(1), p. 127; Nilsson and Silander (2016), Democracy and Security, p. 55.

  92. 92.

    Allison (2014), Russian ‘Deniable’ Intervention, p. 1271.

  93. 93.

    Keukeleire and Petrova (2014), Competing Regionalisms, p. 269.

  94. 94.

    See Hannes Adomeit (2012), Putin’s ‘Eurasian Union’: Russia’s Integration Project and Policies on Post-Soviet Space, Center for International and European Studies, Neighbourhood Policy Paper, No. 4, July, p. 8: “The ostensible purpose of this initiative is economic. Its primary objectives, however, are geopolitical and these are to be achieved in large part by economic means.”

  95. 95.

    See ibid., p. 3; Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, pp. 9–11; Freedman (2014), Crisis Management, p. 19; Uwe Halbach (2012), Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS Region?, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP Comments, No. 1, January, p. 4. See also Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997), The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books, pp. 46, 104.

  96. 96.

    See Moshes (2012), Russia’s European Policy, p. 26. See also F. Stephen Larrabee (2010), Russia, Ukraine and Central Europe: The Return of Geopolitics, Journal of International Affairs, 63(2), pp. 37–38.

  97. 97.

    Wiegand and Schulz (2015), The EU and Its Eastern Partnership, p. 332. See also Roland Dannreuther (2004), Introduction: Setting the Framework, in: Roland Dannreuther (ed.), EU Foreign and Security Policy: Towards a Neighbourhood Strategy, London: Routledge, p. 3: “[T]he EU’s ‘near abroad’ represents a testing ground for its broader political and foreign policy ambitions and its capacity to emerge as a more coherent and strategic actors.”

  98. 98.

    Wiegand and Schulz (2015), The EU and Its Eastern Partnership, p. 349.

  99. 99.

    Interview #39.

  100. 100.

    Moshes (2012), Russia’s European Policy, p. 27.

  101. 101.

    See, for example, Averre (2016), The Ukraine Conflict, p. 713; Freedman (2014), Crisis Management, p. 28; Serena Giusti (2016), The EU’s Policy Towards Russia: National Interests and Path Dependency, in: Lorenzo Cladi and Andrea Locatelli (eds.), International Relations Theory and European Security: We Thought We Knew, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 190; Raik (2019), The Ukraine Crisis, pp. 63–66.

  102. 102.

    Haukkala (2016), A Perfect Storm, p. 659.

  103. 103.

    Raik (2019), The Ukraine Crisis, p. 63.

  104. 104.

    Interview #25: “[T]he Russians [had] never told us that they would perceive the Eastern Partnership as a threat.” Interview #22: “We were caught hopping, honestly! […] we were very much caught on the hop by the Russians. We were caught by surprise. We had not seen this coming. This was a drastic change in Russian thinking at the time. Now, we’re used to it. Now it has become normal. But in 2013, we had become very complacent, because for years we had been talking to the Russians about the Eastern Partnership and the Russian just didn’t seem to be interested.” The official added that even people who were working on the AA/DCFTA did not see it coming “up until it all blew up in their face.”

  105. 105.

    Interview #20.

  106. 106.

    Dmitri Medvedev, quoted in Andrew Rettman (2009), EU-Russia Summit Ends With Prickly Exchange Over Energy, EUObserver, 23 May.

  107. 107.

    Interview #38: “Russia never told us that this was a core national security [interest, J.S.] for them. They never said, you know: ‘If you go ahead with it, we’ll invade the countries, we’ll have a war’.”

  108. 108.

    Interview #14.

  109. 109.

    Interview #37.

  110. 110.

    The distinction between ‘high politics’ and ‘low politics’ in International Relations is sometimes made to differentiate between issues which relate to the very survival of the state (national security, defence, etc.) and those that are not existential (economy, trade, social affairs, etc.). This dichotomy is not without its caveats, given that in a world of ‘complex interdependence’ issues that were previously thought to be ‘low politics’ in nature may quickly turn into problems of ‘high politics’. An example of this is the national security exception to free trade. The high politics-low politics differentiation is, nevertheless, a useful prima facie analytical frame to disentangle the web of policy actions in interstate relations.

  111. 111.

    Interview #14. Also interview #21: “Why should we necessarily do what Russia wants? We don’t believe in spheres of influence! This sort of nineteenth century theory of spheres of influence. […] we believe fundamentally that Ukraine has a right to exercise its sovereign choice as to whether to sign an association agreement and a DCFTA with the European Union or not, whether to enter a customs union with the Eurasian Economic Union or not. So, it’s Ukraine’s sovereign choice.”

  112. 112.

    Interview #38: “Refusing to have this agreement would be to accept that certain countries in Europe have a limited sovereignty; would be to accept that kind of doctrine of limited sovereignty which existed before during the Cold War with Khrushchev and all that, that the countries in the East, you know, couldn’t do certain things because they were under the tutelage, the oversight of Moscow; would be to accept that this still existed, that these countries were not fully independent, they couldn’t take decisions, they were not free to decide on their own international relations.”

  113. 113.

    European Council (2013), Joint Statement by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso on Ukraine, EUCO 245/13, Brussels, 25 November, p. 2.

  114. 114.

    Interview #45: “They were not supposed to take this position of spheres of influence and they still shouldn’t take this position of spheres of influence, because we don’t recognise Russian spheres of influence!”.

  115. 115.

    Interview #35. Also interview #37: “I maintain that I do not think that we should have done anything differently and I do not think that we should be told by the Russian Federation with which countries we should have what kind of agreement. It’s, in the first place, a bilateral affair and it’s the responsibility of the country that has to decide what it wants.”

  116. 116.

    Interview #35.

  117. 117.

    Interview #45.

  118. 118.

    Interview #39: “[F]rankly, who would be ready to sign an agreement when you know that it will trigger a war, the death of ten thousand people, the loss of Crimea and so on? […] I think that many governments in the EU would have been very reluctant if they had known what would happen.”

  119. 119.

    Interview #3.

  120. 120.

    Always assuming that there are domestic producers of x, the EU may also lower its tariff on x to deliberately induce more competition on the domestic market for x, for example to lower consumer prices and spur innovation.

  121. 121.

    Interview #11.

  122. 122.

    Interview #18.

  123. 123.

    Interview #39.

  124. 124.

    Interview #20.

  125. 125.

    Interview #43.

  126. 126.

    See Thomas Gehring, Kevin Urbanski and Sebastian Oberthür (2017), The European Union as an Inadvertent Great Power: EU Actorness and the Ukraine Crisis, Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(4), pp. 734–735.

  127. 127.

    Interview #20.

  128. 128.

    Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis, p. 61.

  129. 129.

    On the limited discretion of the EEAS in EU external affairs more generally, see Hrant Kostanyan (2014), Examining the Discretion of the EEAS: What Power to Act in the EU-Moldova Association Agreement?, European Foreign Affairs Review, 19(3), pp. 373–392.

  130. 130.

    Interview #25.

  131. 131.

    House of Lords (2015), The EU and Russia: Before and Beyond the Crisis in Ukraine, European Union Committee, 6th Report of Session 2014–15, London: The Stationery Office Limited, p. 63.

  132. 132.

    Bossuyt, Orbie and Drieghe (2020), EU External Policy Coherence, p. 59.

  133. 133.

    Interview #14.

  134. 134.

    Nicholas Ross Smith (2018), The EU’s Foreign Trade Policy Towards its Eastern Frontier: Assessing its Triangular Trade Relationship with Ukraine and Russia in the Context of the Ukraine Crisis, in: Sangeeta Khorana and Maria Garcia (eds.), Handbook on the EU and International Trade, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 189.

  135. 135.

    Ibid.

  136. 136.

    See Alexander Wendt (1992), Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International Organization, 46(2), pp. 391–425.

  137. 137.

    See Gehring, Urbanski and Oberthür (2017), Inadvertent Great Power, pp. 728, 732–733.

  138. 138.

    Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, p. 108. See also Kuzio (2017), Ukraine between a Constrained EU and Assertive Russia, p. 104; Giusti (2016), The EU’s Policy Towards Russia, p. 186.

  139. 139.

    See Igor Gretskiy, Evgeny Treshchenkov and Konstantin Golubev (2014), Russia’s Perceptions and Misperceptions of the EU Eastern Partnership, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 47(3–4), pp. 379–381. See also Dragneva and Wolczuk (2015), Ukraine Between the EU and Russia, pp. 116–117.

  140. 140.

    House of Lords (2015), The EU and Russia, p. 63.

  141. 141.

    Ibid., pp. 63–64.

  142. 142.

    Interview #20.

  143. 143.

    Interviews #13, #25.

  144. 144.

    Interview #13.

  145. 145.

    Interviews #11, #14, #51, #52, #53. See also Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis, p. 105, who makes a similar observation.

  146. 146.

    See Sakwa (2015), Frontline Ukraine, p. 41; Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy (2015), Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, p. 358.

  147. 147.

    See, for example, Popescu and Wilson (2009), The Limits of Enlargement-Lite, p. 13: “If the EU continues to ignore the looming crisis on its doorstep, not only will it be expected to pick up the pieces later and at much greater cost, it may find that its core values of democracy, stability and the rule of law are undermined as Russia steps in to fill the vacuum.”; Greene (2012), Russian Responses, pp. 17–18: “[I]f a country in its sphere moves towards a Western politico-economic system, Russia will make it ungovernable; if the West does not come to an understanding with Russia on European security, Russia will make Europe less secure.”

  148. 148.

    Buzan (1983), People, States and Fear, p. 128, contrasts the international political system with the international economic system and contends that the former is characterized “much more by its pattern of fragmentation than by what binds it together”, whereas the latter “presents a more balanced structure in which substantial elements of division are matched by powerful forces of integration.”

  149. 149.

    Gehring, Urbanski and Oberthür (2017), Inadvertent Great Power, p. 739.

  150. 150.

    Besides, as the debate around TTIP has demonstrated, trade policy itself, even without the grafted foreign and security policy objectives, is anything but depoliticised.

  151. 151.

    Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard (2014), The New European Disorder, London: European Council on Foreign Relations, p. 3.

  152. 152.

    Interview #9: “[I]t would not be serious to be saying this was a security consideration from the perspective of Russia.” Interview #10: “Where we see tensions, of course, is through the reaction of Russia, which sort of instrumentalises, if you like, the agreement that we have negotiated with Ukraine.” Interview #13: “On the DCFTA, no, we didn’t see any tension when it comes to security issues.” Interview #41: “Russia created the security problem. It wasn’t the EU that created by using trade, opening trade created the security problem. It was a Russian decision to take this as an offensive step and then to use illegal means to try to reverse the situation. But it’s not the fault of the trade policy.” See also Jean-Luc Demarty (2014), Corrected Transcript of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on the European Union, Sub-Committee C (External Affairs), Inquiry on the EU and Russia, Evidence Session No. 9, London, 28 October: “Russian concerns are more political than really commercial, even if they are presented as commercial.”

  153. 153.

    See, for example, Cadier (2014), Eastern Partnership vs Eurasian Union?, p. 77: “At its origins, the creation of the ENP was mainly motivated by geopolitical considerations: stabilizing the European peripheries and laying the foundations of an EU foreign policy beyond enlargement.“ Cadier (2019), Geopoliticisation, pp. 78–79, subsequently qualifies his argument and contends that “[t]he EaP’s does partly proceed from a geo-strategic rationale, namely stabilising the periphery, but it can be regarded as geopolitical only in the maximalist understanding of the term, not in the minimalist definition adopted here.” The maximalist definition of geopolitics to which he refers designates “the practice by which states and their representatives spatialise international politics, order the space at their border and define relations with their neighbours.” His minimalist definition understands geopolitics as the use of hard power in relation to territory against or in consideration of other powers.

  154. 154.

    See, for example, Kuzio (2017), Ukraine Between a Constrained EU and Assertive Russia, p. 106.

  155. 155.

    Council of the European Union (2014), Foreign Affairs, 3291st Council Meeting, PRESS RELEASE, 6264/14, Brussels, 10 February.

  156. 156.

    See European Commission (2014), Joint Statement by the Presidents of Ukraine, the European Council and the European Commission on the occasion of the beginning of the provisional application of the Association Agreement, STATEMENT/14/349, Brussels, 31 October.

  157. 157.

    The speech by then commissioner for enlargement Stefan Füle is an example of this. See Stefan Füle (2013), Statement on the pressure exercised by Russia on countries of the Eastern Partnership, SPEECH/13/687, European Parliament, Strasbourg, 11 September: “It is true that the Customs Union membership is not compatible with the DCFTAs which we have negotiated with Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. This is not because of ideological differences; this is not about a clash of economic blocs, or a zero-sum game. This is due to legal impossibilities.” (emphasis added) Also interview #37: “The DCFTA is business-related mainly and not political as such.”

  158. 158.

    Indeed, in the aftermath of the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, there were concerns that Ukraine and in particular Crimea, could become the target of a Russian military operation, see Andrey Kurkov (2008), Ukraine Between a Rock and a Hard Place, New Statesman, 8 September, pp. 31–33; Freedman (2014), Crisis Management, pp. 16–17, 31; Ben Judah (2013), Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 164–166; Andrew Wilson (2008), Is Ukraine Next?, The Guardian, 5 September; Hill and Gaddy (2015), Mr. Putin, p. 360; Larrabee (2010), The Return of Geopolitics, pp. 41–43; Popescu and Wilson (2009), The Limits of Enlargement-Lite, p. 57. See also Wikileaks (2009), ‘Scenesetter for the visit of deputy secretary Steinberg and senior director Lipton’, 22 April 2009: “The August conflict and Russian occupation of Georgian territory and Russia's subsequent recognition of Georgia's breakaway regions, has raised specific worries about Russian intentions toward Crimea and whether Russia intends to pursue a ‘South Ossetia strategy’ in this autonomous Ukrainian region.”

  159. 159.

    Interview #14: “[I]t’s a kind of geo-economic fault line, which developed there, which was not foreseeable that it would become also a geostrategic and a security fault line,” given that, as the interviewee emphasised, the AA/DCFTA “was always an issue done by people who are dealing with economic issues.”

  160. 160.

    Maçães (2019), The Dawn of Eurasia, p. 236.

  161. 161.

    See Buzan (1983), People, States and Fear, p. 128.

  162. 162.

    Fredrik Erixon (2015), How Trade and Security Became Europe’s Unhappy Couple, Carnegie Europe, 24 March.

  163. 163.

    As a matter of fact, the so-called Impact Assessments the EU carries out before opening trade negotiations do not analyse the foreign and security policy impact of a prospective free trade agreement.

  164. 164.

    Interview #13.

  165. 165.

    Giusti (2016), The EU’s Policy Towards Russia, p. 190.

  166. 166.

    Jan Techau (2014), Europe’s Five Deadly Sins on Ukraine, Carnegie Europe, 4 March.

  167. 167.

    Youngs (2017), Europe’s Eastern Crisis, p. 62.

  168. 168.

    Schimmelfennig (2001), The Community Trap, p. 66.

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Stueber, J. (2022). The EU Trade-Security Nexus and the Ukraine Crisis. In: The Trade-Security Nexus in EU External Action. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90796-9_3

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