The European Union,Russia and the Eastern region: The analytics of government for sustainable cohabitation

Discourses of knowledge

The ‘analytics of government’ is particularly attuned to the rationalities at work in varied and often competing regimes of governance (Death, 2013). It focuses on power relations that are calculated and justified, and where forms of legitimation are particularly central to the way in which governance is practised: ‘to govern is to seek an authority for one’s authority’ (Rose, 1999: 27). In the circumstances of competing power modalities it becomes even more instructive to de-centre the authority away from the power-bearing polities towards the political microcosms of the recipients, in order to foster their interest and subscription. Hence, pitching the prevalent discourse of knowledge to the level of needs and perceptions of third parties is essential.

Effectively, the discourse of knowledge is a reflection of its dual nature: the projection of ‘the self’ and its representation to ‘the other’, which under this rubric takes a rhetorical form, a speech-act or the utterance of ‘the self’ in application to ‘the other’. A speech-act is regarded by various scholars (Diez, 2005; Manners, 2014; Waever, 1995) as an important manifestation of ‘the self’, and especially of its knowledge of the referent. It is essentially about naming or articulating this knowledge in a form of action. In this case, as Waever argues (1995: 55, italics in original), ‘the utterance itself is the act. By saying it, something is done … By uttering “security”, a state-representative moves a particular development into a specific area, and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means are necessary to block it’. In this context, it would be useful to briefly trace the trajectories of ‘political utterances’ by the leadership of the EU and Russia over Ukraine and the EaP region more broadly.

Political utterances – discourses of knowledge – invariably render an end-product, ‘an act’, which may induce new rules/norms of behaviour and render new structures to support them (Adler and Pouliot, 2011; Korosteleva et al., 2014). In this sense too, it is instructive to study discourses of knowledge, not only to understand whether and how, especially in their structured forms, these utterances connect and are internalised, but also how they could be defused and de-securitised through the actions of powerful protagonists. Foucault (2007: 63), for example, argues that a distinction should be made between ‘normation’ – that is, subjecting others to the norms of a domineering self – and ‘normalisation’ as ‘interplay between different distributions of normalities in an attempt to bring most unfavourable in line with the most favourable’. Yet again, it is necessary to explore whether there are prospects for this kind of convergence between the EU and Russia’s discourses, at the point of their application in the contested neighbourhood.

Technologies of power

The ‘analytics of government’ utilises various means as manifestations of power relations at the point of their application. Technologies – instruments, budgets, roadmaps, benchmarking, association agreements (AAs), etc. – bring into being particular subjectivities (self-knowledge) and enable them to induce system change. Interestingly, both power centres – the EU and Russia – are rather sophisticated in the application of their technologies of power (Casier et al., 2013; Noutcheva, 2014); however, their ability to generate allegiances in target countries is dependent on the levels of structural openness, and degrees of freedom and reciprocity, built in the panoply of instruments. For example, while the EU has become particularly sophisticated in generating interest using a ‘more for more’ matrix of enablement at all levels of society, with a particular emphasis on ‘civil society’ as an instrument (Delcour, 2011), its effectiveness is often disputed, owing to the practical and often asymmetrical modalities of policy implementation and endurance (Pace, 2014). Conversely, Russia enjoys structural advantages predicated on cultural ties and transactional bias to enable swift public subjection. At the same time, Russia’s use of these instruments can also backfire, exposing corruption, coercion and the lack of transparency (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2013), thus invariably provoking the problem of un-freedom of choice and resistance.

Subjectivities

The ‘analytics of government’ approach highlights the production of new circuits of knowledge by third parties (e.g. non-governmental organisations (NGOs), business interests, education units, etc.) and their interaction with the power centres, which subsequently enables them to accept or reject their respective authority. These new, plural and multiple free subjects essentially become the agents of power, and are instrumental for internalisation and dissemination of the authority of others as part of their ‘self-knowledge’. Effectively, generating multiple agents at all levels is a prime objective of external governance for the purpose of its reproduction. Both the EU neighbourhood and Russia’s Eurasian projects are particularly sophisticated at yielding specific agents of power: the former achieves it largely through a complex machinery of ‘more for more’ compelling and partners’ technocratic socialisation in international norms (Korosteleva, 2015a), while the latter through shared cultural affinities, memories, coercion and targeted propaganda machinery, once again curtailing the ‘freedom of choice’ (Noutcheva, 2014). Ultimately, one’s subjectivity becomes one’s subjection through the process of internalisation of knowledge and positioning. In this regard, it is particularly instructive to study whether coexistence of dual subjectivities in the eastern neighbourhood, where presently they receive almost an equal footing in public perceptions, may be possible as much as it is desirable by the people in the region.

Fields of visibility

Finally, the fields of visibility, in simplistic terms, denote ‘practices’ – areas of governance that are perceived to be the most connected and effective in their ‘conduct of the peoples’ conduct’. They are instrumental for generating narratives of success and instigating a sense of allegiance and voluntary following amongst individuals. The governmentality approach is particularly attuned to clashes between competing rationalities and gaps and fractures of the government method: it works by sharing the narrative of success as a means of persuasion, and it captures and protects the visibility spaces that a given authority has gained control over: ‘to govern it is necessary to render visible the space over which government is to be exercised’ (Rose, 1999: 36).

To sum up, these distinctive features of ‘the analytics of government’ allow a more detailed analysis of the complex interrelationship between the three differing modalities of power in their realisation – of the EU, Russia and the recipient EaP region. Furthermore, the conceptual framework is also tested by our research conducted in 2008–2011 (ESRC 061-25-0001) and 2013–2014 (ODB/SIDA and SAK) across the eastern region, including Russia. ⁴ Both research projects used the same methodological frame and methods to enable cross-temporal comparison, and included nation-wide surveys, focus groups, interviews and youth essays.

Discourses of knowledge

Until recently, ⁵ both power centres had successfully coexisted in their exclusive and ‘self-limiting’ rationalities, ‘seeking the right to maintain and reproduce itself’, and ‘making no claims’ against one another ‘except that they allow it the necessary degree of self-control to do that’ (Buzan and Waever, 2009: 262). Their adaptive governance, nevertheless, centred on a ‘normation’ strategy – that is, an EU attempt to bring Russia in line with the accepted international (and EU) ‘normal’ to induce ‘shared values’ and ‘joint ownership’. ⁶ The stakes in their discourses were placed on ‘partnership for modernisation’, for the benefit of all (Council of the European Union, 2010). Consequently, both the EU and Russia have enjoyed a peaceful period of coexistence while incrementally procuring interest in the neighbourhood, either via promised transactional and future institutional opportunities on the part of the EU, or more immediate economic benefits on the part of the Eurasian Customs and now Economic Union (EEU) (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2013). More specifically, since 2009 the Commission has worked painstakingly to empower Ukraine and other EaP partner countries in developing their commitment towards the EU, by way of upgrading from Action Plans and Association Agendas to legally binding AAs in their entirety. At the same time, Russia entertained a vision of fostering a single economic space by enticing and compelling ex-Soviet states into the EEU.

The governance ambitions of the EU and Russia had hitherto succeeded at working around some conflicting issues of legitimacy and future, avoiding aggrandisement and, where possible, allowing partners to develop respective subjectivities as necessary. ⁷ This tense but nevertheless reconciliatory discourse of coexistence was severely disrupted in the summer of 2013.

As previously mentioned, rhetorical pronouncements or speech-acts of major players could potentially be treacherous, as the act of utterance de facto forms a real action that could disrupt or reinforce stability. Consequently, and precisely through utterance, by suddenly declaring essential parts of their respective regional projects – DCFTA and EEU – incompatible, the relations between the EU and Russia immediately became politicised. This was initiated with the EU’s moderate but miscalculated campaign to accelerate or arguably compel Ukraine to a decision over the AA at the 2013 Vilnius summit: ‘It is crucial to define a vision for the coexistence and mutual enrichment of the regional projects as not to end up with two different sets of rules in the European Union economic space and in the Customs Union’ (Füle, 2013a). Russia’s authorities followed suit immediately by impressing the alternative choice on Presidents Yanukovich of Ukraine and Sargsyan of Armenia. ⁸

The EU’s politicisation campaign intensified in the autumn 2013, responding to Russia’s growing pressure on the neighbourhood. Two regional projects were declared fully dichotomous and the expression of ‘choice’ and ‘allegiances’ was required from partner countries:

It is true that the ECU membership is not compatible with the DCFTAs which we have negotiated with Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. This is not because of ideological differences; this is not about the clash of economic blocs, or a zero-sum game. This is due to legal impossibilities … It may certainly be possible for members of the Eastern Partnership to increase their cooperation with the ECU, perhaps as observers; and participation in a DCFTA is of course fully compatible with out partners’ existing free trade agreements with other CIS states. (Füle, 2013b)

The consequences of these politicised utterances have been debilitating for the region and for the existing global order. When Ukraine refused to sign the deal with the EU at the Vilnius summit, it also lost control over its own population, resulting in the Euromaidan protests, and a subsequent civil war. From that moment, EU–Russia relations became fully securitised, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the continued threat of intervention into eastern Ukraine. Securitisation also left the EU and the international system incapacitated. While drafting NATO troops to Ukraine’s western borders, with Russian troops stationed on high alert on Ukraine’s eastern border, the global actors lost control over the possibility to deliberate a common strategy vis-à-vis Russia. Russia’s annexation of Crimea provoked a highly securitised discourse between the EU and Russia, which dominated the EaP landscape for the following period, while the region itself desperately sought the reduction of tension and progress towards reconciliation.

In light of these developments, one would question the meanings of ‘good governance’ of the EU and ‘good neighbourhood’ of Russia as realised through their ‘speech-act’ rhetorical applications in the contested neighbourhood. Two particular manifestations become apparent.

Firstly, in their self-centred projections, both the EU and Russia have explicitly disregarded each other’s rationalities over the contested region. The EU focused on the default assumption that the exposure of Ukraine and others to the future benefits of the EU, and the promise of a ‘well-governed ring of friends’ (centred on the EU) would enable recipients to unequivocally legitimise the European course. This was clearly an error of judgement, not only in terms of the timing to harvest allegiances, but also, more essentially, in failing to factor Russia into the EU’s ‘expansionist’ normative modus operandi. Furthermore, Russia’s Eurasian vision, ⁹ in discursive terms, appeared far more arresting, inclusive and outreaching, pledging economic stability for the entire continent through the creation of a single economic space – ‘integration via integration’ – from Brest in France to Vladivostok in Russia. As Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, aptly stated (2013):

Don’t wave the red rag of a new cold war bloc against the bloc. We must work for a union of unions, an alliance of the EU and the Eurasian Union. Naturally, this cannot happen overnight. But we must have the courage to set a long term goal in developing relations with Russia and its Eurasian partners.

This vision might have gained momentum in the neighbourhood – so captivating and relevant the promise was – if it were not for Russia’s actions to destabilise Ukraine, and the region. As of 2013, two competing identities were propelled into contestation, and their coexistence momentarily was replaced by the drive to impose a binary choice on the region, irresponsibly driving the latter to implosion.

Secondly, and most significantly, both powers evidently failed to understand the region itself and its historical urge for complementary rather than dichotomous relations with wider Europe. Notably, as our extensive empirical evidence suggests, both powers tend to yield similarly appealing subjectivities in the eastern neighbourhood, which, instead of mobilising binary loyalties, foster an ambivalence of choice for the people in the region. For example, in 2013/2014 opinion polls revealed that a healthy plurality (40 per cent on average) of the respondents across Belarus and Moldova expressed their strong preference for both regional projects – the EaP and EEU – and indicated their growing concern over the rivalry between the two power centres (30 per cent on average). Furthermore, our cross-temporal comparison, premised on 2009/2010 and 2013/2014 evaluations of nation-wide opinion polls, suggests that both powers are of equal appeal to the residents of the region, albeit in their own and very complementary way, thus making the binary choice between the EU or Russia even harder to contemplate. In particular, while the EaP and the EU have a stronger influence in promoting functional government and effective sector-specific cooperation, the EEU is seen as relevant and instrumental for providing energy security and trade (Korosteleva, 2014). Enforcing a dichotomous choice on a region not yet ready to make such commitments through their internalised and calculated rationalities testifies to the profound lack of othering. The error of judgement by the EU and the loss of control by Russia are, in an equal measure, the causalities of the decision-making process that occurred in the vacuum of correlated knowledge, resulting in unnecessary politicisation and subsequent securitisation of the contestable narratives, as the case of Ukraine has lately demonstrated.

The bigger question, however, is whether and how the EU and Russia’s discourses could be demobilised and de-securitised in their rhetorical furnishings, in order to return to the level of peaceful coexistence, in order to prevent profligacy of false choice for the neighbourhood. Our comparative research indicates (Korosteleva, 2014) that while the normative framing of the EU and Russian discourses continues to conflict in a profound way, their opposition may not necessarily be insurmountable. Notably, both powers profess and are associated with differing and yet complementary sets of values, which in turn may engineer useful synergies of expectations, especially if embedded into the frame of international norms of stability and economic cooperation. More specifically, as our cross-temporal data of 2009 and 2014 reveals, in public perceptions of the eastern region, the EU is clearly associated with a liberal democratic model, premised on the values of democracy, human rights, market economy and lack of corruption. This spatial survey analysis also indicates the relative endurance of this model in people’s mind-sets. At the same time, the EEU and Russia, in the respondents’ eyes, offer a mix of qualities, a hybrid case, which could be referred to as a social democratic model (Kurki, 2010: 372), and which, while retaining some cultural uniqueness of association, is also driven by the values of economic stability, prosperity and social security. The 2014 findings, in particular, show that there is more proximity and scope for convergence alongside these values than had been publicly purported in the early days of the EaP. This may avail some prospects for economic cohabitation, if ‘normalisation’ as a process of norm-alignment were to be considered.

As the crisis matured, the EU curtailed its tactics in the EaP region by engaging in technical and staggered signing of AAs with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia through the course of 2013–2014 (European Commission, 2014). It will be interesting to see whether this effort to depoliticise the agenda, as well as the accompanying measures to explicate the prospects for coexistence between the DCFTA and the EEU, ¹⁰ could contribute to engendering ‘normalisation’ between the competing projects. A more decisive step on both sides, however, would be a verbal validation of and engagement with both economic projects – the DCFTA and the EEU in particular – to ensure they will evolve towards mutual recognition and even complementarity.

Technologies of power

While the intended outcomes of power modalities may be similar – to establish effective governance over the contested space – power transmissions utilising a multitude of actors, instruments, actions, levels and budgets are different in their respective technologies of power in each individual case. While the EU primarily focuses on institutional/legal framing of public behaviour in the neighbourhood, Russia, through its Eurasian project, is intent on shaping public preferences using the material and structural incentives.

The EU has been perfecting its technologies of power since the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004, responding to the lack of legitimation and commitment on the side of the partner countries. In particular, it has explicitly moved away from operating exclusively at the executive level and exercising ‘disciplinary governance’, based on the enlargement-light model of ‘the permitted’ and ‘the prohibited’ and strict conditionality. It trialled more ‘deliberative’ forms of governance, which opened up tracks for multi-lateral engagement and networked or sectoral cooperation (Korosteleva, 2013). From 2011, the EU has pioneered various forms of adaptive governmentality – by governing from a distance, enabling local initiatives, diversifying stakeholders and speaking to all levels of society (Casier et al., 2013).

In 2014 EU efforts included an unprecedented move to allow the signing of the AAs in several stages as is in the case with Ukraine – a significant step away from the hitherto ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ logic of restrictive conditionality, or indeed contemplating an a la carte approach with Armenia, now a member of the EEU, and Azerbaijan, with more interest in energy cooperation than political reforms. Notably, the EU had successfully negotiated Visa Liberalisation Action Plans (VLAPs) as part of the AAs with Moldova and Georgia, and the political part of the AA with Ukraine separately, preceding the official signing of the rest of the document in late June 2014 (European Commission, 2014). Possibly, learning from the earlier rejection by Ukraine, the EU also encouraged discussions and an analysis of the economic parts of the AA – the DCFTA – not only to stimulate public debate, but also to expose what is potentially at stake in the process. More recently, a ENP consultation took place involving all relevant stakeholders across the eastern region (except Russia) with a view to reinvigorate the EU strategy (European Commission, 2015b). To sum up, the EU is evidently at work to officiate a distinctive and potentially powerful formula of enablement – a ‘deepened’ more-for-more approach – to lock participants, through their voluntary compliance, into a perpetual mode of expanding the benefits of cooperation and reciprocal learning. The emphasis is clearly ‘technical’ on the creation of institutional and legal order – norms and rules of behaviours – to induce specific attitudes and aspirations, in line with European identity. ¹¹

Russia’s Eurasian technologies have also evolved, aiming to emulate legal-institutional settings of EU operations (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2013), but more importantly to reproduce its distinctive space of identification. Russia has concentrated its efforts on locking existing and prospective partners in to an economic/trade mode of immediate reciprocities to stimulate new behavioural demands and enforce new level-dependencies, which would prevent partners from ‘shopping’ elsewhere (Noutcheva, 2014). In normative terms to reinvigorate cultural affinity with the region, Russia’s assertiveness has been propelled across the region, especially at the times of political and military stand-off over Ukraine, skilfully using all means of Russian propaganda to counter EU influence in the region. The scale of this campaign for ‘historical affinity’, ‘fraternal unity’ and moral integrity of the ‘nation’ standing to defend the interests of all Russian-speaking people has been overwhelming, as the case of Crimea attests:

Crimea offers a unique blend of cultures and traditions of different peoples. And in this it resembles a larger Russia, where despite its diversity, throughout centuries, not a single ethnos lost its cultural identity and uniqueness … We understand what is happening today, and that a lot of actions are directed against our fraternal relations with Ukraine, and against the Eurasian integration. And this is when we sincerely offer our dialogue to the West, to reinforce our trust, and ensure equality, fairness and openness. However we do not see reciprocity to our call, and it is time for us to act. (Putin’s Speech, 2014). ¹²

This kind of statement makes geopolitical dichotomy between the West and the East extremely palpable, compelling even ‘the converted’ – Belarus and Kazakhstan – to revisit their loyalties.

In these circumstances, could there be any scope for ‘normalisation’ in the region to overcome competing rationalities? Technologies (budgets, instruments, roadmaps, agreements, etc.) are designed to be bureaucratic and expertise-driven. It is the discourse and subjectivities that make them a tool of politics and security. They may offer an optimal space for diffusing the rhetoric of high politics, by simply enabling the recipients to make informed choices for the subsequently binding decisions. The EU’s technical and apolitical engagement with Belarus is one example, which yielded incremental Europeanisation of the nation (Korosteleva, 2015a). The EU’s staged signing of the AAs, but more so, the acceptance of the EEU as a fact and equally attractive regional alternative for the neighbours, may prove to be able to resolve the problem of dichotomous choices and managing contestation.

Subjectivities of power

Yielding subjectivities is essentially the purpose of effective governance: carefully framed self-knowledge becomes a powerful tool for turning individual subjectivities into a voluntary subjection to one’s authority. In terms of engineering multiple-level actors to promote new types of knowledge, the EU currently operates a wider outreach, speaking to all levels of society – from business communities, local authorities, educational circles and civil society to government-level officials and civil servants (Casier et al., 2013). As the EU roadmaps for the EaP region indicate, sector and agent-focused cooperation measures are all-inclusive in their design and application. Their effectiveness, to a degree, is captured by progress reports that detect growing levels of practices, rendering new structures and shaping new needs-based flagship initiatives. Furthermore, when operating through a mass of rules and complex funding criteria for these initiatives, the EU also appears effective at pre-selecting candidates capable of applying EU narratives to practice (Kurki, 2011).

Conversely, Russia’s Eurasian project is mainly confined to government-level officials at the elite level in their targeting of the wider population by way of media campaigns and centralised decision-making (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2013). Agency-production is organised in a top-down manner, utilising an executive mode of fostering awareness and building commitments. In variance to the EU, Russia is not averse to applying all means necessary – from negative conditionality to military actions – to compel elite and public behaviour to the binary choice (Noutcheva, 2014). Furthermore, the Eurasian project is driven by Russia’s vision, and heavily relies on Putin’s own credibility as a strong and pragmatic leader. Therefore, large-scale and politically aggressive actions are often seen as conducive to Russia’s identity-shaping as distinctive and exclusive.

In terms of yielding equally effective subjectivities of knowledge, as Noutcheva argues (2014: 14), both powers display mixed results: ‘Both the EU and Russia succeed to a varying degree in transferring ideas and norms and in appealing to the citizens of their common neighbourhoods’. At the same time, both fall short of inducing divisive logics and generating dichotomous allegiances to shape voluntary spaces of freedom and foster loyalties. As our surveys indicate, the EU has been effective in generating greater awareness and higher levels of cognisance about its organisation, key policies and benefits, which in the longer term are more likely to enable internalisation and acceptance of its governance. It has also succeeded in making some systemic changes tangible and perceivable to the wider population, as aptly summarised by the respondents of focus groups in Moldova: ‘I can really feel change, in education, in justice and in our lives’; ‘I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is the EU; ‘I see achievements, decent living, prosperity for our youth without the need to abandon their homes for income’. ⁴ The European direction appears to be firmly on the agenda even amongst more reluctant EaP participants such as Belarus (Noutcheva, 2014), whereby the Russian course is no longer seen as the default and only option for future development.

At the same time, Russia’s Eurasian project remains of equal if not greater priority for the people in the neighbourhood. Despite its recent launch, the EEU, in particular, commands an unprecedented degree of awareness (87 per cent on average), interest (about 65 per cent) and relevance of Russia itself (about 80 per cent). The majority of respondents across the neighbourhood see the EEU as an effective and sustainable way to address pressing issues of economy, employment, energy security and trade. All respondents indicated that they wanted to see healthy and balanced relations with Russia/EEU and the EU: ‘we need stability, safety and welfare, with all our neighbours’; ‘being one-sided would be detrimental for our country’ (Noutcheva, 2014).

Perhaps one of the more instructive corollaries of power contestation in the region is the rise of self-awareness in all partner countries. Many felt that prioritisation of domestic reforms to build a strong and independent nation, to resist external pressure amongst other issues, was of utmost urgency. This once again testifies to the limited understanding by the power centres of the practicalities of governance and the need – at least for now – to balance and develop rationalised choices of the future. From this perspective, the EU explicitly fails to project a more adaptive form of governance, when demanding principled conditionality or indeed politicising cooperation, as the cases of Belarus and Ukraine signify. Russia, while availing direct requirements, imposes tacit expectations and unilateral constraints (in the form of embargoes and technical disputes), which are only resolved when its own interests are served. Under these circumstances, is there space for ‘normalisation’ and cohabitation rather than a struggle for exclusive hegemony? Surprisingly, there is, given the quantity and quality of agencies produced and the level-game internalisation of choice by the wider population.

Fields of visibility

Finally, as our cross-temporal surveys ⁴ indicate, there is a clear recognition and differentiation by the respondents of pertinent and successful fields of visibility for both powers. The EU is seen as more effective and enduring in the areas of economic reforms, social protection, effective governance and especially in developing a system of independent institutions and fair judiciary – all these areas are identified as the trademark of the EU. At the same time, the Eurasian project is perceived as bringing more trade, energy security and economic performance, and is regarded as a quick-fix solution for stability and prosperity. The areas of convergence are clearly identifiable – of economic prosperity, market-regulated economy and energy security – however, the paths that that may lead to fostering synergies are distinctly different. On the part of the EU, it would require a systemic overhaul and full modernisation, while on the part of Russia’s Eurasia it envisages creating stronger dependencies and ad hoc solutions (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2013).

When associating future prosperity and stability with the EU, uncertainty and the increasingly negative anticipation of change prevail. These are primarily driven by the fear of job loss, deteriorating living conditions, costly reforms, political uncertainty and, more essentially, less visible change in practice. The EEU offers a more recognisable and socially satisfactory model, with immediate benefits and some stability. It brings security of jobs and income, while at the same time limiting the prospects of fundamental reforms to make economies self-reliant and competitive.

Presenting calculated rationalities of the future, on the part of the EU, to economically impoverished countries may win their ‘minds’, but their ‘hearts’ will always be driven by an emotive thinking of survival. The convergence of two power projects in this particular domain therefore may only seem possible when modernisation becomes popularly associated with stability and future prosperity. This, however, may be a distant prospect, for which realisation would depend on the legitimacy outputs by the competing powers.