Maryna Rabinovych, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the UiA
Nota Bene! This text was written prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, yet its main ideas remain relevant amidst the current security landscape.
The “Lowering the Bar” project focuses on how the EU and Ukraine negotiate compliance while implementing the ambitious Association Agreement. A question that necessarily arises in this context is “Why is the East important for the North?” In this blogpost, we would like to highlight four key reasons why the North shall care about the East. Here we understand “the North” as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, while the “East” is limited to the EU’s associated Neighbours, that is Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
The first reason is security. The Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea back in 2014 and its continuing sponsorship of the unrest in Eastern Ukraine demonstrates the weakness of international law when it comes to violations committed by powerful states. It is also illustrative of how protracted and challenging political negotiations can be when violations by such states are concerned. Launched in 2015, the Minsk Peace Process, which was intended to end the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, has been in stalemate for already three years, with no new alternatives on offer. The stalemate is to a great extent a consequence of Russia’s relatively high bargaining power (secured, amongst others, through its power over gas and oil supplies in Europe) and continuous denial of its role in the conflict, despite active support to the so-called “rebels”. Thus, preserving sovereignty and territorial integrity in the East and building these countries’ defence and economic capacity is crucial for limiting the Russian Federation’s possible future destructive action in the Baltics and the North. While one may think such action is hardly realistic, let us remember the 2008 Russo-Georgian War or the above-mentioned annexation of Crimea. Hardly anybody thought such events could have been possible, yet they happened and continue taking place. Though a direct Russia-driven escalation in the Baltics or the North is hardly conceivable, defence agencies at least in the Baltics regard Russia as a potential military threat to their countries, as well as NATO collective defence systems, more generally. Recently, Russian Federation military aircraft have been found crossing the airspace of Estonia and Lithuania without permission. Therefore, the East can be understood as an outpost of the whole post-World War II architecture, with its principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders, that is equally important for all
countries in the world.
Secondly, nowadays security goes far beyond the absence of an armed conflict. Contemporary hybrid paths of fostering power politics and confrontation stretch to economy and trade, cybersecurity, energy, health, media, migration, citizenship and foreign politics domains. Apart from the military, Russia uses economic instruments, energy (in particular, the new “Nord-Stream II” gas pipeline) and sophisticated disinformation tools to destabilise Ukraine. Furthermore, all three EU’s “associated” Eastern Neighbours (i.e., Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia that signed Association Agreements with the EU) experience pressure due to Russia’s support for unrecognised de-facto states in the region. These are the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” in Ukraine, Transnistria in Moldova, as well as South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. With this, Ukraine and – to a lesser extent – Moldova and Georgia represent “laboratories of resilience-building” against hybrid threats. Notably, the North is also not immune to hybrid attacks, with Russia being blamed for cyber-attacks on Norwegian authorities in 2017 and 2020, and its “mock attack” on Norwegian Arctic radar in 2018. While the number of autocratic powers in the world is unlikely to decrease soon, learning how to oppose hybrid threats embedded into power politics becomes essential for states worldwide, including the North.
The third reason why the North should care about the East deals with economic
cooperation prospects and business internationalization projects. Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia signed Association Agreements with the EU including “deep” liberalization of trade. This means not only free trade in goods but also free trade in services and liberalised public procurement and financial markets. By virtue of the Association Agreements, domestic legislation in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia also becomes ever closer to EU law. The Agreements and the changes in domestic legal frameworks in these countries offer an impetus for cooperation for the North, with Finland and Sweden being EU Members, and the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement bringing together the EU, on the one hand, and Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, on the other hand. Apart from export and import opportunities, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia offer chances for investors to build up exciting projects, such as the building of a new hydroelectric power plant in Georgia – the biggest Norway-supported power plant abroad – and provide Northern companies access to highly qualified, yet not such an expensive labour as in Nordic countries. Moreover, the associated Neighbours are involved in numerous EU-funded cooperation schemes, such as Erasmus and Horizon Europe in the education and research domains and the Fund for Regional Cooperation under the EEA and Norway Grants. Such development cooperation channels offer various economic actors both for-profit and non-for-profit chances to do things together.
Last but not least, both the East and the North belong to “broader Europe”, meaning the Nordic countries and those in Eastern Europe may have different cooperation and integration arrangements with the EU but still belong to Europe in ideational, normative and cultural domains. Economic freedom, market economy, democracy, human rights, the rule of law, gender equality and non-discrimination – these are the “benchmarks” the EU, the Nordic countries regardless of the format of their relations with the EU and the countries in the East subscribe to. Particularly these “benchmarks” may not only help both the Eastern and Northern countries counter external military and hybrid threats but further nurture the common space of values and prosperity. Though the associated Eastern Neighbours may still encounter democracy, human rights and rule of law challenges (and no country is entirely immune against them), common discourses and institutionalised cooperation structures may to at least some extent serve as “vaccines” for Europe to continue adhering to the path it selected.