With the two preceding Subchapters elaborating on the conceptual complexity of geopolitics, Subchapter 2.3 seeks to put this multifacetedness in a EUropean context. Hence, it gives indication on the very scientific placing of the research on hand and how critical geopolitics can actually be contextualised from a EUropean perspective. From a conceptual stance, this Subchapter researches into the question of the very nature of EUropean geopolitics, expounding on how the field of critical geopolitics has portrayed and discussed the ‘geo’ and ‘politics’ of an international actor under construction. Accordingly, empirical research briefly revisits neighbouring EUropean spaces of interaction, namely the ENP and the ND. Finally, this Subchapter also introduces the meta-concept of geopolitical subjectivity – a model that was developed to capture the EU’s on-going evolution as a geopolitical ‘subject’ in progress, enabling to put the Union’s external behaviour in a comparative setting. Ultimately, this particular model is applied in the present EU-Arctic case to essentially summarise Part Four (see Subchapter 7.5).
How to connect Geopolitics and EUrope?
As we have seen, the concept of geopolitics is already contentious (Ibid.: 350), however with regard to the EU it is also a politically and academically delicate one. In the European Quarter of Brussels, geopolitics is perceived as a crude concept and its study deemed to be an odd activity, out-of-date and rather alluded to more troubled facets of European history (Kuus 2014: 12). Hence, specific EUropean geopolitical concepts seem to be absent in the discussions of EUropean policymakers (Ibid.: 12–31).
In the European world of academia, the concept is also only of peripheral scientific matter. This is partly because of its realist connotations, a school of IR most European academics find difficult to embrace (Techau 2013), but also because of the aforementioned analytical weaknesses and its flawed historic roots. With the Union itself remaining deeply entrenched in a post-sovereign, post-modern, post-
classical geopolitics self-image – “the EU is not a geopolitical actor”32 – Political Science and European Studies serve to circulate analogous information (Klinke 2013: 1). Accordingly, the pertinent question on ‘what kind of power’ or ‘global/international actor the EU actually is’ has been predominantly answered in this post-classical geopolitics narrative (Bretherton & Vogler 2006; Sjursen 2006; Rogers 2009: 832).33 Thus, an epistemic community of EU foreign policy researchers continuously, albeit mostly unintentionally, construct an “‘ideal power Europe’” through the discourse on a post-sovereign/post-modern Union or the EU as-a-model discourse (Cebeci 2012: 564).34
Yet, in addition to the broad works of Political Science, the Union’s status as an international actor has also been scrutinised from a Political Geography perspective. Contrary to Political Science, this academic discipline has explored the Union as an emerging geopolitical space along three, partly overlapping clusters of critical geopolitics’ research (Klinke 2013; Mamadouh 2015):
• The Union’s borders and its bordering practices, see inter alia (Dowd, Anderson & Wilson 2003; van Houtum 2010)
• The Union’s territory and its relation to and perceptions by its neighbours, see
inter alia (Clark & Jones 2008; Boedeltje & van Houtum 2011; Bosse 2011;
Bachmann & Müller 2015)
• The production and circulation of geopolitical knowledge and discourse within the Union and its representation as an emerging geopolitical actor, see inter
alia (Aalto 2002; Diez 2004; Bialasiewicz 2008; Jones & Clark 2011; Rovnyi
& Bachmann 2012; Kuus 2014)
The EU’s evolving nature and continuous geographical expansion, especially to the east and south, have raised questions on the EU’s finalité politique with final borders
32 Stated by a scholar that worked in both European and Arctic Studies during a personal conversation
with the dissertation’s author in October 2012.
33 And yet, some exceptions prove the rule, see (Rogers 2009, 2011) and his proposed Grand Area of
future European power (Annex I, page 352).
34
Several roles have been attributed to the EU, with the Union being endlessly referred to as, inter alia, soft (Haine 2004; Hettne & Söderbaum 2005), transformative (Grabbe 2006; Börzel 2010), normative (Manners 2002, 2006), (green) civilian (Duchêne 1973; Bull 1982; Orbie 2006; Vanden Brande 2008; Bachmann & Sidaway 2009) or integrative (Koops 2011) power/actor.
delineating EUrope from the other Europe and its surroundings. In that regard, and ever since the EU’s Eastern enlargement process – a process lasting from the 1990s to 2007 – scholars have started to portray the EU as a geopolitical agent or with geopolitical agency (Aalto 2002; Bachmann 2013b).35 Kuus explicitly characterised the EU’s Eastern enlargement as “geopolitical process[]” (2007: 4) with similarly Diez referring to a “return of geopolitics in European identity constructions” and a move towards a more geography based, ‘conventional’ othering (2004: 319). Moreover, questions on the Union’s finalité are closely connected to EUrope’s very own identity. An identity that, according to Larsen, was inter alia constructed in the interplay between internal and external dangers to EUropean security (2004: 74).
From its very beginning and throughout the Cold War, threats to the European Economic Community (EEC) were predominantly fashioned as European-internal, based on Europe’s World War II experience. However, with the Union’s widening and deepening, internal threats were (thought to be) overcome with now external factors being perceived as principal threat determinants of EUropean stability, such as civil wars at EUrope’s borders, transnational threats (e.g. terrorism, mass immigration or global warming) or the rise of China and Russia (Rogers 2009: 847; Germond 2013: 81). Accordingly, questions concerning the EU’s identity acquired some kind of geographical and external security dimension where the Union’s ‘outside’ was perceived as unstable and being a threat provider to the EU’s (internal) stability. Hence, the ‘control’ of bordering regions/countries and maritime spaces (= projecting EUropean power beyond the Union’s external boundaries) is considered vital for EUropean security and permanency with a geography-informed representation of risks classifying involved actors along an inside/outside line (Ibid.: 81) – the already touched upon ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. These referred to EUropean positions, worldviews, foreign policy paradigms and security assessments became manifest, for example, in the European Security Strategy (ESS), adopted in 2003, and its follow-up implementation report from 2008 (European Council 2003, 2008).
35 For a range of different scholars that deal with the nexus ‘Eastern enlargement and the EU’s
geopolitical nature’, see inter alia (Aalto 2002; Browning & Joenniemi 2003, 2007, 2008; Diez 2004; Scott 2005a, 2009, 2011; Sidaway 2006; Joenniemi 2007; Moisio 2007; Bialasiewicz 2008; Parker 2008; Kuus 2011b). Moreover, a volume edited by Bialasiewicz (2011a) has been considered a key
Accordingly, the ESS inter alia refers to (regional) geography as remaining matter of importance, despite an era of globalisation and global interdependencies with the EU essentially being interested in well-governed borders and neighbourhoods, and an international order based on effective multilateralism, rule-based institutions and a stronger international society as such (European Council 2003: 7 and 9). Back in 2003, the ESS denoted terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, state failure and organised crime as key threats to EUrope and identified only en passant the security implications of climate change and global warming (Ibid.: 3–4). Eventually, the ESS’ implementation report dedicated slightly more space on climate change, denoting global warming as threat multiplier able to lead to disputes over trade routes, maritime zones and resources (European Council 2008: 5).
Thus, it has been argued that over the last decade the Union has steadily developed a tacit, embryonic geopolitical discourse, exhibiting certain geopolitical ambitions alongside its own conceptualisation of world order, core values, rule of law and good governance (Kuus 2011b: 1151; Germond 2013: 81 and 83).36 Yet, this rather fuzzy geopolitical doctrine primarily emphasises the EU’s stabilising and democratising role in the world system and its (immediate) neighbourhood through political and economic cooperation and specific politics of norm diffusion (Scott 2006: 17–18) and not necessarily via the ‘classic’ perspective of military presence and the external projection of related power; although Operation Atalanta – the counter-piracy military operation off the Horn of Africa – maybe be an exception to the rule. This particular EUropean role in the international system is based on Europe’s historical process of post-World War II integration and the formation of EUropean-internal spaces of interaction. Spaces that are, inter alia, characterised by supranationality with European nation states ceding sovereignty, multilateralism based on the rule of law and commonly agreed on values or the irrelevance of
36 Germond argued that the tacit EUropean geopolitical discourse, as highlighted by Kuus (2011b),
coexists with other discourses, such as a civilian or a normative one (2013: 81). In that regard, Hill stated that students within the field of European Studies have actually neglected geopolitics because “they could not see its relevance to a ‘civilian power’ or because they were uneasy with that kind of discourse for normative reasons” (2003: 98). In a similar fashion, Bachmann (2013b, 2015) identified both civilian and normative power as distinct EUropean geopolitical discourses and constitutive elements of the EU’s geopolitical role and identity.
military force within the EU and between its Member States (Bachmann 2015: 695– 697). Hence, the EUropean external character is inevitably (co-)constituted by its internal history and developed processes of cooperative and multilateral governance (Rosamond 2014: 134). According to Bachmann, “the externalisation aspect of internal preferences is essential” for the evolution of EUropean spaces of interaction as these internal modes form the basis of global visions and scripts (2015: 698 and 700). Thus, the EU as a distinct actor cannot operate if the external regulated space is characterised by an environment of arbitrary and ad-hoc interaction or anarchy in the international system and realist power politics – a space that erodes EUropean geopolitical agency with the Union lacking flexibility and the necessary tools to respond and/or project power (Ibid.: 698). The recent events in both Syria and Ukraine serve as prominent example. Accordingly, EUropean geopolitical agency is at its best if the international system and/or a regional level thereof is predictable, governed by a legal framework and routinized relations between different actors (Ibid.: 698).
EUropean Spaces of Interactions: the EU’s Various Neighbourhoods
The EU’s ENP serves as the most prominent example of a distinct EUropean space of interaction outside the Union’s very own border – a policy framework to structure the relation between the EU and its neighbours (Scott 2009: 238). Thus, the ENP has been characterised as “a reflection of a rather fixed geopolitical vision of what the EU is about and how it aims to run and organize the broader European space” (Browning & Joenniemi 2008: 520). 37 Accordingly, the project of ‘Neighbourhood’ can be defined as the EU’s search for a “macro region of stability and prosperity, informed by common goals and values and hence coherent in its response to security challenges” (Scott 2011: 147). Using the example of the ENP associated Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, Jones stressed that the particular construction of a symbolical, territorial and institutional space for EU Mediterranean
37 A 2007 Council report characterised the ENP as “clear geopolitical imperative to foster stability, the
rule of law and human rights, better governance and economic modernization in the neighbourhood” (Council of the European Union 2007). For in-depth analyses on the ENP’s broader geopolitical character, see inter alia (Aalto 2002; Emerson 2002; Browning & Joenniemi 2003, 2007, 2008; Pardo 2004; Diez 2004; Lavenex 2004; Scott 2005a, 2009; Joenniemi 2007; Kuus 2007; Boedeltje & van
related action justifies the promotion of EUropean solutions in order to govern and tackle challenges (partly) outside its very own territorial space (2011: 42). Hence, the term ‘neighbourhood’ and/or a more general “making regions for EU action” (Jones 2011) exemplifies the already referred to “geography-informed representation of risks and threats” and the specific classification and categorization of various actors along an inside/outside line. This particular geopolitical discourse of spatial demarcation is needed to ensure public acceptance of certain foreign policies aimed to guarantee EUropean security and has subsequently practical implications in terms of the EU’s external power projection (Germond 2013: 81). Moreover, the idea of a EUropean neighbourhood implies the inherent logic of apparently belonging without effectively belonging. It is “a sense of inclusion and belonging to a working political community (…) despite the fact that direct membership is not an immediate or probable option for several states that consider themselves very close to the EU” (Scott 2012: 89–90).
With the ENP focusing on the Union’s Eastern and Southern neighbourhood, it is the ND that constitutes the existing policy framework to cover the EU’s Northern ‘neighbourhood’. Yet, this third neighbourhood has deliberately been excluded from a common neighbourhood policy approach as the concept of EUropean neighbourhood has been developed with an exclusive southern and eastern focus, as the northern and north-western ‘neighbourhoods’ were significantly less controversial.38 As a matter of fact, the ‘Northern Neighbourhood’ does not even exist in EUropean parlance.39
The political and conceptual formulation of a European North as a distinct EUropean political space only evolved in the mid/late 1990s and was directly linked to the Union’s Northern enlargement process and the consequent accession of Finland and Sweden in 1995 (Heininen 1998: 33; Moisio 2003: 74). Ever since then, the EU is considered an important part of Northern Europe’s broader institutional
38 Stated in a 2013 internal EP briefing paper that is on file with the author
39 As both Iceland and Norway belong to the EEA and the Faroe Islands and Greenland being part of
the Danish Realm, the ‘Northern Neighbourhood’ differs significantly from the Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood and the related relationship between the EU and its neighbouring countries. Hence, the geographical area north of EUrope is not just ‘simply’ a neighbourhood (Interview 8), see also Subchapter 5.1.
framework – the quadriga of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC), Council of the Baltic Sea States, Nordic Council (NC) and ND. The EU is not only involved in this regional institutional set-up, it is also expected to take an active regional role, especially in relation to Russia with the EU-Russia relationship being considered as the main-axis of Northern regional cooperation (Aalto 2013: 104–105).
The ND itself became a common policy of joint ownership between four equal partners – the EU, Iceland, Norway and Russia – with a rather flexible policy framework that aims to promote dialogue and cooperation especially in the sectors environment, public health and social well-being, transport and logistics, and culture (European Union et al. 2006).40 Geographically, the ND covers a broad geographical area, from the European Arctic and Sub-Arctic areas to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, including the countries in its vicinity and from North-West Russia in the east to Iceland and Greenland in the west” (Ibid.: 1), see Figure III (page 52).41 Although being one of the three regional foci of the ND, the broader Arctic region, has eventually only been of peripheral concern in related considerations with the priorities rather being focused on the Baltic Sea Region and the relationship with Russia. In that regard, the ND has even been considered the most successful cooperation policy with Russia.42
40 For a broad variety on analyses discussing the ND, its initial ideas, its development, its flaws and
achievements, see inter alia (Arter 2000; Ojanen 2000; Catellani 2000, 2001, 2003; Heikkilä 2006; Aalto, Blakkisrud & Smith 2008; Archer & Etzold 2008; Gebhard 2013). For in-depth analyses on the ND from a EUropean geopolitics’ perspective, see inter alia (Joenniemi 2002; Aalto, Dalby & Harle 2003; Browning & Joenniemi 2003, 2008; Laitinen 2003; Moisio 2003; Laine 2011)
Figure III: Northern Dimension
Source: (Delegation of the European Union to Russia 2014)
The EU as a Geopolitical Subject or the Question of Geopolitical Agency The conceptualisation of the EU as a geopolitical actor reflects a variety of disciplinary, philosophical or critical approaches that essentially all raise questions about the territorial nature of the Union and how to eventually promote security and stability beyond its post-21st century enlargement borders (Scott 2009: 235). Accordingly, the Union is understood as a project both transcending and reconfirming state-centred, traditional geopolitics (Ibid.: 236).It is described as a “geopolitical actor with different, often conflicting agendas”, either corresponding to traditional Realpolitik and its related interests, or the promotion of self-perceived EUropean values and norms, in particular democracy, human rights or environmental protection (Ibid.: 233).
In order to situate the Union’s evolving nature in a conceptually informed, comparative setting, Aalto (2002) introduced the meta-concept of geopolitical
subjectivity. The developed concept aims to explain the EU’s geopolitical processes
and the social institutions influencing and depicting this development (Ibid.: 145 and 169).
The notion of geopolitical subjectivity refers to the EU as rather being a geopolitical subject than an agent or actor. This meta-concept implies the explicit understanding of a subject to have both the ability to act and abstain from acting in a certain space at a given situation. Additionally, this concept allows to account for situations where the EU is recognised as a legitimate subject by other subjects but yet declines “to respond by means of any goal-oriented action, in that way reflecting a relatively weak ‘internal’ constitution of subjectivity” (Ibid.: 148). Accordingly, Aalto defined the character of geopolitical subjectivity as “goal-oriented ordering of territories and political spaces, extending from one’s own sphere of sovereign rule to broader regional contexts” (Ibid.: 148) (Original in italics).
Ordering in that regard refers to the objective to create a certain configuration
of social and material relationships with a desirable design within a pre-defined political space (Ibid.: 148) = Bachmann’s (2009) regulated space of interaction. However, the extension to broader regional contexts can come in various forms of entities from non-sovereign transnational groups to semi-sovereign unions of states and does not necessarily needs to entail nation states only. This definition nevertheless indicates that in order to be counted as a geopolitical subject, the particular subject has to make an impact at the respective regional level, the pre- defined political space (Aalto 2002: 149).
Thus, goal-oriented refers to the ability to use any kind of power, either positive or negative during the ordering process. As its name implies, while negative power refers to control, domination and usurpation, positive power concerns a less visible ability to act, cooperate and assent (Ibid.: 149–150).
Instead of only looking at the territorial effects of ordering – the classic geopolitics’ perspective – critical geopolitics rather focuses on the effects regarding the construction process of political spaces and the symbolic and material boundaries delimiting these spaces from others, the above already referred to separation between, e.g. ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Ibid.: 150). Accordingly, geopolitical space cannot be equalised anymore to a fixed territory only but essentially also focuses on structures, processes and flows. Hence, the very construction of space and consequently also the EU’s power role depends on these factors.
The constitution of a geopolitical subject as a geopolitical ordering power further depends on the intersubjective foundation processes not only within the Union and the related recognition by its Member States but also in relation with its various
neighbours (Ibid.: 152 and 155). As a ‘space of meaning’ the EU is defining itself in
a two-fold way, both externally as a potential regional-dominating and global power and internally as a political community based on a common set of values and a sense of purpose (Scott 2011: 153). Consequently, the EU’s extensive regional engagements have to be understood “as an interactive process of dialogue (…) in which the EU itself is changing [due] to enlargement and evolving relationships with its ‘new’ neighbours” (Scott 2005a: 434). Additionally, a subject also needs to
promote its interests and particular identity projects for the given political space and
its delimitation process (Aalto 2002: 157). Both concepts are highly connected to each other, both in a conceptual as well as empirical sense, as identity never exists without goal-oriented factors with agents often simultaneously appealing to both of them during periods of political struggles (Ibid.: 157).
The open-ended perspective of geopolitical subjectivity allows for understanding how peculiar entities, such as the EU can take part in today’s geopolitics by developing a conceptual scheme for theoretically informed and systematic comparison with other geopolitical powers. The indicated peculiarity defines the EU as unfinished business and on-going construction process with the lack of a fixed centre of power from which policies and decisions are imposed upon third parties (Ibid.: 145–146). “Instead, power and policies are imposed in a flexible framework in which the EU takes different forms” (Boedeltje & van Houtum 2011: