EURASIAN UNION VERSUS EUROPEAN UNION
Putin, in his Izvestia article, had already tried to dissipate fears concerning his new integration project. “Some of our neighbours have made clear that they don’t wish to participate in advanced integration projects in the post-Soviet space,” he wrote, “because this allegedly goes against a European choice. I think this is a false alternative…. The Eurasian Union will be built on universal integration principles as an integral part of Greater Europe, united solely by the values of freedom, democracy and market laws…. Now dialogue with the EU will be undertaken by the Customs Union, but later it will be the Eurasian Union. Therefore, entering the Eurasian Union… will leave each of its members in much stronger positions to integrate more quickly into Europe.”[17] In fact in his article Putin used three arguments:
• The first argument was that the Eurasian Union was a project similar to the European Union. It was presented by him as a supranational project with similar institutions to the EU, which would include a commission, a council, a court, and—in time—a common currency.
• The second argument was that the Eurasian Union—like the European Union—was built on shared values. As examples of these shared values he mentioned freedom, democracy, and a market economy.
• A third argument was his suggestion that no competition existed between the Eurasian Union and the European Union. A choice to adhere to the Eurasian Union, according to him, would not imply a definitive geopolitical choice that would exclude future integration with the EU.
In fact all three arguments were severely biased. In the first place the Eurasian Union is not a European Union bis. This is not only because its institutions lack real supranational authority, but also because of the fundamental disequilibrium in particular that exists between its constituent parts. The EU is a union of four big states, two medium-sized states, and a group of smaller states in which none of the member states would be able to establish a unilateral hegemony over the others. Even Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse, is in no position to dominate the rest. It has to recognize the superior military and diplomatic power of both Britain and France. In the Eurasian Union, on the contrary, the disequilibrium between the member states is striking. Not one of its prospective member states can match the economic and military power of Russia. Even if the whole CIS were to join, Russia’s weight would still dwarf the collective weight of the other member states. In addition, there is still another problem. Russia is the former imperial center with a centuries-long history of imperial conquest, which was characterized by the suppression of the national identity and autonomy of the dominated peoples. For this reason, wrote Umland, the “intellectual elites of the other post-Soviet republics have more or less ambivalent stances, and, sometimes, negative views on their nations past relations with Moscow.”[18] These reservations also concern Putin’s past. Putin, as a former KGB colonel, is “a representative of those organs previously responsible for the execution of, among other crimes, anti-national policies.”[19] One could, of course, point to Germany, which from being a European outcast became a respected member of the EU. However this comparison would not be valid for two reasons. The integration process in Western Europe was set up after World War II to heal the scars the war caused. Germany started a painful process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with its past), which led to repentance, official apologies, and compensation payments (Wiedergutmachung). In the case of Russia there are few signs that it feels responsible for the crimes committed or the repressive policies in the former Soviet Union and Soviet bloc (excuses for the Katyn massacre are a rare exception). The European Community, in addition, was not only meant to heal. This originally French project was also meant to bind Germany to prevent history from repeating itself. Putin’s initiative for the Eurasian Union, on the contrary, comes from the former imperial center. It neither heals the crimes of the Soviet past, nor does it bind the former imperial power. On the contrary, it represents a thinly disguised attempt to restore the lost empire on new foundations.[20]
The second argument, used by Putin in his Izvestia article to justify the Eurasian Union, was that the new Union would be built on shared values. He mentioned as such democracy, freedom, and the principles of the market economy. The reader will probably rub his or her eyes: whatever positive things one may say about Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, one can certainly not say that these three countries are shining examples of freedom and democracy. All three have “lifelong” leaders kept in place by organizing fake elections. All three have repressive regimes that suppress opposition voices and violate fundamental human rights. All three also lack an important condition of a functioning market economy: impartial courts.
The most amazing argument, however, is Putin’s third argument: a choice to join the Eurasian Union does not exclude integration with the EU, but, on the contrary, “will leave each of its members in much stronger positions to integrate more quickly into Europe.” Putin is playing here a game of words with the concept “Europe.” As members of the Eurasian Union these countries do not integrate into the EU, but in “Greater Europe,” a name he gives to the Eurasian Union and the EU together. In fact Putin is referring here to trade negotiations between the EU and the Eurasian Union and the eventual benefits for the member states of the Eurasian Union if they negotiate with the EU as a bloc. However, this has nothing to do with integration into “Europe” or the EU. It is a formulation intended to conceal that membership of the Eurasian Union implies an unequivocal geopolitical choice that excludes membership of the EU.[21]
THE ULTIMATE GOAL: THE CREATION OF A “BIG COUNTRY”
Putin’s article is a textbook case of active disinformation. What is at stake for the Kremlin in the project for a Eurasian Union remains carefully hidden. However, one week after the signing ceremony by the three presidents in Moscow it was possible to get a clearer idea of the way of thinking of the Russian political elite. On November 24, 2011, they came together to discuss the new project in the building of the Federation Council, the Russian Upper House. The title the organizers had chosen for this roundtable was in itself interesting. It was called “Big Country: Perspectives of the Integrative Processes in the Post-Soviet Space in the Framework of the ‘Eurasian Union.’”[22] Big country! The first catchword used to describe the new Union was not “economic modernization” or “economic cooperation,” but “big country.” One cannot but think of the centuries-old Russian fixation on territorial expansion. Had not Putin already said in 2009 in a speech before the Russian Geographical Society: “When we say great, a great country, a great state—certainly size matters…. When there is no size, there is no influence, no meaning.”[23] In the same vein, on the occasion of the signing of the treaty, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said: “Yes, we are all different but we have common values and a desire to live in a single big state.”[24] “A single big state”? It is not sure that the CIS countries, after having been reassured by Putin that their autonomy would not be jeopardized in the Eurasian Union, would welcome the prospect of living in “a big state.” And certainly they would appreciate even less the prospect of living in “a single big state.”
17
Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya.”
18
Andreas Umland, “The Stillborn Project of a Eurasian Union: Why Post-Soviet Integration Has Little Prospects,”
20
Tatyana Valovaya, minister responsible for the main areas of integration and macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, reacting to the remark that “the idea of unifying the countries of the CIS is often called the realization of the imperial ambitions of our country’s leadership,” said: “In this space some ‘unity’ has always existed.” She added: “The original six countries of the EEC were, in fact—precisely the empire of Charlemagne.” Valovaya saw no problem in comparing the empire of Charlemagne, which ended in 814—this is 1,200 years ago!—with the Russian Empire, which ended only twenty years ago. (Cf. “Integratsiya obedinyaet vsekh: ot kommunistov do ‘Edinoy Rossii’ i pravykh,”
21
Putin’s argument is repeated by Yevgeny Vinokurov, who wrote that “one should not consider European and post-Soviet integration to be mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the regionalism of the CIS is a step along the way toward integration with the European Union.” (Y. Yu. Vinokurov, “Pragmaticheskoe evraziystvo,”
22
Tropkina, Olga. “Yevgeny Primakov nazval usloviya dlya uspekha Evraziyskogo soyuza,”
23
Putin quoted by Maria Antonova, “State Lays Claim to Geography Society,”
24
Gleb Bryanski, “Putin, Medvedev Praise Values of Soviet Union,”