EXPANSIONISM EVEN BEYOND FORMER SOVIET FRONTIERS?
However, for some Russian analysts Moscow’s integrationist fervor should not stop at the frontiers of the former empire. Dmitry Orlov, a political scientist, wrote that the Eurasian Union should not only bring together the countries of the former Soviet Union, but should equally include “Finland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mongolia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, as well as two countries not in either Europe or Asia, Cuba and Venezuela.”[25] For Orlov, the Kremlin should not satisfy itself with reuniting the parts of the former Soviet Union, but it should aim higher, trying to restore the whole former communist bloc—and even beyond (Finland). Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister and former ambassador to NATO, was quoted as saying that the project was designed “to unite not so much lands, but rather peoples and citizens in the name of a common state body.”[26] Rogozin, a Russian ultranationalist, who always wanted to activate the Russian diaspora abroad and even create new Russian diaspora (he was, for instance, in favor of responding positively to the request of the estimated twenty thousand Serbs in Kosovo, applying for Russian citizenship), went even further than Orlov. He wanted not only to assemble a maximum number of countries into the Eurasian Union, but also the Russian diaspora “in the name of a common state body.” It led Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to declare that the project represented “the most savage idea of Russian nationalists,” adding that when Russia announces such ideas, “as a rule, they try to implement them.”[27]
During the “Big Country” conference former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov was more prudent. According to him the Eurasian Union should start with building a Belarusian-Russian-Kazakh Union. “For the time being one should not go beyond this framework,” he said, [notwithstanding the fact that] Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are knocking on the door.”[28] According to him one should not repeat the mistakes of the EU, which was in crisis because of its too rapid enlargement process. In the same vein a Chinese expert warned that building a Eurasian Union “is an uphill road…. Former Soviet republics are unlikely to go for integration with Russia gratis…. The accession of former Soviet republics to the Eurasian Union will hardly be a boon for Russia. The Belarusian economy is highly unstable and if such poor countries as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan join the Eurasian Union, Moscow may face even bigger problems than the EU does over Greece.”[29]
THE EURASIAN UNION AS THE ULTIMATE INTEGRATION EFFORT
Despite these warnings and despite the fact that “the Eurasian Union has only little integration potential and has few attractions to offer the newly independent states,”[30] the Kremlin does not shy away from spending money—a lot of money—on this project. While in 2009–2010 Russia still refused to transfer loans to Belarus when that country failed to privatize and sell industrial companies to Russian companies, in late 2011 the situation had changed fundamentally. Russia began to provide billions of dollars in oil and gas subsidies and allocated $10 billion for loans for a nuclear plant in Belarus. It also paid $2.5 billion for the second half of Beltransgas shares. In addition, it also signed on November 21, 2011, an agreement in Moscow on a loan for $1 billion.[31] The willingness of the Kremlin to subsidize Lukashenko’s rickety economy was a clear sign of the political importance it attached to the Eurasian project.[32]
In fact, the Eurasian Union is for Moscow the ultimate integration effort, crowning and superseding all earlier integration efforts. The Eurasian Union is not just some new integration project alongside the other existing integration projects created by Russia in recent years. The Eurasian Union is something different. This new structure is like the crowning synthesis in a Hegelian dialectic: it is not only the most complete realization of earlier Russian attempts at integration, but—while keeping these other structures in place—it absorbs them over time. (Hegel calls this process aufheben, which means both “to preserve” as well as “to bring to a higher level.”) We can, therefore, expect that the Eurasian Union will gradually take over functions from other existing structures, such as the Russia-Belarus Union State, EurAsEc, the Customs Union, and the CSTO. Belarusian President Lukashenko hinted at this when he declared that the Russia-Belarus Union State may disappear if the project of the Eurasian Union were to develop further.[33] This hidden function of the Eurasian Union, to replace and absorb already existing integration structures, is also recognized by Uwe Halbach, a German expert who wrote on the Eurasian Union that “a piece of integration theatre is being played out on multiple stages and levels, which ultimately calls for an ‘integration of the integrations.’”[34]
The centerpiece of this intended “integration of the integrations” is, undoubtedly, military integration. Putin did not mention this in his Izvestia article, but Ruslan Grinberg, director of the economic institute RAN, hinted at this at the “Big Country” conference. Grinberg mentioned “the necessity to build supranational structures, [also] partly, military.”[35] “The Eurasian Union is primarily an economic project accompanied by Russian efforts toward integration within security policy areas,” wrote Uwe Halbach. “The main recipient here is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an ‘alliance’ of seven [now six, MHVH] CIS states.”[36] Halbach is right. This hidden ambition of the Kremlin, however, is not trumpeted too loudly in order not to frighten away potential candidate members of the Eurasian Union.
The Eurasian Union, this ultimate integration project of Russia and pet project of Vladimir Putin, has to be taken seriously. It is the last product of the Kremlin’s funnel strategy in which countries are invited to participate in an integration project on the basis of a manifest agenda that is different from the Kremlin’s hidden agenda. The hidden agenda behind the Eurasian Union is twofold. In the first place it is the creation—over time—of a military arm of the Union, similar to the defunct Warsaw Pact. This military arm (the CSTO) will reserve for itself the exclusive right to intervene militarily in the post-Soviet space. Such an exclusive right of military intervention that excludes the intervention of external powers (the United States, NATO, but also China) has found its theoretical elaboration in the Grossraum (big space) theory of Carl Schmitt, which was already at the core of Medvedev’s proposal for a pan-European security pact.[37] A Russian droit de regard over the post-Soviet space would further imply that Russia wants to introduce qualified majority decision to replace the consensus rule of the CSTO (Article 12 of the CSTO Charter) for substantive decisions on peacekeeping operations or interventions.
27
“Eurasian Union Proposal Key Aspect of Putin’s Expected Presidency,”
29
Prof. Sheng Shiliang, “Putin’s Eurasian Chess Match,”
30
Katharina Hoffmann, “Eurasian Union: A New Name for an Old Integration Idea,”
31
Andrei Liakhovich, “The Reasons behind Putin’s Unprecedented Generosity Towards Lukashenka,”
32
Andrew Wilson wrote that Lukashenko “might find a new role with Putin by selling Belarus as an exemplar in Russia-supported integration schemes such as the Eurasian Union. Russia cannot allow Belarus as a member of the Eurasian Union to go bust because that would seriously undermine the whole idea of Russian-sponsored integration projects.” (Cf. “Andrew Wilson on His Belarus Book and Lukashenka’s Survival,”
33
“Russia-Belarus Union State May Take Backseat if Eurasian Union Project Pans Out: Lukashenko,”
34
Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS Region?”
36
Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS Region?”
37
On the influence of Carl Schmitt’s geopolitical