The EU and Russia: The War that Changed Everything
本文分析了俄罗斯2022年入侵乌克兰如何根本改变了欧盟的战略环境，促使欧盟在对俄制裁、东扩、安全与防务政策及对外关系上采取前所未有的行动，并探讨这些变化的持久性。
The significance of Russia's war against Ukraine can hardly be overestimated. This is the biggest interstate war in Europe since the Second World War. On the 24th of February 2022, the largest country in Europe, Russia, attacked the second largest, Ukraine, on three different fronts, with massive military force, with the clear purpose of territorial control and at an immense human cost. In doing so, the Kremlin broke one of the most important taboos in European security, that on territorial expansion through military force. Confronted with a massive war along its borders and no normative framework for security negotiations left, the EU operates in an entirely new strategic environment, one that is based on pure confrontation and determined by an imminent threat. This generated a sense of urgency and unity in the EU unseen before. It created a window of opportunity for the reinforcement of European Security and Defence Policy. Even more, the EU took up a new role as security actor that would have been unthinkable without the context of a massive war so close by. This article will briefly discuss Russia's motives for the invasion. A good understanding of the reasons for this war is crucial to comprehend the strategic context the EU is operating in and the policy options it has. The next section will outline four ways in which the war has affected the EU's foreign policy role and relations with Russia. This will be followed by some reflections on the impact and significance of these changes. For many years, and very assertively since 2007, Russia has voiced its security concerns, in particular over NATO enlargement. Many analysts have concluded that Russia's motives to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 were the result of these security concerns and the gradual deterioration of relations with the West.1 Yet, as Kimberly Marten argues, ‘to disentangle the relationship between NATO's geographic enlargement and Russia's relations with the West is not as easy as it first appears. The causal chains that may seem to link the two are complex, subject to interference by many other variables, and mediated by the evolving subjective interpretations of a diverse cast of Russian actors.’ (Marten 2023, p. 210) The question whether antagonist relations over security that preceded the war also caused the war is one that deserves more attention, in particular in a context where debates are mostly driven by theoretical assumptions. This is not to deny the reality of tensions over security that have existed for many years before the war but to explore whether they are the reason why the Kremlin went for war and whether opposition to NATO enlargement was driven mainly by concerns over security or over loss of status (Sarotte 2021). It is beyond the scope of this article to analyse the Kremlin's motivations for the war in 2022 in detail (see Casier 2023 for a more extended analysis). Yet, a couple of lines need to be set, as they are essential for understanding the political context in which EU-Russia relations operate. Undeniably, president Putin carefully built up and escalated a rhetoric about Russia's security concerns over 2021, the year preceding the war. In his state of the nation address of 21 April 2021, Putin used the term ‘red lines’ as a clear warning to the West. ‘Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time. … I hope that no one will think about crossing the “red line” with regard to Russia. We ourselves will determine in each specific case where it will be drawn.’ (Putin 2021a). Only by the end of the year, Putin specified where the red line would be drawn, formulating three ‘unconditional demands’ (Trenin 2022b)2: no further expansion of NATO to post-Soviet states, no deployment of offensive weapons in the proximity of Russia and the withdrawal of NATO military infrastructure from member states that joined after 1997. In spite of these statements, the likelihood of NATO expansion being the main motive for Russia's invasion deserves a closer look. First of all, it should be noted that the idea that the fear of Ukraine joining NATO led Russia to a pre-emptive invasion is also dismissed by some close to the Kremlin. Dmitri Trenin, one of Russia's leading foreign policy analysts, stated just before the invasion: ‘No degree of NATO expansion, including to incorporate Ukraine, will threaten the military balance and deterrence stability. … Therefore, in terms of military security, it's correct to say I don't see NATO expansion as such a terrible threat.’ (Trenin 2022a). From an unexpected corner, leader of the Wagner group Prigozhin stated at the start of the mutiny on 23 June 2023: ‘The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.’ (Prigozhin quoted in Van Brugen 2023). Turning to actual arguments, there are different reasons to assume why fear of NATO expansion to Ukraine was unlikely one of Russia's main motives for the war (Ferraro 2023; Marten 2023). First, it should be noted that NATO accession for Ukraine was all but imminent when Russia waged war on Ukraine. A vague prospect had been given to Ukraine at the NATO Bucharest summit of 2008, but that was fourteen years before the invasion of February 2022. The vague formulation then was largely a compromise resulting from a sharp disagreement between the US administration and European member states. While rhetorical references to the prospect were made occasionally after 2008, most importantly at the NATO Brussels summit in June 2021,3 little significant progress had been made towards Ukraine's accession (Ferraro 2023, p. 14), nor was membership expected any time soon. It is interesting to note that military co-operation between Ukraine and NATO only increased substantially after Russia's annexation of Crimea (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Increased co-operation was thus a reaction to Russia's offensive, in a context where the annexation of Crimea was not followed by a Ukrainian counter-offensive, let alone one supported by NATO. Moreover, before 2022 US weapon deliveries were fairly limited and ‘Ukraine had absolutely no capacity to attack Russia’ (Marten 2023, p. 238-239). It was also in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainian parliament on 23 December 2014 renounced the ‘non-bloc status’ of the country, that former president Yanukovych had introduced (Pifer 2014). At a more general level, there are indications that NATO enlargement was not perceived by Moscow as such a profound threat as often assumed. Between 2000 and 2010, for example, when most of NATO's eastern expansion took place, the numbers of troops and weaponry that Russia deployed along its borders closest to the enlarged NATO (its Western and Southern military districts) ‘fell steeply’ (Marten 2023, p. 220). Nor did Putin express serious concern in 2022 about the effective accession of Finland to the alliance, despite its great military importance, with a capacity of mobilising an army of 280,000 and adding 1340 km to the NATO-Russia border.4 These and other arguments lead Kimberly Marten to conclude that there is ‘evidence that the whole NATO enlargement issue has been more a symbolic red herring than a real security problem for Russian leaders, used strategically abroad to try to manipulate the West into taking Russian security interests seriously, and at home as a way of manipulating nationalist support’ (Marten 2023, p. 234). When it comes to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the question needs to be asked how the Kremlin expected the latter would improve its security situation, in particular in a context whereby the security demands of December 2021, mentioned above, were ‘far beyond Kyiv's reach’ and no ultimatum was posed to Ukraine (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Inevitably, there is a degree of speculation in answering this question, but it is striking that with a full-scale war against Ukraine, the Kremlin opted for one of the most risky and costly scenarios, without trying alternative options (Ferraro 2023). Russia may have miscalculated the chances of success of its military invasion and the reaction of the Euro-Atlantic community, but if it genuinely believed the US wanted to make Ukraine a bridgehead, it would for sure have expected the US to help Ukraine significantly after the 24 February 2022 invasion. It is improbable that Moscow would have expected the West to take limited retaliation measures against a war on that scale, against a country of the size and strategic importance of Ukraine, and while breaching the vital principle of non-violation of borders, and threatening European security on a scale unseen since World War II. What can be said with certainty, is that Russia's security situation has all but improved since 24 February 2022. Finland and Sweden have given up their traditional neutrality status to join NATO. German Chancellor Scholz announced a Zeitenwende or historical shift, sealing the end of the classic axis of reconciliation between Russia and the West, dating back to the Ostpolitik of NATO increased their there is little that Russia has a loss of to its military and has and NATO expansion is unlikely to be the main reason for this what then was the Kremlin's was a second line in Russia's to the war that than the one on Russia's It was one of on Ukraine. In 2021, for example, Putin an article in which that Russia, Ukraine and one nation and and (Putin On many other to Ukraine as and Ukraine as a (Putin its the in what a to the that Russia was just taking back what was (Putin this Russia's war against Ukraine as of its to with its 2022, p. the scope of this this can be as of a in three of post-Soviet In terms of foreign policy there was a clear over time in how Russia as a great and how the latter is to since the of the Russia has to be a great The is at the of its strategic and and is in the state of whereby Russia can only as a great The that Russia is not just as great but also to this in Putin to great status as a for Russia to the borders of the Russian a country as Russia can only and the borders if it as a great (Putin quoted in p. the time of the 2022 the had been the was no that great status Russia to the post-Soviet borders, but the Kremlin to that territorial expansion had the for great The idea of Russia's as great had with a idea of whereby Russia is as than the borders of the Russian This can be a the that only a Russia be a great It is to interpretations of as this by February to Putin on Ukraine and often the Kremlin's Russia, expansion is not just one of the but the reality of our historical is effective with 2021). not why the invasion in 2022 and why not for in when the Ukrainian army was and by The Russian of the in the Ukraine in 2014 as an p. have no and the of about Russian and how it is to ‘The Ukraine has been It into question Russia's as a great European and to the two main of the Kremlin's good relations with Europe, with and and the of former 2021). 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