Boisterous Russia in emerging Europe

• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017
• Author: Matthew Olatubosun Aihonsu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1602

■Practitioner Paper

Boisterous Russia in emerging Europe

Matthew Olatubosun Aihonsu*

School of Arts and Social Sciences, National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria

Russia is permanently at a crossroads in its history, or standing in exasperation at a fork in the road but failing to re-

solve a geographical, historical and metaphysical dilemma: is Russia part of Europe or not? Russia holds a key but

vulnerable strategic position in the heartland of Eurasia. Its geographical existence within a larger zone of Eurasian

civilization meant that Russian culture had been shaped to a not insignificant extent by influences coming from Asia,

that Russia was Eurasian and not European not only by virtue of its cultural patterns but also in terms of anthropo-

logical–racial considerations as well. The Eurasian Customs Union is clearly seen by Russia as a vehicle for

reintegrating the post-Soviet space, including the countries that fall within the sphere of the European Union’s

(EU)’s eastern neighbourhood.

The Eurasian Customs Union is the vehicle through which Russia increasingly engages in ‘normative rivalry’with

the EU in the so-called ‘shared neighbourhood’. These geopolitical and economic contraptions underpin the strategic

calculations that have influenced largely the crisis of Russian Lebensraum escapade in Ukraine and EU’s reaction.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Russia is a key actor in the United Nations

Security Council and, due to history, geographic

proximity and cultural links, is one of the key

playersinthecommonEuropeanneighbourhood.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a

geopolitical earthquake that redrew the map of

Europe and Central Asia. In his state-of-the-nation

address, in April 2005, Russia’s President Vladimir

Putin went so far as to describe it as the ‘biggest

geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century’.

1

Russia holds a key but vulnerable strategic posi-

tion in the heartland of Eurasia. Firstly, an arc of

instability (a zone of present and inevitably future

unrest in the coming deca des) runs along its

southern border from the larger Middle East

towards northeas t Asia. Secondly, its geographi cal

position aggravates the post-imperial crisis of

identity. The furtive Russian military intervention

into the Crimea is a di rect reaction to the uncoor-

dinated ‘triple expansion’

2

of North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union

(EU) plus American/European defence and politi-

cal economic interests and military infrastructure

into the so-called Russian ‘near abroad’.This

uncoordinated triple expansion has been coun-

tered by Russian effo rts to check both NA TO and

EU enlargement, a t the same time that M oscow

has been seeking to build step by step a new

Eurasian geostrategic and political economic

alliance in the aftermath of Soviet collapse. This

rebuilding of Russia has involved the formation

of the Collective Security Treaty Organization,

Eurasia Customs Union (ECU) and Shanghai

Cooperation Organization (leading to closer

Russian–Chinese security and defence cooperation

since 2005).

2

On the ‘triple expansion’, see Hall Gardner, NATOExpansion and

US Strategy in Asia (New York: Palgrave, 2013.

*Correspondence to: MatthewOlatubosun Aihonsu, Schoolof Arts

and Social Sciences, National Open University of Nigeria, 14/16,

Ahmadu BelloWay, Victoria Island,Lagos 100001, Nigeria.

E-mail: aolatubosun@ymail.com

1

BBC, ‘Putin deplores collapse of USSR’, 25 April 2005, http://

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4480745.stm.

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 17 Number 4 e1602 (2017)

Published online 4 February 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1602

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 of 7