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EU’s shift to geopolitical power from normative
In his famous 2002 article, Ian Manners claimed that when acting externally as a normative power, the EU transfers liberal-democratic norms in non-European space through its legal and political rationales. At least several cohorts of students were educated by that vision when learning about the transfer of EU’s acquis communautaire into non-European jurisdictions, which has been part of that normative power Europe discourse.
A lot has changed since 2022, two decades after Manners’s article, when European leaders have openly started to state the need for Europe to act as a geopolitical power especially amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (here, here, here). What are the structural ramifications of this shift both for international law and international relations? This article, focusing on one specific geopolitical location, the South Caucasus, discusses this interplay between power shifts in the EU and what such repositioning means for legal and political order construction in and around Europe.
Normative power in charge of promoting international rules-based order: What about the geopolitical EU?
When engaging in its external relations with neighbouring countries and partners, normative power Europe has traditionally promoted a liberal vision of international law as a cooperation framework. In the South Caucasus, the promotion of international law has also been a core part of the activity of the European Union, as provisions of the Comprehensive and Deep Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Armenia and the Association Agreement (AA) with Georgia demonstrate. For instance, the CEPA with Armenia not only stipulated that parties reaffirm their commitment to fundamental principles of international law but also set forth Armenia’s commitment to join the International Criminal Court and bolster the promotion of human rights and the rule of law in the country. The AA with Georgia also envisioned similar commitments on the part of Georgia and went even further in Article 5, which specified that the parties agree on gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy. Normative power Europe, from this perspective, has seriously engaged in international rules-based order promotion where human rights and the (emerging) right to democratic governance constituted the core element of its transformative vision.
Would a geopolitical power be different in this respect? At the verbal communication level, it seems that the EU’s turn to geopolitics does not amount to disregarding international rules-based order. In reality, however, this transformation cannot escape ontological shifts and revisions. First, geopolitical power would define its zone of activity more straightforwardly by differentiating its geopolitical zone of activity where it may more meaningfully engage in norm promotion or act as transformative or a ‘civilisational’ power. That is not the case for the space out of that geopolitical zone, where norm promotion may be pursued but not imposed and sanctified to the degree as it is in the latter category.
From that perspective, locating that discourse over South Caucasus, geopolitical power Europe may engage differently with Georgia than with Armenia and Azerbaijan since the former has been granted the status of the candidate and joined the European ‘heartland.’ Armenia and Azerbaijan, on the other hand, have remained in the ‘Rimland of Europe.’ Second, geopolitical power Europe will inherently be stuck in cases where normative considerations clash with its geopolitical interests. As a result, the policy and legal responses to issues will become more indeterminate, with a sort of ad-hocism involved in the path of constructing a fully geopolitical visionary for Europe. With these two specificities in mind, the EU’s policy and legal responses to recent developments in the South Caucasus may be examined.
Geopolitical power EU in South Caucasus
In the era of normative power, the EU’s policy towards the South Caucasus was more in the form of a package rather than individual treatments of the three Republics. This reflected the EU’s soft power relations with the South Caucasian nations through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership (EaP), which have aimed to foster democracy promotion, market economy standards, judicial reforms, and anti-corruption mechanisms, to name a few.
Over time, the EU’s approach vis-à-vis the South Caucasus has become drastically individual – showcasing more geopolitical tendencies in line with the EU’s growing ambitions to become a geopolitical power or replace traditional geopolitical powers. This has been reflected in three main areas: strategic, security and economic, which are complementary.
Strategically, the EU has had a significant presence in the South Caucasus by, as mentioned, concluding individual agreements with Armenia and Georgia (CEPA and AA/EU candidacy status, respectfully). In recent years, especially amid the second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the EU has doubled its efforts to have a prominent role in conflict mediation and resolution through more direct involvement and initiating peace talks. Since October 2022, Brussels also deployed an EU Monitoring Capacity in along the Armenian side of the international border with Azerbaijan to contribute to the stabilisation and security related efforts in the region.
Whereas the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and the EU’s involvement in it follows more strategic reasoning, its presence in the form of the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia since Russo-Georgian War of 2008 also has security components. First of all, through this initiative, the EU expands its role as a weighty security provider and aims to promote regional stability. Moreover, Georgia’s differential status in the relationship with the EU increases the need and incentive to have beyond strategic presence in the country.
With Azerbaijan, on the other hand, the primary means to extend Brussels’ geopolitical influence is through energy cooperation, which aims to help the EU diversify its fuel supplies in order to minimise its energy dependence – primarily from Russia. The third area, economic ends, incorporates many of the existing products of the relationship through trade agreements, investment in infrastructure projects, and cooperation in various sectors to foster economic growth and integration with the EU market.
The three cases are instrumental to observe the power shifts. Alongside the EU’s transitions to geopolitical power-building, the intensity of its normative stance concerning the extra-European matters started being differentiated between ones that happen in its own geopolitical zone of activity and ones out of it. That differentiation has also come with certain indeterminacy in its responses, particularly evident in its approach towards Georgia, which, due to its increasingly close relationship with the EU, is seen as part of its ‘heartland’ where non-conformity with liberal-democratic norms by part of Georgia may be punished – through sanctions and deprivation of candidate status. To that respect, the EU’s attempts to balance normative and geopolitical power in its dealings with Armenia and Azerbaijan are more apparent. The absence of these countries in the EU’s geopolitical zone reduces the incentive for the EU to fully commit to normative interventions despite its efforts to maintain a balanced approach.
Finally, in efforts to deploy a balancing act, the EU strongly contradicts itself by clearly depicting that economic objectives and strategic and security calculations oftentimes surpass classic normative approaches. This is demonstrated by its close partnership with Azerbaijan, prioritising energy security over poor human rights records and authoritarian governance. Such indeterminacy is also visible in the recent developments in Georgia, where, in response to the Georgian government’s adoption of the controversial foreign agent’s law, the EU voiced rather mild criticism without tangible consequences so far. Similarly, the ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Armenia have witnessed violent clashes with the police backed by the Armenian government, which the EU again did not condemn unequivocally.
Regionalising the normative power projection
Normative power categorisation has been criticised for its approach to be influenced by a civilising mission of the EU, similar to the expansion of Eurocentrism through colonial means and tools. Geopolitical power categorisation of the EU, in this respect, delimits the EU’s sphere of activity. Even if, at a global level, Europe will remain the protagonist of the rule of law, human rights, and democracy, the pronouncement of being a geopolitical power spatialises the political idea within a specific zone of geopolitical activity. In that zone, Europe may intervene more straightforwardly – as the war in Ukraine demonstrates – than in other cases.
In conclusion, this shift leads to the regionalisation of the normative power Europe category within geopolitical boundaries, resulting in two significant outcomes. First, this transformation reveals that the discourse of universality associated with the normative power Europe categorisation is becoming self-limiting and spatially constrained. Secondly, it implies that States outside the EU’s geopolitical zone must adjust their foreign policies, as they now deal with not a purely normative power but rather a geopolitical one. That means Europe would respond differently to different issues in different locations, which may raise concerns about hypocrisy and double standards.
Artur Simonyan is a senior fellow at KFG Berlin-Potsdam Research Group “International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?” He received his PhD in Law from the University of Tartu, School of Law.
Mariam Baghdasaryan is the PA to the President of the Global Solutions Initiative. She completed her graduate studies (M.A.) at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Sciences Po University (Paris School of International Affairs).