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This event has been postponed. Please check our website for the new date.
Please join the Harriman Institute for talk on post-Soviet conflicts by Nina Lutterjohann, Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute, moderated by Elise Giuliano (Harriman Institute).
The Eastern Partnership (EaP) has been the flagship project of the EU since 2009. Often, and especially since 2013, this has led to disagreement and even hostility between the Kremlin and the EU. The EU’s outreach through Association Agreements (AA) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTA), while intended as only beneficial, created seemingly exclusive choices for these countries between the EU and Moscow’s Eurasian Union. Ukraine’s Yanukovych government’s rejection of the association agreement and the ensuring Maidan protests of 2013-14 led to regime change, Russian annexation of Crimea, and continuing conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The focus of this research offers a comparative perspective to better understand the origins, dynamics, and scenarios of these conflicts. This is shown in two ways.
The first argument is that international organizations have achieved some successes (yet also failures) that have not been recognized. This is addressed by introducing a typology of success and failure to explain IO performance between 1992 and the EU's Vilnius Summit in 2013. It also considers improvement of societal conditions, although finding a political solution is often more realistic. Examples are Moldova-Transnistria, Georgia-Abkhazia, and eastern Ukraine, although with attention primarily on the Georgia-Abkhazia case. For the conflicts mentioned (Moldova and Georgia), the ethno-national origins, geopolitical dimension and entrenched conflicting party positions in the context of pan-European actors' responses are re-appraised. About 70 expert interviews and textual analysis of 500 primary sources have pointed out similarities and differences.
The second argument foresees the reappraisal of the conflicts that have served as cushions for the colliding interests of external powers. The de facto states have survived in their atypical statehood with limited material capacities for almost 30 years through certain strategies and practices of existence. It is therefore asked how they have succeeded in this undertaking, especially in terms of issues like borders and sovereignty.
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