The

EU plays monopoly, Russia plays chess

a publication by the Greater Europe Think Tank

Picture by Stef, some rights reserved: https://www.flickr.com/photos/103932984@N05/25930015953



Contents

Contents 2

A Different Game Altogether 3

1. N. Askerova - Different competitors 4

2. C. Lesage: EU and Russia : a conflict of two foreign policy paradigms 5

3. A. Botashev: A Game between Russia and the EU: Everybody Loses 8

4. O. Kryshtapovych: Are the EU and Russia symmetrical players? 11

Bibliography 12

Endnotes 13

2

A Different Game Altogether

The EU plays monopoly; Russia plays chess. Variants on that theme can be found throughout
the entire recent academic discourse on Russo-Western relations. The phrase is often used to
emphasize that the two parties involved play fundamentally different games on the worlds stage,
leading to a number of misunderstandings and severe clashes of a politico-strategic nature.
Neither player seems to understand the others motives and tactics, or do they? What does the
main playing board really look like? What are the spheres of influence? Why do the EU and
Russia seem to understand the terms "winning" and "losing" in different senses, if they consider
their respective international relations strategies as a game that must undoubtedly end in a gain
or loss for either party in the first place?

The Greater Europe Think Tank challenged aspiring young students to provide their own
interpretation of this modern maxim, and to answer the questions above. The result: Four papers
have been selected, which are all incorporated in this article. Various dimensions of EU-Russian
relations, such as structural and normative ones, are evaluated. In terms of general strategy, the
Russkiy Mir and Near Abroad concepts are juxtaposed with the EUs Neighbourhood
Policy. According to the students, the board on which EU-Russian affairs are played out, are the
ongoing Syrian conflict, the Ukrainian civil war, and the Moldova uprisings, among others.

Can a more harmonious stance between the players be established? Only if the EU abandons its
universalist value ideology, according to one submitting student. Russia will need to respect
human rights if it ever wants to be respected itself, another author argues. Undoubtedly, such
measures will require the players to profoundly change their ways, but apparently, it is necessary
to adjust the rules in the middle of the game, in order to move forward.

R. Zard, R. Dieleman, Greater Europe Think Tank editors

1. N. Askerova - Different competitors

In modern times, in a period of increasing confrontation between Russia and the EU, it is
important to determine the direction of Russian and European foreign policies to find out what
differences may exist in the two approaches. Russian and European approaches regarding their
respective foreign policy are quite different, because the countries do not understand the terms of
winning and losing in the same fashion. For Russia it is national interests that matter
primarily, while for the European states it is not only national interests that must be taken into
account, but also their global interests and fundamental common values such as human rights,
democracy and a free trade concept that play a huge role in its application within the instruments
of foreign policy. In this regard, Russia plays a simple game of chess where the only purpose of
this player is to win, with the consequence that the other player can but lose. At the same time,
the EU plays a much more complicated game of monopoly where there are several dimensions
of action.

When we speak about the conflict in the Ukraine, for instance, we notice clearly how these
different approaches can be implemented. For Russia, Crimea is a part of its national interests, a
territory that historically belonged to the country, and hence one that is Russian by right. For the
European states, the accession of Crimea is seen as an annexation and a violation of borders, and
thus an action that consequently violates the international rules and guarantees of the
international community. With regards to the energy sector, the two approaches can be also seen
there. Although Europe depends on oil and gas imports and benefits from the supply of natural
resources from Russia, it has continued to impose economic sanctions against Russia, in
retribution for the Russian foreign policy strategy. According to the official statistics, in 2012 the
share of Russian gas in the total gas consumption of the EU made up more than 20% which
makes a significant part of European economy.i Still this dependence did not lead to the EU to
setting aside its ideological values. For Russia, such an approach seems to be completely ill-at-
odds because such it does not correspond with the real national interests of the European
countries.

The same can be said about the Syrian Crisis. While Europe considers Russia to be embarking
on a proxy war in Syria that is thus completely illegal from the perspective of international law,
for Russia the engagement in Syrian conflict is an opportunity to test its military force, to
prevent the spreading of terrorism to the other regions including Russia and to increase Russian
geopolitical positions and its status as a great power. ii From the Russian perspective this
political strategy is reasonable and balanced because it allows to achieve the key national goals.
To sum up, it is obvious that Russia and the EU play in different fields, as well as mind-sets of
the game. But in reality they need to be brought to a single field where there may be common
rules for the game, a greater chance for cooperation amongst these two entities on a greater range
of issues that concern them both.

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2. C. Lesage: EU and Russia : a conflict of two foreign policy paradigms

The ongoing Ukraine crisis has highlighted a creeping struggle for influence between the
European Union that tries to expand its model of liberal democracy through its projection as a
soft power hence the creeping nature of the struggle - and an empowered Russia seeking to
maintain the former Soviet republics under its clout, and thus strive to present an alternative
model. Besides the conflict in the Ukraine, there lies a conflict between two paradigms in the
way Russia and the EU envisage their identity, their foreign policy, and more especially, their
approach towards their shared neighbourhood.

The EU as a universalist norm setter and exporter in the shared neighbourhood

Europe has based its neighbourhood policy on the claim that, as a normative power (Manners
2002) its ideational model is based on free markets, liberal democracy, the rule of law and
Human Rights promotion. In contrast, the pursuit of purely material interests appears secondary
or ancillary to the promotion of these legal and ethical principles (Pollack 2012). Through this
liberal narrative, the EU is meant to shape according to its own normative standards its external
environment and, more especially its immediate neighbours accordingly (Zielonka 2008). To
uphold the legitimacy of these values, it has framed them as being - somewhat paradoxically -
constitutive of the European identity one the one hand, and universal (Leino and Petrov 2009) on
the other, as if they were a civilizational matter, a sort of European exceptionalism which
actively and openly seek to challenge the traditional Westphalian order based on the sovereignty
of States (Falk 2002, Diez 2005) by projecting this model abroad and in its immediate
neighbourhood in particular by putting forward the shared and common claim of these values
(European Commission 2004). In sum, through its normative power, Europe seeks to adjust and
transform the outer world by making it compatible with its own internal order.

However inclusive this rhetoric of shared values is, Korosteleva (2012:31) argues a
fundamental contradiction in terms. Indeed, if these values were to be shared inherently
between the EU and its neighbours, as epitomised by the Commissions Strategic Paper on the
ENP (2004), they are accompanied by commitments to be fulfilled by ENP countries, which
implies in the backdrop that these values are actually far from being fully shared from the outset
(Samokhvalov 2007), given the mixed record of these countries in the attainment of the reforms
attached to them. On the top of this, some scholars claim that Eastern European countries have
not relinquished policy practices and cognitive patterns related to the former Soviet rule
(Levitsky and Way 2010:184, Dimitrova and Dragneva, 2009) whilst jumping on the EU
bandwagon was merely about satisfying mostly economic benefits mostly for the incumbent
elites - and less about implementing principles (, Emerson & alii 2007:6, Korosteleva 2012:100-
101). Therefore, those values, despite their universal claim, are merely the projection of a
specific EU-centric ethos, not only claiming to be morally superior (Bjrkdahl 2011) - which
poses a serious problem in terms of legitimacy to the outside world - but which also endorses an
authoritative and a prescriptive tone, implying an asymmetric relation between the EU and its
external partners (Zielonka 2008, Haukkala 2010) especially as the EU seeks, because of the
essentially universalist vocation of its values, to expand regardless of the interests of other
actors, and, in the present case, ignoring those of Russia (Sakwa 2016).

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Russias realist foreign policy: from interest maximisation to an own narrative
Russia presents a counter model with very different assumptions of international relations and
governance that seems, at first sight, to completely contradict the normative-based paradigm
advanced by the European Union. Whilst Brussels promotes an ideational based policy seeking
to expand internationally and in the shared neighbourhood, specifically by the virtue of a self-
asserted legitimacy (Haukkala, 2008:1604), Moscow adopts a vision of international relations
primarily (albeit not exclusively) based on the maximisation of its material interests (Sakwa,
2008:365-391, Trenin 2007) which is the key driver of its foreign policy, and even during the
ongoing conflict with the West, it remains still overwhelmingly the case today. Tsygankov
(2016a:247-249) and Rykhtik (2012:25) argue that to this end, Russia adopts a rather pragmatic
foreign policy seeking to closely cooperate with countries that are not especially and always like-
minded as it exemplified with the spectacular rapprochement with Turkey in the summer 2016
and by using alternative locus with emerging powers the BRICS, the Shanghai Organization
in contrast to Western dominated institutions. Russia wants to present itself as the champion of
a multipolar order. The rise of different world actors a future Chinese hegemon, a resurgent
Russia, a challenging India - all embracing a neo-realist policy Tsygankov (2016a:235-236)
takes place in a context where the Western dominated liberal order, of which the EU was a
champion alongside the US, is loosing its own pre-eminence. In fact, what is contested by Russia
and other emerging powers are not the Western values and the rules as such, but rather who is
setting them, who is defining them, who is in charge of enforcing them (Ikenberry, 2015, Chen,
2016) and ultimately, if there are also complementary values to these rules.

Therefore, because the Western based liberal world order comes under deep challenge, Russia
feels increasingly confident to move from a purely material based foreign policy, towards a more
ideologically motivated platform. Since Putins second term, Russia is willing to promote its
own narrative and vision consisting in the upholding of Russias traditional and Christian values
one the one hand, and in the reaffirmation of its specific destiny as a post-imperialist country
by regaining influence in the former Soviet republic through the Eurasian Economic Union
(Tsygankov, 2016b) so that it may compete with the EU on an equal basis. It therefore still
consists primarily in preserving Russia and its interests from external, and especially western
interferences in both its internal and foreign policy, as the doctrine of sovereign democracy
recalls (Surkov, 2006) but it is also now a value based ambition which also compete with the EU
on these normative terms : to project itself globally as a counter-model, the champion of
conservative values, versus an European Union which holds a growingly contested and
questioned liberal normative as it faces internally the challenge of populism and Brexit, and
externally a diminishing influence on the world stage.

The illusions of Europes normative power in a multipolar world

How can Russia and the EU reconcile their increasingly drifting perspectives on global and
regional governance, as revealed by the conflicts in Ukraine and in Syria? The foreign policy of
the EU, which is the result of a compromise between different Member States, first of all lacks
coherence. The supposed normative power Europe appears to be an empty shell, a lowest
common denominator which implicitly reveals the very divergent national perspectives on
foreign policy and an uneasy approach to Moscows unified and clearly formulated interest-
based foreign policy. Conversely, Russia presents a questionable but coherent and unified vision
of the world and a determined stance to advance its interests on the world scene. It is doubtful
6

that the demonization of Russia, the quasi-breakdown of dialogue and the attempts to isolate the
Kremlin through a sanctions policy that has mostly resulted in a rally around the flag bolstering
Putins popularity and confidence which could hardly be considered as the desired outcome -
have helped the make Russia a more obedient and easier partner for Europe and the West in
general. Does it mean that the EU mostly bears the responsibility to engage more constructively
with Russia through a more inclusive and open dialogue? In my view it has and it still does.

Firstly, Keukeleire (2015:379) argues that the EU-centric value-based approach of

neighbourhood and foreign policy fails to acknowledge and factor-in what he calls the outside-
in perspective, i.e. the interests and perceptions of other actors which evolve in their own
normative setting which perceive the EU approach as patronizing and disrespectful of their own
interests and traditions (Romanova, 2009). Secondly, and more specifically as regards the
relation with Russia, Sakwa (2015:578) argues that the EU has to state its interests in clear terms
and adopt a franker dialogue with Russia instead of wrapping them in an uncompromising and
obstinate value-based discourse which serves as vehicle to advance more basic material interests
(Kratsev, 2008) such as strengthening its security by managing its periphery (Hyde-Price,
2006) and create a ring of friends according to the famous expression of J.M. Barroso (2004).
The concerning situation in the Ukraine, the new assertiveness of Russia and the cost of
sanctions against the latter for the European economy illustrates that the dismissal of the EUs
largest neighbours values and preferences in its value-based approach of the shared
neighbourhood ironically and tragically undermine its security and, ultimately, its own interests.
From a ring of friends, the EU is now having in its Eastern border a ring of fire.

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3. A. Botashev: A Game between Russia and the EU: Everybody Loses

Chess and Monopoly are both games where opposing sides use their varied resources to gain
victory over their opponent. The aim is to out-manoeuvre until the other is out of options, and is
either submitted to a check-mate or is declared bankrupt. Neither of these games involves good
or evil, only tactics. The player with the better tactics, in most cases, wins. A game of this type is
played out on a geopolitical level between Russia and the EU. I will analyse this with respect to
the Ukraine crisis from 2013. I argue (a) Russia is the superior player: their decisions are fast,
strategic and speak of realpolitik. (b) the EU does not, and further - should not - have the
capacity to play this game. Therefore, they should embrace Russia with a strictly normative
approach.

Russias decisions are fast, strategic and grounded realpolitik, with no considerations for human
rights. The annexation of Crimea demonstrated the speed with which the Russian decision
makers could operate. Within just a few days in late February, Russian forces took over
government buildings in Crimea and within a few weeks it had been absorbed by Russia in a
controversial referendum.1 Whatever conclusions one has about the operation: from securing the
Sevastopol port to re-establishing lost territory from the Soviet Union, it is undeniable how fast
and spontaneous the decision-making was. Characteristic of realpolitik, the annexation and the
further destabilisation of Donbas have been marked with spontaneity and risk, all for promoting
Russias strategy (whatever that may be). The Kremlin has a strong, quick hand over its chess-
pieces and moves them with speed, knocking over other players as they go.

When it comes to aggressive foreign policy, the EU, by its structural nature, is unable to compete
with Russia. Quite simply, the EU wasnt created with the idea of geopolitical battles with
Russia in mind. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU is based heavily in
cooperation and cohesion between member-states. Indeed, it was created in the aim of preserving
peace and promoting freedom2. Barring qualified majority voting, its process of decision-making
is cumbersome and the cost of cohesion is high. Taking the most decisive foreign policy act of
the EU as an example, that of sanctions, even they put a spanner in the works and often came
down to member-states own domestic policies rather than through the EUs framework3. Russia
has easily taken advantage of this. Peter Mandelson4 explained in 2007 that no other country
reveals our differences as does Russia.5 The support for sanctions fluctuating heavily between
EU member states, demonstrated the weakness. It is then quite clear that the EU has a structural
difference in aim and capability when it comes to a comparison with Russia.

Nonetheless, the EU attempts to fight Russia at its own game, stepping further away from a
norm-based policy. Expanding interests from both the EU and Russia, without a proper basis for
cooperation, inevitably created conflict. The Partnership for Modernization (2010) and the
Strategic Partnership (2011) were major steps away from the norm-based cooperation. They

1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26248275
2
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_6.1.1.html
3
http://www.ibtimes.com/eu-unity-crumbles-russia-sanctions-extension-debate-rages-2376693
*
The article will focus on Ukraine as the location for analysis, given the word constraints.
1
External Trade Commissioner from 2004-2008
5
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-07-242_en.htm

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turned out to be unsuitable from the beginning with member states pursuing economic interests
while ignoring major issues.1 This pragmatic-style of foreign relations has sparked conflict in
zones of mutual interest. Of course, the Ukraine conflict began due to Viktor Yanukovichs not
signing the EU Association Agreement (AA). As such, the EU began to play a game it was not
designed to play.

Whats more, is that the divide is not as clear as it seems. Through the Lisbon Treaty (2007), the
EU promotes a liberal agenda that values democracy and human rights.2 However, ostensibly,
Russia promotes a similar agenda in the Foreign Policy Concept of 2008. Casier (2013) says that
there is no fundamental difference in the norms presented.3 In fact, both Russian and European
diplomacy has shifted further towards pragmatism. Without a norm-based foreign policy the two
were, ostensibly, playing the same game in a geo-political conflict where the EU was destined to
lose.

This pragmatic style of foreign policy has put the EU in situations where it cannot win. In fact, it
has grown into an information war, where Russia dominates. Fake news has become the newest
weapon in Russias propaganda war. This style of attack impacted Americas election.4 Cyber-
attacks and fake news have sparked fears even for Angela Merkel in the upcoming election
cycle.5 Partially EU-funded Deutsche Welle and Radio Liberty, as well as Euronews have scaled
up their Russian operations6, but do not come close to the efficacy of their Russian counterparts
in swaying public opinion. This conflict speaks to a further structural impediment in that Russia
seems to devote huge amounts of resources to expand Russia today and even to pay trolls to
spread pro-Russian comments7 whereas this service is simply not available to the EU.

But with every geopolitical step the age-old adage rings true: the weak suffer what they must. As
Russian soldiers secretly fight a war in Ukraine 8 , families are forced to bury their children
without knowing even what happened to them.9 In Crimea, human rights violations ran rife10
with minorities affected and medications stopped at the borders.11 While the EU doesnt have the
foreign policy instruments to annex Crimea back, they very much do have in their power
economic and humanitarian instruments that can aid the region. The EU should not focus on

1
Cristian Nitoiu (2016) Towards conflict or cooperation? The Ukraine crisis and EU-Russia relations, Southeast
European and Black Sea Studies, 16:3, 375-390, DOI: 10.1080/14683857.2016.1193305
2
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A12007L%2FTXT
3
Tom Casier (2013) The EURussia Strategic Partnership: Challenging the Normative Argument, Europe-Asia
Studies,
4
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-
election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-
716af66098fe_story.html?postshare=1401480037630796&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.b929a87bf7d5
5
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/russian-cyber-attacks-could-influence-german-election-says-
merkel
6
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34248178
7
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
8
https://tvrain.ru/soldat/
9
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28949582
10
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/18/ukraine-fear-repression-crimea
11
During his first official statement on Crimea on April 2, 2014 the Director of the Russian Federal Drug Control
Service insisted that opioid substitution therapy shall be closed. This led to large numbers of drug addicted people
to go into withdrawal, with some dying.
http://fskn.gov.ru/includes/periodics/speeches_fskn/2014/0402/104829810/detail.shtml

9

fighting fire with fire. Instead, they should do what they were aimed to do continue to use
economic means to promote peace and freedom.

The question asks for a metaphor of EU-Russia relations as a game, as many perceive it. If you
were a betting person and this was a game of chess, you may side with Russia. They have a
centralised and speedy tactical approach, whereas the EU doesnt. But if you were the pawn,
caught up in this game: who would you choose? I think the answer, given neither side is clear in
its normative objectives, is unclear. The EU must organise itself and fight back using a norm-
based approach and go back to their original aims, or face further out-manoeuvring by Russia.

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4. O. Kryshtapovych: Are the EU and Russia symmetrical players?

The discussion of (a)symmetry of foreign policy actors requires identifying the dimensions for
comparison. Here I will focus on structural (power struggles in internal policy-making
process) and normative (values promoted by actors foreign policy) dimensions.

Structural dimension
Imagine a chess game. On one side of the board, one player makes decisions and moves. On
another side of the board, 28 different players argue over decisions, exercising their formal equal
voting rights and informal political influence, to get the best possible decision for their
individual gain with the objective of arriving at generally acceptable solution. This is what I call
a structural dimension, in which the EU and Russia are asymmetrical.

In Russia, decision-making is practiced by a small elite group and exercised through increasingly
large powers of the head of state. The public discussion about new policies takes place (if it takes
place at all) as merely a facade, while core decisions are made behind the scenes (Taylor, 2013).

The multi-level governance system of the EU ensures that none of the EU bodies has the power
to make important decisions independently. While the European Commissions responsibilities
have increased with each extension of the EU (Heidbreder, 2014), the European Parliament and
the Council of the EU both remain capable of scrutinising the European Commissions power.
Moreover, despite the declared intention of the Member States to increase cooperation in foreign
policy and security (e.g. Maastricht Treaty), there is still a reluctance of large Members States to
delegate to the EU the matters of war and peace, and a sound foreign policy with clear goals in
the EU Neighbourhood is still missing (Blom et al., 2016:18).

To sum up, in the structural dimension Russia and the EU are asymmetrical players, which
manifests itself in the speed of decision-making and reacting to the changes in the geopolitical
environment. This structural asymmetry is painfully clear when one simply compares the speed
with which Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine (a few days), and the EU response to the
annexation.

Normative dimension
In the normative dimension, the EU and Russia are symmetrical actors: they both offer their
shared neighbourhood with often competing definitions of democracy, human rights and
other values. According to the Normative Power Europe (NPE) argument, the unique political
form of the EU predisposes it to act in a normative way (Manners, 2002:242). The EU
politicians and technocrats have founded themselves on this assumption to justify the
universality of the EU norms of democracy and human rights, which in turn serves legitimise the
conditionality of their policies, linked to the promotion of these norms.iii

Unlike other EU partners in the Eastern neighbourhood, Russia heavily criticised the ENP,
considering it an illegitimate imposition of European values. Since the mid-2000s, Russia has
offered its own concept of sovereign democracy one where countries decide for themselves
what their final product of democratisation should be (Casier, 2013). More recently, the Russian
normative agenda was formulated as Russkiy Mir the idea of a civilizational community,
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united by common history and Christian Orthodox values, which de facto confronts normative
goals of the EUs Neighbourhood Policy (Wawrzonek, 2014).

To conclude, the fact that both the EU and Russia turn to normative arguments to justify their
policies towards the countries in the shared neighbourhood makes them symmetrical players in
the normative dimension. Symmetrical attempts of Russia and the EU to win over the hearts and
minds of citizens in their respective neighbouring countries most notably Ukraine and
Moldova have resulted in the creation of ideational battlefields as components of the
frozen conflict between Moldova and Transnistria since 1992 and the ongoing military conflict
in the East of Ukraine since 2014.

Bibliography
- Blom, P., Brown, K., Cleary, S., Habich, J., Nowotny, V., Papademetriou, D. G., &
Weiss, S. (2016). Dealing with Neighbors: Fighting a Ring of Fire or Building a Ring of
Friends? In Trilogue Salzburg August 18 19, 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.bertelsmann-
stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/Projekte/84_Salzburger_Trilog/Background-Paper_Trilogue-
Salzburg-2016_Dealing-with-Neighbors_20160820.pdf
- Casier, T. (2013). The EURussia Strategic Partnership: Challenging the Normative
Argument. Europe-Asia Studies, 65(7), 13771395.
http://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2013.824137
- Heidbreder, E. G. (2014). Why widening makes deepening: unintended policy extension
through polity expansion. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(5), 746760.
http://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2014.897748
- Manners, I. (2002). Normative Power Europe: A Contradication in Terms? Journal of
Common Market Studies, 40(2), 235258. http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5965.00353
- Taylor, B. D. (2013). Police reform in Russia: the policy process in a hybrid regime.
Post-Soviet Affairs, 30(23), 226255. http://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2013.860752
- Tocci, N. (2008). The European Union as a Normative Foreign Policy Actor. CEPS
Working Document. http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.167
- Wawrzonek, M. (2014). Ukraine in the Gray Zone: Between the Russkiy Mir and
Europe. East European Politics and Societies, 28(4), 758780.
http://doi.org/10.1177/0888325414543947

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Endnotes

i
Is Europe vulnerable to Russian gas cuts? / Behrens A., Wieczorkiewicz J. // URL:
https://www.ceps.eu/publications/europe-vulnerable-russian-gas-cuts (12.03.14).
ii
What does Russia want in Syria?, CNN // URL:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/08/middleeast/syria-aleppo-russia-strategy/ (08.02.16).
iii
Inconsistency between normative claims, policy implementation means and outcomes
of the EU foreign policy have been uncovered and used as a critisism of the NPE by
academic community (e.g. Tocci, 2008).

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