Suchergebnisse

In May 2022, Finland and Sweden both announced that they had decided to apply for membership in NATO. This was a dramatic shift in both countries' foreign and security policies, but a logical consequence of their European Union membership and close partnership with NATO in the post–Cold War era. For both Finland and Sweden, the key motivation for joining NATO was the need for greater strategic stability in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The swift decisions to cast aside their traditional military nonalignment cannot be understood without considering the strong emotional response in public opinion to Russia's unprovoked war.

Germany's relationship with Russia has historically been one of the most crucial in shaping Europe's fate. Despite radical transformation in the nature of European Great Power politics, it continues to be pertinent from the perspective of today's world. Germany's willingness to establish good relations with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s-its emphasis on economic relations and cooperation instead of political disagreements-prepared the ground for the end of the Cold War and German unification twenty years later. Germany's basic policy towards Russia remained broadly unchanged despite German unification and changes in the domestic political coalitions and leadership, sometimes against political expectations. In the European context, Germany's attitude towards Russia created the backbone of EU-Russia relations. During 2012-13, however, the continuity in Germany's policy towards Russia was seen as having come to an end. Political twists came to the fore and the atmosphere was loaded with tensions, made worse by the Ukrainian crisis. This article reviews the recent, alleged changes in Germany's policy towards Russia during the Merkel era. It asks two basic questions: first, whether Germany's policy really has changed and if it has, what are the theoretical tools that give us the best potential understanding of these changes? The article argues that the policy has changed, but not as dramatically as made out by some headlines. Moreover, the article suggests that a key element in analysing the degree of change in Germany's policy towards Russia is neither the external power relations nor domestic politics and related changes in the prevailing interpretation of national interest, though these are important too, but the interaction between the leaders and foreign policy elites. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

This article looks at the status conflicts between Russia and theWest and asks: why do these conflicts exist despite attempts to avoid them? If status conflicts refer to merely a symbolic recognition, then they should arguably be easier to solve than conflicts stemming from competition for power and resources. Yet, status conflicts can be difficult to solve evenwhen they were not conceived as zero-sum games. The article argues that status conflicts cannot be understood without the interplay of perceptions and emotions. First, what really matters is not objective status but perceptions thereof and there seems to be a gap how Russia and the West perceive status in general. Secondly, the perceptions of when status is gained or lost seem to be emotionally loaded. Russia is more willing to understand its relative status when military or economic issues are at stake, but if the dispute deals with international norms and questions of justice Russia is more likely to interpretWestern action as violating its status and conversely, it is more likely to interpret its own action as enhancing its status when it is defending such values differently from the West.

La puissance de l'UE: comment expliquer l'influence de l'UE (et sa perte) sur la Russie? Il existe de nombreux désaccords et confusions lorsque l'on cherche à interrogerla puissance réelle de l'UE dans la politique internationale. Connaît-elle une augmentation ou un déclin? Quelle est la meilleure manière pour l'Europe d'utiliser le pouvoir dont elle dispose? Parce qu'aucun cadre analytique ne suffit à lui seul à appréhender la notion de puissance dans la politique internationale, il est essentiel de cerner les différentes approches alternatives qui considèrent et cherchent à analyser cette dimension. Selon une première approche, la puissance peut être considérée en fonction de ses sources constitutives: militaires, économique et normative. Pour une seconde lecture, elle mérite d'être conçue en termes de ressources, de perceptions et d'interactions subjectifs. Une troisième démarche ajoute aux ressources, la stratégie et les pratiques considérant qu'elles offrent une compréhension supplémentaire de la puissance. Enfin, la dernière vision estime que l'hypothèse selon laquelle la partie la plus puissante impose toujours sa volonté peut se révéler contredite en raison de l'importance du contexte. Cet article compare ces quatre lectures en les appliquant à l'UE et à ses relations avec la Russie. Nous chercherons à démontrer pourquoi l'explication du succès ou de l'échec de l'UE pour promouvoir ses intérêts vis-à-vis de la Russie a peu avoir avec la compréhension des marqueurs traditionnels de la puissance telle que la capacité militaire. Au contraire, une attention particulière sera apportée aux autres dimensions qui structurent ce registre européen.