Citation

Sakwa R. Siberian Historical Research 2015; (3): 8-39.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015)

DOI

10.17223/2312461X/9/2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

On the outbreak of the First World War was declared as "the suicide of Europe", a hundred years later we can talk of a new suicide of Europe, as the idealism associated with a whole era of European integration is revealed as nugatory and an illusion. At the heart of the European Union (EU) is a peace project, and it spectacularly delivered on this promise in Western Europe before 1989. However, when faced with a no less demanding challenge in the post-communist era - to heal the Cold War divisions and to build the foundations for a united continent - the EU failed. Instead of a vision embracing the whole continent, the EU became little more than the civilian wing of the Atlantic security alliance. Even its increasingly limited commitment to social and cross-national solidarity is jeopardised by the putative Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The EU ultimately stumbled into geopolitical competition with Russia while suppressing recognition of the logic of its actions. Ukraine was divided internally and located along Europe's traditional historical fault lines, but adroit diplomacy of the traditional "realist" kind could have averted the crisis. The EU has suppressed recognition of its own geopolitical ambitions, couching its advance in the language of regulation, good governance and normative institutions. The new Atlanticism of the post-Cold War era brings together Russophobic elites in the East European accession countries, virulent Atlanticists in "old Europe" and exponents of American "leadership" (hegemony) in Washington, who together have conspired radically to subvert the original peace purpose of what has now become the EU. The EU has become subsumed into the new Atlanticism, thereby losing its own sense of purpose and responsibility for its geopolitical ventures. Instead of advancing the peaceful integration of Europe on a clearly articulated pan-continental basis, the EU became the instrument for new dividing lines across the continent.

Language: ru

Keywords

Ukraine; Russia; United States of America; European union; Atlantism