Strategic culture and competing visions for the EU’s Russia strategy: flexible accommodation, cooperative deterrence, and calibrated confrontation

Abstract

This article analyzes the national security strategies of EU member states in the 2009–2018 period, and conceptualizes three security strategies EU member states have adopted toward Russia – flexible accommodation, cooperative deterrence, and calibrated confrontation. It tests strategic culture hypotheses against those of realism and commercial liberalism to explain the variation of EU member states’ security strategies toward Russia. While a realist explanation would predict EU member states geographically proximate to Russia would possess more confrontational security strategies, geographic proximity and confrontational security strategies toward Russia are not positively correlated. Bilateral economic interdependence with Russia, the presence of populist parties in EU member states governing coalitions, and EU member states’ alignment or status as an occupied state during the Cold War also do not explain EU member states’ security strategies toward Russia. A more consistent explanation of the variance in EU member states’ policy on Russia revolves around the strategic culture of the state in question. States with a more Atlanticist perspective tend to be more confrontation with Russia than their more Europeanist counterparts, regardless of geographic proximity or economic interdependence with Russia.

Counterbalancing And Pragmatic Accommodation: CEE Countries Towards Russia’s Expansion, 2014-2021

“…Among them accommodation was correlated with, presumably, the perception of Russia as a minor threat, which was shaped greatly by geographic distance and limits in historical resentments. Silva II's (2022) diagnosis on the variety of CEE policies is largely confirmed by the article, whereas his conclusions on Atlanticism and Europenism as major causes of that variety are neither confirmed nor challenged. In practice, pro/anti-Russian policies in an observably polarized European system correspond with (inversely) anti/pro-US approaches.…”

“…The practice was limited counterbalancing whose subjects faced external, i.e., economic limits, and exercised self-restraints because of potential retaliatory measures. Like accommodation, limited counterbalancing draws particular attention of scholars interested in explaining Asian and Pacific countries' responses to the rise of China (De Castro, 2022;Han & Paul, 2020) or 'Atlanticist' EU countries 2 towards Russia (Silva II, 2022). A more specific type of strategy is soft balancing which finds expression through acts of establishing, using or dominating international institutions (He, 2008;Wivel & Paul, 2020) and this type of strategy was to some extent conducted by the CEE countries, however, far from their major effort 3 .…”

“…5), and plenty of publications on Russia's expansion itself (Götz, 2017(Götz, , 2019Korolev, 2015;Rutland, 2019). Alternatively, some scholars examine EU and thus CEE countries towards Russia, few among academics, however, have scrutinized the post-annexation period (Orenstein & Kelemen, 2017;Silva II, 2022). While imperial and hegemonic threats in the East of Europe attract attention of media, think tanks and policy makers, the academic literature lacks comprehensive research on general patterns of CEE policies toward the Russian challenge to European security.…”