Safe European home: European war and interdependence

摘要

In early August 2008, Georgia invaded its province of South Ossetia and sparked a brief interstate war when Russia decided to defend its provincial neighbors in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The European Union (EU), mainly represented by the Council Presidency of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, diplomatically intervened on Georgia's behalf. The EU's intervention represented a critical challenge for that institution and its intervention is judged as a qualified success. Before a ceasefire put forth by the EU was implemented, Georgia had sustained heavy casualties compared to Russia and its government was swiftly crippled. Left to its own devices, it is nearly inconceivable that the Georgian leadership could have gained better terms in the ceasefire negotiations than those terms that the EU negotiated on its behalf. When hostilities ended, the Georgian government remained intact with its formal sovereignty upheld while Russian troops evicted themselves from Georgia's non-secessionist territory.;This thesis argues that the EU's intervention during the crisis was surprisingly successful and was dependent on the EU's regime of European interdependence, facilitated by institutional association and economic ties between the EU, Georgia, and Russia. The prospect of eventual EU membership yoked the Georgian leadership to the reform expectations that the EU set forth. Georgia believed that its destiny lay in Europe and that eventual yet distant membership was a relatively plausible outcome based on statements and actions by Georgian officials and their EU counterparts. The possibility of EU membership for Georgia constituted a normative ability on the part of the EU's partnership and enlargement scheme to translate functions of regional stability and conflict management to the Georgian nation state. Russia's belligerence during the conflict and its willingness to negotiate with the EU was a function of that country's deep and interdependent economic ties with the EU and its members, as well as an embryonic but functioning form of EU association.