Theorizing Conflict and Cooperation Between Europe and Russia

Abstract

While the post-Cold War decade is depicted as a honeymoon, tensions between the United States, the European Union and Russia appeared in 1999. Russia joined the coalition against terrorism and agreed to the formation of NATO-Russia Council after 11 September 2001, but the Kosovo war (1999), the expansion of NATO to former Soviet satellites in 1999-2004, the US missile defense plan (200709), the Georgian conflict of 2008, energy crisis of 2009, the civil war in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimea have soured relations. Although relations between the West and Russia look bad in general, they have nevertheless resisted cooling on several issues, such as facilitating the granting of visas, management of Kaliningrad or the environment in the Baltic Sea. Can we analyze and theorize EU-Russia relations by focusing on zones of contact between these geopolitical blocs? The aim of the panel is to contextualize and nuance macro-level relations by looking at cases of countries and societies at the border, such as the Baltic countries, Kaliningrad or Moldova. On the one hand, the panel will pay specific attention to transnational actors and social fields of interaction. On the other, we are interested in discussing theoretical approaches to analyze cooperation and conflict at the meso-level.