CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Jabiyeva, Leyla |
|---|---|
| Title | Eastern Partnership vs. Eurasian Union: A New Geopolitical Game between the European Union and Russia |
| Summary | The thesis examines the construction of a geopolitical contestation between the European Union and Russia over the common neighborhood where the six post-Soviet Eastern European countries, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine are situated, to demonstrate its negative implications for the target countries. Positioning the issue in critical geopolitics, it argues that the EU and Russia’s integration plans for the region—Eastern Partnership and Eurasian Union—are mutually exclusive, thus urging the target countries to make a choice between them that can provoke challenges to their security, as recently seen in Ukraine. Through tracing the roots of the Ukrainian crisis, the thesis seeks to show the casual link between the independent variable—rivalry between the EU and Russia, and the dependent variable—its negative impacts for these six countries. Being aware of their distinct characteristics, the thesis comes to the general conclusion that these smaller countries are weakly positioned in this geopolitical game; while the existence of unresolved conflicts makes them more vulnerable to Russian threat, these disputes also block their way to full EU membership. |
| Supervisor | Balazs, Peter |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/jabiyeva_leyla.pdf |
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