The European Union in a Reconnecting Eurasia by Laruelle Marlene;

Author:Laruelle, Marlene;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4523139
Publisher: ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

THE UNITED STATES

The European Union and the United States have largely shared interests in Eurasia but go about them in different ways. The strongest commonalities include the pursuit of human-rights standards, democratic development, stability and security, and the broader economic and social development of the post-Soviet states. Naturally there are also divergences and differences.23

The United States and Europe are divided in their perception of the post-Soviet space as constituting a unified geopolitical region. While the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Council maintained Central Asia in their Eurasian portfolio, the U.S. State Department dissociated Central Asia from the post-Soviet space in 2005 by creating a Bureau for South and Central Asian Affairs, grouping the five Central Asian states with Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Seen from Brussels, the U.S. decision makes no sense, and solely reflects the U.S. focus on reintegrating Afghanistan into the Central Asian region. The special representative for the European Union at the time, Pierre Morel, did not hesitate to talk of a “de-Europeanization” of Central Asia in the American vision, and complained that it would dissociate European and American policies by bringing South Asia into play, which is above all an American preserve. The U.S.-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project has also been seen as diverging from European interests, as a South Asian orientation for Turkmen gas potentially contradicts European hopes for Central Asian participation in the Southern Corridor.

This difference in perception can be explained by the fact that most U.S. policies concerning Central Asia have been directly linked to the war effort in Afghanistan, and therefore look “south,” whereas Europeans see the region through the prism of its geographical proximity with Europe, and therefore look from a “west” perspective. Unlike the United States, the European Union’s approach to Central Asia is fully separated from Afghanistan, and the progressive European withdrawal from this country did not give rise to new connectivity with the EU policy for Central Asia. The U.S. New Silk Road project found little resonance in European circles, for which it amounts to a grand narrative designed for Afghanistan’s future, but which Brussels believes has no real ability to influence security and economic trends on the ground.

More concretely, EU and U.S. approaches to the South Caucasus and Central Asia often lack coordination or are undertaken without joint action. U.S. and EU bureaucratic traditions and budget cycles are largely divergent. Decisionmaking mechanisms in both Washington and Brussels are very complex, with a multitude of actors involved in each (State, Defense, White House and Congress for the former; the European Commission, Council, Parliaments and member states for the latter). Bilateral contact between U.S. assistant secretaries and EUSRs—at least twice a year—is not enough to consolidate coordination. European External Action Service desk officers only have ad hoc interaction with their American counterparts, and on the ground, EU delegation officials and U.S. embassy staff generally each go their own way.

Europeans and Americans meet regularly in the framework of NATO and the OSCE, and participate

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