Europe’s new frontier states Analysis by Foreign Policy

The Foreign Policy magazine has published an article claiming that Russia’s war in Ukraine has turned Europe’s “buffer states” into frontier ones. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

In the 2000s, an unspoken belief began spreading in the West: There would be a gray zone between the rest of Europe and Russia made up of Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; countries in the South Caucasus; and perhaps those of the Western Balkans and Türkiye as well. These buffer states served a double purpose: By putting a break on NATO and European Union enlargement, they allowed both organizations, especially the latter, to concentrate on themselves while also (at least in theory) appeasing Russia.

Since 2005, the EU has confronted successive constitutional, sovereign debt, migration, and pandemic crises—as well as Brexit. Consumed by them and alarmed by the challenges bedeviling its neighbors, the EU lost the will to expand. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Western Balkans, not to mention Türkiye.

Freezing EU and NATO enlargement also meant meeting Russia halfway given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s opposition to it on the alleged grounds of Moscow’s security concerns. The 2008 Russian war in Georgia took place against the backdrop of NATO’s Bucharest summit, which declared that Georgia and Ukraine “will become” members. The spiral of events that culminated in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas began in light of Russia’s opposition to the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. In neither case were these NATO and EU decisions precursors to enlargement, however. They only acknowledged—weakly—the buffer states’ desire to move westward.

The buffer zone strategy was clearly suboptimal. It frustrated the buffer countries’ ambitions for prosperity, democracy, and security. It was insufficient in appeasing Russia—as evident by the 2008 war in Georgia; the beginning of war in Ukraine in 2014; and the festering of unresolved conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. And it hardly proved that the EU, unburdened with enlargement, would successfully deepen integration and reform its institutions, as it barely scraped through its successive crises.

Yet the best is the enemy of the good, and the formula that the EU and NATO had concocted seemed at least workable. Aspirants to enter Euro-Atlantic organizations often pretended to reform while those organizations pretended they would eventually take them in. In the case of NATO, some countries did enter, such as Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.

But EU expansion languished, with a moribund accession process and a lackluster European Neighbourhood Policy, theoretically aimed at offering everything apart from participation in EU institutions but practically only reaching comprehensive free trade agreements with a few countries. As Russia’s assertiveness grew, not only in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus but also in the Western Balkans and Türkiye, these states became a buffer between Europe and Russia. Suboptimal as it was, many experts thought it was good enough.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shattered that illusion. Moscow’s narrative is that war became inevitable because of NATO’s expansion, but Russia invaded Ukraine without the latter having any realistic prospect of entering either the EU or the 30-bloc alliance. We cannot know whether war would have happened had Ukraine been a member of one or both organizations. What we do know is that while outside both of them, the invasion took place.

This points to the fact that there is no buffer between the rest of Europe and Russia. There are only frontier states. On one side of the frontier, prosperity, security, and democracy are possible (though not guaranteed, as in Hungary and Poland); on the other side, authoritarianism, war, and state capitalism are the norm rather than the exception.

This brings back in full force the question of enlargement. Less than a week after the invasion began, Ukraine applied for EU membership. Moldova and Georgia did as well in the weeks that followed. In September 2022, Kyiv applied for NATO membership as well.

In the midst of war, these applications may seem purely symbolic, yet the alacrity with which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has pursued these goals, including the reforms that come with them, is real. This is hardly surprising: In no place is it more dramatically obvious than in Ukraine that there is no stable buffer between the rest of Europe and Russia.

Ukraine and Moldova were granted EU candidacy while Georgia was recognized as a potential candidate. The concern that the Western Balkans would be left behind partly reignited the dormant accession process toward that region, with the opening of accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania as well as the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s candidacy last year.

The recognition of Ukraine’s candidacy was an act of solidarity and an acknowledgement of the country’s resilience. Whereas Northern and Eastern European states, acutely aware of Russia’s threat, have traditionally been more sympathetic toward further enlargements to the east, Western European ones would never have conceded it had the war not begun. Yet when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi traveled together to Kyiv last year, it became obvious that it was politically impossible to turn Zelensky down. Away from the limelight of the media though, some politicians and bureaucrats remain skeptical.

Yet it will become increasingly clear that the costs of leaving Ukraine to the other side of the frontier would be much too high for Europe. This is because of the tight links among democracy, prosperity, and security on the continent. Even in the best of circumstances—in which Ukraine liberates most of its territory and would be willing to negotiate with Russia—a stable peace is unlikely so long as Putin remains in power. It could remain impossible even after, until Russia sheds its imperial ambitions. This could take a very long time. So even if the war as we know it ends at some point, it’s probably going to be followed by a protracted state of un-peace. Security in Europe will remain precarious, and Ukraine would probably become a hypermilitarized state in order to defend itself.

This raises the question of Ukraine’s economic reconstruction and democratic development. Were it to remain on the authoritarian side of the frontier, with the profound insecurity that comes with it, it is difficult to imagine that Kyiv would see much economic reconstruction and democratic consolidation. Ukraine’s reconstruction will cost tens of billions of dollars, and the bill rises with each day of destruction.

Russia should shoulder the bill for its war crimes, but this is unlikely to happen so long as the current regime—or one like it—is in power in Moscow. The West, particularly EU institutions, is exploring legal avenues to use Russia’s frozen assets for Ukraine’s reconstruction, but it is unlikely to succeed in a meaningful way. Although the United States and other like-minded countries will contribute, the lion’s share of reconstruction will fall on European shoulders. Doing so will not only be a moral imperative but will also be in Europe’s strategic interests. The alternative—a postwar Ukraine that settles into a hypermilitarized state and an economic black hole for its almost 44 million people—would be a massive security risk for Europe.

Yet European states have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the pandemic and the energy crisis in addition to assisting Ukraine and hosting Ukrainian refugees. They will need to continue spending billions of dollars to accelerate the energy transition and develop an industrial policy that does not leave the EU hollowed out by US-China competition. It is difficult to see how Ukraine’s reconstruction can be paid only from public budgets unless European debt skyrockets.

The only way to square the circle is to develop a framework that incentivizes the private sector to pick up much of the bill. In circumstances of profound insecurity, this requires the governance and rule of law guarantees that come with EU membership as well as NATO-like security assurances. This will become an economic necessity for Western and Southern European countries just as much as it is a security imperative for Northern and Eastern ones.

Enlargement had been shelved for years, as many experts believed that Europe could survive without it. Europeans, including those farther away from the frontier, will come to realize they cannot do without it.