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Managing Security
Threats along the EU’s
Eastern Flanks
Edited by
Rick Fawn
New Security Challenges

Series Editor
George Christou
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
The last decade has demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in
their causes and manifestations and that they invite interest and demand
responses from the social sciences, civil society, and a very broad policy
community. In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective,
but with the end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as the
centrepiece of international security agenda became untenable. There has
been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis away from traditional
approaches to security to a new agenda that talks of the softer side of secu-
rity, in terms of human security, economic security, and environmental
security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this pressing
political and research agenda.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14732
Rick Fawn
Editor

Managing Security
Threats along the
EU’s Eastern Flanks
Editor
Rick Fawn
School of International Relations
University of St Andrews
St Andrews, UK

New Security Challenges


ISBN 978-3-030-26936-4    ISBN 978-3-030-26937-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26937-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Acknowledgements

Funding for both a book workshop and a public discussion and dis-
semination event held in St Andrews was made possible through the
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN-ETN) of
the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro-
gramme, under grant agreement ‘CASPIAN—Around the Caspian: A
Doctoral Training for Future Experts in Development and Cooperation
with Focus on the Caspian Region’ (642709—CASPIAN—H2020-
MSCA-­ITN-2014). This funding also supported some of the individual
contributors, who make separate acknowledgement in their chapters.
One other contribution and longer-term insights and research oppor-
tunities were also gained through funding by the European Commission
under FP7-­PEOPLE-­2012-ITN TENSIONS (Grant agreement num-
ber: 316825).
The School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews
provided additional financial support for a book workshop, alongside a
public event. Input and assistance during those events were given by
contributors as well as from Iuliia Drobysh, Ahmed Fawaz, Matteo
Fumagalli, Elham Gharji, and Pengfei Hou; and Iuliia Drobysh kindly
assisted with last-minute referencing requests. As ever, these comments
are appreciated as much as the responsibilities continue to remain with
the authors.
Sarah Roughley provided the most helpful and understanding guidance
through the process, and we remain grateful also to the substantial and
thoughtful comments by external readers secured through Palgrave
Macmillan. Mary Fata affably and efficiently guided the typescript through

v
vi Acknowledgements

production. Our sincerest thanks also go to Vinodh Kumar for the very
helpful and patient finalisation of the book. Any errors remains with
the authors.

St Andrews, UK Rick Fawn

∗Editor’s Note: The UK was still part of the EU at time


of going to press.
Contents

1 The Price and Possibilities of Going East? The European


Union and Wider Europe, the European Neighbourhood
and the Eastern Partnership  3
Rick Fawn

2 Turning Points and Shifting Understandings of European


Security: The European Neighbourhood Policy’s
Development 31
Maria Raquel Freire and Licínia Simão

3 The Dilemmas of a Four-Headed Russian Eagle for the


EU: Russia as Conflict Instigator, Mediator, Saviour and
Perpetuator 53
Rick Fawn

4 The US and the New Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarus,


Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) Since 1991  69
Jason Bruder

5 The EU and Pan-European IOs and ‘Symbolic’ Successes


and Failures in the Protracted Conflicts in Moldova and
Georgia 99
Nina Lutterjohann

vii
viii Contents

6 Georgia as a Case Study of EU Influence, and How


Russia Accelerated EU-Russian relations131
Shu Uchida

7 Security Challenges in Ukraine After Euromaidan153


Andreas Marazis

8 Iraq and the Kurds: What Threats to European Stability?177


Samuel Doveri Vesterbye

9 In-Between Domestic Terrorism, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, or


How Russia Sees Prospects of Security Cooperation with
the EU203
Elena Zhirukhina

10 The EU and Central Asia: The Nuances of an ‘Aided’


Partnership225
Karolina Kluczewska and Shairbek Dzhuraev

11 Reflections on How the EU Is Handling Threats to


Stability in Wider Europe253
Dominika Krois

Index265
Notes on Contributors

Jason Bruder was a senior staff member on the US Senate Foreign


Relations Committee and a US State Department official. He has been an
adjunct professor at Columbia and Georgetown Universities. At the
time of publication, he was finishing his PhD at the University of St
Andrews. He previously earned an MA from The Johns Hopkins
University, School of Advanced International Studies. His views are
his own and do not reflect those of his former affiliations.
Samuel Doveri Vesterbye is Managing Director at the European
Neighbourhood Council (ENC), where he works on EU foreign policy,
specialising in Turkey and the Middle East. He oversees ENC research
projects across the neighbourhood and Central Asia, including Academic
Council Members and regional strategy. His research primarily focuses on
accession and EU neighbourhood policy, including energy, migra-
tion, and customs union or trade. He has worked on EU projects
related to foreign affairs, strategic communication, and migration
since 2012 in cooperation with stakeholders and partners like the
European External Action Service, international universities, and
several European ministries of foreign affairs. Between 2010 and
2012 he was a journalist in Turkey and Belgium, covering foreign
affairs, energy, and the Middle East. He holds a master’s degree from
the University of St Andrews. He is fluent in English, Italian, Danish,
and French.
Shairbek Dzhuraev is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews.
He previously served as deputy director at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek,

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and was dean of academic development at the American University of


Central Asia. Shairbek is a member of research networks of political scien-
tists working on post-Soviet Eurasia, including Central Asia Program at
George Washington University, the EU-Central Asia Monitoring
(EUCAM) and Crossroads Central Asia, a Bishkek-based research
network. Shairbek’s research interests include political regimes, inter-
national relations, and foreign policy making in Central Asia.
Rick Fawn is Professor of International Relations at the University of St
Andrews in the UK. Among a dozen previous books are International
Organizations and Internal Conditionality: Making Norms Matter
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He is completing a book for Georgetown
University Press entitled Visegrad and Central Europe: The Remaking of
a Region.
Maria Raquel Freire is researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES)
and Associate Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of
Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC). She holds a Jean
Monnet Chair. She is currently Head of the International Relations
Department and Director of the PhD Programme in International Politics
and Conflict Resolution. She is Visiting Professor in the Post-Graduate
Programme in International Relations, Federal University of Santa
Catarina, Brazil. Her research interests focus on peace studies, particularly
peacekeeping and peacebuilding, foreign policy, international secu-
rity, Russia, and the post-Soviet space.
Karolina Kluczewska is a post-doctoral research fellow at the research
centre CERAL, University of Paris 13 (France), and an associate research
fellow at the Tomsk State University (Russia) and University of St Andrews
(UK). She holds a PhD degree in International Relations from the
University of St Andrews. Karolina has both research and practical
experience in the development sector in Tajikistan, including collabo-
rations with civil society organisations, international organisations
and local research institutions. Her research interests include devel-
opment aid and localisation of global governance.
Dominika Krois serves currently as the coordinator for OSCE affairs in
the European External Action Service. Prior to this, she represented the
EU in the UN Office and other International Organisations in Vienna
(2011–2015) and served as vice president of the Conferences of the
Parties to the UN Crime and Corruption Conventions and UN expert on
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

corruption (2006–2011). Earlier in her career, she gained experience


with the EU integration process, legal affairs, and the bilateral diplo-
macy. Dr Krois is a lawyer, and has graduated from the Jagiellonian
University in Cracow; her doctoral thesis focused on international
criminal law.
Nina Lutterjohann was, in 2018–2019, Project Coordinator and
Research Fellow at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict
and Violence at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. She holds an MA
double degree of the Erasmus Mundus Programme Euroculture and BA
in European Studies from Maastricht University, and has completed a
PhD at the University of St Andrews. Among previous appointments was
for a Public Affairs Consultancy in Brussels and was Advisor on Climate
and Energy Policy for the International Political Dialogue of a
German foundation. She was also Research Assistant and Academic
Organiser for the MA Programme Euroculture after completing a
traineeship at the European Commission in the Directorate-General
External Relations, with projects on the Black Sea region, Caucasus/
ENP, South-East Europe, and the EU’s Barents Cooperation. She
worked at the think tank Club de Madrid and the Permanent
Delegation of Germany to UNESCO in Paris.
Andreas Marazis is the Head of Research for Eastern Europe and Central
Asia at the European Neighbourhood Council (ENC). His research is
concerned with the post-Soviet space, particularly sociopolitical develop-
ments in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Andreas Marazis is also
affiliated researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and associate
researcher for EUCAM. He holds an MLitt in Middle East, Caucasus,
and Central Asian Security Studies from the University of St Andrews
(Scotland, UK) and an MA in Black Sea Cultural Studies from the
International Hellenic University (Thessaloniki, Greece).
Licínia Simão is researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) and
Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Economics
of the University of Coimbra (FEUC). She is currently acting as staff
member at the Office of the Minister of National Defense. Her
research interests include foreign policy, international security,
European foreign policy, and the post-Soviet space. Her most recent
publication is The EU’s Neighbourhood Policy towards the South Caucasus:
Expanding the European Security Community (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Shu Uchida is a guest researcher at the Osaka School of International


Public Policy, Graduate School, Osaka University, Japan, and a visiting
associate professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia, November
2018–present. Previously affiliations include Visiting Fellowships at
the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard
University, USA, and at the Strategic Research Center, Tbilisi,
Georgia. He also served as Attaché at the Embassy of Japan in
Georgia. Tbilisi, Georgia in 2011–2013. He is a Marie Curie Fellow
the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra,
Portugal.
Elena Zhirukhina is a senior researcher at the Institute of International
Relations in Prague and a research associate at the University of St
Andrews. Her work focuses on international cooperation and state strate-
gies towards violent non-state actors and their various illicit activities,
micro dynamics of irregular conflicts, and Russia, the Caucasus, and
Central Asia. She is involved in data-focused research and design/
management of regional N-large datasets on political violence.
Previously, she taught at the Academy of Public Administration
under the president of the Republic of Kazakhstan and held a Marie
Curie Fellowship at the University of St Andrews.
List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 The spectrum of balancing between the West and Russia in 2017 92
Fig. 5.1 A typology of perceived relative success and failure
(Author’s model) 101
Fig. 5.2 Timeline of concluded and non-(concluded) agreements in the
Georgia-Abkhazia conflict (Author’s timeline) 108
Fig. 5.3 Timeline of concluded and non-(concluded) agreements in the
Moldova-Transnistria conflict (Author’s timeline) 109

xiii
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Components and dimensions of EU security actorness 33


Table 2.2 Mapping major steps in EU relations with EaP countries 41
Table 4.1 Issues in bilateral relationship, principal US constituencies,
factors in policy approach 90
Table 7.1 Minsk II: Points and state of implementation 159
Table 10.1 Key bilateral agreements governing relations of Central Asian
states with the EU 228

xv
Fig. 1 Map of European Union and Eastern Partnership countries, including the
United Kingdom at the time of finalisation of publication, prior to Brexit
CHAPTER 1

The Price and Possibilities of Going East?


The European Union and Wider Europe,
the European Neighbourhood
and the Eastern Partnership

Rick Fawn

It all began so well. The then European Community’s first enlargement


after the 1989 revolutions in socialist Eastern Europe was one seamlessly
coterminous with German unification: as the two Cold War-era Germanies
fused on 3 October 1990, so the European Community inched slightly
eastwards. European neutrals joined in 1995, and the admission of Austria,
and especially of Sweden and Finland, brought the European Union (EU)
into north-eastern Europe. Its borders then extended along Russia’s, at
that point still uncontroversially, by over 1300 kilometres.
Pressing demands from post-communist countries eventually led to the
2004 ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004. Eight post-communist countries
entered the Union, along with Malta and Cyprus, in the Mediterranean.
Already then the EU’s borders had moved decidedly eastwards, encoun-
tering post-Soviet ones and making new policy challenges. Belarus, still
the political pariah of Europe, the only one of 47 European countries to

R. Fawn (*)
School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
e-mail: rick.fawn@st-andrews.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2020 3


R. Fawn (ed.), Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern
Flanks, New Security Challenges,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26937-1_1
4 R. FAWN

be outside of the Council of Europe, now bordered the EU on two sides,


through Lithuania and Poland. Ukraine, Europe’s second largest country
geographically, and with immense potential but with severely stunted
reforms and arguably a divided population, became immediately adjacent
to the EU through the Union’s new eastern frontiers of Poland, Slovakia
and Hungary.
The entry of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 further projected the EU,
this time in a south-eastern direction, into the Black Sea region, giving it
over 600 kilometres of coastline. The new frontiers obliged the EU to face
an impoverished and conflict-ridden Moldova, gave it additional borders
with Ukraine and had it facing across the Black Sea to Russia, Turkey
(already sharing frontiers with Greece) and Georgia. In physically moving
itself East, and despite its claims to enhanced prowess and attractiveness,
the EU engages a very different eastern flank now than it did when it was
still the European Community and from when it slowly embarked on even
the idea of enlargement in the early post–Cold War era. This book is about
those new challenges. Its concerns are threefold: about the EU; the mul-
tiplicity of actors and security issues along its eastern borders; and the
interactions between the EU and those neighbours. The book is also nec-
essarily about other actors that interact with the EU and the states and
conflicts in the EU’s eastern flanks: the United States and the Russian
Federation.
One immediate assumption of the EU that was upended in engaging
with its eastern flanks was that this region, especially the immediately adja-
cent post-Soviet states, would respond to the EU’s requests, encourage-
ments and expectations and would also do so uniformly. Not only did that
assumption not materialise, but the EU also now confronts very different
and differentiated challenges and threats from a region which it presumed
might willingly refashion itself in the EU’s image. Such thinking was not
fanciful but rooted in planning and resulted in the Eastern Partnership
(EaP). Presented to the EU’s General Affairs and External Relations
Council in Brussels on 26 May 2008 and launched on 7 May 2009 in
Prague, the EU believed that the EaP had to, and could, transform its new
immediate neighbours. Doing so would provide stability for both those
countries domestically and, in turn, for the EU.
More than a decade since the EaP’s launch, the outcome remains very
different than anticipated.1 To be sure, there are some successes, as the

Growing literature on the EU and the EaP includes: Dimitris Bouris and Tobias
1

Schumacher, The Revised European Neighbourhood Policy: Continuity and Change in EU


1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 5

volume recognises. However, the EU’s East generates more chaos and
catastrophe than could possibly be foreseen in 2009, which since
then include rejections of the EU, revolution, conflict stalemates, and
‘hybrid war’ and territorial annexations. This is a horrific agenda, not least
for an organisation largely predicated on peaceable aims and instruments.
Nevertheless, the EU needs more than ever to recognise and deploy the
values and the tools available to it for the security threats emanating from
and beyond its eastern borders. A key starting point involves not merely
identifying threats but reasserting and refocusing existing EU capacities
and suggesting new ones, to address threats and achieve greater stability.
This volume seeks to determine the nature of the security challenges to
the EU emanating from its eastern flank, to reassess EU capacities in light
of these challenges and to offer ways forward.
Although the EU faces various challenges, including internal ones,
those identified in the present book are unlikely to dissipate in coming
years, or even decades. To be sure, the unique fallout from the United
Kingdom’s Brexit from the EU, whatever form that eventually takes, will
change the shape of both unions.2 Issues within the EU will continue to
arise and surprise. Cognates to or successors of the Eurozone crisis, anti-
­EU sentiments among populist movements, divisions between north and
south, or east and west, within the Union remain likely.
Despite these internal challenges, the EU continues to see itself as a
global actor. Within that ambition the EU has particularly identified as a
central focus its Eastern Partnership with the six post-Soviet states of
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In addition
to that, new, multifaceted and deeply challenging issues now emanate
from that region, and from other countries and phenomena integrally
linked to them, including Turkey, Russia, and post-Soviet Central Asia.
The external threats to the EU recognised in the volume thus present
fundamental security challenges and call for both the renewed application
of EU capacities and also for new ones. Although 2015 provoked crisis
within the EU over dealing with an influx at the historic highpoint of

Foreign Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Licinia Simão, The EU’s
Neighbourhood Policy towards the South Caucasus (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018);
and Elena Korosteleva, The European Union and its Eastern Neighbours: Towards a More
Ambitious Partnership? (London: Routledge, 2012).
2
On the challenge of Brexit to the EU’s Global Strategy, see for example, Sven Biscop ‘All
or Nothing? The EU Global Strategy and Defence Policy after the Brexit’, Contemporary
Security Policy, 37:3 (2016), 431–445.
6 R. FAWN

1,322,800 asylum seekers,3 the prospects of other influxes remain, as does


potential societal disquiet and possibly new political tensions within the
EU over compulsory relocation quotas. That is but one dimension. In
attempting to secure its borders through delicate measures such as the six
very different post-Soviet states in the EaP, one of the EU’s most ambi-
tious foreign relations, it has ironically contributed to making some of its
frontiers not only less secure but also the scenes of open violence and
unilateral territorial rearrangement.
In short, Brussels faces, and will continue to face, multiple crises, or
even ‘poly-crises’.4 That may be the business of EU affairs. But the security
issues, and their geographic origins, addressed here are likely to either
endure even in their present forms, such as conflicts in post-Soviet
European states, or, even in the best circumstances, still provide lasting
challenges.
This chapter first establishes how the EU defined itself since 2016 as
being a global actor, the priorities it has assigned to itself, and how also
those proclaimed priorities provide a means to assess EU successes. The
chapter then explains different geographical terminologies that the EU
has adopted and, through that, offers a rationale for the countries and
regions covered in this volume. Finally, the chapter identifies the chal-
lenges that the EU faces in its East, and does through an explanation of
the choice and the interlinkages between the methods and the issues
that it uses.

The EU and Global Ambitions


In addition to its expansion east- and south-eastwards and its intensified
engagement with proximate post-Soviet states, the EU pronounced itself
to be a global actor. This heightened ambition coincided with, and in
some regards contributed to or even sparked, some of the crises in this
immediate neighbourhood, migrant flows across the Mediterranean not-
withstanding. The EU itself provides a statement both of its political aspi-
rations and of its capacities, through its indicatively entitled A Global
Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS),

3
Eurostat, Asylum statistics, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Asylum_statistics.
4
See for example, Richard Youngs, Europe Reset: New Directions for the EU (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2017).
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 7

launched in 2016. Evaluating the EUGS gives a self-declared framework


to identify and analyse the EU’s approach and capacity for dealing with
challenges to its east.
Within the EU’s global ambitions is dissemination of what it deems to
be constituent values that are also universal.5 Where the EC’s earlier trade
agreements and development cooperation were notably apolitical, after
1992 and the Treaty of Maastricht, democracy promotion was introduced
to all of its external endeavours.6 The promotion of this world view was
further brought into practical policy with the launch of the EUGS. At
almost the same time, in the preceding year, the EU reviewed its then six-­
year-­old key strategy towards the EaP, and these two important docu-
ments are almost inseparable. The principles, capabilities and priorities
that the EU uses to define itself as a global actor are perhaps no more
germane for its eastern flanks than anywhere else. They provide a self-­
declared framework of analysis for challenges and threats emanating from
the EU’s east.
The EUGS itself was a watershed for the EU, eliciting observer com-
ments such as ‘In terms of diplomacy, the new EUGS is an important
document at a significant moment in the EU’s history. It is not simply the
product of a standard bureaucratic exercise, but a reminder of the vast
range of activities in which the EU already actively engages’.7
The five priorities of the EU’s Global Strategy indicate the centrality of
the themes and regions that are addressed in this volume, some implicitly,
others explicitly. These are: ‘The Security of our [the European] Union’;
‘State and Societal Resilience’; ‘An Integrated Approach to Conflicts and
Crises’; ‘Cooperative Regional Orders’; and ‘Global Governance for the
21st Century’.8

5
Apart from literature on transforming accession or candidate countries, the literature on
EU conflict resolution capacities specifically is now considerable. Recent works include
Thomas Diez and Nathalie Tocci (eds), The EU, Promoting Regional Integration, and
Conflict Resolution (Palgrave, 2017).
6
An overview of the transformation of democracy promotion is given, for example, in
Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘EU Democracy Promotion in the
Neighbourhood: From Leverage to Governance?’, in Sandra Lavenex and Frank
Schimmelfennig (eds), Democracy Promotion in the EU’s Neighbourhood: From Leverage to
Governance? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), esp. pp. 1–2.
7
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, ‘The EU Global Strategy and Diplomacy’, Contemporary Security
Policy (Vol. 37, No. 3, 2016), p. 402.
8
These can be found on ‘Priorities of the EU Global Strategy’, available at: http://europa.
eu/globalstrategy/en/priorities-eu-global-strategy.
8 R. FAWN

While the first priority deals with security threats such as economic vol-
atility, climate change and energy insecurity, it also includes fighting ter-
rorism and hybrid threats. Meant more broadly than in that instance, the
EU’s definition of ‘hybrid threats’ can include Russian action in Ukraine;
hybrid threats nevertheless apply in that case and were defined as ‘conven-
tional and unconventional methods that can be used in a coordinated
manner by state and non-state actors while remaining below the threshold
of formally declared warfare. The objective is not only to cause direct
damage and exploit vulnerabilities, but also to destabilise societies and cre-
ate ambiguity to hinder decision-making’.9
The Strategy’s second priority, state and societal resilience, offers sup-
port to the EU’s Eastern and Southern state neighbours, to develop and
enhance domestic good governance and accountable institutions, and
support and engage with civil society. Geographically, the priority was also
defined as being from Central Asia in the East to Central Africa in the
South, and these themes remain of particular salience to post-Soviet poli-
ties. This dimension also includes post-conflict rehabilitation, in order to
make conflict-affected areas socio-economically stronger. The region, as
noted in the previous section, that we cover brings multiple conflicts in
Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and, indeed, also of the North Caucasus
within the Russian Federation.
In this second priority, the EU makes a significant claim of its capacities
for peacebuilding, declaring:

The EU engages in a practical and principled way in peacebuilding. Human


security is at the core of all our actions and wherever we can we act early to
prevent conflict and save precious human lives. We also stay engaged in the
aftermath of conflict to ensure that peace is deeply rooted in society.

Such engagement is far more advanced in the Western Balkans than in


the space of the Eastern Partnership.10 While doubts remain about inter-
ethnic harmony, as in Bosnia, or statehood itself remains contested, as
between Kosovo/a and Serbia, open conflict no longer exists and most

9
European Commission, ‘Security: EU strengthens response to hybrid threats’, Brussels,
6 April 2016, which is hyperlinked into the Global Strategy. Available at: http://europa.eu/
rapid/press-release_IP-16-1227_en.htm.
10
Recent case-based comparison is offered in Marek Neuman (ed.), Democracy Promotion
and the Normative Power Europe Framework: The European Union in South Eastern Europe,
Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (Springer, 2018).
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 9

polities have regularised, fully contested elections. By contrast, the EaP


countries rank at best as partially free to outright dictatorship, and five face
conflicts that, in addition to enormous human costs, involve unresolved
territorial issues. The EU’s status and authority are shown to be limited on
the ground; its rapid and innovative measure to agree and deploy its
Monitoring Mission to Georgia after the 2008 war, its impressively fast
establishment and fast deployment notwithstanding, remains barred by
Russia from entry to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.11
The ‘State and Societal Resilience’ priority sounds promising, and is
certainly relevant for the EU’s eastern flanks. Its third priority, ‘An
Integrated Approach to Conflicts and Crises’, sets up the EU to be assessed
as to how well it handles exactly those challenges of conflict and crisis.
The fourth priority, of ‘Cooperation Regional Authority’, would like-
wise be welcome and necessary for the EaP states, and also for countries
that interconnect with them, such as Turkey, Russia and post-Soviet
Central Asia. The promise, as the EUGS states, is as immense as it is
auspicious:

Regional governance makes it easier to manage security concerns, reap eco-


nomic gains, and project influence. This is the rationale for the EU’s own
peace and development. We work with regional organisations around the
world because we are stronger when we act together.

How the EU works with other regional organisations towards its east-
ern flank is an increasingly important dimension. While the EU, for exam-
ple, has supported the values and practices of the Council of Europe, and
of the 57 participating state Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), it encounters resistance in those forums from Russia and
other post-Soviet states. The EU has intensified cooperation with the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), to the point as of the 2016
NATO Warsaw Summit of being ‘unprecedented’,12 but faces increased
resistance to its values by Moscow-led regional cooperation initiatives. Far

11
For accounts of the EUMM, see Maria Raquel Freire and Lícinia Simão, ‘The EU’s
security actorness: the case of EUMM in Georgia’, European Security Vol. 22, No. 4 (2013),
pp. 464–477; and Richard G. Whitman and Stefan Wolff, ‘The EU as a conflict manager?
The case of Georgia and its implications’, International Affairs Vol. 86, No. 1 (2010),
pp. 87–107.
12
Dominika Krois, in this volume. See the Joint declaration by the President of the European
Council, the President of the European Commission, and the Secretary General of the North
10 R. FAWN

from offering prospects for cooperation with the EU, Eurasian regional
formations increasingly frame themselves in contradistinction to the EU,
and have arguably outwardly resisted what they see as the EU’s encroach-
ment on their territories and economic systems. While Moscow raised no
objections to EU enlargements (unlike those of NATO, against which
Moscow protested), it also gave a ‘flat rejection’ to its own inclusion in the
European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). That refusal was seen already as
an act of ‘great significance’, in a growing divide between the Russian
Federation and the EU.13 (Four EU-Russia Common Spaces were created
instead, arguably giving Moscow a pre-eminent status among Soviet suc-
cessor states in its relations with the EU.) But the EU-Russia divide was
intensified with the launch of the EaP, which Russian officials framed as an
unacceptable zero-sum game imposed on countries to which it had
extremely deep and multifaceted connections.
The presumption of cooperation extends to the EUGS’s fifth priority,
that of Global Governance for the Twenty-First Century. The values con-
tained in that priority are central to EU initiatives generally, ranging from
women’s empowerment to meeting the Millennium Development goals.
In that respect, the fifth priority speaks more generally to the EU’s east
than to other priorities. And that might be an appropriate juncture at
which to assess how the EU has framed geographically its neighbourhood
generally; its conception of and for the rest of ‘Europe’, more particularly;
and then the EaP and related countries, specifically.

Wider Europe, the ENP and the EaP: Situating


Different ‘Europes’ and Their Possible Parts
The EU has created multiple terms for states around it. Those definitions
not only are essential in themselves but also help to frame analyses of the
threats to the EU. Three key terms apply: Wider Europe, the European
Neighbourhood and the Eastern Partnership. Their differences, in terms
of both EU policy and analysis, in turn help to inform this book’s identi-
fication of issues and case studies.

Atlantic Treaty Organization, 8 July 2016, available at: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/


natohq/official_texts_133163.htm.
13
A good contemporary account is given in Hiski Haukkala, ‘Russian Reactions to the
European Neighbourhood Policy’, Problems of Post-Communism (September/October
2008), pp. 40–48; quotation at p. 41.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 11

The term ‘Wider Europe’, not yet introduced in this discussion, was
generated by the European Commission on 11 March 2003, referring to
the principles of its relations with the Russian Federation, with what it
called the Western New Independent States (of the former Soviet Union),
and with the Southern Mediterranean countries.14 National foreign minis-
tries responded by creating sections and staffs dedicated to it. Similarly
research and think tank institutes responded, so that, for example, the
European Council on Foreign Relations opened and still runs a dedicated
‘Wider Europe’ programme. ‘Wider Europe’ derived substantially from the
twofold implications of the EU’s ‘big bang’ enlargement, agreed in 2002
and effective from 1 May 2004. Those joining, as said, brought the EU
further east and increased the EU’s physical presence in the Mediterranean.
This expansion potentially had enormous consequences not just for the
EU’s new neighbours, but for the Union itself. As Elisabeth Johansson-­
Nogués asserts, ‘the destabilisation of the eastern and southern neigh-
bourhood’ is not merely issues in themselves, but also have consequences
that ‘upset the narrative of the European integration and arguably, on a
deeper level, the EU’s ontological security’, that is also how it thinks and
defines itself and its security.15
While in less circulation now, the term Wider Europe continues in
usage and embraces 54 countries: the EU itself (28, retaining in that num-
ber the United Kingdom); 5 EU candidate countries; 3 potential candi-
date countries; 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa,
extending also inland to Mauritania; as well as Russia and 6 European
post-Soviet states. Already in its early stages of launch, the EU’s handling
of ‘Wider Europe’ was seen to be ‘oscillating between an inclusionary and
exclusionary approach’ to those many countries.16 Thus, for example, in
one usage by Russia specialist Richard Sakwa we can read that the
‘European Union and its expansive “wider Europe” agenda is really the
only game in town’. He continues with an important ‘if’, but nevertheless
suggests the potential consequences of such a project: ‘If the latter, then

14
Wider Europe—Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and
Southern Neighbours (Brussels, 11 March 2003), available at: http://eeas.europa.eu/
archives/docs/enp/pdf/pdf/com03_104_en.pdf.
15
Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués, ‘The EU’s ontological (in)security: Stabilising the ENP
area … and the EU-self?’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 53, No. 4 (2018), p. 529.
16
Sandra Lavenex, ‘EU External Governance in “Wider Europe,”’ Journal of European
Public Policy 11:4 (2004), pp. 680–700.
12 R. FAWN

those left outside are faced with few choices but to adapt or be excoriated.’17
The European Commission states that it aims to ‘respond efficiently to
global challenges’ and it immediately follows those challenges with specific
reference to ‘the crises in its neighbourhood’.18 Despite originally having
been banded together in ‘Wider Europe’, the Mediterranean and North
Africa, the southern neighbourhood, has been treated and studied differ-
ently from the eastern neighbourhood.19
With the EU’s enlargement to the east and south having been declared
in 2002, and set to occur in 2004, the European Commission outlined in
March 2003 its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Tighter in both
the number of members and the intensity of relations with the EU than in
the ‘Wider Europe’ programme, the ENP nevertheless remained geo-
graphically expansive, and embracing hugely varied societies, economies
and polities. At a meeting of 12–13 December 2003, the European
Council adopted the European Security Strategy, which was declared to
provide the conceptual framework for the Common Foreign and Security
Policy, including what would later become the Common Security and
Defence Policy (CSDP). It contained a section on ‘Regional Conflicts’
and further illustrated the EU’s global outlook. The following conflicts
were mentioned: Kashmir, between India and Pakistan; the Great Lakes
Region of Central Africa; the Korean Peninsula, which remains a poten-
tially volatile flashpoint that involves major powers, including the United
States and China; and the Middle East.
The EU’s immediate proximity, the section entitled ‘Building Security
in our Neighbourhood’, referred to the Balkans, but not, notably, to the
post-Soviet space. A severe competition of competing regionalisms could
be said to have begun between Brussels and Moscow over the EaP
countries.20
17
Richard Sakwa ‘Letter to the Editor’, Europe-Asia Studies, 68:6 (2016), p. 1103.
18
European Commission, ‘A stronger global actor: Bringing together the tools of Europe’s
external action’, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/stronger-global-
actor_en.
19
Among earlier works of the EU and the southern dimension are Federica Bicchi,
European Foreign Policy Making Toward the Mediterranean (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008).
20
An example of stark identification of such regional competition can be the following:
‘The EU put pressure on the various countries to enter into closer institutional and economic
links with the EU and not with Russia…. Russia explicitly warned countries like Georgia,
Moldova and Ukraine that it would be a mistake to seek closer ties with the EU and it threat-
ened with potential counter-reactions against countries that would opt for the EU.’ Stephan
Keukeleire and Irina Petrova, ‘The European Union, the Eastern Neighbourhood and
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 13

The EU remains very positive of the ENP, writing, for example, in


2011 that ‘since its inception in 2004, the ENP has promoted a variety of
important initiatives, particularly on the trade and economic front, which
have allowed the EU and its neighbours to develop stronger relationships
in virtually all policy fields, from energy to education, from transport to
research’.21 Nevertheless, the EU’s east was not uniformly responsive to
the EU’s offers of assistance, especially in terms of wholesale domestic
political-economic reforms; more importantly, the areas produced crises of
its own, which affected the EU and challenged the abilities of its primary
instruments of influence to function.
As scholar-foreign policy adviser to the then-Italy’s foreign minis-
ter Federica Mogherini, Nathalie Tocci summarised of her policymaking
experience regarding the EU, the Union’s political leaders had ‘to con-
stantly jump from one crisis to the next’. Consequently, she noted ‘A strat-
egy would give direction’.22 In ‘Wider Europe’, the ENP and especially
the EaP, the EU believed it had ‘strategy’. Its own actions, particularly
through the EaP, and developments within the EU’s eastern neighbours
tested strategy and demanded response. We turn next to how those chal-
lenges could be identified and addressed.

How and Why to Analyse the EU’s Eastern Flanks


Having given appreciation of the geographic scopes of the EU’s terminol-
ogy for its surrounding countries and regions, this volume contends that
the scope is to the EU’s south and east. It takes a broader approach than
the EaP, both arguing for necessary connections to, and also identifying
the EU’s own recognition of interlinkages with countries, regions and
security issues that go physically beyond the EaP countries.
Consequently, the EU’s eastern flank also means the countries of the
former Soviet Union and Turkey. Benefit may come from pausing to con-

Russia: Competing Regionalisms’ in Mario Telò (ed.), European Union and New Regionalism:
Competing Regionalism and Global Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era (Routledge, 2016),
p. 263.
21
Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic
and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. A new response to a changing
Neighbourhood (May 2011), available at: https://ec.europa.eu/research/iscp/pdf/policy/
com_2011_303.pdf.
22
Nathalie Tocci, ‘The Making of the EU Global Strategy,’ Contemporary Security Policy
37: 3 (2016), p. 461.
14 R. FAWN

sider the place of the Western Balkans as a region with a distinctive dynamic
with the EU and arguably, as suggested above, deeply accepting of the
Union’s influence. A striking difference of course is that several Western
Balkan countries are in accession negotiations with the EU. Four Western
Balkan countries are defined as candidate countries for membership:
Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia/the Republic of
North Macedonia23; Montenegro; and Serbia. The latter two have begun
accession negotiations. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo (by that
name) are considered as potential candidates. Croatia, after surrendering
one indicted war criminal, acceded to the Union already in 2013. The
European Commission, at a minimum, pronounced that ‘All Western
Balkans [countries] have the chance to move forward on their respective
European paths’. The EaP, while demanding almost similar domestic
reforms, rules out EU membership.
To be sure, some Western Balkan countries will continue to prove chal-
lenging for the success of EU influence. Even so, the EU’s proximity,
effectively surrounding the Western Balkans, the small demographics of
Western Balkans countries (the largest population is Serbia’s, at under
nine million) and the attractiveness of their wealthy markets, and access to
higher education and massive assistance programmes ensure preponderant
influence. The EU has long referred to the whole of the Western Balkans
as having ‘a clear EU perspective’.24 That clearly cannot be, and it is not
said of the EaP countries, let alone of the larger post-Soviet space. By fur-
ther contrast, Wider Europe presents the EU with divergent geographic
challenges, which includes Russia, the former Soviet Union more broadly,
and Turkey, the only one of these countries to have entered into accession
negotiations with the EU, a process that began before any of the other
accession negotiations mentioned here. The focus in this collection is on
the EaP countries and others that interconnect with them or with EU aims
towards them. As EU foreign relations analyst Michael E. Smith observed,

23
The European Commission began backdating its documentation with this country to
include reference to the new country name that was agreed between Skopje and Athens on
12 February 2019. Commission webpages now write, for example, that ‘The Republic of
North Macedonia’s application for EU membership was submitted on 26 February 2004’,
even though that name was not in use at the time. See https://www.consilium.europa.eu/
en/policies/enlargement/republic-north-macedonia/, last current at 26 February 2019.
24
European Commission, Directorate-General for Trade, Regions: Western Balkans, avail-
able at: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/bi-lateral-relations, accessed 9
August 2012.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 15

‘the EU cannot devote equal attention to all aspects’ of its ambitious


Global Strategy. Consequently, ‘the EU’s strategic priority must involve
stabilizing its own neighbourhood’.25 In this way the eastern flank remains
the key geographic area for the EU. The EU’s east, however, is not only
the Union’s key geographic area of concern, but the region also provides
a multiplicity of security challenges that challenge the EU’s capacities.

The EU’s Eastern Security Challenges


and the Rationale and Scope of This Volume

What the volume shows also is the range of security challenges that the
EU faces from its east. These are many, and some are not specifically or
uniquely regional but more extensive, or even global, such as climate
change. Nevertheless, the EU’s east, as outlined above, presents immedi-
ate and unavoidable challenges, and some of which arguably have arisen
because of EU policies.
The volume begins with analysis of the European Union itself, the
threats and challenges that it faces, and its capacities towards its eastern
flanks. The necessary starting place is to ask how EU’s regional security
role in Europe has evolved and why, and particularly how these changes
are reflected in the conceptual design of its vicinity policy. In Chap. 2,
Maria Raquel Freire and Licínia Simão analyse specifically the Eastern
dimension of the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) by focusing on the
EU’s institutional discourse. They map the points of inflection and adjust-
ments to the ENP’s overall conceptualisation as a regional security policy.
The chapter does so by testing potential explanations regarding the rea-
sons for and the directions of these shifts in EU policy. It contends that
arguments regarding path dependency provide powerful explanations for
the early design of the ENP’s approach to regional security. It then out-
lines both as an understanding of the EU as an actor in its neighbourhood
and as a further conceptual framework for this volume, by analysing the
evolving debates, views and approaches to the ENP and particularly the
EaP. It identifies the EaP’s articulation with major EU policy documents,
including the 2016 Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and
Security Policy, to map and explain the most important shifts in the con-

25
Michael E. Smith, ‘Implementing the Global Strategy where it matters most: The EU’s
credibility deficit and the European neighbourhood’, Contemporary Security Policy, 37:3,
2016, p. 446, quoting the abstract.
16 R. FAWN

ceptualisation of the EU’s regional security role beyond enlargement. It


further provides an overview of the most significant challenges and poten-
tial avenues for further development of the EU’s Eastern Partnership,
which are also examined in greater detail in subsequent chapters.
For the EU, however, an unavoidable factor in its expression of influ-
ence into its eastern flank is Russia. The volume’s third chapter, by Rick
Fawn, employs the metaphor of Russia having not merely a double-headed
eagle, but two doubled-headed eagles, on its coat of arms to present two
pairs of contradictory practices in Russian foreign policy that all confound
the EU’s tool box.
The arguments include that Russia has certain legitimate concerns but
it expresses them in a manner that first created an ideational security
dilemma, and then, second, one that has taken on physical manifestations
of aggression. The ideational security dilemma arose from a contest over
the fundamental meaning of core values, such as human rights, democracy
and the role of law. From that also follows the place and roles of interna-
tional actors, both intergovernmental and international non-­governmental,
within states and their societies. The tangible manifestations include
Russia’s recognition as independent states of territories belonging to oth-
erwise fully sovereign states and the annexation of other territory. Moscow
employs the mechanisms of legitimation, such as referendums, and mor-
ally justified language from Responsibility to Protect, even to the point of
preventing genocide.26 The book, both in Chap. 3 and, then, indicative of
the scope of contemporary Russian challenges to EU’s values, also in sev-
eral other cases, addresses the fundamental dilemma of a Russia that simul-
taneously flouts international laws and norms and yet sees itself as a
protector of precisely those.27
The difficulty for the EU remains that Russia operates on a basis of dif-
ferent values yet sees them as at least equally valid to those of the
EU. Indeed, Russia rejects the EU’s values system to the point of hostility
that that bilateral relationship, irrespective of other former Soviet coun-

26
Contending justifications for the 2008 war and given, for example, in Rick Fawn and
Robert Nalbandov, ‘The Difficulties of Knowing the Start of War in the Information Age:
Russia, Georgia and the War over South Ossetia, August 2008’, European Security, Vol. 21,
No. 1 (March 2012), pp. 57–91.
27
A highly informative study remains Roy Allison, Russia, the West, and Military
Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2013). On human rights, see especially Tuomas
Forsberg and Hiski Haukkala, The European Union and Russia (London: Palgrave, 2016).
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 17

tries’ ambitions, went from ‘courtship to confrontation’.28 Additionally


problematic, however, is that while Russia had originally accepted the
enlargement of the EU to post-communist countries (while resisting the
same of NATO), Moscow came to see the EaP as a direct threat not only
to its regional interests but possibly even to regime stability itself.
Unfortunately, the conclusion is that the gulf of misunderstanding is so
great as currently to be unrepairable. That said, issues and dynamics out-
side Europe allow and still require cooperation, and these are a means to
address Russia’s persistent need for the self-satisfaction of being consid-
ered to be, if not a global power, then at least a major and certainly a
regional power.
That said, of course, the EU does not operate alone. Perhaps ironically,
some similarities exist between Russian and US world views. As Gerard
Toal contends, ‘It is a striking fact that, in the heat of the crises generated
by Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, both Russian and U.S. geo-
political culture drew upon the same archetypal narratives to frame the
meaning of crises for their populations.’ But such ‘structurally similar
affective storylines’ only heighten differences between the United States
and Russia, rather than facilitating any mutual comprehension.29 Brussels
and Washington continue to have considerable commonality in their
views, and interests, in addressing Russia.
In Chap. 4, Jason Bruder shows how, despite some divergence under
the Trump Administration in other areas, US foreign policy remains highly
supportive of the EU’s approach to the EaP countries and, thus, also of
Brussels’ approach to Moscow over relations with these post-Soviet coun-
tries. And despite seeming personal chemistry between Trump and
President Putin, the Trump Administration’s specific policies towards
Russia have been noted to be more strict, not less, than that of the preced-
ing Obama Administration.30 Additionally, EU cooperation with NATO

28
Anna-Sophie Maass, EU-Russia Relations, 1999–2015: From Courtship to Confrontation
(London: Routledge, 2016).
29
Gerard Toal, Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus
(Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 275.
30
In a news account of Scotland-born Russia adviser to Trump, Fiona Hill, commented
more widely: ‘Yet Hill and her peers have managed to craft a Russia policy that is, by any
measure—sanctions, expulsions, military buildup—tougher than that of the Obama admin-
istration. Trump has not always championed this approach, but he apparently hasn’t hin-
dered Hill and her colleagues on the National Security Council or in the State Department
from doing their work. He has, in effect, sanctioned a Russia policy that is entirely at odds
18 R. FAWN

has intensified despite the lack of perfect symmetry of country member-


ship, particularly in the scope of the Union’s Global Strategy document.
In turn, and in contradistinction to Moscow’s previous unwary attitude
towards the EU, its National Security Concept now defines both NATO
and the EU as threats to it.31
It is in this context of differences over political values, and even open
confrontation, between the EU and Russia that three subsequent chapters
then turn to address specific issue areas. Five of the six EaP countries have
conflicts over territory. Only the Karabakh conflict, between Armenia and
Azerbaijan (although the former often maintains that it is not party to that
conflict, even as it attends international mediation) is one where Russian
military involvement, though very significant, remains indirect (and that
as an arms supplier to both countries, in contravention of an international
embargo, and despite Russia being a co-chair of the Minsk Group plat-
form for conflict mediation). By contrast, in 2008, with a range of
­justifications, Russia recognised as independent states Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, and militarily reinforces them to make both diplomatic and mili-
tary resistance by Georgia ever more difficult. Moldova has since the early
1990s de facto lost control of its eastern territory of Transdnistria. And
although the newly independent Ukraine already faced risks to its territo-
rial integrity in the 1990s, that only materialised by the Russian annexa-
tion of Crimea and what, despite Muscovite counter-claims of
non-involvement, surely is a simmering war in eastern Ukraine where
Kyiv’s authority is broken.
These conflicts in EaP countries both show the importance to the EU
of addressing these crises, but also that the EU does not act alone. Nina
Lutterjohann illustrates in Chap. 5, much how the EU is a partner, some-
times even in what could be called junior roles, in dealing with post-­Soviet

with his own pronouncement.’ Alexander Nazaryan, ‘Fiona Hill, Trump’s top expert on
Russia, is quietly shaping a tougher U.S. policy’, Yahoo News, 25 September 2018, available
at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/fiona-hill-trumps-top-expert-russia-quietly-shaping-
tougher-u-s-policy-090025600.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw&guccounter=1.
31
Paragraph 61 refers to the ‘geopolitical expansion’ of both the EU and the NATO, and the
practices of both had led to a ‘serious crisis in the relations between Russia and the Western State’.
Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (approved by President of the Russian Federation
Vladimir Putin on November 30, 2016), citing the official English version, available at: http://
www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/official_documents/-/asset_publisher/CptICkB6BZ29/con-
tent/id/2542248?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_CptICkB6BZ29&_101_INSTANCE_
CptICkB6BZ29_languageId=en_GB.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 19

conflicts in Georgia and Moldova. The chapter, however, importantly


underlines, first, that the EU does not seek unilaterally to engage in con-
flict transformation and resolution in its Eastern Neighbourhood. Rather,
the EU supports peace-making efforts in tandem with the OSCE and
other actors, including individual states. The chapter’s second dimension
contends that, while the conflicts in Moldova and Georgia continue,
opportunities exist for conflict transformation, signalling positive roles for
the EU in these conflicts. Without so saying, the EU is extending its
regional cooperation priorities by the necessary cooperation with other
intergovernmental partners, particularly the OSCE, to confront these fun-
damental challenges to its EaP project.
In Chap. 6, Shu Uchida elaborates the analysis of EU capacities with an
intensive case study of EU policies towards Georgia, perhaps the most
willing of the EaP countries for absorbing EU practices into national law
and practice under the terms of the EaP. On the one hand, he concludes
from the Georgian case that Russian policies against the country have
pushed Georgia to seek Euro-Atlantic accession, making an even-more
willing adherent out of the country. However, Uchida warns from his on-­
ground work and unique interviews that despite even the signature of an
Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade
Agreement, Georgian patience for full EU membership may wear thin. He
finds grounds to compare that impatience with Turkey’s current malaise,
one that arises from decades of queuing for possible membership. The
chapter also provides a specific test case of what is developing as differen-
tiations of EU capacity to influence neighbouring countries, to the point
that that may take on what is becoming called elsewhere: ‘deep, deep-light
and shallow modes’ of such integration.32
Georgia also became a hallmark for pioneering security efforts by the
EU when it not only (through the French presidency of the European
Council) brokered a peace between Georgia and Russia in 2008, but also
deployed its multinational EU Monitoring Mission. On a larger level, the
move put the EU into high politics, even if with some ambiguity. As
Angela Stent commented, ‘Given the strained relationship between
Washington and Moscow, it was prudent to pass the responsibility for end-
ing the conflict to the French [in the role of the rotating presidency of the

32
See László Bruszt and Julia Langbein, ‘Varieties of dis-embedded liberalism. EU integra-
tion strategies in the Eastern peripheries of Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, 24: 2
(2017), pp. 297–315.
20 R. FAWN

EU], but some in Washington bristled at the idea that the United States
was now on the sidelines of conflict.’33
Some observers warned since the early 1990s that Ukraine faced both
disintegrative forces and Russian revisionism. This observation from 1994
reads appositely for events two decades later: ‘A Russian-Ukrainian conflict
arising from a crisis in Crimea … would endanger Russia’s already difficult
reforms, destroy the weak remaining chances for the survival of indepen-
dent Ukraine, and push Russia on the path of re-expansion in defense of an
illegitimate secessionist movement created by domestic stagnation in
Ukraine.’34 Foresight aside, Ukraine since 2013 has gone further than even
Moldova and Georgia in testing the EU’s capacities for response to conflict
in its eastern neighbourhood. But in addition to the challenges from
Ukraine, the EU can take comfort, even reassurance: parts of Ukrainian
society have given arguably the greatest demonstration of historical sup-
port for EU accession when, eventually, 800,000 people protested for EU
accession after the government of Viktor Yanukovych decided arbitrarily
not to accept EU trade and reform terms in November 2013.
The Ukraine crisis is arguably even a result of the normative power of
the EU that is seeking association so all-embracing that it made relations
with Russia mutually exclusive, or so it was perceived by Moscow.35 Two
decades ago, the academic analysis of the EU’s values system was that it
was capable of conflict prevention through its own example and the expor-
tation of its values: ‘The best form of conflict prevention is the spread of
the belief that violent conflict is counter-productive and that other priori-
ties and values are more important. The EU can legitimately hope to help
to promote this belief in the long term, and by a variety of means, many
indirect.’36 Normative influence now may have helped to provoke conflict.

33
Angela M. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First
Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 173.
34
Eugene B. Rumer, ‘Eurasia Letter: Will Ukraine Return to Russia?’ Foreign Policy, No.
96 (Autumn 1994), p. 143.
35
See Hiski Haukkala, ‘From Cooperative to Contested Europe? The Conflict in Ukraine
as the Culmination of a Long-Term Crisis in EU-Russian Relations,’ Journal of Contemporary
European Studies Vol. 40, No. 1 (2015), pp. 25–40. Richard Sakwa lays blame for the
Ukrainian crisis overwhelmingly on Western policies of failure towards Russia and the post–
Cold War European order. Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2016).
36
Christopher Hill, ‘The EU’s Capacity for Conflict Prevention’, European Foreign Affairs
Review 6:3 (2001), p. 333.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 21

In this regard, Chap. 7, by Andreas Marazis, identifies the severe diffi-


culties that the EU faces in working with Ukraine. Ukraine’s internal
political dynamics meant, briefly stated, that its commitment to engage-
ment with Brussels or Moscow was contingent on a particular leadership.
And while domestic Ukrainian politics should not be reduced to a simple
axis of Western-versus-Eastern voting patterns, nonetheless certain prefer-
ences have emerged. The EU may have been over-optimistic, or perhaps
naïve to expect that Ukraine would sign up to an Association Agreement
at the Vilnius Summit in December 2013, particularly after Armenia had
balked already in September 2013.
Not only was the EU faced with a demographically and geographically
enormous country whose government rejected EU values, but the spiral
of events that followed meant that the EU’s capacities became fundamen-
tally tested. Following the flight of President Viktor Yanukovych, demo-
cratically elected in 2010, Russia claimed to support both the democratic
rights of the population of Ukraine’s southern extremis, the Crimean
Peninsula, and the supposed threats to them by Ukraine’s new but illegiti-
mate and even ‘fascist’ government. The response, with the seeming legit-
imacy of a quick referendum, was for Crimea, and the city of Sebastopol,
to join the Russian Federation.
The EU protested but was materially powerless to confront this territo-
rial alteration, the first conducted unilaterally since the Second World War.
On 27 March 2014, the EU’s statement on Ukraine stated: ‘There is no
place for the use of force and coercion to change borders in Europe in the
twenty-first century. Russia’s actions are in clear breach of the Helsinki
principles.’ That same statement referred to European Council Conclusions
made a week earlier.37 EU capacities were shown to be even more mean-
ingless in the face of the low-intensity conflict that erupted in Donbass in
eastern Ukraine, and resulted in the de facto loss of territory, as well some
13,000 deaths and 1,500,000 people being displaced inside Ukraine and
(far less reported in the West) also into Russia. To be sure, the EU has
maintained a firm diplomatic stand objecting to the violence in and the
loss of Ukraine territory, has supported international mediation and has
also enacted sanctions against Russia. While Crimea and eastern Ukraine
on the one hand show the limits of EU influence and, on the other, Kyiv’s
enthusiasm for closer relations with the EU, culminating in the Association

37
See ‘EU Statement on Ukraine’, OSCE Permanent Council, 27 March, 2014, available
at: PC.DEL/346/14, 27 March 2014 https://www.osce.org/pc/117093?download=true.
22 R. FAWN

Agreement that entered into force on 1 September 2017, which demon-


strates the EU’s attractiveness.
But the EaP countries, of course, are not the only parties to the EU’s
eastern flank. And while the EU identified six post-Soviet states for its EaP,
it recognises itself that it, and those countries, also interact with other
former Soviet states. For that, and other reasons, this volume includes two
subregions and another region. The first subregion is Kurdistan, and its
implications for Iraq and also for Syria and Turkey. Conflicts in the Middle
East have intensified the geostrategic importance of Turkey to the EU,
which has been a long-standing accession country to the EU (and, indeed,
because it has queued so long, it was an accession country to the former
European Economic Community and the European Community). Apart
from accession considerations, Turkey interlinks with many of these other
countries and also both produces and absorbs for the EU some of the key
security issues with which the volume deals.
Turkey perhaps both presents a security issue and is a partner for the
EU to confront instability in that country, particularly in its minority
Kurdish areas, and also on its southern borders, including Iraq and Syria.
Ankara and Brussels have shared an ambiguous relationship, but security
and stability issues in that relationship could not be more graphically dem-
onstrated than through the migrant/refugee crisis on 2015 onwards. The
creation of the Turkey Refugee Facility in late 2015 had Turkey assist the
EU to stem the refugee flow, which the European Commission has put at
over 2.7 million people; in the following year, in 2016–2017, the EU
funded the Facility with €3 billion.38 Turkey has had long-standing issue
over its Kurdish minority—and with the violent disintegration of both
Iraq and Syria, the pan-regional fate of Kurds has intensified.
As Samuel Doveri Vesterbye argues in Chap. 8, even though Iraq has
not been included in the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP),
while Syria has been, he contends that the EU’s sets of foreign policy val-
ues are also applied to its southern neighbour. He concludes that any suc-
cessful EU strategy towards Iraq requires a serious reconsideration and
improvement of current relations with Ankara, including support from
Washington. Such relations are likely to depend on a series of complex and
domestic Turkish-European policy elements, ranging from the improve-

38
European Commission, ‘European Neighbourhood Policy And Enlargement
Negotiations: Turkey,’ available at: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/
countries/detailed-country-information/turkey_en.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 23

ment of the EU’s relations with the ruling Turkish Justice and Development
Party, a likely conundrum for EU values in the face of Turkish domestic
political developments, but also in mutually beneficial functional coopera-
tion, such as in a common energy project and a modernised Customs Union.
The second subregion addressed in the volume is the North Caucasus
of the Russian Federation, which raises another key security theme and
policy area, that of terrorism and counter-terrorism.
And that, then, raises issues of cooperation between the EU and the
Russian Federation. Elena Zhirukhina opens Chap. 9 with an apposite
quotation from President Vladimir Putin, deserving iteration here:

The consolidation of the world community is needed for an effective fight


against terrorism, extremism, neo-Nazism and other threats. We [Russia]
are open to such cooperation. Russia will always side with the forces of
peace, with those who opt for equal partnership, who reject wars as contrary
to the very essence of life and the nature of man.39

Before al-Qaeda’s prominence following the 9/11 attacks and that of


Islamic State (IS) since its 2014 seizure of territory in Syria and Iraq, the
EU and Russia faced similar, though separate, terrorist threats. Similar
because they predominantly came from subnational sources, that is, from
within countries and primarily against the government. Separate because
ETA, or the Irish Republican Army, and later for Russia the Chechen sepa-
ratists, at the time of their prime activity were not operating regionally, let
alone internationally. Al-Qaeda and IS of course changed that with their
ability to attack internationally.
While much literature exists on EU counter-terrorism efforts,40 Chap. 9
provides statistical analysis, and with fluency, both in the Russian calculus
of such and its own methods of how Russian strategies work—and their
limitations. Within that is the need for cooperation with the EU. That
spirit of such cooperation may be found also in other geographic areas,
perhaps particularly that of the EU’s Western Balkan Counter-Terrorism
Initiative. As Dominika Krois writes later in this collection, ‘Dealing with

39
Vladimir Putin, ‘Speech for the Victory Day Celebration on 9 of May 2017’, kremlin.ru,
9 May 2017, available at: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54467.
40
See, for example, Javier Argomaniz, Oldrich Bures and Christian Kaunert (eds), EU
Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence: A Critical Assessment (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017);
and Raphael Bossong, The Evolution of EU Counter-Terrorism: European Security Policy after
9/11 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).
24 R. FAWN

the jihadist threat and identifying opportunities for enhanced cooperation


remains the most important tool to coordinate counter-terrorism/counter
violent extremism activities in the Western Balkans region and a top prior-
ity for the EU.’41 Despite the myriad difficulties in Russian-EU relations,
counter-terrorism remains an area of established cooperation and high pri-
ority for both partners. The Russian Federation’s 2016 Foreign Policy
Concept noted the ‘potential for Russia and the EU to step up combined
efforts to counter terrorism, uncontrolled and illegal migration, as well as
organised crime, including human trafficking, illicit trafficking of narcotic
drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors, arms and explosives,
and cybercrime’.42 Scope for EU-Russian counterterrorism cooperation
extends also to the collapse of the Islamic State. Thousands of each of their
citizens have become fighters in Syria, and who may return home but are
possibly part of the mercurial and internationalised extremist network that
wreaks fear in the EU and Russia alike. As a popular work stated of the
collapsing Islamic State, ‘Many of the non-Arab foreign fighters attempted
to return to their home countries in Europe and the Central Asian states,
all of which look destined to be plagued by violent Islamism for years
to come.’43
Moving further east from Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and from the North
Caucasus, the volume contends that post-Soviet Central Asia both con-
nects to other regional consideration of the EU and demonstrates how the
EU projects its values. Indeed, post-Soviet Central Asia states were
included in wider policies and programmes of the EC/EU in the 1990s
through some of the major outreach such as Partnership and Co-operation
Agreements (PCAs) and Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of
Independent States (TACIS).44 Of the 2015 appointment of the EUSR for
Central Asia, the European External Action Service (EEAS) wrote that it
‘shows the EU’s continued cooperation with Central Asia, ensuring strong

41
Dominika Krois, ‘Reflections on How the EU is Handling Threats to Stability in Wider
Europe’, in this volume.
42
Paragraph 64, available at: http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/official_docu-
ments/-/asset_publisher/CptICkB6BZ29/content/id/2542248?p_p_id=
101_INSTANCE_CptICkB6BZ29&_101_INSTANCE_CptICkB6BZ29_languageId=
en_GB.
43
Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography (London: Elliott and Thompson, 2015), p. 161.
44
For an overview, see Laure Delcour, Shaping the Post-Soviet Space? EU Policies and
Approaches to Region-Building (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), especially Ch. 2, ‘The EU: A
Latecomer in Central Asia’s Great Game’.
1 THE PRICE AND POSSIBILITIES OF GOING EAST? THE EUROPEAN UNION… 25

presence in our engagement on key issues of mutual interest including the


rule of law, security, energy, water, education and human rights.’45
The EU influence is less tangible in this further-flung region, and has
also faced intense competition from Russia and especially from China, but
nevertheless is of identified increasing important to the EU, and also one
linked by common history, hydrocarbons and human security issues to
other post-Soviet countries in the EaP. But it is nevertheless, and arguably
also because of that, of increasing importance to the EU. As Krois further
observers, ‘The EU’s strong interest in the stability and security of Central
Asia translates into the cooperation with the Central Asian states in build-
ing peace and economic prosperity in the region, and clearly extends the
EU’s aims to extend its values and experience beyond the EaP.’46
Karolina Kluczewska and Shairbek Dzhuraev importantly demonstrate
in Chap. 10 that the EU has through its representatives effectively said
that ‘although the EU does not see itself as imposing them, it nevertheless
believes that its values are excellent and universal, and should be accepted
by Central Asian countries’. This is an additional test case of how the EU
can export values. While identifying challenges, their analysis is more opti-
mistic for the EU’s capacities than in many of the other cases studies,
contending that ‘EU-Central Asia relations have great potential. While
both parties pursue their own agendas, the cooperation is free of an overly
“realpolitik” nature that would push one side into the corner. The EU and
Central Asia relations are essentially well-intentioned with greater benefits
for both sides still to be realised’.47
Chapter 11 gives analysis of how the EU deals with its neighbourhood.
Dominika Krois, an international lawyer and OSCE/COSCE Coordinator
of the European External Action Service, offers her personal analysis. She
outlines how the EU support for economic development in neighbouring
countries through its stabilisation policy; conflict mediation, with multiple
roles, including particularly regarding Ukraine has been firm on principle,
applying restrictive measures where necessary and cautiously keeping
options for diplomatic engagement open. A further measure is the EU’s
response to security challenges, as identified in the 2016 Global Strategy,
45
EEAS, ‘EU Special Representatives’, 14 June 2016, available at: https://eeas.europa.
eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage_en/3606/EU%20Special%20Representatives.
46
Dominika Krois, ‘Conclusion: How is the EU handling threats to stability in wider
Europe?’ in this volume.
47
Karolina Kluczewska and Shairbek Dzhuraev, ‘The EU and Central Asia: The Nuances
of an “Aided” Partnership,’ in this volume.
26 R. FAWN

and its five priorities, outlined above. Additionally, the EU supports


regional cooperative initiatives that provide both states and populations
with opportunities to better manage security concerns in the Black Sea
region, Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe, and these are seen to offer
positive spillovers for increasing stability.
We turn now to see how the EU functions as a global actor, and par-
ticularly towards the EaP countries.

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CHAPTER 2

Turning Points and Shifting Understandings


of European Security: The European
Neighbourhood Policy’s Development

Maria Raquel Freire and Licínia Simão

The European Union (EU) plays a fundamental role in Europe’s security.


The EU’s capabilities are undergoing significant changes, which are
increasingly reflected in the conceptual design of its Neighbourhood
Policy (ENP). These changes result both from the external context within
which EU policies are implemented and from the institutional and politi-
cal context in which they are designed. Regarding the former, we identify
several turning points which have affected European security since the
inception of the ENP, in 2003. These include developments in EU-US
relations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and EU
enlargements in a post-9/11 context, the important role of Russia and its
relations with former-Soviet countries, as well as the Arab Spring events
and the political instability in the Southern neighbourhood of the
EU. Regarding EU institutional and political context, we focus on the
impacts of the 2004/2007 EU enlargements, particularly in terms of the
regional agenda that was uploaded onto the EU’s regional security con-

M. R. Freire (*) • L. Simão


Faculty of Economics and Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra,
Coimbra, Portugal
e-mail: rfreire@fe.uc.pt; lsimao@fe.uc.pt

© The Author(s) 2020 31


R. Fawn (ed.), Managing Security Threats along the EU’s Eastern
Flanks, New Security Challenges,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26937-1_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
forti: il terzo abbraccia Chioggia e Brondolo sin alla foce della Brenta
con sei porti. È dunque tenuta inespugnabile da chi non sia
provveduto di buona flotta: il ponte meraviglioso, che con
ducenventidue archi unisce Venezia al continente, opera appena
finita l’anno avanti, fu rotto e fortificato [129]: i pozzi artesiani di
recente trivellati, supplirono al difetto d’acqua.
Trentamila Tedeschi, liberi omai da ogn’altro nemico, circondavano
la laguna col generale Haynau e con tremendo materiale d’assedio,
mentre la flotta austriaca si affacciava ai Murazzi. Il genio,
l’artiglieria, gli zappatori austriaci ebbero a sostenere sforzi
portentosi onde macchinare via via i mezzi di attacco: intanto che gli
eroi improvvisati di Venezia profittavano della docilità della
popolazione e della conoscenza dei luoghi per respingerli; e se la
flottiglia avesse ella pure messo altrettanto d’ardore e di costanza,
forse non bastavano i tesori e le ventimila vite che l’Austria dovette
scialacquare per recuperare Venezia, a più caro prezzo che non le
fossero costate le due campagne di Piemonte.
Il forte di Malghera, difeso con perseveranza eroica, fu forza
abbandonarlo (27 maggio): e rotte le trattative, e dissipata ogni
speranza su forestieri, pure si volle resistere, sovrapponendo alla
guerra il generale Ulloa napoletano, il Sirtori milanese, il veneto
Baldisserotto. La nuova dittatura pareva elidere la prisca, ma l’amor
patrio evitava gli urti, e Manin seppe imbrigliare gli scalmanati,
affrontava non solo le bajonette, ma che, più costa, le ingiurie e i
vituperj de’ falsi patrioti: egli solo fra i governanti dell’Italia
conservossi non soltanto, ma ricuperò la devozione del popolo; i
barcajuoli gettavano i berretti e se medesimi sotto a’ suoi passi
quando andava all’arsenale; e mentre tutt’altrove il potere
sbolzonavasi da una mano all’altra, egli il tenne fino all’estremo.
Il ministro De Bruck, notissimo ai Veneziani perchè anima e testa
della società triestina del Lloyd, venne a trattare [130]: e i nunzj di
Venezia vollero conoscere la costituzione che l’imperatore d’Austria
prometteva ai Lombardo-Veneti; e la dispettarono, perchè le cariche
amministrative non erano tutte serbate a Italiani: perchè i diritti
fondamentali poteano essere aboliti in tempo di guerra o sommossa;
perchè la parte più importante della legislazione veniva riservata al
Parlamento viennese, anzichè all’Italico; perchè non creavansi
eserciti nè flotta italiani, nè si stabiliva rimarrebbero in paese.
Così Venezia, incolpata allora e poi di municipalismo, fu la sola che,
quantunque abbandonata dalla flotta sarda e dai sussidj fraterni, e
bloccata sempre più strettamente, in quegli estremi trovasse
coraggio per discutere sulle franchigie, promesse al regno lombardo-
veneto.
Ma il tempo dei patti era passato; e compresse tutte le rivolte e tutte
le speranze, Radetzky intimava d’arrendersi a discrezione. Al 28
luglio arrivarono le palle fin presso la piazza, lanciate dalla distanza,
fin allora insuperabile, di cinquemila ducento metri. Dal quartiere di
là da Rialto si stivò allora la gente in quel di Castello, serenando
sotto le procuratie, e principalmente ne’ giardini pubblici; la fame
s’incrudiva, dovendo misurarsi a miccino un miserabile e schifoso
alimento: poi più non restava un tozzo di pane, non un sacco di
farina, e il mare era chiuso. Gli animi conservavansi tranquilli e fin
sereni: ma nei corpi illanguiditi imperversò il cholera, che straziava i
feriti nello spedale e la plebe accumulata, e in un mese seimila
seicentrentaquattro persone colpì, n’uccise tremila
ottocentrentanove. Di fuori giungevano notizie sempre più
sconsolanti; caduta la Sicilia, caduta Roma, agonizzante la
repubblica francese negli abbracci napoleonici: erasi sperato
nell’Ungheria, poi, mentre s’aspettavano gli eserciti promessi da
Behm e Kossuth, si seppe anche quella rivoluzione soccombuta alla
fortuna dell’Austria e, solita canzone, ai tradimenti. Non era più
costanza ma ostinazione il resistere, e l’Assemblea decretò si
trattasse col nemico (22 agosto). Radetzky consentiva piena
amnistia, solo obbligando alcuni a partire; si conserverebbe valore
alla carta moneta comunale, spegnendola a carico della città
stessa [131]; nessuna multa di guerra.
I disfrenati che suscitavano tumulti quand’era bisogno di ordine e
calma, cercarono insozzare quell’agonia col volgere l’ira del popolo e
fin i cannoni contro Manin, gridato traditore; ma egli potè ancor una
volta, mediante il popolo, imporre alla ciurma battagliera e
scrivacchiante; e arringato dal solito balcone del palazzo ducale
verso Piazzetta, scende colla spada in pugno, e dissipa i tumultuanti;
essi rannodansi a Santa Lucia, ed egli con pochi gendarmi e
Svizzeri, di cui erasi fatta una guardia, va a disperderli senza
sangue. Allora, rassegnati i poteri, avviossi all’esiglio, dopo perduta
una ricchissima clientela e i pochi averi suoi: ventimila lire gli furono
decretate dal municipio, in benemerenza della mantenuta quiete; or
vive di fare scuola, e gli eroi gli ammanniscono il pane dell’insulto.
Il 28 agosto l’aquila bicipite sventolava ancora dai pili di San Marco.
CAPITOLO CXCIII.
Rassetto forzato. Moto ripreso.

Adunque desiderj, concessioni, riforme, esplosione, anarchia,


reazione si succedettero con rapida vicenda, questa volta come le
altre, e nulla meglio istruendo delle altre volte. Delle quali abbiamo
veduto riprodursi il decorso e gli errori, e sempre a chi citava il
passato rispondersi, — Ma adesso è tutt’altra cosa, adesso l’idea è
più diffusa, il popolo vi ha parte, la ragione è maturata» [132].
I fatti, e ancor meno i sentimenti si presumerebbe dedurre dai
giornali, dai libercoli, dai manifesti d’allora, nè tampoco dalle dicerie
alle Camere o dalle relazioni d’inviati e ministri, improntate della
fisionomia personale, e sottomesse alla necessità o di attutire, o
d’infervorare, o di sottrare se stessi all’insulto plebeo, o di ottenere
applausi col blandire le vulgarità. Coloro che più tardi tolsero a
parlarne con serietà e connessione, acquistano valore quando
espongano atti, di cui furono testimonj o parte: ma poichè solo i
grandi e i furfanti hanno coraggio di confessare i proprj falli, e i
governanti di quel tempo non erano nè l’uno nè l’altro, i più si
restrinsero ad apologie di sè, a requisitorie contro gli avversi,
riboccanti di quell’individualità che rivela anima e intelligenza
mediocre; e dove, non che aver appagata o assopita la propria
coscienza, nè tampoco all’amor proprio soddisfecero, giacchè
provocarono ricozzi fino alla calunnia, e finirono col rimpicciolirsi
nell’esiglio e nella sventura che suole ingrandire.
I forestieri ci pajono la più parte ingiusti e parziali; e fino i migliori,
quelli che trattano d’arte militare, cascano nell’assurdo quando
toccano al civile. De’ nostri i più scrissero ostilmente, perchè chi loda
ha aria di adulatore, di franco chi maligna; oppure sistematicamente
vantarono un partito e incriminarono l’avverso, a persone vive e
onorate imprimendo stigmate d’infamia senza processo, coll’iniquità
che si rimprovera alle corti statarie, supponendo uno onesto fin a un
dato istante, e ribaldo e scellerato dopo quell’istante, senz’avvertire il
perchè di tale mutazione [133]. Ve n’ha che, complici o godenti, ogni
disgrazia spiegano col tradimento, stile da caffè; ovvero colla
superiorità della forza, che è un precipitarsi nel fatalismo e umiliarsi
in eterna inferiorità; o come il vulgo, incaricano di tutti i danni i
Governi, riuscendo così insulsi giudici e assurdi maestri. Ve n’ha che
non immolerebbero mai i rancori personali alla verità o alla patria;
lodando o biasimando per proposito, per nomi e prevenzioni, gli
scrittori municipali, restringono la morale e la politica a parziali
aspetti, dando valore a fatti e aneddoti che immeschiniscono i
concetti: mentre lo storico, siccome l’oratore, è fuoco fatuo, che brilla
non riscalda, abbaglia non guida, e produce effetti talor perniciosi,
sempre effimeri, ogniqualvolta non si palesi grave, convinto,
disinteressato. Alcuni vivranno malgrado la passione, o forse a
causa della passione, perchè generosa e sincera. Montanelli volle
onestare la propria causa colla virtù e la gentilezza, e farla amare,
mentre Guerrazzi alla sua sospinge a sferzate, colla rabbia di chi
soccombette e non può dire senza colpa. Farini vale nell’esporre i i
Governi, le cospirazioni, la diplomazia, e coll’intrepido pronunziare e
con certa dignità retorica acquista autorità. Ranalli, anch’esso di stile
accademico, approfonda le tresche de’ cospiranti e il vigore delle
moltitudini, attribuisce le colpe anche di queste ai governanti; ma
rifacendo il proprio lavoro, ebbe la lealtà troppo rara di ricredersi
d’opinioni e di fatti.
Appartengono alla polemica, quando anche assumano proporzioni di
storia, i racconti di Cattaneo, Ricciardi, Anelli, La Farina, La
Cecilia...: interesse di romanzo ispirano Dandolo, Ulloa, la
Belgiojoso, i narratori della guerra di bande. La turba desidera
situazioni e giudizj ricisi; e allettata al linguaggio delle passioni, vuole
panegirici o imprecazioni sulle persone e sui fatti che o carpirono
ammirazione ed amore, o attrassero odj e spregi, del pari subitanei
ed esagerati, portanti il carattere violento della passione, e
l’instabilità che della violenza è espiazione. Il crepuscolo avversa del
pari e la notte e il sole, perchè al pari lo dissipano: laonde la limpida
sposizione dei fatti, che scoprirebbe l’erroneità dei principj, è
bestemmiata dalle plebi, che gridano morte a Cristo e salute a
Barabba. Troppi attesero a contentarle; troppi rinnegarono quel serio
e modesto pudore che riconosce e i falli proprj e i meriti degli
avversarj, quella lealtà che fa preferire la sicurezza della propria
coscienza al trionfo delle proprie idee, quella sana imparzialità che
deriva dall’abbracciare molte cose, e che è di buona giustizia
insieme e di buon gusto; trascurano di ponderare la verità e fin la
probabilità degli avvenimenti, quand’anche abbiano la sincerità di
palesarli. E questo mostrare retorica invece di convinzione,
quest’arzigogolare di sentimentalità quando fa mestieri di fredda
ragione e di riverenza ai fatti, questo pretendere col fumo delle
chimere colmare l’abisso che separa la difettosa realtà delle cose
dall’ideale perfezione, convincono che poco s’imparò, e che domani
ricominciando inciamperemmo alle stesse pietre, avremmo le stesse
ignoranze e, ch’è peggio, le stesse mezze cognizioni, che furono
causa principale della mostrata inettitudine [134].
Decomporre con rispetto quella miscela di lagrime e di sangue, non
a servigio d’un partito, ma per isvolgere quello spirito politico, che è
l’intelligenza del ben pubblico e il coraggio di farlo prevalere, in modo
da farsi udire alla posterità, non è a sperare si faccia mentre così
recenti sono le impressioni personali, i rancori di parte, le
permalosità di parentela, di paese, di classe; e per affrontarli vuolsi
un coraggio ch’è raro, un’abnegazione ch’è eroica, perchè tocca a
ciò che l’uomo ha più caro, la reputazione propria; perchè, fra tepidi
amori ed ire bollenti, si è certi di spiacere a tutti i partiti, di vederci
decretate le gemonie anche mentre ci benedicono le anime schiette.
Chi (primo distintivo de’ pensatori) si sottragga alla tirannide di
qualsiasi fazione, resista alle idee d’un’età anche lusingandole,
risoluto di non mancare alle proprie convinzioni per paura d’essere
mal inteso o mal giudicato; accetti le dure conseguenze de’ fatti
compiuti, e, pur vedendo il meglio, contentisi del bene; avendo già
fatta la propria rivoluzione, al giungere della pubblica sappia cercare
temperamenti e transazioni fra le opinioni proprie e le necessità dei
tempi: colla confidenza in sè che, appoggiata a forti studj, è la
condizion necessaria allo schiudersi de’ grandi talenti, osi repulsare
l’errore con tutta l’energia che permette la pulitezza, e per amore
dell’umanità calpestar vipere che certo lo morsicheranno; si
proponga di restaurare la facoltà che nelle rivoluzioni più deperisce,
il buon senso; abbondi di quell’attitudine pratica che, come nelle
procelle, non guarda indietro ma avanti, e senta la necessità di
compatirci tutti ove tutti errammo, quello potrà divenire fisiologo, non
patologo della rivoluzione.
Della quale, chi attenuò il merito de’ cominciamenti perchè favoriti da
opportunissime contingenze, confessi che per grandi sfortune essa
fu precipitata dappoi, e per le condizioni generali dell’Europa. Intanto
era la prima volta che si trovassero a fronte i tre poteri della società;
principi, plebe, popolo: quel de’ primi espresso dall’esercito, dalle
ordinanze, dallo stato d’assedio; quel dei secondi dalle grida, dai
giornali, dalle dimostrazioni piazzesche; quel del popolo dal
pensiero, dagli interessi, dalla morale. E chi ha mai veduto tirocinj
senza errori? qual meraviglia se Governi radicali, sostituiti repente a
Governi petrificati, nell’incessante barcollare non mostravano nè
coerenza, nè decoro? Le doti che costituiscono un buon capo non
sono quelle che fanno buoni amici; nè il suffragio delle moltitudini
s’acquista colla severità, l’esattezza, il sentimento della propria
dignità. Quei capi governavano a sproposito, con deliberazioni lente,
con partiti medj, colla debolezza che fomenta l’insubordinazione dei
governati: ma perchè non furono deposti? e perchè i surrogati non
apparvero migliori? e perchè l’audacia, indispensabile nelle
rivoluzioni, si manifestò soltanto ne’ piazzajuoli che cogli articoli o coi
fischi insultavano a principi fuggiaschi o a governanti inermi?
Era anche la prima volta che Italia affrontasse grandi Potenze con
vera guerra; e i vilipendj consueti dovettero ammutolire quando, non
solo eserciti disciplinati, ma gioventù inavvezza, popolazioni
pacifiche, città aperte, sfidarono la morte, sia coll’impeto istantaneo,
sia colla più difficile perseveranza, e fin dopo sconsolati dello
sperare. Ma l’inesperienza bellica ci avea fatto credere bisognasse
munire ciascuna città; quasi le piccole e particolari difese vagliano
contro a grossi eserciti e al fulminar delle artiglierie; quasi da popoli
civilissimi e in pingui contrade possa aspettarsi l’eroismo de’
semibarbari: nè tampoco comprendemmo che i pochi e novizj, sorti a
combattere un esercito agguerrito, devono evitare gli scontri di
fronte, moltiplicando invece gli urti di fianco, dove anche il coraggio
inesercitato assai vale se diretto da buoni uffiziali; ma che in nessun
caso possono oggi vincersi le guerre senza la grande strategia.
Appunto in vista di tali difficoltà, da trent’anni i pensatori, fedeli alla
dolorosa teoria delle proteste, adoperavano per rimutare la potenza
dalle spade alla ragione, e sfuggire la rivoluzione, la quale impianta
la forza sopra al diritto e al dovere; ammazza le libertà
coll’opprimerle quando trionfi, col farle temere quando vinta le
invochi; prepara i popoli alla tirannia col meritarla, e ve li fa
rassegnare per paura di peggio; scalza quanto rimane di fermo nelle
coscienze, di generoso nelle convinzioni; deprime i caratteri, induce
il bisogno di stordirsi, disvia dalla legale resistenza, avvezza al
provvisorio, a confidare nel caso e nell’imprevisto. Il movimento
cominciò pacifico, e i moderati dicevano, «Badate di non porgere
pretesto a snudare le spade, perchè in quel giorno perirete»: in fatto,
ogni volta che col subbuglio si provocò la forza, noi fummo percossi,
trucidati, sbanditi; nel 1848 sfidammo il nemico in campo, e
dovemmo soccombere, come succede ogni volta che al desiderio
non corrispondono le forze o alle forze la volontà.
E la forza trionfò di nuovo; ma noi continuammo a credere che una
nazione vale per quello che pensa, ancora più che non per quello
che fa, e sono le grandi idee che menano alle grandi cose. Più
dunque che imputare altri, noi credemmo obbligo di esaminare noi
stessi; e questo ci condusse anzitutto a confessare che si procedette
senza sincerità, anzi coll’aborrimento dalla verità; ed oltre che è
natura delle fazioni ostentare un fine diverso dal reale, il sincerare i
detti o gli atti dichiaravasi codardia e tradimento; si crearono fantocci
ideali invece di persone; parole chiare e precise furono stiracchiate
al senso delle passioni nostre; non uno dei mali accadutici arrivò
senza essere predetto; predetto anche da voci ascoltate, ma che
cessavano d’esserlo all’istante che diceano quello ch’era, non quel
che si volea che fosse. Così tutti abusarono del principio, e
traviarono nelle conseguenze. I politici dozzinali smarrironsi, perchè
tenevano in veduta unicamente la nazione, mentre il mondo è invaso
da idee, da interessi, da concetti, da fatti, che travalicano le angustie
della nazionalità; e male attribuivano a persone singole quel ch’era
sentimento della progrediente società, nel vortice della quale se
vuolsi che non venga assorbito l’individuo è necessario accrescergli
vigoria.
I mutamenti riescono durevoli allorchè i più trovinsi d’accordo sopra
un punto, e a questo convergano l’attenzione e le opere. Qui invece
si volle innovare il tutto d’un colpo; modo di scontentare chi perde il
goduto, nè ancora coglie lo sperato. Predicavasi l’affratellamento, e
ciascun popolo o città o uomo adocchiava a convenienze particolari,
dando agl’interessi privati il linguaggio e la maschera di interesse
pubblico. Si ricantava la libertà, e s’impediva di fare, e nè tampoco
pensare altrimenti, e dichiaravasi tirannide la repressione della
licenza. Si tolse per iniziatore il papa, ma bestemmiandolo appena
resistè alla corrente. Dai principi chiedeasi appoggio e spinta, e non
si dissimulava di volerli sbattere appena cessassero di parer
necessari. Era primo proposito l’emancipazione dagli stranieri,
eppure quanto e più che da quelli si aborriva il dipendere uno
dall’altro. Le grida di piazza doveano riscuotere assenso e lode a
Torino e a Palermo, infamia a Napoli; parer sante come il martirio a
Milano fino a un dato giorno, e dopo di quello sediziose. Ai soldati
imponeasi di faticare, soffrire, vincere, e intanto se ne impacciavano
gli atti e calunniavano i consigli, e moveasi querela del troppo che si
facea per loro. Il suffragio universale dovea valere per fondere la
Lombardia col Piemonte, non per istaccare la Sicilia da Napoli. La
logica è più potente che non si creda.
Ora è doloroso e istruttivo il confessare come le nazioni dalla nostra
rivoluzione ritirassero le simpatie, che universali aveano concedute
ai primi agitamenti. I Francesi del Governo parlavano di carpirsi la
Savoja non solo, ma e il contado di Nizza; i Francesi avversi al
Governo tentarono invadere e ammutinare la Savoja; mentre
improperj ci erano lanciati dalle loro tribune, conforti ci venivano
soltanto da pochi che voleano carezzare il vulgo fraseggiando la
disapprovazione: la Dieta tedesca, attarantata di libertà, pure giudicò
micidiale alla Germania lo staccare il Veneto dall’Austria: il
demagogo Kossuth esibiva a questa ducentomila Ungheresi per
reprimere l’Italia: a Radetkzy accorrevano studenti dalle Università
austriache, crociati opposti ai nostri: da Inghilterra avemmo
benevolenze, arringhe, libri; ma combattenti, prestiti, doni? Quegli
stessi diplomatici che a suono di mani gridavano «Viva Italia», a noi
dicevano all’orecchio, «Rassegnatevi e sottomettetevi»; e ai padroni,
«Uccideteli pure, che n’avete diritto». E appena la cacciata del papa
ne offrì un pretesto, sorse gara fra tutti gli stranieri nello spegnere
questi incendj.
Eppure anch’essi devono convenire che, se nel moto rimasero
mediocri i mediocri di prima, se nei capi apparvero inettitudine e
deficienza di senno civile e di militare educazione, in nessuno si
videro le colpe dell’avidità, e onoratamente tornarono i più a
guadagnarsi la vita faticando. Fra i deplorabili dissensi, tra l’urto di
conservatori pusillanimi e di progressisti sovversivi, la nazionalità
che dapprima era memoria, divenne affetto, e ne fu sentito più
comunemente il bisogno, espresso da singhiozzi prima,
dall’esultanza poi, infine dalle proteste. Verrà esso soddisfatto? Sì,
purchè senza violare il diritto e la morale, senza persecuzioni: sì,
qualora non si confonda l’unità nazionale coll’unità amministrativa:
sì, qualora agl’inni non si surroghino elegie, cioè sempre lenocinj e
sentimentalità laddove occorre robustezza d’abnegazione; qualora si
cerchi come operare, più che non pretesti a non operare e lo sciocco
onore di non essere nulla, non mescolarsi di nulla: nè si inglorii
d’eroica astinenza quel dormiveglia di chi non sa cosa fare, e da cui
appena tratto tratto riscuotono i bottoni di fuoco; qualora si assuma il
coraggio di confessare i proprj sbagli, e nel ravvedimento
ritemprarsi; qualora l’indipendenza la cominci ciascuno da se
medesimo, fidando nell’energia personale, sviluppando le proprie
facoltà, non questuando dallo Stato onori e profitti a scapito della
dignità, che poi credesi di ricuperare col dir male e fare
un’opposizione frivola e di calcolo.
I giornalisti, la cui autorità è sempre grande in tempo e fra persone
che non istudiano, e che, abdicando alla propria, si rassegnano a
pensare colla testa altrui, erettisi tiranni dell’opinione, blandendo agli
ignobili istinti col gettare l’oltraggio in faccia alle persone e alle cose
che la nazione era abituata a venerare per scienza, per politica, per
virtù, creavano abilità e virtù fittizie; inducendo a tremare di mali finti,
accecavano sui veri, ch’essi non conosceano per imperizia o
dissimulavano per pravità: quel baratto di lodi e strapazzi; quel
farnetico ora di denigrare ora di esaltare senza nè verità nè
riflessione, stillando il biasimo nelle lodi; quella baldanza di rancori
servili, quella gelosia del bruto contro ogni merito che trascenda la
mediocrità, quell’adulare alla ciurma illusa o vendereccia ch’essi
intitolavano popolo, sbigottì i buoni, che di rado sono eroi, e ancora
una volta il numero impose al merito, cioè la forza all’intelligenza; ed
anche nel campo di questa restò la sovranità del vulgo, che fu il vero
nemico in tutte quelle vicende.
All’ombra di costoro vegetava la fungaja delle stemperatezze; una
folla impressionabile, come i solfanelli, accesa al minimo attrito,
spenta al minimo soffio, che cangia convinzioni a norma della
gazzetta che legge o del buffone che la fa ridere: una furia di
sollevare la inesperta democrazia al posto cui richiedonsi e abilità e
pratica e stima e disinteresse; un’esuberante fede nell’attitudine dei
novizj; una presunzione in sè, che fa ripudiare la mano del fratello;
una dicacità, che può spingere a morire, ma non riesce a dar vittoria;
un preferire il trionfo de’ concetti giornalieri al trionfo della coscienza;
un ricusare il bene evidente per ismania d’un bene fantastico; un
repudiare il tempo, il quale annichila le opere fatte senz’esso. Così
ognuno vuole pagare la propria quota d’illusioni: così, sordi agli
avvisi della sperienza, si attende solo ai colpi delle catastrofi.
E s’altra volta mai apparve manifesto che, nell’individuo come nelle
nazioni, il trionfo più difficile è quello sovra se stessi: giacchè molti
seppero sacrificare la vita, non le passioni, che pure
compromettevano il bene generale; pochi rinunziare a quella
popolarità, che è l’appoggio e il pericolo delle anime fiacche; pochi
mostrarono sapienza civile, robusta moderatezza, abilità
riordinatrice, quel buon senso che, risolutamente volendo i beni
essenziali, si rassegna agl’inconvenienti inseparabili; quella
indipendente probità, che non vacilla secondo le tesi e antitesi della
politica, tutte egualmente vere o false, perchè non hanno in sè la
ragione dell’essere, ma sono spinte dal movimento sociale che
sempre le alterna.
Da ogni paese, oltre quelli che morirono d’angoscia od impazzirono,
migliaja esularono, o costretti, o per moda, o motivi vergognosi
mantellando di martirio. Il Piemonte principalmente ne riboccava; e
mentre gli onesti e laboriosi vi trovarono onore e guadagno negli
impieghi, nell’avvocatura, nell’istruzione, nella stampa, ne’ tanti lavori
pubblici, e potentemente contribuirono a inoculare al paese ciò che
di meglio offriva l’esperienza degli altri, la tempesta buttò sulla riva e
schiuma e immondezze; e pretendendo pane, posti, potere,
influenza, senz’abilità nè onoratezza nè fatica nè merito, sotto ai
portici, nelle botteghe, ne’ circoli mantenevano una postuma
convulsione galvanica; continuando i fischi anche dopo lo spettacolo;
nè precedenti onorevoli nè nome illibato nè carattere venerando
lasciavano immune; come in un incendio di cui i campati
s’accusassero a vicenda, palleggiavansi ingiurie e oltraggi,
persistendo nel satanico uffizio di rinfocolare le ire fraterne, di
scagionare persino i tiranni col falsarne od esagerarne le colpe.
Quelli che, stando in panciolle, aveano esclamato «vincemmo alle
barricate, combattemmo a Pastrengo, repulsammo i Francesi da
Civitavecchia», diceano poi «Carlalberto tradì Milano; Ruggero
Settimo disertò dalla Sicilia; Mazzini e Brofferio fuggirono ad ogni
approssimarsi del nemico»: e la calunnia tornò (come già Foscolo se
ne lagnava nel 1816) il piatto che fra loro s’imbandivano i pazienti
de’ medesimi dolori, stillando bava contro il partito o l’uomo avverso,
colle reciproche incriminazioni diffondendo quella disamorevolezza
che profitta soltanto agli oppressori.
Insomma la rivoluzione aveva avuto per sola unità l’odio; si
comprese ch’esso non basta alla riuscita, eppure sopravvisse, e da
odio de’ dominanti divenne odio dei fatti. E se noi insistiamo su
questi torti dei vinti, egli è perchè dilaniano il cuore più che le
violenze dei vincitori; perchè le nuove speranze non possono
fondarsi se non sopra le virtù che allora ci mancarono, o dai peccati
d’allora saranno ruinate. Intanto da una parte ne derivava
aborrimento del vero, spregio del santo, tentativi forsennati che
bisognava mettere al bando militare; dall’altra a fiducie senza limite
sottentrava uno scoraggiamento senza conforti, un disperare della
vita morale e del progresso, dall’inettitudine de’ pochi arruffapopolo
arguendo inetto il grosso della nazione; nessuno era contento della
posizione propria, perchè nessuno credeasela imposta dal dovere,
ma solo da un fatto che domani potrebbe cangiarsi, non essendosi
che sospese le ostilità perchè v’era uno più forte; l’alleanza de’
principi co’ preti ingeriva l’idea che la religione sia maestra di servilità
e complice d’oppressione; fra l’ancipite esagerare pervertivansi il
senso comune e il concetto dell’onesto; il popolo, ingannato tante
volte dalle idee, più a nessuna credeva, e spinto ad eccessi di cui
soffriva le funeste conseguenze, rinnegava anche le massime
sacrosante di cui quelli avevano usurpato il manto.
Ciò rendea ben tristi i primi momenti della ristorazione. Eransi
dissipate immense riserve, esaurite le finanze, cresciuti i debiti,
buttato in corso moltissima carta monetata, gravati i Comuni, reso
più costoso perchè più difficile il governare. I ristabiliti, non potendo
impedire che si ricordasse e sperasse, dovettero premunirsi con
quartieri incastellati, campi, truppe forestiere, eserciti ingrossati,
sbirraglie, e lungo stato d’assedio che escludeva dalle condizioni
normali d’ogni società incivilita, alla regolare azione de’ tribunali e
dell’amministrazione surrogando l’arbitrio incondizionato del militare
e le corti marziali, sciolte da quelle formalità che proteggono la vita e
la sicurezza del cittadino. La commissione militare istituita a Este
contro bande di ladri, dilatatesi con colore politico in quel confine
della Venezia col Modenese e colla Romagna, dalle rivelazioni di
alcuni ebbe appiglio a sempre nuovi processi, che portarono
centinaja di supplizj [135]. In tre anni furono mandate a morte nel
Lombardo-Veneto quattrocentrentadue persone, mentre non più che
settantuna dal 1814 al 48: il che fatto conoscere all’imperatore,
inorridito egli sospese quelle procedure eccezionali, e diminuì le
pene portate dal feroce codice marziale di Maria Teresa.
Con tanti fuorusciti e con tanti detenuti o vessati dalla rinascente
Polizia, con tanti finiti per corda o polvere e piombo; colla fierezza
inevitabile ad un potere costretto a pensare alla propria
conservazione; colla tirannide o sistemata o abnorme, inducevasi ne’
popoli un erettismo convulso; la morale deteriorava peggio ancora
che l’economia, giacchè le idee eccezionali presto si applicano
anche in generale, per quanto assurde ed inique.
Governanti reazionarj, mancanti della voglia o dell’attitudine di
riconciliare la subordinazione colla libertà, l’ordine col progresso,
vituperarono quanto erasi domandato dalla rivoluzione, smentirono
quanto le aveano consentito; contro la petulanza plebea parve
giustificata l’esuberanza clericale e soldatesca; dal traboccare delle
esigenze trassero motivo a negare fin il giusto e il promesso; non
credettero giovasse condiscendere alquanto ai soccombuti per
conciliarseli, esaudire a ragionevoli domande per dare il torto alle
inopportune, stringere in partito compatto tutti quelli che all’anarchia
preferiscono l’ordine, persuadersi che ben governa soltanto chi si
associa agli interessi, alle idee, ai sentimenti del popolo; che,
quando i poteri rinunziano ad ogni iniziativa, perdono la
cooperazione dei ben pensanti e dei ben volenti, e resta
abbandonato il progresso a un’opposizione scarsa di logica e
d’efficacia.
Francia ha bisogno che alcuno faccia i suoi affari, riservandosi
sempre di disapprovarlo: e l’accentramento fa che da Parigi parta
l’ordine del come pensare e sentire, non meno che il cenno delle
rivoluzioni. Luigi Buonaparte, che invano erasi provato in Italia, poi
due volte ne’ dipartimenti, riuscì a Parigi a salire al maggior posto,
cacciare in prigione o in esiglio chi si opponeva, e costituire un
impero, che, sostenuto da rara abilità e da una irremovibile
fermezza, prometteva i vantaggi del primo senza le rischiose glorie,
e che cercava popolarità col mostrarsi premuroso degli interessi del
popolo. Gli stessi che aveano improvvisato la repubblica per poter
governare, invocarono la monarchia per essere governati; e siccome
su Francia suol modellarsi l’Europa, caddero in discredito i Governi
parlamentari. E questi furono aboliti in Italia, dove col lasciarli
ineseguiti come a Napoli, dove con espressi decreti come nei paesi
austriaci, nei ducati, in Romagna [136].
Il perdono del passato si proclamò dappertutto, ma con numerose
eccezioni, e colla riserva di revocarlo ad ogni nuova ombra di colpa,
e gravando di sospetti e d’esclusioni chi si sottraeva dalla forca.
Forse unico nella storia fu il contegno del popolo lombardo ne’ primi
tempi, a Governi senza ipocrisia ma senza raffinatezza, opponendo
un’assoluta astinenza; non a teatri, non a feste, non a convegni, non
badare ai soldati neppure per mitigarne la fierezza; pagare perchè
costretti, e tenere sempre l’occhio fissato di fuori, come fosse uno
stato precario e di mero fatto. Ma del silenzio e del non far nulla, si
pretese lode come d’eroismo: quindi venerare ciecamente l’opinione
vulgare, e amar ed aborrire una persona o una cosa sol perchè
sgradita o benvoluta dai vincitori; vivendo cioè d’imprestito, e qui
pure scomunando chi pensasse ed operasse non per moda ma per
convinzione, impedendo così di formarsi un’opinione pubblica; e
dimenandosi senza effetto, benchè non senza pericolo. Vigilava su
tale situazione la stampa di fuori, e impediva anche atti innocenti col
denunziarli, alterarli, malignarli: col qual modo al dignitoso contegno
imprimevano aspetto di violenta obbligazione, attesochè al minimo
declinarne infliggevano il marchio di fuoco e talora peggio. Anzi
infliggevanlo a chi mai non disviò, sopra la diceria d’un frivolo, la
lettera d’un malevolo; e convintisi d’avere accusato a torto, non
aveano la lealtà di disdirsi; quand’anche ciò potesse valere in una
società palustre, che trangugia le accuse a occhi bendati, e si
nausea della più lampante discolpa.
Venne a rincalzarsene anche l’armeggio delle società secrete, che
scomparse al momento dell’azione, rinacquero dopo esauste le
speranze; abbracciarono anzi tutt’Europa. Mazzini, benchè a Roma
si fosse dimesso dal triumvirato, l’assunse di nuovo in Isvizzera, anzi
la dittatura; e a nome del popolo romano, decretava, eleggeva ad
impieghi, vietava di pagare le taglie, mentre esso ne imponeva per
allestire nuove rivoluzioni, e rinfiancato dalle migliaja di profughi,
spediva esploratori ed emissarj per tutto, e collegavasi all’unica
fazione che stesse ancora in piedi, la comunista. Di là uscirono
spesse condanne di morte che venivano eseguite fin nel mezzo di
Milano, di San Marino, di Roma, di Bologna, di Ancona, e
principalmente la Romagna fu contaminata di assassinj: orribile
postumo della rivoluzione, che da una parte rese alla nazione quella
taccia onde per due secoli era stata obbrobriosa alle genti civili;
dall’altra anche fra gli educati offuscò il senso morale: fu anzi
teoricamente sostenuto che sia necessario fra un popolo sprovvisto
d’altri mezzi a punire i traditori; così agli assassini dando per
complice la coscienza di tutta la nazione, alla quale interdicevasi fin
il coraggio della pietà. Anche persone frementi di sdegni nazionali
riconosceano inevitabili le eccezionali repressioni contro l’irrompere
delle passioni brutali; e D’Azeglio, uno dei più moderati espresse, in
un discorso ai proprj elettori, che l’Europa era stata salvata dagli
eserciti e dalle corti marziali.
Dalle particolari si passò anche ad uccisioni cumulative, non per
iscoppio d’un popolo oltraggiato che spezza le sue catene e le pesta
sul cranio degli oltraggiatori, ma sotterraneamente armando di stiletti
un pugno di arrisicati o di venali, tutti delusi col mentire l’estensione
della congiura e i mezzi di riuscita.
Una commissione speciale a Mantova continuò lungo tempo un
processo contro persone onorevoli, professori, parroci, dottori,
perchè aveano diffuso cartelle del prestito mazziniano, e predisposto
ad un’insurrezione. Di tempo in tempo se ne impiccavano alcuni, fra
cui l’arciprete di Revere; e il giorno di sant’Ambrogio del 1852 si
strozzò, con altri, don Enrico Tazzoli, professore di storia
ecclesiastica nel seminario, raccomandatissimo per probità di
costume, limpidezza d’ingegno, carità di opere [137]. Ebbe
esacerbato il supplizio dalla sconsacrazione, fatta piangendo dal
proprio vescovo per preciso ordine da Roma; dettò lettere che
rimarranno testimonio del come le tenerissime affezioni non
fiaccassero la sua intrepidezza; a’ suoi compagni somministrò le
uniche consolazioni da quel gran momento: e ultimo abbandonossi
al capestro.
La Lombardia, che sperava cessati i supplizj dacchè quattro anni di
compressione aveano rimosso i pericoli, si coperse di lutto: «Su
quelle forche leggete, Nessuna conciliazione! non più pace!»
diceano i cospiratori, e fidavano che l’indignazione si tradurrebbe in
furore di rivolta al primo offrirsene il destro. Pertanto, senz’avervi
predisposto il paese, quando tutt’il resto d’Europa tranquillavasi
nell’obbedienza o nello spossamento, quando Milano si spensierava
la domenica di carnevale (1853 6 febbrajo), ecco alcuni trafiggere a
morte qualche soldato e uffiziale, sorprendere la gran guardia e
qualche fucile, mentre la popolazione inconscia e aliena stordiva di
quella temerità senza prendervi parte, e lasciò che la truppa
agevolmente prevalesse.
Il governatore militare, stupito non men dell’inatteso attentato che del
facilissimo trionfo, e un pugno di masnadieri, incitati coll’oro e
coll’alcoole, discernendo da un intero popolo quieto, agiato,
bisognoso di tutelare la proprietà e d’avviare i traffici, rassicurava i
cittadini a tornare alle loro cure, ai divertimenti; tutto essere finito.
L’assassinio desta tale raccapriccio, tanto parve assurdo e scellerato
il proclama che doveva accompagnare quel fatto, che le popolazioni
non furono mai propense quanto allora a riconciliarsi co’ vincitori,
che li campavano da tali eccessi; allorchè quelli, credendosi meglio
informati sulla natura di quell’attentato, mutarono tono, inveirono
contro tutto il paese, e lo misero in rigorosissimo stato d’assedio.
Chiuse le porte, impedito il circolare delle carrozze, il sonare delle
campane, gli uffizj solenni, percorsa la città da ronde coll’arma
pronta, frugate case e persone, interrotti i carteggi, rotti i silenzj della
notte dal chi viva, obbligato chiunque ad arrestarsi davanti al fucile
inarcato delle frequentissime sentinelle, a subire la sospettosa
indagine, l’insolente invettiva, gli schiaffi, quando ogni resistenza
sarebbe stata caso di morte. Alcuni furono côlti a tentone, e
compendiosamente impiccavansi al cospetto della città, certa
dell’innocenza d’alcuni e compatendo agli altri, persone basse e
sedotte dai veri rei, ai quali erasi lasciato tempo ed agio a sottrarsi.
Non v’era autorità municipale, non fermezza sacerdotale, non
rappresentanza di corpi che s’interponesse fra il soldato vendicatore
e la popolazione flagellata. A lungo durò quella condizione; più a
lungo alcuni rigori vessatorj introdotti allora; e quel colpo esacerbò
gli animi peggio che non avvenisse dopo la rivoluzione: allora
potevano dire «Tentammo e fallimmo»; qui erano puniti senza nè
atto nè tentativo.
Due gravissime conseguenze ne scaturirono. Nella persuasione che
quel moto fosse ordito dai profughi lombardi, il Governo austriaco
sequestrò i loro beni. Nell’armistizio col Piemonte erasi stipulata la
libera partenza di chi volesse, talchè non poteva imputarsi il
rimanere fuori; castigo speciale per questi attentati non poteva
infliggersi se la colpa non risultasse da indagini e sentenze speciali;
alcuni poi di que’ colpiti già erano regolarmente riconosciuti cittadini
piemontesi; talchè quel Governo rimostrò a favore loro, e non
ottenendo ascolto, ne crebbero le malevolenze e l’allontanamento.
Ebbe pure il Governo militare a credere che i sicarj fossero venuti
dal Canton Ticino, e colà ricoverassero dappoi: onde proferì il blocco
contro quel paese, e fra tre giorni partissero quanti Ticinesi stavano
in dominio austriaco. Per la vicinanza e il comune linguaggio e
l’operosità, que’ paesani tengono vivissime comunicazioni colla
limitrofa Lombardia: vinaj, caldarrostaj, facchini, spazzacamini,
calderari, imbianchini, muratori, serventi ne affluiscono alle città
lombarde; molte case di commercio, molti bottegaj, oltre quelli che
popolano e spesso onorano le scuole, le accademie, i seminarj
nostri. Fu spettacolo di desolazione il dovere, tutti a un tratto,
andarsene forse 6000 dal paese ove erano nati o accasati da anni
ed anni, per portarsi in un altro dove non teneano nè conoscenze nè
parenti nè mestiere, dove molti non potrebbero vivere che della
carità. Il Canton Ticino ne immiserì, per quanto il resto della
Svizzera, e fin paesi stranieri mandassero soccorso a gente che,
colpita in monte, doveva considerarsi come innocente [138].
Si presunse che l’amministrazione austriaca volesse con ciò punire il
Governo del Canton Ticino, composto da alcun tempo di
trascendenti, o a dire meglio in arbitrio d’un corpo di carabinieri che
impongono il loro volere ai comizj elettorali, ai giudici, agli
amministratori, ai cittadini. La Costituzione unitaria, che accentrò a
Berna il Governo dello Stato, minorò la potestà de’ Cantoni, e perciò
l’influenza di costoro e dei capoparte da cui dipendono, ma
l’esercitavano sempre negli oggetti riservati all’amministrazione
paesana. I Lombardi che vi rifuggirono dopo il 1848, aggiuntisi a
quelli del 21 e del 31, preponderavano nel paese, anche perchè
superiori in denaro, ingegno, operosità; e spinsero ad ordinamenti
conformi al loro liberalismo: tal fu l’abolire ogni frateria, espellendo
anche alquanti Cappuccini lombardi; tale il volgere all’istruzione
laicale e militare i seminarj d’Ascona e Poleggio, per istituzione
dipendenti dall’arcivescovo di Milano; e a questo e al vescovo di
Como impedire d’esercitare la loro autorità diocesana. Ne vennero
nell’interno scismi e persecuzioni, dolendosi i padri di vedersi tolta la
libertà di fare educare i figli da chi volessero; dolendosi i parrocchiani
di vedersi imposti pastori riprovati dal superiore ecclesiastico e fino
scomunicati; dolendosi il Governo austriaco dell’ingiuria fatta a quei
Cappuccini suoi; dolendosi Roma della conculcata sua autorità.
Intanto brigavasi per tenere in posto gli eccessivi; per isbalzarli
brigavasi da altri; e ne seguirono processi, insurrezioni, violenze,
assassinj. Sotto la pressione del blocco e della conseguente miseria,
credeasi che il popolo abbatterebbe il Governo che n’era cagione, e
surrogherebbe i moderati, e che a tale intento l’Austria lo
prolungasse; quando, pochi giorni prima delle elezioni, s’udì ch’era
sciolto. Chi non osava credere l’Austria complice de’ rivoluzionarj,
persuadevasi che ne’ suoi consigli avessero peso quelle società
secrete, alle quali taluni imputano tutti i fatti che altrimenti non si
sanno spiegare, quasi immensa ne sia l’efficacia per sovvertire la
società.
Ma quest’Austria, che erasi creduta perita, dalla caldaja di Medea,
ov’era stata buttata a pezzi emergeva ringiovanita; la politica attiva
diretta da Buol, facea migliore prova che non la conservatrice di
Metternich (1773-1850); le finanze e il commercio trovarono in De
Bruck un accorgimento e una pratica, che speravasi camperebbero
dal naufragio; e il Ministero, composto di persone nuove, e
interessate a impedire il ritorno dell’antico assetto anche per
conservare se medesime, diè spinta insolita a una macchina, che
erasi lasciata arrugginire. A quel rinnovamento parve sconvenire la
Costituzione, promessa dal cessato, ratificata dal sottentrato
imperatore; e questo annunziò ai ministri che non doveano più conto
se non a lui.
Essi avranno sottinteso «ed alla propria coscienza».
L’impero più operò in tre anni che non avesse in trenta; fu dei primi a
coprirsi di telegrafi elettrici, estese le strade ferrate, le tariffe daziarie
via via alleggerì, strinse convenzioni doganali coi ducati vicini,
sciolse la stampa dalla censura preventiva, pose in esperimento un
sistema d’istruzione, nel nuovo Codice penale introdusse la
pubblicità de’ processi e la difesa; ma delle riforme capitali, come il
parificare le eterogenee popolazioni, l’abolire le giurisdizioni baronali,
i servigi di corpo, le servitù agricole e i moltissimi vincoli alla
proprietà, la formazione de’ Comuni, ed altre provvidenze con cui
rigenerò le sue provincie ungheresi, slave, tedesche, non risentirono
le italiane, che già n’erano al possesso. Solo nel Veneto è
memorabile la cessazione del pensionatico, per cui le pecore
poteano mandarsi a pascere sulle proprietà altrui. Nella pubblica
amministrazione si tolse quell’arcano che prima la disonorava.
Poco a poco quello stato eccezionale, di cui profitta chiunque ha un
diritto da conculcare o un dovere da negligere, andò cessando; si
rimetteano in atto le autorità civili; ma poichè si coglieva
quell’occasione onde riformarle, ne derivava una lentezza che
noceva sì pel disordine che lasciava prolungarsi, sì per le speranze
che quello stato d’aspettazione alimentava. La venuta
dell’imperatore (1857 febbrajo), l’oblìo incondizionato delle colpe di
Stato, il riparo addotto a moltissimi disordini dacchè la presenza offrì
modo a conoscerli, la ricostituzione d’un Governo generale, la
liberalissima norma pei passaporti, le numerose grazie concedute, i

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