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Abstract:
The article deals with the European Union (EU) policy toward the post-Soviet secessionist conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-arabakh. The article argues that, in order to understand the EU as a crisis management actor, one has to study not just the patterns of EU intervention in conflict resolution and the impact of its actions but also EU decision not to intervene. These have a huge explanatory potential for the understanding of the EU as a foreign policy actor. Thus the article analyses in detail not just what the EU does vis-à-vis the post-Soviet secessionist conflicts but also what it failed to do. It analyses EU decisions to appoint special envoys, send civilian crisis management operations and offer assistance to the conflict zones, but also draws lessons from EU’s refusal to consider the deployment of peacekeepers or the avoidance of conflict resolution strategies, which might upset Russia. The article concludes that EU intervention in conflict resolution is primarily driven by external constraints or opportunities rather than strategic design. When faced with a choice for possible intervention in conflict settlement, the EU tends to opt for the easier, rather than the necessary, foreign policy measures and tends to work around the hard issues of conflict resolution.
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