BY AUDREY PARMENTIER (IR/III)
On February 24, the Department of Political Science held a seminar on the topic “Back to a Divided Continent: Europe 25 Years After the Collapse of the Iron Curtain.” The guest speaker was Dr. Tom Casier, academic director of the Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent. Dr. Casier, holder of a Jean Monnet Chair, is an expert on EU-Russia relations.
The seminar dealt with the relationship between Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War. One of the first questions Dr. Casier posed was, “Is there a new Cold War?” To answer this, he traced the history of the relations between the EU and Russia from the collapse of the Iron Curtain to the present. Although the relationship between the two is currently strained, it is not, in Dr. Casier’s view, a new cold war, in that we can observe neither a confrontation of two superpowers nor an ideological struggle.
Dr. Casier then discussed in some detail the Ukrainian crisis, which grew out of a sense that the country had to make a choice between Europe and Russia. He singled out the annexation of the Crimea as a particularly dangerous situation, which could have a domino effect. He also drew attention to Russian perceptions that it is encircled by enemies, and that the West intends to weaken the country, as another source of danger. It is possible that the conflict in Ukraine may escalate, given that the sanctions against Russia have been ineffective in ending it. Overall, Dr. Casier drew a rather pessimistic picture about the current situation of a “divided Europe.”