Warsaw East European Review Review European East Warsaw More Information on Recruitment: Volume I1/2012
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Warsaw East European Conference vol. ii/2012 • In the academic year 2012/2013 THE CENTRE FOR EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES will be inviting applications for the following scholarship programs: ◆ The Kalinowski Scholarship Program ◆ Scholarships of the Polish Government for Young Academicians ◆ 25 scholarships to enter the 2-year Master’s Program in Specialist Eastern Studies ◆ The Lane Kirkland Scholarship Program Warsaw East ◆ The Krzysztof Skubiszewski Scholarship European Review Warsaw East European Review Review European East Warsaw More information on recruitment: www.studium.uw.edu.pl volume i1/2012 R Warsaw East European Conference Okl_Warsaw East European Review 2012.indd 1 2012-07-09 08:27:20 e W E E R / Warsaw East European Conferenc e W E E R / Warsaw East European Conferenc INTERNAT I ONAL BOARD : Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Vytautas Magnus University Stefano Bianchini, University of Bologna Miroslav Hroch, Charles University Yaroslav Hrytsak, Ukrainian Catholic University Andreas Kappeler, University of Vienna Zbigniew Kruszewski, University of Texas, El Paso Jan Kubik, Rutgers University Alexey Miller, Russian Academy of Sciences Richard Pipes, Harvard University Mykola Riabchuk, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Alexander Rondeli, Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies John Micgiel, Columbia University Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, Lund University Theodore Weeks, Southern Illinois University ED I TOR I AL COMM I TTEE : Jan Malicki, University of Warsaw (Director of the WEEC – Warsaw East European Conference, chair of the Committee) Leszek Zasztowt (chair of the WEEC Board), University of Warsaw Andrzej Żbikowski (secretary of the WEEC Board, University of Warsaw ED I TOR -I N -CH I EF Jerzy Kozakiewicz, University of Warsaw ASS I STANT ED I TOR Konrad Zasztowt, University of Warsaw ISBN: 978-83-61325-239 ISSN: 2299-2421 Copyright © by Studium Europy Wschodniej UW 2012 COVER AND TYPOGRAPH ic DES I GN J.M & J.J.M. LAYOUT Jan Malik, “MALGRAF” PR I NT I NG Zakład Graficzny UW, nr zam. 720/2012 Foreword ........................................................................................................... 9 I. RUSS I A AND GEOPOL I T ic AL CHANGES Tomas Kavaliauskas, Vilnius 10 Group: Geopolitical Emancipation or a Lost Op- portunity for Angelic Moral Politics? .................................................................. 13 Allen C. Lynch, The Logic of Geopolitics in American-Russian Relations .................. 27 Olena Podvorna, Russia under Putin’s Presidency ..................................................... 39 Davit Hovhannisyan, Eurasian Union: Objectives and Problems ........................... 53 II. BELARUS : POL I T ic S , EC ONOMY AND CULTURE Palina Prysmakova, Expecting Heavy Rain of Chinese Yuan over Central and Eastern Europe: First Drops in Belarus ............................................................................ 59 Iryna Shumskaya, Contemporary Cultural Identity in Belarus: Terra Incognita ........ 75 Mariusz Maszkiewicz, State Ideology in Belarus: Main Problems and Concepts ........ 79 III. EU’S POL ic Y TOWARDS THE SOUTH CAU C ASUS Tomasz Stępniewski, The European Union and the Southern Caucasus: Geopolitics and Security .................................................................................................... 101 IV. POST -COMMUN I ST EUROPE : CULTURAL CHANGES Grażyna Drzazga, Irena Radišević and Magda Stroińska, Discourse on Minorities and Social Exclusion in Post-Communist Poland and Serbia: An Exercise in Politi- cal Correctness or a Test for Tolerance ................................................................. 115 V. EC ONOMY : REG I ONAL AND GLO B AL CONTEXT Kazimierz Dadak, Twenty Years of Economic Transformation: The Price of Economic Orthodoxy ........................................................................................................ 131 Katarzyna Żukrowska, Characteristic of the International Governance. G-20 Financial Coordination Experience in 2007/2008+ Financial Crisis: Where This Can Lead? .... 147 Contributors ..................................................................................................... 167 FOREWORD Foreword HE second volume of the Warsaw East European Review contains se- lected papers presented during the last year’s 8th annual session, held in July 2011 at the University of Warsaw under the title “Twenty years of Tindependence of the countries of the former Soviet Union: 1991–2011”. The papers are divided into five general topics including the most important issues of the session: transformations in the Russian Federation, economic and cultural change in the region, geopolitics of the South Caucasus, and the most widely analyzed, specific case of Belarus. Two decades of statehood is a period sufficiently long to start the debate on transformational processes, their common features and the local, national pe- culiarities, to attempt to make the necessary assessments and analyse in details processes of systemic change in order to evaluate what has been successful and what was the failure. International conference, academic debate, round tables including on an equal footing scholars, politicians, students and analysts specialising in the problems of political, social and economic transformation of post-Soviet area – can one imagine a better forum for exchanging ideas? It is no wonder that the initiators and organisers of the annual summer confer- ences in Warsaw – the Centre for East European Studies at University of War- saw, the Conference Program Board and the Conference Organising Committee decided to document the Warsaw East European Conference as an especially important tool for education and information. WEEReview ii/2012 9 Introduction So far, the conference was accompanied by an annual volume of published ab- stracts of all reported and presented papers, presentations and messages, divided into thematic panels. The first volume with the full texts of the conference papers was published last year (Warsaw East European Review, Vol. 1/2011). It was a selection of the papers from seven successive conferences. This year’s volume initiates annual publishing of the reviews documenting the Warsaw East Euro- pean Conference’ sessions. Jerzy Kozakiewicz Warsaw East European Review, Editor-in-Chief University of Warsaw 10 WEEReview ii/2012 I RUSS I A AND GEOPOL I T ic AL CHANGES Vilnius 10 Group – Geopolitical Emancipation or a Lost Opportunity for Angelic Moral Politics? TOMAS KAVAL I AUS K AS Department of Social and Political Theory Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania ilnius 10 Group – comprised of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia – supported the war in Iraq. All these countries in 2003 were aspiring NATO candidates. VBut the highly controversial war was also supported by other eight European NATO members as well: Italy, Spain, Britain, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Portugal.1 Three of these eight – Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland – are Central European countries. Needless to say, these three NATO members did not have to support the U.S. for the war in Iraq in order to join NATO as they achieved this membership in 1999. Nevertheless, they showed that pro-American position in Central Europe is unanimous. Even before Vilnius 10 Group supported the US attack on Iraq, some intellectuals and politicians believed that Central Europeans would deliver Western Europe with a sense of freedom. This thought was updated during the US president’s visit to Vilnius, when George W. Bush in Vilnius City Hall Square on a crisp November morning in 2002 unequivocally emphasized the price that Lithuania has paid for its liberty. In this context, when the crowd was shouting “thank you” both in English and Lithuanian thanking for an invitation to join NATO and was ceaselessly waving flags of the United States of America, of Lithuania, and of NATO, the words that touched upon Lithuanian honor were proclaimed by the smiling US president: “You don’t have to thank. NATO needs you!” Soon afterwards, the Vilnius 10 proved America was indeed in need of this new NATO member. Soon after the war in Iraq, when the US Congress approved the list of new NATO members, Bush in a welcoming ceremony emphasized that these new members of post-socialist countries proved their right to join NATO not only through words but also through action. 1 Jeffrey Donovan, “Eastern Europe: Vilnius Group Supports the U.S. on the War in Iraq,” February 6, 2003, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1102148.html. WEEReview ii/2012 13 Tomas Kavaliauskas However, the tension between the US and France, Germany and Russia before the attack on Iraq was so high that according to the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rums- feld, the Vilnius 10 position split Europe into two parts: the old and the new. Suddenly, the region of Europe, which Milan Kundera in 1984 called the “kidnapped West” and later “the tragic Central Europe”, was baptized the “new Europe”. Committing itself to such foreign politics in the early spring in 2003, Central Eu- rope suddenly became politically emancipated. Central European politicians showed regional solidarity and challenged the old Europe. Lithuania’s political status suddenly altered – poor beggars turned into equal partners of Paris and Berlin, demonstrating that the opinion of Central Europe has to be taken into account seriously. Chirac meanwhile hurriedly named the Vilnius 10 as irresponsible