22 November 2018 ISSN: 2560-1628 2018 No.38 WORKING PAPER The perception of relations with China in East Central Europe in the scope of the tradition of regional integration Csaba Barnabas Horvath MTA-ELTE-SZTE Silk Road Research Group Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 [email protected] china-cee.eu The perception of relations with China in East Central Europe in the scope of the tradition of regional integration Abstract: The present prospering relations between China and the CEE region are in many ways part of a long lasting geopolitical tradition of the region. Dating back for centuries, the geopolitical status of the region has been characterized by a high degree of fragmentation with being composed of more than a dozen of small nations, stucked between the major polities of Germany, Russia, and till the early 20th century the Ottoman Empire. This developed a high sense of vulnerability throughout the region, with its’ nations being subject of domination by the neighboring great powers of Russia, Germany or German polities (such as Austria and Prussia) or the Ottoman Empire. This sense of vulnerability triggered aspirations of both forming some kind of unity among the small nations of the region and a diversification of their foreign relations beyond the region, attempting to deepen relations with great powers beyond neighboring Germany and Russia. From Polish cooperation with Napoleon, through the proposals of the „Danubian Confederation” by Lajos Kossuth, „United States of Greater Austria” by Aurel Popovici, and the „Intermarium” by Jozef Pilsudski, several such proposals appeared throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the countries of the region simultaniously form closer ties both with China along the frames of the 16+1 Initiative, and with the USA along the frames of the Three Seas Initiative, and this rapproachement with the US and China at the same time, may be confusing and even seem like a paradox without being aware of this historical attitude in the region. In the scope of the described phenomenon however, we can see that it perfectly makes sense, and perfectly fits in the tradition of geopolitical thought in the region. Introduction To understand present day trends in international politics, we often have to reach back of centuries old histories and traditions of certain regions. The 16+1 Initiative, that is the key platform of deepening relations between the countries of China and East Central Europe, is no exception. An apparent phenomenon that marks certain trends in the region seem a bit confusing is that while countries of the region apparently seek stronger cooperation with China in the framework of the 16+1 Initiative, on the other hand, as Donalnd Trump attended the Warsaw summit of the Three Seas Initiative, another initiative consisting of most European members of 1 the 16+1, it also became apparent that they also seek a stronger cooperation with the US as well at the same time. Countries that seek closer cooperation with China and the USA at the same time may seem confusing in the scope of the fact that a superpower rivalry is becoming more and more apparent in the Indo-Pacific between these two powers. If we take an overview on historical attitudes in East-Central Europe however, we can find trends and attitudes in political thought in the region that can show the logic behind these seemingly confusing developments. This paper makes an attempt to take such an overview. Defining East Central Europe The exact geographical definition of East Central Europe is somewhat fluid. From the narrowest definitions limiting the concept to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, to the broadest ones that expand it to as fat west as Austria, as far east as Ukraine, as far north as Finland, and as far south as Greece. As the 16 countries participating in the 16+1 initiative mainly cover those former communist countries of Europe that are not part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, for practical reasons, in this paper we will use this definition. This also make sense regarding the political, economic, social and psychological delimitation of the region discussed: Those former communist countries of Europe that are not part of the Commonwealth of Independent States are distinct from countries to the west in that unlike those, they experienced communist rule during the Cold War, and what makes them distinct from countries to the east of them, is that while development of countries that joined the Commonwealth of Independent States were still more closely tied to that of Russia even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the development of these countries were defined by their relations to the EU and NATO ever since the 1990s. East Central Europe is a region characterized by an especially great degree of ethnocultural and political fragmentation. If we define the region as those former communist countries that are not part of the Commonwealth of Independent Nations, then this means a population of 120 million people, less than that of each of the 11 most populous countries on Earth, divided to 17 countries, with 13 to 16 official languages (depending on whether if we consider the Serbo-Croatian as one single language, or of we distinct Bosnian, Croat, Montenegrin and Serb languages) that belong to four subfamilies of the Indo-European language family (Albanian, Baltic, Romance and Slavic) and two subfamilies of the Uralic 2 language family (Finno-Permian and Ugric).1 The Huntingtonian dividing line between the Western and Orthodox civilizations crosses right through the region, with Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia belonging to the Western civilization, while Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania belonging to the Orthodox, and Albania, and Kosovo being Muslim majority countries, and Bosnia being divided between these three civilizations.2 One thousand years ago the region was dominated by three Western, and two Orthodox powers, the three Western being the Kingdom of Bohemia (the historical predecessor of the Czech Republic) the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Kingdom of Poland, and the two Orthodox being the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire. By the end of the 15th century, the Bulgarian and Byzantine empires were consumed by the expansive Ottoman Empire, and by the end of the 18th century, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland were also taken over by the Austria, Prussia and Russia. By that time, virtually all other polities of the region as well fell under the control of either Austria, Prussia, Russia or the Ottoman Empire, so the entire region was divided between these four powers.3 As countries started to break away from Austrian, Ottoman, Prussian, or Russian rule (or at least made attempts to it) political thought in the region embraced the idea of finding a solution to assure security against these powers. As the Ottoman Empire fell into decline, and no longer appeared as a viable expansive power, and the idea of German unity started to influence Austria and Prussia, by the mid-19th century, this thought took its final form as seeking guarantees against German and Russian pressure. As political thinkers of the region acknowledged that the high degree of ethnocultural fragmentation of the region makes it vulnerable to “divide and conquer” tactics by the feared German and Russian powers, many of them got to a conclusion that some kind of unity in the region could be a solution for the problem. In today’s efforts by countries of the region to view the option of building closer economic relations with China with apparent enthusiasm, we can also find patterns characteristic to this attitude, thus the present trends can also be interpreted as the newest manifestation of centuries old attitudes. To get a better understanding of this phenomenon, at first we take an overview of three notable proposals of regional integration in the region during the 19th and early 20th centuries. 1 Romsics, I. (1998). Nemzet, nemzetiség és állam: Kelet-Közép-és Délkelet- Európában a 19. és 20. században. Napvilág. 2 Huntington, S. P., Dóra, P., Mila, G., Györgyi, G., & Attila, A. K. (2008). A civilizációk összecsapása és a világrend átalakulása. Európa. pp. 255-266. 3 Romsics, I. (1998). Nemzet, nemzetiség és állam: Kelet-Közép-és Délkelet- Európában a 19. és 20. században. Napvilág. pp. 33-71. 3 The “Danubian Confederation” proposal of Lajos Kossuth Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the Hungarian war of independence crushed by the combined force of the Austrian and Russian empires, finalized his plan of the Danubian Confederation by 1862. The Confederation was a plan about how the nations of the Austrian Empire should position themselves in case if they can successfully break away from the empire, as Kossuth assumed that without some kind of unity, they would not be able to withstand German or Russian pressure. The Danubian Confederation was a proposal for a confederation between Croatia, the Kingdom of Hungary, Romania and Serbia.4 The main aim of this proposal was also to unite the strength of these four small nations of the region, to counter the force of the Russian Empire in the east and the forming German unity in the West. The geopolitical framework that would have meant to provide cohesion for this entity was that most of the territory of the constituent countries lay within the watershed of the river Danube, and the proposed confederation in fact covered more than half of the entire watershed. The countries to be included consisted of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, that both were planned to break away from the Austrian Empire, while Romania and Serbia were at that time still under Ottoman suzerainty, but already autonomous states in control of their internal affairs.