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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Structural Geopolitics in Europe: Constructing Geopolitical Subjectivity for the EU and Russia
Pami Aalto
Copenhagen Peace Research Institute
July 2001
Introduction
This paper is designed to elucidate structural geopolitics in Europe. This entails mapping the main structural developments and processes in contemporary Europe in the sphere of spatially and geographically coloured politics, i.e. geopolitics.
I argue that the main structural processes in Europe are about the projects of constructing geopolitical subjectivity for the EU and Russia. These projects manifest themselves in the forms of integration efforts and great power politics. The two projects also encounter each other in an interesting way in the question of the Russian exclave/enclave of Kaliningrad. This region is becoming Russia's relatively impoverished and isolated exclave/enclave within the EU, with the neighbouring states Lithuania and Poland presumably becoming members of the Union during the course of the ongoing decade. Lithuania's and Poland's EU accession entails visa, transit and energy supply problems for the Kaliningraders, and several "soft" security issues that call for a display of geopolitical subjectivity both from the EU and Russia.
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