Putin’s Russia: Exploiting the Weaknesses of Liberal Europe

By Jonas Grätz

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31 March 2015

Jonas Grätz thinks that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine poses a threefold challenge to liberal Europe. To start with, Moscow has already sabotaged the EU’s peaceful attempts to transform its neighborhood. It has the added options, however, of exploiting Brussels’ ‘weak’ economic policies and a growing disinterest in the European project.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has brought war back into Europe. In addition, it presents a threefold challenge to an already weakened liberal Europe: With regard to security, Moscow has spoiled the EU’s approach of transforming its neighborhood while disregarding the power of military coercion. Furthermore, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin can also exploit the existing weaknesses of the EU’s economic policies and the waning en­thusiasm for the EU’s liberalism in member states. Collectively, those chal­lenges result in a crisis of the EU’s liberal order.