Neoclassical Realist Reasons for EU's Pragmatic Approach to its Eastern Neighbor Belarus

Abstract: The research aims at conducting Neoclassical Realist Foreign Policy Analysis of EU's Eastern Partnership, to elicit the neoclassical realist reasons for EU's pragmatism in relations with Belarus. The reasons identified by the literature for EU's pragmatism in Belarus revolves around structural and domestic factors. However, it turns a blind eye to the influence of strategic culture in shaping the member state's security and political interests and EU's milieu goals in Belarus. The research, therefore, tries to address the gap, by tracing the influence of strategic culture as explained by Charles Kupchan, through the methodology of process tracing. It takes a broader view of strategic culture (official and public) in shaping the EU member states (Poland, Baltics, Germany, and France) security and political interests and its narrower concept, to explain the influence of post-modern EU strategic culture and civilian identity in shaping EU's milieu goals in Belarus. By elaborating the factors that shape the political, security, economic, and energy interests of the member states, and EU's milieu goals as well as the simultaneous impact of the process in which the influence of intervening variables shape the pragmatic preferences of the EU national power (the EU Parliament as represented by Poland, Baltic, France, and Germany) and foreign policy, the research tries to arrive at a comprehensive picture of the reasons for EU's pragmatism in Belarus. Which concludes that in the expansion of normative influence in Belarus EU's resort to pragmatic foreign policy is determined by the EU's national power. That has a preference for pragmaticism shaped by the different intervening variables, rather than EU's political moralism. If the EU Commission's milieu shaping agenda in Belarus jeopardize the interests of the member states i.e. the Polish-Baltic fears of Belarus becoming a Russian military outpost at their doorstep, the disruption of economic ties, and the Franco-German Russia first policy's drive for the engagement of Russia, it would be hindered by the opposition of its national power- the EU Parliament. The way open for EU's political moralism in Belarus rests in the reduced economic and energy dependence of its member states on Belarus and a minimized fear of the Russian bear hug of the borderlands. That can be achieved by acknowledging Russia's great power status, rather than viewing it as the EU's other to be transformed and an indigenous European security architecture replacing the transatlantic security mechanism. The study makes a contribution to the field of EU policy-making and implementation in Belarus.