The Role of the Models of Strategic Partnership in the New World Order. Euro-Russian Relations and the Eurasian Economic Union in Strategic

Abstract

Before the conflict in Ukraine, the EU-Russian relationship was developing in the format of a Strategic Partnership, and Russia was in fact already considered to be one of the EU’s ten strategic partners. However, the main problem of this emerging concept of European Union Foreign Policy was that there was neither an official definition of strategic partnership nor any common criteria for being chosen as a strategic partner. It is worth mentioning that before the crisis in Ukraine, Russia had not only developed a sense of integration with the European Union but had also promoted the same idea with regard to post-Soviet land space, and as a result the Eurasian Economic Union was created. Thus, when discussing EU-Russian relations we should take into account the new Actor on the international arena, the Eurasian Economic Union. The present doctoral thesis, composed of three independent chapters, represents a kind of trilogy where each segment has a life of its own consisting of a specific object of research, specific objectives, hypothesis, methodology and conclusions. However, they are united by the same goal of elaborating a conceptual model of strategic partners’ election to the EU, and on the basis of this model and Gravity Models to prove the rationality of establishment of a strategic partnership between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union from the economic, political, social, and cultural points of view.