For more than thirty years, the Eastern Partnership countries have been trying to build democracies. From the very outset, democratic values and processes were perceived and communicated as the path to economic prosperity, peace, and integration into Western institutions, especially the EU and NATO. However, it all turned out to be a lot more complicated – writes Nikolay Kapitonenko, associate professor at the Institute of International Relations at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and director of the Centre for International Relations Studies – in the online magazine International Politics and Society, supported by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.

Over the last thirty years, only a small number of individual countries managed to cling on to their membership in the group of flawed democracies for a short period of time, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. As of 2020, Ukraine and Moldova were in 79th and 80th position of the Economist’s global ranking, respectively, while Armenia and Georgia occupied 89th and 91st position. These four countries are classified as hybrid regimes where, because of poverty, it is relatively difficult to uphold democratic institutions. The Democracy Index puts Azerbaijan and Belarus, which are autocracies, even further down the list in 146th and 148th position, respectively. Russia is, incidentally, also classified as an authoritarian regime, a fact which has a significant impact on security in the region as a whole.

So what does this chronic democratic deficit mean for foreign policy? First, it is highly likely that it will block access to NATO and EU membership: democratic values are essential for both organisations, and not just as catchwords but as functioning institutions. Second, a weak democracy creates internal instability, as we have seen from multiple revolutions and uprisings in the Eastern Partnership countries. Third, there is no democratic peace (democratic states rarely go to war against each other), and this goes hand in hand with a lack of trust between the different states. This democratic deficit has significantly reduced the potential for constructive diplomacy, especially when it comes to resolving ‘frozen’ conflicts. Various projects and arrangements, even before the events of 2014, remained on paper, notes Nikolay Kapitonenko.

Thirty years ago, the first conflicts emerged and became ‘frozen’, including the Transnistria War, which provided Russia with more opportunities to influence processes in the former Soviet republics. Over the last seven years, Eastern Europe has returned to the familiar framework of geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the West. The risk for the medium-sized and small countries in the region has increased and opportunities declined. Frozen, partially frozen, and simmering conflicts in Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Donbass, but also the annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, turned the region’s countries into fragile states, living in a constant fear of escalation. Thirty years ago the future looked very different, writes Kapitonenko.

Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine want to join the EU and NATO. But the world around them has changed, leaving them no real chance of success. These countries’ foreign policy is reminiscent of a tram track, a rut they are stuck in and from which there is virtually no possibility of escape: containment of Russia, the search for allies in the region, and the rhetoric about joining NATO and the EU. In some ways, this is their own choice, and partially, it is imposed on them by external circumstances. Russian revisionism and aggression has effectively blocked any other strategic alternatives for an indefinite period of time. In these circumstances, can we even refer to independent foreign policy?, asks Nikolay Kapitonenko,