Putting the EU Global Security Strategy to test: ‘cooperative orders’ and othering in EU–Russia relations

This paper examines the notion of othering and its role in the development of cooperative regional orders, prioritised by the EU Global Security Strategy. It argues that the conceptual underpinnings of the relationship between the inside and the outside, the established Self and the emergent Other, are too often taken for granted, and in an increasingly fragmenting global order require urgent re-conceptualisation. Hitherto, excessive emphasis has been placed on the Self, at the expense or even ignorance of the Other, leading to the production and endurance of hegemonic power structures, reinforced and maintained by the exclusionary ‘regimes of truth’, to which the EU-Russia relations in the ‘shared’ neighbourhood presently testify. Drawing on post-structuralist and Freudian work, the paper argues that while living in an increasingly complex and contested world, it is imperative to develop a more nuanced understanding of a changing global order as relational and interdependent. This would require a new conceptualisation of othering as a reciprocal nexus (rather than an opposition or even juxtaposition) between the Self and the Other, to ensure that cooperative orders would form and become sustainable.