At the end of May, 2014, Russia signed an economic treaty
with Belarus and Kazakhstan that “forges closer trade and labor ties among the
former Soviet republics.”[1]
Even though the new economic ties fall short of another European Union, Russian
President Vladimir Putin referred to the new trading relationships as the
Eurasian Economic Union, which I contend is deliberately misleading. Being
implicitly part of the category mistake, the E.U. itself could be further
misunderstood as a consequence.
“Today, we are creating . . . a major regional market,”
Putin said at the signing ceremony. In addition to establishing a common market
characterized by free trade, the economic treaty coordinates the financial
systems of the three countries and coordinates their respective industrial and
agricultural—but not energy—policies along with their labor markets and
transport systems.[2]
Such an arrangement harkens back to the European Coal and Steel Cooperative,
which was formed by six European countries in the wake of World War II in order
to keep an eye on German iron production and possible re-militarization.
Indeed, cooperative is a more fitting
label than is union; as Bakytzhan
Sagintayev, Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister pointed out, “We fought over
every letter of the agreement to make sure there was no political integration.
. . . If Russia wants anything in the agreement, it needs our consent.”
Therefore, the enhanced economic coordination falls short of the
dual-sovereignty that characterize both the E.U. and U.S.
In the European case, qualified-majority-voting means that a
state may find itself on the losing side of a vote in the European Council. That
is to say, France may find itself bound by a federal law in spite of having
voted against it. In fact, representatives in the European Parliament who live
in the state of France may have voted for
the new law! The E.U. goes far beyond any treaty between (and obliging)
governments. Indeed, the exclusive competencies of the E.U. mean that some
governmental sovereignty has been transferred to the federal level.
Similarly, the residual sovereignty remaining with the
American states means that the U.S. federal authority is also delegated.
Additionally, the Russian economic cooperative does not establish a legislative
body directly elected by citizens without respect to their respective states,
such as the European Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives. Strictly
speaking, treaties are limited in that they can bind only states, rather than
forging direct effect, or a direct political relation between individuals and a
federal institution. Hence Putin’s economic treaty differs fundamentally from
the E.U. basic law and the U.S. constitutional law.
In short, Putin’s use of the word union to describe a treaty that coordinates trade between three
sovereign countries is erroneous at best, and in all probability disingenuous too.
The category mistake is doubtless an attempt at propaganda to resurrect the
notion of the old Russian empire even as Ukraine was leaning to the West rather
than back into the fold. The real damage from Putin charade of diction may
occur to the west, where too many Europeans were still under the illusion that
their states too were still sovereign even as they were subject to E.U. rules,
directives, and regulations. This misimpression has weakened the E.U. even as
its responsibilities have increased. Imagine a parent saying to a teenager, “we
expect you to take on the responsibilities of being a young adult, but we are
still going to treat you like a child.” The teenager would quite understandably
be confused and utterly frustrated at the sheer unfairness of the
mischaracterization. “I’m not a kid anymore!”
At the crux of the matter of Putin’s incorrect use of the
word union, dual-sovereignty and
direct-effect, as in the establishment of direct citizen-federal relations,
separate the E.U. and the U.S. as unions from economic coordinative treaties,
and even from alliances, between sovereign governments. Put another way, the
U.S. is more than the U.S. Senate and the E.U. is more than the European
Council. Both federal levels have legislative, judicial, and executive
machinery that goes beyond the intergovernmental sort that a treaty could
establish. Nice try, Mr. Putin.
[1] This
and all other quotes in this essay are taken from: Anna Arutunyan, “Russia, 2
Other Nations Sign Pact,” USA Today,
May 30, 2014.
[2]
Ibid.
