NNL Pod 1: What is the Baltic Sea Region and how has it changed since the invasion of Ukraine?

The Nordic Region is part of the Baltic Sea Region, connected in historical, cultural and economic ways. Listen to a podcast about what has changed in the Baltic Sea Region since the invasion of Ukraine, and about how regions are not static and change over time, much like our affiliation for them.

Students from Aarhus University, Chance Dorland and Sóley Eliasdottir, get answers to their questions from two scholars, Kazimierz Musiał from the University of Gdansk's Scandinavian and Finnish Studies department and Alexander Drost from the Interdiscipliary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research at Greifswald University.  This podcast was made possible by funding from the A.P. Moller Foundation.

Sound credits: Summer by tictac9 from freesound.org.

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Transcript

Sóley Eliasdottir: 0:06

Welcome to this podcast for the New Nordic Lexicon. We are in Aarhus with students and researchers from Aarhus University, Gdansk, and Greifswald University. And the subject of this podcast will be the Baltic Sea region and the Nordics. And we have a few researchers who will be helping us with this, who we will introduce along the way.

Nicola Witcombe: 0:32

The New Nordic Lexicon is a collection of articles, podcasts and films based on research about the Nordic region and the world. This is the first New Nordic Lexicon podcast. What is the Baltic Sea region? And how has it changed since the invasion of Ukraine? The New Nordic Lexicon brings young people together with researchers and a dialogue on Nordic society history and culture. Good morning.

Sóley Eliasdottir: 1:04

[Native greeting][Native greeting] My name is Sóley Eliasdottir. I am from the Faroe Islands. And I am currently a master student at Aarhus University where I am studying philosophy with elective English. And I am here because I'm very interested in the work that the New Nordic Lexicon is doing since I am personally interested in the culture and the Nordic countries.

Chance Dorland: 1:31

My name is Chance. I'm from the US. I've lived in South Korea about the last 10 years and I came here with my wife for a master's program at Aarhus University, and the Danish School of media and journalism. The Baltic Sea region can be defined differently. But for now, we'll simply say that the states that are in the Council of the Baltic states today includes all the Nordic countries, so Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, and the three Baltic nations, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as Poland, Germany, and the representative of the EU. Russia, and Belarus were suspended and then withdrew from the Council of Baltic sea states shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine. So Alexander, turning to you, you're an interdisciplinary historian, and scientific director of the interdisciplinary research center for the Baltic Sea region, IFZO, which is based at Greifswald University, what does it mean to be an interdisciplinary historian?

Alexander Drost: 2:41

Well, I have to become a historian that is not limited to only the approaches and concepts and sources in the canonical, historical research. But I try to include, for instance, the understanding of security that is used in international relations studies, or I try to think about regionalism and political science so that I can actually integrate different approaches that are useful to do research on the Baltic Sea region.

Chance Dorland: 3:14

So it's interesting because are not all countries landmasses tied together by the sea? So what is particular about the BSR, in comparison to say, the southern Chinese region that you have also studied?

Alexander Drost: 3:29

I actually see the South China Sea region as a reference region to the Baltic Sea region, because you have comparable small societies around a water and a lot of exchange across the water, you have with China, a comparable global power factor as in the Baltic Sea region with Russia. And in this regard, I think we have a very similar situation where we can actually have a look into how these regions were formed, and how they set up their integrative structures.

Chance Dorland: 4:05

So of course, it's difficult. With such a large area, we can't cover its entire history in today's recording, but could you give us a brief overview of some of the historical reasons and periods that have tied the Baltic Sea region together?

Alexander Drost: 4:22

When you ask for certain kinds of periods that shaped the region then of course, it is the Hanseatic League that that starts in the late Middle Ages. And here we have not really some kind of power politics of the big rearms around the sea, but it is rather a league of certain kinds of traders. It's a trading network that then developed into a city network and describes a certain kind of extension across actually from London and from the Netherlands way into the the area what is today Russia. And then we have an age of changing Imperial hegemonic. See so the Swedish idea of a [?], that was nurtured very much actually, also, through the spread of Protestantism, it was spread, of course, also in dominating all the access to the Baltic Sea region controlling the sound and of course, also limiting Russian influence in the region. And then of course, we have some kind of religious coherences that describes a very different extent of the Baltic Sea region and constitution of the Baltic Sea region. Because we have an orthodox space in the east we have overlapping this orthodox space with the Protestant space in the West and in the northern region. And of course, we have the very huge Catholic communities also still present and very lively, around Poland and down to southern Europe. And what we should not forget, and that is also quite important and often overlooked in in the grand narratives is that we have a lot of dynastic relations, actually, across these different areas. We have a Swedish king on the Polish throne, we have [?] King on the Polish throne, actually the polish on was quite interesting, often changing. And this all contributes to how the region was shaped and how it became the beginning. But this is, of course, the historian speaking now with all these wonderful historical examples, but then you jump into the 20th century. And what you see then is actually that the region becomes shaped through institutional structures that were set up by these different societies bordering the Baltic Sea. And you can look into the first attempt of dealing with the environmental issues in the region, and that is then the Helcom and the Helsinki Commission in the 1970s. To set up actually to speak or to have a communicative point, to speak about the problems of the Baltic Sea, its fishery and its health, it's environmental protection.

Sóley Eliasdottir: 7:46

Just to introduce Kazimierz here. You are a professor at the Scandinavian studies department at the Gdansk University in Poland. And you have written about the Baltic Sea region in various contexts. And in some of your papers, you have talked about the Baltic Sea region builders or regional actors, and who or what do you mean by this? And can you tell us something about them?

Kazimierz Musiał: 8:16

We have to go back to the Helsinki Commission initiative from 1974, which was the first initiative in the Baltic Sea region and this is one of the first institutions that actually put the modern shape of the Baltic Sea region on the map, not only on the real map, but on the mental map of all the people who were stakeholders in Baltic Sea regionalism later on. When I talk about region builders, I also mean politicians who are active, for instance, in the Nordic Council in the Nordic Council of Ministers, who saw that perhaps the Nordic framework is not sufficiently big to to accommodate wishes of the peoples living across the Baltic Sea to live in peaceful coexistence and relative wealth enjoyed by the Nordics. And there were very many initiatives all of the Nordic politicians or the Nordic Council as a collective body to extend the Great Northern Europe concept to the Baltic Sea region as well to the Baltic states as well. The initial idea from the 1970s and then from 1989 and 2001-2004, when most of the countries became members of the European, apart from Russia, was to cooperate with this biggest neighbor on the Baltic Sea, the neighbor, which had quite a numerous population living on the Baltic Sea, in Kaliningrad, on St Petersburg. And somehow these people felt also connected to the sea, while at the same time being citizens of the Russian Federation. This dream has definitely been deflated in 2014 and has been shattered. Now because of the war in Ukraine, which the Russian Federation decided to wage.

Nicola Witcombe: 10:41

The Nordic region is part of the Baltic Sea region connected in historical, cultural and economic ways. This podcast is about the Baltic Sea region and what has changed since the invasion of Ukraine.

Chance Dorland: 11:02

So yes, the invasion of Ukraine has come up multiple times in the conversation. And previously, we took a look at the Baltic Sea region prior to that invasion. And I remember shattered dreams or dream shattered was mentioned. Can we take another look at some of the hopes and the aims for the Baltic Sea region at the point before the current conflict and what has happened to those helps since the invasion of Ukraine?

Kazimierz Musiał: 11:34

Well, I think the hopes were very high. And at the same time, the hopes were very realistic after the Cold War, I mean, people, peoples around the Baltic Sea were tired of the divisions. But they were also living in the divisions made up by the logic of the Cold War, where you had two blocks, you had a bipolar world system where the big powers and the satellites have the big powers. What happened in the Baltic Sea region was phenomenal, because people and scientists the epistemic community, they seized the historical window of opportunity to redefine the future, take the future in their hands and redefine the world they live in, in a peaceful manner without the big powers interfering too much. If you again, look at the theories of regional building you speak of transition from old regionalism to new regionalism, the old regionalism was about big powers and big countries, realistically having agreements for a common cause, for common trade, or for defense against the external evil, whereas the new regionalism focus rather on the soft security and common good and common challenges. So there was a distinctive change in the language that happened in the early 1990s. How you define the world in which you live? Is it full of dangers? Or is it full of opportunities? I think this dream of a world full of opportunities, which has been created and has furnished our imaginaries of Baltic Sea regionalism in the 1990s was a very formative moment for a whole generation, like us, who has started to believe in the world being able to do without wars and conflicts that are openly resorting to the use of military force. I think this is ending and this is a problem that we have to cope with when we have the invasion in Ukraine.

Alexander Drost: 13:59

But I wanted also to point out on this idea that maybe something has changed as Kazimierz just mentioned it. Nevertheless, certain points have not changed due to the Russian war in Ukraine, but actually, they worked as an accelerator for some hopes that for instance, when it comes to energy transition, when it comes to the security architecture of the region, these are really points that were already on the agenda before and these were tied to certain kinds of hopes, how to create a region here and more security in the region. And of course, a common energy market or something like that. And now they are actually on focus and now we are actually even driving them more forward. So that the situation is changing and you can see that these, the core of this topics, they are still there, the only thing that is different and you might experience some more of disparity within the region, because there are so different ideas and interpretation of the way how to transform actually into a sustainable region, into a region that experiences energy, security and energy supply security, and that actually experiences a stronger security architecture within the region.

Chance Dorland: 15:33

So that acceleration with Russia as the aggressor has that made that acceleration for the Baltic Sea region, the Baltic Sea countries, to come together more closely in certain issues that you just mentioned, military coming together for a common goal, has Russia become that other to identify against, Alexander?

Alexander Drost: 15:55

I mean, Russia always was the other in this region, I guess. Because if you if you look at all the different policies that were running, they were always running in the awareness of Russia is not part of the EU, or Russia is not part of any of the other networks, political networks and so on, and alliances. So Russia was always the other. And you could see that actually, that you have certain kinds of neighborhood programs set up or, or even the Northern dimension idea is, is really something how do we deal and integrate Russia into these political networks. And these special ways of treating Russia were, of course, also fostering the idea that Russia has to be treated specially. So with this war in Ukraine, of course, Russia is excluded immediately out of all these political initiatives, and is even more alienated by themself actually, to all these programs. And in so far, I would say, yes, it helped, actually, to unify. But all the countries in the Baltic Sea region wouldn't actually have a common ground if there wouldn't have been already set something up before. So we have institutional structures that evolved over decades now. So we can go back again to Helcom in the 1970s, where we have the long experience of working together on problems. And of course, this common ground that we have developed also since the 1990s. And the 2000s, is now helping to find even faster these unity against an aggressor like Russia.

Chance Dorland: 18:00

So as already mentioned, Russia and Belarus were suspended and withdrew from the Council of the Baltic sea states quite soon after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which Kazi, you differentiated the two in a recent policy paper by calling it the full blown invasion. So to look at that juxtaposition, why wasn't Russia expelled from CBSS? When it went into Crimea, back in 2014? Couldn't that also be classed as an invasion?

Kazimierz Musiał: 18:36

This is a very good question. And I think politicians, high officials, high representatives of different country in the council would have problems answering why they didn't act earlier? I think the question of having Russia at the table and this being a price to pay was handled differently at that time. And of course, Russia, well, you could say not only 2014, but 2008 should have been a bell that rang when parts of Georgia were annexed by the Russian Federation. And when [?] was also a part of Moldova, was also in the heavy influence of Russian military. So well, this bell should have rang earlier didn't. And I think many of their higher officials regret that development that they didn't act earlier. But on the other hand, well, even though Council of the Baltics Sea States is based on a very democratic principle, one country one voice. It's the reality of politics in the Baltic Sea region like it is in The United Nations as well and other international organizations is very often that you the bigger countries have a little bit more of weight when saying something. So as long as there were vested interests of Germany, and vested interest of Sweden or Finland to cooperate with Russia, Russia was not suspended. The violation of human rights in Russia was not enough violation of territorial integrity of Ukraine and Crimea was annexed was not enough, because political but first and foremost, economic interest were more important. But after 24th of February 2022, I think this was the moment when even those who are in favor of the economy, being the most important in relations with Russia had to see that well, there is perhaps something else at stake as well, there is the democratic order of the world. And there is the liberal state of our democracies that perhaps may be endangered by that. And as soon as bigger countries change their mind about the Baltic, about the relevance of Russia for their own wealth and well being, then we had a change decision also in the council.

Chance Dorland: 21:30

Obviously, we could go on for quite some time. But many thanks to everyone as we wind down today's episode, does anyone have any concluding comments or observations about we've discussed that they'd like to say before we call it a day?

Kazimierz Musiał: 21:44

I think what we now have in the Baltic region on the table for Baltic Sea regionalism in the future is not only the idea of a common sea as a common, endangered species. But we have an infrastructure within the EU strategy for the Baltic Sea region that also includes to other points or to other priorities, which is increase prosperity, and connect the region. And I think much of it has already been realized, to think of rail Baltica, which has not only been designed but parts of it have already been actually created via Baltica the motorway network around the Baltic Sea that's has been planned in the 1990s. It has come into existence. But what I think is also worth not forgetting is that with the war in Ukraine, we have also lost a number of Baltic Sea regionalism friends in Russia itself. I mean, the EU strategy for the Baltic Sea region for 2009, has actually triggered similar initiatives in Russia, there was a Russian Federation strategy for Northwest regions, which was supposed to match the EU strategy. Of course, nobody remembers it now and will remember it in the future where all the links with the politicians with the civil society in Russia with the businesses in Russia gone.

Sóley Eliasdottir: 23:24

So I came to think of your vision within this context, which is relatively big in Europe. And this has depicted something that's supposed to be or remain unpolitical, which turns out to be very political in the end. And I'm thinking specifically about how Russia has participated regularly in the competition until the invasion of Ukraine. And they did not partake in the competition last year, yet Ukraine did. And this has clearly revealed some political standpoints.

Alexander Drost: 23:59

Thank you very much for that example, actually, because that is what I think also happened due to the war of Russia and Ukraine is any topic that is touching somehow these issues, they are politicized at the moment, yeah, they are instrumentalized because it is a period of very highly politicized issues. In any case, the energy transition will always be an energy transition, and it will always be important, but but now it is politicized. The same as with let's say, with with the remnants, the shared heritage and the remnants of history of the Cold War era, yeah? So what are we actually doing with the with the Soviet bases and all the countries in in the area? Are we keeping them to show further generations something about it? Or do we now actually distract them very quickly just to show Russia how bad they are doing? So what are we doing with that? So everything at the moment, I think, is very highly politicized, even the NATO membership of Finland and Sweden and so on. At the moment, you cannot escape this very much. Yeah. So but I hope that we find actually a way also to discuss this at a later stage, again, for the sake of the topic, and not for political reasons.

Kazimierz Musiał: 25:41

I think one of the lessons that you learn from the theories of the so called critical junctures is that the developments after them can be put on the positive or negative trajectories. And well, whichever we choose in 1989, we were happy to put it on the positive trajectory. Let's hope it won't be put on the negative trajectory now after 2022.

Chance Dorland: 26:04

Well of course, many thanks to everybody for participating in today's podcast episode. Thank you.

Kazimierz Musiał: 26:10

Thank you very much.

Nicola Witcombe: 26:20

The researchers you listened to speaking today were Kazimierz Musiał, from the University of Gdansk and Alexander Drost, from Greifswald University. The students you listened to today were chance Dorland, a journalism student at Aarhus University and Sóley Eliasdottir, also from Aarhus University. The New Nordic Lexicon podcast series will mainly be in English with some episodes in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Subjects range from the invasion of Ukraine and security in Europe, to minority languages in Finland and Sweden. The New Nordic Lexicon is brought to you by the team behind Nnrdics.info at Aarhus University in Denmark with students and colleagues from across the Nordics and beyond. The New Nordic Lexicon is supported by the A.P. Møller Foundation and grew out of the university hub Reimagining Norden in an Evolving World which was supported by NordForsk.