Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine back in February 2022, the call for the decolonisation of International Relations has taken a new impetus. The countries from the so-called “shared neighbourhood” between the EU and Russia are among the first to be affected, having been largely deprived of a voice of their own, considered as objects rather than subjects. It is argued that this is both due to the Eurocentric trend in IR and the dominant place of Russia when studying the former Soviet space. This paper aims at bringing to the fore the specific agency that seemingly marginal actors can have on the cores. Through the lens of liminality, this paper considers the countries from the shared neighbourhood as in-between: in-between two competing regional cores – the EU and Russia – and as partly-Self partly-Other, a position that can be used as a source of constitutive power. Through this ambiguity characteristic of liminality, liminal actors can subvert and challenge the established order, thus opening possibilities for re-articulations of the cores’ structures. From this view, the paper asks the extent to which Georgia, being on the “margins” of both the EU and Russia, tries to turn this uncomfortable position into a source of agency. From the analysis of political speeches and interviews, this paper examines shifts in Georgia’s perceptions of its Self and of the EU and Russian Others and how these are linked to re-articulations of the discursive strategies at play within the foreign policy discourse. Considering Georgia’s long-standing stance in favour of EU integration and its branding as a frontrunner in terms of Europeanisation in the wider “post-Soviet” space, the paper discusses Georgia’s self-assigned role as a barrier for the EU against an “evil” Russia and as an outpost of democracy and modernity in the area. Taking into account recent evolutions linked to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and democratic backsliding in Georgia, which did not receive the EU candidate status as did the rest of the Associated Trio, the paper finally questions the extent to which Georgia’s ontological security narrative is being destabilised, and how this can affect its agency.

Culture has increasingly become a cross-cutting issue mainstreamed in the EU's external cooperation agendas. The 2016 Joint Communication ‘Towards an EU Strategy for International Cultural Relations’ and the ‘New European Agenda for Culture’ placed culture to the centre of the EU’s external relations strategy with a focus on utilising cultural cooperation with partner countries as part of the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy. This interest has been manifested in three ways. First, in the publication of key documents placing culture in the framework of the EU’s wider foreign strategy. Second, reformulating the discourse around ‘culture’ by shifting the attention from Cultural Diplomacy (CD) to International Cultural Relations (ICR) as well as readapting the narrow definition of culture as arts, language, and heritage to a wider sense of culture, as norms, values, social behaviours and institutions. Third, the ICR framework also supported the introduction of cultural intermediaries by the EU. Therefore, the ICR offered a new potential pathway for the EU to translate the strategy’s visions into action.

This paper examines the role of international cultural organisations (intermediaries) in foreign policy and neighbourhood policy in the Eastern Partnership initiative of the European Union. Applying an interpretive lens, it analyses how communities of practices (CoPs) are created and situated through and for the implementation of the European Union’s foreign policies.

This approach is discussed in three steps. First, the paper introduces the background and emergence of the ICR approach in the EU’s global strategy. ICR not only marked a shift in narratives, but also introduced new actors to its delivery. One way to understand the role and position of these actors is through the concept of communities of practices (CoPs). Therefore, second, the article introduces a theoretical framework based on the CoPs approach. While CoPs are mainly seen as self-organised groups of people brought together by shared practices, this part will also reflect on the question, of whether and how CoPs could be instrumentalised to deliver foreign policy goals. Third, the article introduces the analysis of assessment and orchestration tools of the EU, based on discourse analysis of the related documents and semi-structured interviews conducted by EU officers, stakeholders, and cultural operators. It concludes with a discussion on whether and how assessment tools can create communities of practices, as well as networks of practices.

Since her appointment in 2019, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has promoted the idea of a ‘geopolitical Commission’. Her call for a more ‘security-conscious’ EU has gained renewed emphasis following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Practitioners have welcomed this geopolitical turn as a move towards more EU actorness on the global stage; however, critical, feminist and decolonial scholars have suggested that the EU’s geopolitical turn further enables the prioritization of neoliberal policies over concerns for global justice, besides normalizing military masculinities and racist imaginaries of a European ‘garden’ versus the rest as a ‘jungle’ - thus producing more insecurities and inequalities. Against this backdrop, the paper interrogates the performance of the EU’s geopolitical power in the South Caucasus, particularly with regards to Brussels’ evolving role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, from a decolonial feminist perspective. Following Azerbaijan’s war against Armenian forces and people in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in late 2020, Brussels has been taking up a more active role in conflict mediation, presenting itself as an alternative to Russia’s illiberal conflict management style. However, as the violence experienced by Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians does not fit the West’s broader geopolitical interests and narratives, the EU's involvement in the conflict remains skewed. For instance, Brussels’ whitewashing of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime as a "reliable energy supplier", as well as its framing of peace in merely technical and economic terms, arouse critical questions regarding the EU’s role in the process and on-the-ground perceptions thereof. Drawing upon decolonial thinking and feminist geopolitics, the paper unravels the understandings of (in)security and peace that are mobilized in the EU’s official discourse as well as by anti-war and feminist groups from Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. It investigates the (re)production of the EU’s geopolitical power in the South Caucasus and how this is experienced, shaped and questioned by differently situated populations on the grassroots level. In so doing, it attempts to sketch out imaginaries of peace that are not limited to the language of geopolitics but challenge and go beyond the present structures of coloniality. The paper is based on interviews and on the close reading of relevant policy documents, reports and (social) media sources.