By Araya Kebede Araya*
Critique against the EU’s Foreign Policy (A brief book review)
· The EU lacks a coherent foreign policy strategy
I, inspired by Prof. Wang Li’s lecture and class’ discussion, was immediately pushed to read a 2010 edition book entitled The Foreign Policy of the European Union: Assessing Europe’s Role in the World compiled and edited by Federiga Bindi as contributed by many authors on the theme. The book, inter alia, is about a critical assessment of EU (strategic) foreign policy.
Questioning if after all it is a ‘myth or a reality’, Federiga Bindi and Jeremy Shapiro slams EU’s foreign policy evolution as a mess, a simple fusion of different issue areas that were thrown together with little thought to overall strategy, and thus no parallels can be made with the foreign policies of its member states.
From a comparative perspective they argue that it is relatively easy to define, for example, the foreign policy of the USA, and one can even find a fairly accurate expression of it in official documents such as the “National Security Strategy of the United States.” The EU, in contrast, has not defined the goals of its foreign policy, to a large degree because it cannot agree on them. There is a “European Security Strategy” (ESS) document, published in 2003, that reads much like that of the USA, but it is in fact not a representation of what the EU actually wants to do in the world. In fact, it is quite clear when looking at the diversity of opinion on the EU’s role in the world among its member state populations and governments that the EU as a collective does not know what its foreign policy goals are. As the unsuccessful effort to update that strategy in 2008 showed, there is no longer even sufficient consensus to come up with a new document.
Towards establishing a common foreign policy
There is a long history of European efforts to establish a common foreign policy. The European nations first tried to pool resources in the field of defense, even before EEC. That proved a step too far: the European Defense Community (EDC) was initiated to respond to both domestic and international challenges: namely the problem of German rearmament and the Korean War. But when it became clear that that conflict was local, Europeans lost interest, forsaken the EDC, and in effect looked inward.
1960s
Even much of the progresses of the 1960s were reflections of domestic policies and problems. For example, the customs union brought with it a commercial policy, with a major boost coming from the GATT as it provided the EEC with a forum for negotiating as a unit. In the same years the EEC development policy responded to the need to deal with French colonies within a European framework to act together where France had failed separately with the Communauté Française. After the 1973 enlargement, development policy received a considerable improvement as it also came to include former British colonies.
1970s
During the 1970s the EC found itself not ready to deal with the changes the world was undergoing the notable events being the oil crisis and the Arab-Israeli wars. Relations with the United States also changed, and not for the better. Henry Kissinger, the then U.S. secretary of state, straightforwardly told the Europeans that they did not want to hear: that they have only regional interests. Offended, the Europeans tried to form a European political identity in order to express their global interests. In concrete terms that meant that for the first time they gave themselves a few specific instruments for dealing with foreign policy: the European Political Cooperation (EPC) and the European Council. By the end of the 1970s, international events conspired to remind Europe that it could not ignore the wider world and could not simply rely on the United States to define its interests in the world. The refusal of the Europeans to go along with American sanctions against Iran after the revolution in 1979 or to join the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan are two prominent examples that showed that the Europeans do exist and that they do not always agree with the United States.
1980s
During the 1980s, with the accession of Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the EC essentially comprised all of Western Europe. There was a general sense that as a geographic entity the EC needed a qualitative leap forward in its capacity to act geopolitically. The Single European Act of 1986 gave the EPC a permanent secretariat and entrusted the EC Presidency with representing Europe internationally. In the same years, with the accession of Spain and Portugal, the EEC became interested in Latin America, conducting the San Jose dialogue to create links with the Latin American countries and to send a signal to the United States that Latin America would no longer be its exclusive sphere of influence. The EEC also pushed the new democracies in Latin America to create regional groupings in the image of the EC.
Redefining Europe
1990s
During the 1990s, the fall of the Berlin Wall redefined the very meaning of Europe, while the conflicts in the Balkans confirmed the dangers of a weak Europe. Internally, collapse of the USSR meant a reunited Germany, which posed a challenge to existing structure of Europe. In 1992 the Treaty on the EU sought to secure a bigger Germany in a stronger Europe, with a common European currency and a stronger foreign and defense policy. Ultimately, the result in the field of foreign policy was the CFSP, which was actually an institutional upgrade of the EPC rather than a coherent foreign policy. The European failure to act resolutely in the Balkans meant that the 1990s was also the time in which the Europeans started discussing defense seriously. The results were relatively weak institutions (the ESDP) rather than a strong common defense policy. Only after the civil wars ended in the Balkans was the EU able to make a difference on the ground.
All in all, however, the main priority of the 1990s was the relationship with the central European countries. With an eye toward granting these countries membership, the EU negotiated enhanced Association Agreements with them. The fall of the Berlin Wall also naturally led to an attempt—not always successful—to enhance relations with Russia and with the other states of the former Soviet Union, which would soon become the EU’s neighbors. Last but not least, the early 1990s saw an attempt to become a major actor in the Mediterranean with the Barcelona dialogue and to go global by relaunching relations with Asia and the United States.
The previous decade – 2000s
After ‘September 11’, European internal security also became an issue, in response to the presence of terrorism as well as the massive entry of immigrants to Europe. The big bang enlargement to the east in 2004 made Europe and the EU nearly synonymous, at least as geographic expressions. The EU’s continental scope aspired a global role, but the burdens of integrating the new members, the even more awkward decision making processes, and the divisions introduced by a new members meant that the expanded Europe was even less capable of making a viable foreign policy.
Conclusion: towards formulating a security strategy
In general, the EU’s foreign policymakers have as a rule reacted to specific events and situations as opposed to forming a forward looking strategy. In other words, the EU and its member states have responded tactically to events, adding competencies in foreign policy at the EU level when there was an urgent need or a specific opportunity rather than according to some finely elaborated strategy.
In effect, this approach has been disappointing to its members, its publics, and the EU institutions themselves, in particular. However, the EU has also developed an ideological basis for foreign policy as well as institutions and capacities that have the power to serve as the foundation for more significant achievements. An EU foreign policy would require a more strategic stance to realize that potential. The setting up of ESS was an important step in that regard, but creating a strategy document is not the same as having a strategy. The formulation of a security strategy should be a political process, an effort to build consensus around a broad approach to securing a polity’s interests. It is much more than just a document; it is a process that seeks to negotiate the limits of what the polity can agree on, to smooth out the most logically incompatible edges of that consensus, and to produce a document that can command widespread respect and agreement. The resulting strategy document, even if it gets the headlines, is the least important part of that process—it is the result of a political negotiation, not the impetus for a strategic change. The ESS was not created through such a political process; rather the ESS process was heavily centralized in the staff of the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana. The editors even make strong concluding remark that reads the European Union lacks the institutional infrastructure to carry out such a process.
Araya Kebede Araya, LL B., MA, LL. M (PROLAW)
Lecturer in Law, Mekelle University, College of Law and Governance
Ethiopia, Mekelle - Adi Haqi Campus
Cell phone: +39 3896872473 (Rome, Italy), +251 923 771883 (Ethiopia)
E-mail: araya57k@gmail.com, aaraya@luc.edu
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