The EU's Foreign Policy

What Kind of Power and Diplomatic Action?

Mario Telò, Frederik Ponjaert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317032649
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Essays in Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A very timely and topical volume concerned with the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on the European Union's (EU) capacity to further develop a distinctive foreign policy in accordance with the various policy instruments necessary to fulfil its role as a global actor. This edited volume brings together a host of scholars in the fields of European Studies and International Relations whose contributions offer both innovative theoretical perspectives and new empirical insights. Overall, the book emphasizes the question of the EU's evolving legitimacy and efficiency as a foreign policy and diplomatic actor on the regional and global stage. This shared concern is clearly reflected in the book's three-pronged structure: Part 1 - the EU a controversial global political actor in an emergent multipolar world with contributions from A.Gamble, M.Telò and J.Howorth; Part 2 - After the Lisbon Treaty: the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the European External Action Service, includes chapters from C.Lequesne, C.Carta and H.Mayer; Part 3 - R.Gillespie, F.Ponjaert, G.Grevi, Z.Chen, H.Nakamura and U.Salma Bava assess the CFSP and the EU's external relations in action. Foreword by S.E.M P. Vimont. As a result, the book is a useful and relevant contribution to European Union studies and International Relations' research and teaching. It offers any interested party informed and comprehensive insights into EU foreign policy at a time when it seeks to undertake an increased role in World affairs and this despite economic crisis.

PART I
The EU: A Controversial Global
Political Actor Within an Emergent
Multipolar World

Chapter 1
The EU and the Evolving Shift of Power in Global Governance

Andrew Gamble

Abstract

The world order was transformed by the end of the Cold War, which allowed the US-dominated liberal world order to incorporate most of the rest of the world. This unipolar system was short-lived partly because of the ambitions of the EU to make itself a global actor, but mainly because of the emergence of rising powers, particularly Brazil, China and India, which raised the prospect of a fundamental shift of power in the way the world order was governed. The financial crash of 2008 and the Eurozone crisis since 2010 underline the growing relative weakness of Western states, and accelerated trends towards shifts in power between established and rising powers. What form these shifts will take is uncertain, and will depend in part on whether and how the political deadlocks both at domestic and international level such as those in the United States and the European Union are resolved, and what kind of new world order then emerges. A number of scenarios as to how the international economy and the international state system might develop are set out, together with their implications for the European Union.

Introduction

The contemporary world order was transformed in 1991 by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which created for a time a unipolar world in security terms, the apparent triumph of the West, and the consolidation and extension of the multilateral liberal market order which had been fashioned under US leadership. It freed the European Union from dependence on the security guarantees of the United States, and led to attempts from the Maastricht Treaty to the Lisbon Treaty to turn the European Union into a global political actor (see Chapter 2 in this volume) developing a common foreign and defence policy while extending the already existing common economic policy to embrace monetary union. This new assertiveness and distinctiveness of Europe was accompanied by the rise of new powers, in particular Brazil, India and China, which many observers interpreted as signalling the emergence of a new multipolar world, opening up possibilities for both multilateral and bilateral cooperation as well as conflict between the main players, along with new forms of regional economic and security cooperation.

The emergence of the new rising powers has led to speculation about a fundamental shift in power in the world order, as they become leading players and seek to alter the system in their favour. Their challenge is to the Western-dominated liberal world order of the last 200 years which in the nineteenth century was shaped and sustained first by Britain and subsequently by the United States. The future of this system in the twenty-first century was already looking uncertain with the prospective return to a multipolar world, and this uncertainty has been magnified by the crash of 2008 and its aftermath, and the significant economic weakness in North America and Europe it has revealed. The robustness of the political and economic foundations of the growth of the rising powers has also however been questioned. There seems no easy transition to the next stage in the evolution of the international economy and the fragmented state system which is an integral part of it, and it is difficult to imagine concretely what that next stage might be. There are optimistic and pessimistic readings of the political and economic outlook, and the future of Europe. The European Union has been through many difficulties, but the crisis over sovereign debt in the Eurozone since 2010 is threatening to become a fundamental existential crisis over the future of the European Union itself – whether the predictions of a steady decline of Europe’s influence and importance in the world will be proved right, and even whether the kind of association between states which the European Union has pioneered can survive (see Cramme 2009; Lucarelli et al. 2011; Marquand 2011; Telò 2009; Tsoukalis 2009).

The crisis in the Eurozone has also raised questions over the feasibility of the EU becoming a global political actor, a major aim of the Lisbon Treaty (see Chapters 2 and 3 in this volume), and rising powers such as India and China have been reassessing the importance for them of having the EU as a strategic partner in the future (see Chapters 10, 11 and 12 in this volume). As the balance of power in global governance continues to evolve, the weaknesses exposed in part by the Eurozone crisis may make it difficult for the EU to play a full part in shaping the outcome.

The End of Bipolarity

The opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought to an end four decades of Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the bipolar structure which had come to define both the international state system and the international economy after 1945. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union was not anticipated by many analysts, but in retrospect it was not considered a surprise (Halliday 2000). The competition had been unequal from the start, and the bipolarity existed because the USSR possessed nuclear weapons rather than because it was a genuine competitor which might have supplanted the United States across all dimensions of power. The security threat posed by the Soviet Union helped the United States to weld together its allies into a relatively cohesive and successive international economy and security alliance. The European Union had grown up within that context, and with American support.

The end of bipolarity with the disintegration of the Soviet Union left the United States without any serious challenger. In military terms it was now overwhelmingly dominant. Most of the other major military powers, including those within the EU, were its allies and likely to remain so, although the EU now felt able to plan its own defence and security policy. The international economy was reunified under the control of the institutions which the United States had set up after 1945. For the first time since before 1914 the international economy was once again one economy, with many economies that had formerly stood outside it, including China and India, now engaging with it. Free market capitalism and liberal democracy appeared unchallengeable as the ideological principles for this new unified world, and the spread of both to all parts of the international system of states was confidently predicted (Fukuyama 1992).

During the 1990s the liberalisation of the international economy begun in the 1980s combined with the expansion of the world market to promote a new boom in the international economy. The era of stagflation which had afflicted the United States in the 1970s was definitively banished, and many countries now experienced steady rates of growth and low inflation. Some of the most successful economies of the Cold War period, Germany and Japan, did not participate in this success, Germany because it was struggling with the costs of reunification, and Japan because it was coping with a severe deflation after its financial implosion at the end of the 1980s. But the relatively subdued performance of these two former engine rooms of the international economy was more than compensated by the high rates of growth achieved first by China and then by other rising powers, including India and Brazil. The flood of cheap imports from these countries pushed inflation down to historically low levels in the more developed countries, while providing surpluses which were recycled through an increasingly inventive financial system and created ever higher levels of demand. The twin supports for this boom were thus increasing personal, corporate and public debt made possible by an expanding financial services industry, and low cost manufactures, made possible by the industrialisation and urbanisation of major countries in Asia (Glyn 2006).

This boom was taken as another signal that the United States and the political and economic order over which it had presided since 1945 now incorporated the majority of states in the international economy, with only a few remaining outside or resistant to it. The discourse on globalisation became dominant in the 1990s, with the talk of a borderless world, and dreams once again of creating a perpetual peace (Hay and Marsh 1999; Held and McGrew 2007). The European Community, which had been so important in binding together the countries of Western Europe during the Cold War, now emerged as the promoter of a new post-Cold War model of multilateral integration, with proposals for a full Union embracing monetary cooperation and defence cooperation. The idea of Europe as a model for the liberal world order, promoting a relatively open form of regionalism, took hold (Telò 2005).

The era of liberal peace, however, soon became one of liberal war as a number of small-scale wars against failed states and against states labelled terrorist states erupted. While US military dominance remained unquestioned, it proved very difficult for the United States to translate its military superiority into control over particular states. This was illustrated by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York which led to the United States declaring a war on terror and embarking on interventions first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. These wars and their messy outcomes underlined how far much of the world was from embracing a single set of values and institutions, or accepting without question US leadership. It also displayed the vulnerabilities of the United States and led to reassessments of the different kinds of hard and soft power which the United States had at its disposal (Nye 2003). While the United States remained world’s only superpower, or hyper-power as some preferred, its reach was shown to have limits. The strong movement of opinion in the United States in favour of US primacy and in the forceful assertion of US power which had been such a strong feature of the neo-conservative critique of US foreign policy in the 1990s, and helped shape the US response to 9/11, has been checked by the difficulties encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and induced a new mood of disengagement in the United States (Fukuyama 2006).

One of the results of the more proactive US foreign policy after 2001 was to divide Europe into those governments which supported the United States in its war on terror, and those which disassociated themselves from it. EU governments were split, although EU public opinion much less so, and it led to some angry exchanges between European and US politicians and commentators, with Europe being perceived as too weak and divided to provide for its own defence, yet unwilling any longer to support the United States (Kagan 2003). Although much diplomatic effort was spent repairing the rift, the division was an increasingly real one, with most European countries choosing to spend much less on defence than the United States (see Chapter 3 in this volume) and being unwilling to sanction overseas intervention without explicit UN authorisation. The United States found its political and ideological authority waning, and its position as the undisputed leader of the West weakened.

The other looming challenge was the rise of new great powers – China above all, but also India, Brazil and a reorganised Russia. Unlike the EU these states had not been incorporated into the American-led West, and they now appeared as potential challengers to the US liberal world order, China being particularly singled out by many US commentators as the next potential threat to the liberal world order and US hegemony within it (Friedberg 2011; Halper 2010; Swaine 2011). The liberal world order of the last 200 years has maintained a relatively open international economy based on liberal principles encouraging free movement of goods, capital and labour and instituting common rules for the conduct of trade and international affairs. While proclaiming universal principles it also served the immediate interests of its leading powers, first Britain and then the United States. The challenges to it had come initially from Germany and the United States before 1914, but the United States ultimately sided with Britain and France against Germany. That war however fractured the liberal world order and attempts to rebuild it failed. A new wave of challenges now came from Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. After the defeat of Germany and Japan made possible by the alliance between the United States and the USSR, there followed a long stand-off between the two former allies. The liberal world order so badly damaged after 1914 had taken 80 years to be fully restored (Van der Pijl 2006).

It was however a very different liberal world order. Europe was no longer central to it, and the colonial empires had disappeared. Through the European Union Europe had overcome its internal fragmentation and divisions which have caused two world wars, and now emerged as a zone of peace and prosperity, comfortably within the American security umbrella, with its own distinctive model of welfare, human rights and democratic governance. The EU was not a great power in the traditional sense, its decision-making structures were opaque, and formation of a unified political will and common policies was slow and difficult. After the disintegration of the USSR the EU began to enlarge further, gradually admitting new members from Eastern Europe. By 2008 it had 27 members, with several more states seeking to join. The EU was now the largest economy in the international market with a population higher than the United States. But in most contexts the EU was not treated as a single entity but continued to be broken down into its constituent parts. There were numerous examples of this in international organisations. Britain and France retained their separate seats in the United Nations; Britain, France, Germany and Italy were separate members of the G8; and the G20 when it began to assume a greater role after the financial crash included the same four G8 EU members, an additional seat for the EU as a whole. Other EU states, including Spain and the Netherlands, were given observer status at some meetings. The EU was recognised as an important and essential part of the functioning of international institutions and the international community, but its capacity to exercise leadership was limited, and while European attitudes often inspired US irritation at times, the EU was not seen as challenging the position of the United States. It subscribed broadly to the same set of principles and understood the operation of the liberal world order in the same way as the United States (Anderson 2009; Cafruny and Ryner 2007; Garton Ash 2005).

If there was an underlying shift in world power in this period the threat to the position of the United States came less from the EU than from the rising powers, which precisely because they were rising introduced uncertainty as to their long-term intentions and interests. The scale of the transformation that began to take place in the two decades after the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Europe marks this period out as potentially one of the great watersheds in modern world history. The Eurocentric character of the governance of the world order in the last 200 years has been much analysed. Even in 2000 the richest and most powerful states were the same as in 1900, with the solitary exception of Japan. States had risen and declined, but the basic hierarchy remained intact (Arrighi 1994). But by 2000 it was already clear that changes were in train which would transform that hierarchy in the twenty-first century. The richest and most powerful states by 2100 are certain to include several of the new rising powers. Even before the 2008 financial crash a key question had become how these rising powers could be fully integrated into the international economy and into its governance arrangements. The size of these states and their economic potential meant that their legitimate interests would have to be accommodated. Such alterations in the balance of power had however rarely been accomplished without friction and conflict. Finding a way to prevent the economic challenge of China becoming a security challenge was acknowledged as a key task for the international community.

The 2008 Financial Crash

The financial crash of 2008 not only brought the boom in the Western economy to an end; it signalled the opening of a new era in the international economy, inaugurating a period of economic and political reconstruction (Gamble 2009). The crash did not affect all states equally; its effects were felt most sharply in Europe and North America. The rising powers suffered some effects from the contraction of demand in some of their most important markets, but this at most moderated the pace of their advance. It did not stop it. The dependence of the rising powers on Western markets was real but not absolute, and the onset of the crisis forced all states to rethink their economic strategies, and what would preserve their economic security and prosperity in the future.

The dimensions of the current crisis are still uncertain, but three years after the initial crisis over the financial system in 2008 it is already clear that the recession in the Western states which has followed is much more than just a normal cyclical correction. There has not been a sharp V-shaped recovery. Instead there was a steep plunge in output of around 6–9 per cent in many Western economies, followed by a weak recovery in 2010, followed by a further downturn in 2011. In 2012 there were again signs of an economic recovery, notably in the United States, but the indicators remained weak, and there were concerns that this recovery too might be reversed. The level of output before the crash has still not been regained in many countries, a sign of strong deflationary pressures created by the overhang of public, private and corporate debt. The difficulties of paying down debt and creating the right conditions for growth is proving very testing for policy-makers across the Western world, and this has led to fears that the Western economy may be entering a prolonged period of stagnation and deflation similar to that endured by Japan in the 1990s (Kaletsky 2010; Koo 2009; Krugman 2009).

The pessimistic assessment of the Western economy is that a period of very slow growth has become inevitable while the debt burden is reduced. Many Western countries, particularly in the EU, have few obvious sources of renewed growth. To the extent that the last boom was kept going by ever increasing levels of corporate, public and personal debt, this is no longer a viable option while levels of debt remain so high, and so many Western banks remain fragile. Major new innovations which revolutionise production by reducing the cost base across industry are proving difficult to identify, population levels in many countries are declining or static, and immigration faces increasing domestic hostility. The explosive growth in some of the populous countries of the world is increasing demand for raw materials and resources, and while this is giving prosperity to resource-rich countries such as Australia, the overall effect is upward pressure on commodity prices. The international economy has so far avoided a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The EU’s Foreign Policy
• The EU’s Foreign Policy
• Table Of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I: THE EU: A controversial global political actor within an emergent multipolar world
• PART II: After the lisbon treaty: the common foreign security policy and the european external action service
• PART III: Assessing cfsp and the eu’s external relations in action: near and far abroad
• Bibliography
• Index