Is Europe a global power? European Union propagandists say it is. They point to EU-flagged military missions in the Balkans and Africa. They hail the European Defence Agency and the presence of European officials in Afghanistan as proof of the EU’s growing puissance as an embryonic world power. For many analysts on the liberal left, Europe is home to Joseph Nye’s soft power, the beguiling concept that a mixture of liberal values, open trade and subsidies for NGOs can transform the world for the better.
Europhobe Conservatives and papers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph also obsess over Europe’s presence in the world. They present Europe’s external action service as a giant diplomatic octopus articulating a European foreign policy that relegates Britain’s global presence to Isthmian League status. Any utterance by Catherine Ashton, the British EU Commissioner who also enjoys the grand title of High Representative for Foreign Affairs, is seized on as evidence of EU ambitions to bestride the world stage.
Both Europhiles and Europhobes have a common interest in talking up the European Union as a world power. They should go into a dark room, put on the light and read this excellent polemical essay. Its author, Richard Youngs, is Associate Professor of International and European Politics at Warwick University and director of the Madrid-based progressive international policy think tank Fride.
Youngs is a pro-European to his English fingertips. But, like the child in the fairytale, he is prepared to say that the EU foreign policy emperor is naked. That far from being a player on the world stage the EU is marginalised by the nations of the world and unable to convert its economic status, its position as the world’s biggest trading bloc, its democratic mandate, or any of its charters or treaties into policies that can change the world.
The Tunisian crisis is a case in point. Here in Europe’s backyard, as close to Spain, France and Italy as Ireland is to us, the EU had no Tunisian policy worthy of the name. EU leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy, Felipe González and Silvio Berlusconi smarmed all over the Tunisian strongman Ben Ali. Brussels turned a blind eye to the repression of journalists and other recent symptoms of the revolutionary volcano about to blow in Tunis. The EU has no policy on the other Maghreb countries, Morocco and Tunisia, either. The EU cannot even agree a policy on the Balkans as key member states refuse to recognise Kosovo, thus playing to the Serb dream that one day Kosovo will return to rule by Belgrade. Germany vetoes any policy that involves getting tough with Israel or Moscow. France ensures the EU looks benevolently on African dictators as long as they speak French.
And that is the rub. The EU’s foreign policy is the lowest common denominator permitted by its nation states. In the Middle East, the EU has poured soft power aid into Palestine, Syria and Jordan and got nothing in return. It drops Mediterranean meetings if Arab countries with no knowledge of democracy refuse to sit with Israeli ministers. Europe, despite Ed Miliband’s best efforts, was brushed aside at the Copenhagen climate conference as the world’s rising nation-first powers – China, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Japan and the United States – ignored Europe.
The answer is clear. Either we take the Tory-Mail line and disaggregate Europe into competing, rival nation states each hoping they will be listened to in world affairs. Or we take European foreign policy seriously and decide that speaking as one rather than 27 can make a difference in the world. But that requires harder thinking about global issues than was possible in the lost first decade of the 21st century dominated as it was by George W Bush’s disastrous and counter-productive internationalism. But as Europe’s nations lose their self-confidence and retreat into domestic politics or nationalist populism who is there to make the case for a 21st century foreign policy fit for purpose? A study of Youngs’ book would be a good place to start.
Denis MacShane
