European Union Foreign and Security Policy

Towards a Neighbourhood Strategy

Roland Dannreuther

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134351152
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The end of the Cold War presented a major challenge to Western Europe and to the European Union. It led not only to a whole new set of countries seeking to join the EU, but also to a strong demand for a more intensive EU engagement in the broader regional context. This book assesses whether the EU has successfully faced up to this challenge and has adapted its policies towards its immediate neighbourhood in a coherent and strategic manner. This volume examines EU policy from all its major regional dimensions including assessments of: * the enlargement process to East Central Europe * the increasing engagement of the EU in conflict resolution, most notably in the Balkans, but also in the Arab-Israeli conflict * policies towards the countries of the former Soviet Union, such as Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus * the complexities of EU policy towards Turkey and the Middle East * the transatlantic dimensions of the EU's neighbourhood policies.

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Introduction

Setting the framework

Roland Dannreuther

The main objective of this volume is to examine the extent to which Western Europe, meaning the European Union (EU) and its member states, has been able to respond as a coherent and strategic actor towards the countries in its immediate neighbourhood or periphery since the end of the Cold War. From a broader perspective, this is clearly a partial and incomplete picture of the full scope of the EU’s foreign and security policy. As most accounts of EU foreign policy highlight, the EU is most clearly a coherent international actor when dealing with economic and trade issues; the EU is also an influential actor in many more distant parts of the world, such as Asia and Latin America; and the EU is a significant development body and aid donor, with a particularly involved relationship with the former colonial countries of Africa and the Caribbean.¹

Nevertheless, the EU’s engagement with its immediate neighbourhood over the past decade can justifiably be considered a highly distinctive and dynamic feature of Europe’s foreign and security policy, the engagement which also most clearly differentiates EU foreign and security policy from the Cold War period. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet hegemony after 1989 quickly created the demand, not only from the newly liberated countries but from Western capitals including Washington, for Europe to assume the responsibilities of engaging decisively in the economic and political stabilization of the region.² As a consequence, this dimension of Europe’s foreign and security policy has gained a new centrality and significance since the end of the Cold War, partially overshadowing the other dimensions. The strategic challenge was for Europe to fill the vacuum which had emerged with the withdrawal of Soviet power and the widespread expectation of US reorientation of its interests away from Europe.

The challenge represented, though, something more than a traditional geopolitical opportunity. It also had a more fundamental and even existential quality to it, reaching into the very heart of the European project. From its origins, the ideal or ‘vocation’ of Europe has been to ensure peace between former warring European nation-states and to provide the conditions for geopolitical stability built on the foundations of a commitment to liberal democracy. Such an ideal, despite or in spite of European traditions of realpolitik, has become a critical constituent element of European foreign policymaking. As Helen and William Wallace argue, there is an embedded European commitment to forms of liberal democracy, ‘not as a monopoly of west Europeans but as [a] strongly to be preferred system to be defended against competing models in the immediate neighbourhood’.³ Accordingly, the internal logic of European integration dictates that the acquired gains should not be limited to the western part of the Eurasian landmass but should be extended beyond those borders. Inevitably, there has been and continues to be strong resistance to such an extension, since it raises the costs for existing member states and increases fears among Western publics of the dangers of an opening up to the East and South. However, the future of European integration is very much linked to the success and failure of the strategic engagement of the EU with the countries and regions in its immediate neighbourhood.

The assumption of this volume is, therefore, that the EU’s engagement with its immediate periphery represents a highly important, and possibly the most important, post-Cold War geopolitical challenge for its foreign and security policy. The nature of this challenge can be considered to have three major dimensions to it. First, there has been the challenge of the enlargement of the European Union, to take on new members and to define the new borders of the Union. To some degree, this has been a joint project loosely coordinated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which culminated in the NATO summit in Prague and the EU summit in Copenhagen in late 2002 broadly welcoming the same group of candidates from East-Central Europe.⁴ However, these summits took place at a time when NATO has appeared increasingly marginalized and when Europe’s role in providing for the broader security of the region has correspondingly grown. The impact of EU enlargement is also not limited to the accession of new members but involves the definition of new borders and the creation of new neighbours with their particular demands and interests.⁵ The Copenhagen summit has thus opened up new questions of Europe’s policies towards these countries and regions, which represent a broad geographical arc from Russia and the other former Soviet states, to Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

The second dimension of this challenge has been the impact of the EU’s ambition to provide a political union to complement its economic union. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) represent the most visible aspects of this political ambition. There are numerous studies highlighting the weaknesses and failures of the CFSP, and the lack of progress on ESDP, and expectations of what these policies are likely to produce has become increasingly more realistic, if not pessimistic.⁶ As part of this greater realism, there is a recognition that it is likely to be in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, rather than on the broader international stage, that the EU will have the greatest opportunity to utilize the full range of its instruments, not just economic but also political and military. Thus, the EU’s ‘near abroad’ represents a testing ground for its broader political and foreign policy ambitions and its capacity to emerge as a more coherent and strategic actor.

The third dimension is driven by the security challenges emanating from Europe’s periphery and the demands for an effective crisis management capability. Clearly, it was the Balkan conflicts which first exposed this need for such a capacity and demonstrated the complete lack of preparedness of the EU. As Ettore Greco in this volume demonstrates, European capacities have improved, leading to a much more substantial EU role in stabilizing the Balkans. However, ethnic and religious conflict is not limited to the Balkans but extends to the post-Soviet borderlands and the Middle East. In addition, the European periphery is viewed by EU member states as the primary source of many of the non-traditional security threats, such as terrorism, migration and transnational organized crime, which in turn compels a European engagement with the countries of these regions. The EU’s internal security agenda, arguably the most dynamic area of European integration, particularly since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, is therefore a highly significant dimension of Europe’s strategic engagement with its neighbourhood.⁷

The underlying assumption of this book is, therefore, that the geostrategic consequences of the end of the Cold War have required the EU to prioritize and sharpen the focus of its foreign and security policy towards the countries and regions in its immediate neighbourhood. Concentrating on this dynamic area of EU foreign and security policy should contribute to the ongoing debate about the EU as an international actor and Europe’s prospects for translating its economic might into political and strategic influence. In addition, the fact that the EU’s strategic engagement with its immediate neighbourhood is inextricably entwined with the evolving self-definition of Europe’s borders, identity and purpose should contribute to the broader debate over Europe – whether, as set out by Jan Zielonka, it is developing into a classical Westphalian state, which rigidly demarcates between internal and external, citizen and alien, or into an alternative post-modern entity in which these divisions are collapsed or sublimated.⁸

These debates have become even more intense in the aftermath of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent international crisis over Iraq, which culminated in military action spearheaded by the United States and the United Kingdom in March 2003. To put it mildly, this period has not been the most auspicious for the EU’s foreign and security policy. The Iraq crisis has again demonstrated the internal divisions between the EU member states, the continuing primacy of national foreign policies, and the conflicting national interests and threat assessments which undermine the potential for a coherent European foreign and security policy. The majority of commentators have assumed a gloomy perspective, judging the latest crisis as confirming the EU’s impotence in foreign policy, its internal structural deficiencies, and its paralysis of action.⁹ Others, most notably Jacques Chirac, argue that it is precisely when responding to its failures that Europe is invigorated and radical advances are made in the process of European integration.¹⁰ Only time will tell whether the EU is entering a period of ‘Euro-paralysis’ or a renewed period of expansion and growth in the aftermath of its intense disunity during the Iraqi crisis and war.

It should, though, be stated that the most notable feature of European policy towards Iraq is the absence of such a policy, at least since the intense European divisions, most notably between France and the United Kingdom, emerged in the mid-1990s. Europe failed over Iraq not because it failed to implement a previously agreed policy but because it never succeeded in formulating such a policy. Hence, Iraq and the broader Gulf region, with the partial exception of Iran, does represent the clear limits of a common European foreign policy, and it is this absence of a policy which has been the main reason why Europe’s policies towards Iraq and the Gulf have not been covered in this volume. But the failure to develop common policies towards Iraq should not obscure the existence of common European policies to the other countries and regions in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, however partial and limited these might be. In focusing on the divisions brought out by the Iraq crisis, the success symbolized by the Copenhagen summit of November 2002 should also not be completely forgotten. More generally, addressing the question of what the various policies and strategies adopted by the EU towards its neighbourhood add up to, and whether they constitute something reasonably coherent and strategic, remains a legitimate research question as well as focus of this volume.

Chapter breakdown

The key research question that all the contributors were asked to address was the extent to which, in their particular area of concern, Europe can be considered to have become a more coherent and strategic actor. The more specific and derivative questions related to this broad overarching research question included:

• How has the policy of the EU and its member states developed since the end of the Cold War?
• To what extent can the EU be viewed as having increased its strategic presence and influence?
• What have been the main strengths and weaknesses of EU policy?
• To what extent is the EU acting as an autonomous actor and to what extent is it driven by the policies of key member states?
• To what extent do other actors – such as the United States, NATO, the UN and sub-regional organizations – impinge on and influence the activities of the EU?
• To what extent has the EU moved from being a developmental and economic actor (civilian power) to being a politico-security and strategic actor?

The majority of the chapters of the book focus on the principal regions neighbouring the EU. These chapters seek to provide a detailed and comprehensive survey of Europe’s engagement with its immediate neighbour-hood. The first chapter, by Antonio Missiroli, provides a broad survey of the policies adopted by the EU to its neighbourhood since the end of the Cold War and argues that a twin-track approach has been adopted: stabilization and integration. Pál Dunay then examines the evolution and, as he argues, the success of the EU’s strategic engagement with the candidate countries of East-Central Europe. Gilles Dorronsoro provides a more qualified assessment of the EU’s policies towards Turkey, an applicant country but with a special status, but nevertheless argues that the EU has stimulated a radical reform programme within the country. Ettore Greco sets out the factors behind the EU’s current expansive role in the Balkans, which has increasingly taken over and subsumed the functions and roles played by other international and regional institutions in the region, such as the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and NATO.

The following set of chapters cover what might be called the northern (Russia and the other former Soviet states) and southern dimensions (the Middle East) of the EU’s foreign relations. Hiski Haukkala sets out the evolution and development of the originally Finnish initiative for a Northern Dimension to EU policy which sought to build bridges between the northern EU members and their neighbours, Russia and the Baltic states. Haukkala raises the question of the future purpose of this initiative once the Baltic states become full members of the EU. Andrei Zagorski analyses and compares EU policy towards the East European former Soviet states Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, noting the inconsistencies and limitations of the EU’s strategic engagement. Neil MacFarlane reaches a more unqualified conclusion that the EU’s policies adopted towards the Caucasus and Central Asia effectively constitute a ‘non-strategy’. Moving on to the ‘southern dimension’, Fred Tanner assesses the impact of the Euro-Mediterranean Programme on the countries of North Africa, and highlights the weaknesses and contradictions in the policies and instruments used to implement this programme. Roland Dannreuther reaches a cautiously more optimistic assessment of the EU’s engagement in the Middle East peace process and how, particularly from the mid-1990s, the EU has secured a more significant role in the negotiation process.

The chapter by John Gault deviates from the pattern of regional analyses and offers an in-depth assessment of Europe’s energy security in relation to its periphery. There are two reasons why this contribution has been included in this volume. First, as Gault himself states, energy is the ‘umbilical cord’ which connects Western Europe to its eastern and southern periphery, most notably to Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (p.182). It is the key economic resource that the EU needs for its economic vitality and for which it will become increasingly dependent on its immediate neighbourhood. Second, the chapter highlights the critical but sometimes ignored role that private business must play in the development of Europe’s neighbourhood and the policies that the EU and national governments can promote to facilitate the private investment desperately needed by these countries.

The final substantive chapter by William Wohlforth also breaks the pattern of regional studies by providing a transatlantic perspective to the issue of the EU’s emergi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: setting the framework
• 2 The EU and its changing neighbourhood: stabilization, integration and partnership
• 3 Strategy with fast-moving targets: East-Central Europe
• 4 The EU and Turkey: between geopolitics and social engineering
• 5 South-Eastern Europe: the expanding EU role
• 6 Policies towards Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus
• 7 The Northern Dimension: a presence and four liabilities?
• 8 The Caucasus and Central Asia: towards a non-strategy
• 9 North Africa: partnership, exceptionalism and neglect
• 10 The Middle East: towards a substantive European role in the peace process?
• 11 EU energy security and the periphery
• 12 The transatlantic dimension
• 13 Conclusion: towards a neighbourhood strategy?
• Index