The European External Action Service and National Foreign Ministries

Convergence or Divergence?

Rosa Balfour, Caterina Carta, Kristi Raik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317033301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Based on extensive empirical work by a cross-European group of researchers, this book assesses the impact of the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) on the national foreign policy-making processes and institutions of the EU member states. As such, the contributions cover both the involvement of the national diplomatic and foreign policy actors in shaping the outlook of the EEAS and its mission, as well as the changes (or not) it has produced for those actors of the member states. The analysis draws in theoretical frameworks from Europeanization and socialization, but also from intergovernmental frameworks of policy-making within the European Union.

An introduction by the editors outlines the issues and trends examined in the book and establishes the theoretical and methodological framework. Split into 2 sections, Part I: EEAS and national diplomacies as part of global and European structures has contributions by Richard Whitman, Rosa Balfour, Christian Lequesne, Caterina Carta and Simon Duke. Part II: National diplomacies shaping and being shaped by the EEAS is covered by Daniel Fiott, Fabien Terpan, Cornelius Adebahr, Andrea Frontini, Ignacio Molina and Alicia Sorroza, Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira, Alena Vysotskaya G. Vieira and Louise van Schaik, Grzegorz Gromadzki, Mark Rhinard, Jakob Lewander and Sara Norrevik, Sabina Kajnc Lange, Ruby Gropas and George Tzogopoulos, Vit Beneš and Kristi Raik. This book is much needed, especially in an era when the EU is trying to pull its weight in the international sphere (e.g. Syria, Iran, the Arab Spring, Chinese relations and emerging powers) but also at a time when the EU is trying to recalibrate its institutional structure in light of the current financial predicaments and questions on the democratic legitimacy of the European project.

PART I
The EEAS and National Diplomacies as Part of Global and European Structures

Chapter 1
Europe’s Changing Place in the World and Challenges to European Diplomacy

Richard Whitman

1.1 Introduction

The early twenty-first century has been a period of change and transition in international relations to which European states are still adjusting. Individually and collectively, European states face foreign policy challenges in connection with the forging of relations with other key global powers such as the United States and the ‘rising powers’. These relations are developing in the context of an ongoing process of globalization, alongside the relative decline of the United States as the Asia-Pacific region accounts for a greater share of global economic activity, levels of US indebtedness increase, and US military power appears diminished as a consequence of the difficulties encountered by interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to changes in the structure of international relations there are also changes to patterns and practices in the flow of information, including the emergence of social media as a key mechanism for the mobilization and communication within and across societies, and the Snowden affair has demonstrated that the ability of states to retain the security and confidentiality of their own information can be grievously compromised in a manner not previously possible.

The twenty-first century is a challenging environment for the practice of diplomacy. The challenges of changing structures of international relations appear to require greater diplomatic effort and initiative whilst simultaneously diplomats’ previously privileged position as interlocutors between states is eroded both by competing alternative sources of information and a widening of actors engaged in diplomatic functions. Professional diplomats now operate in a crowded marketplace with Heads of State and government engaging in direct peer-to-peer diplomacy, a range of government departments engaging directly with their counterparts in third parties and regional and international organizations as the agenda of international relations has widened, and non-governmental actors seeking to perform functions traditionally reserved for diplomats. Foreign policy can be viewed as fragmented. Foreign ministries have largely been deprived of their traditional role as the sole spokespersons for and coordinators of foreign policy, as heads of government and other ministries in varying degrees impose their stamp in this area. Ironically, this ‘identity crisis’ for diplomats is happening at a time when diplomacy is in increasing demand. Across Europe, there is recognition that the major contemporary challenges will require greater reliance on the ability to negotiate, communicate and resolve differences through diplomacy.

Against this challenging backdrop European Union member states have created enhanced arrangements for collective diplomacy and which are the focus of this volume. Despite the organizational significance of the Lisbon Treaty reforms, European collective foreign policy also remains substantively in the hands of the 28 member governments. A key challenge for the EU collective diplomacy remains how to align the interests and policies of these 28 member governments so that they converge into effective common approaches.

This chapter explores the contemporary contextual challenges for European diplomacy. First it explores the key ‘outside in’ challenge facing national and European Union diplomacy: the fragmentation of contemporary international relations. Second, the chapter explores the ‘inside out’ challenge of the preservation of national foreign policies alongside the emergent EU diplomatic system.

1.2 Outside In: The Fragmentation Challenge

Europeans were fortunate in the aftermath of the Cold War in that they were central to the remaking of their own security relationships through the enlargement processes of the European Union and NATO. In the 10 years from the end of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia until the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century Europe’s future looked to be anchored in the prosperity provided by European economic integration and the peace provided by former adversaries signing up for their collective security within NATO. The major issues for debate were the pace and scope for European political integration and the extent of future membership of Europe’s two key security institutions.

The global financial crisis that emerged in 2008, the attendant Eurozone debt crisis, and the atrophy of Europe’s economy, ensured that the predominant focus for European political energy and effort shifted to the security and stability of the EU rather than its international relations. Consequently the more recent challenge for European diplomacy has been to sustain an argument that the European Union is a relevant player in international relations and that the European integration project is not in danger of imminent collapse.

Intertwined with Europe’s economic existential challenge have been four broad ‘outside in’ sets of trends faced collectively to the diplomacy of the EU’s member states: the changing distribution of global economic and political power. This trend has been characterized in varying ways, but common features include the shift of political and economic power towards the South and the East and new challenges to global governance (Mahbubani, 2008; Zakaria, 2008); the post-Arab Spring transitions in the Middle East and North Africa; the transformation of communications technology, business and warfare leads to a ‘flatter’ distribution of power where non-state actors have growing influence both at the state level and in the international system. In many countries of concern, meanwhile, state infrastructure is fragile and there is no credible government to negotiate with; the global nature of many pressing challenges – economic, security and environmental – accompanied by growing international economic interdependence. Diplomacy becomes more complex as issues cut across organizational structures, the distinction between internal and external affairs becomes blurred, and multiple stakeholders are required to solve international problems.

This is a formidable set of challenges to which national and European diplomacy needs to adopt and adapt. The challenges of ‘diplomacy in a networked world’ is a core theme of symposia and other reflections upon changing diplomatic practice (Kalathil, 2013). Older diplomatic challenges of statecraft in managing relationships between states are wedded to discussion of technological change as a core adaptation challenge for diplomacy. The consequences of social networks, peer-to-peer and mobile technologies upon diplomacy have been explored extensively and most especially in the United States.

Allied to a discussion on the implications of information technology has been the consequences for soft power and public diplomacy (Nye, 2005). The latter has become a sub-field of investigation, debate and practice with the focus on its traditional purpose of communication with overseas publics, for advancing foreign policy goals, now expanded to encompass the integration of new technologies, new state strategies for foreign policy influence (and so an instrument of soft power) and a policy end in itself (Melissen, 2006; Davis Cross and Melissen, 2013). Public diplomacy is an issue explored in the subsequent chapters of this volume.

The response of Europeans to the core challenge of the rise of new global powers has been multivariant (Cameron, 2011; Smith, 2013). The growing economic strength of these states has gone hand in hand with increasingly prominent political profiles at the international level, and has led to an acceleration of relations between the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and European states. While the international profiles of Brazil and India are on the rise, it is European states’ relationships with Russia and China that have impacted most on contemporary foreign policy developments for Europeans.

China is Europe’s largest trade partner, and with its membership of the UN Security Council, it is influential in global politics. However, China does not conform to Western norms, and is wary of the extension of Western power close to Chinese borders. The Chinese government’s close relationships with the previous oppressive regime in Burma/Myanmar, arms sales to oppressive African regimes in Zimbabwe and Sudan, and domestic human rights violations have been particular points of contention, and European states’ efforts to invite China to play a more constructive international role in world affairs have more often than not fallen on deaf ears.

The UK is Europe’s main investor in China, and continues to establish cultural and educational links with the country. However, this influence rarely extends to criticizing Chinese human rights abuses in Tibet and elsewhere. China has skilfully exploited European states’ differences and the tensions within European states between business interests and human rights concerns. While some European states such as Austria, Belgium and Ireland are content to ‘remove’ their national policy on China to the EU level, Germany, France and the UK have retreated to national positions at the expense of a united EU policy. The latter three states are therefore particularly responsible for Europe’s disunited policy towards China (Fox and Godement, 2009; Vogt, 2012). Disagreements about the proposal to lift the arms embargo to China (in place since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacres) are a case in point. Neither has Germany’s middle-ground approach, which attempts to separate trade issues from human rights, borne any fruit: the Chinese government has simply ignored Chancellor Merkel’s concerns. Clearly, Europe’s dealings with China are more constructive when a coordinated policy can be agreed on – for example, in gaining Chinese support in the UN Security Council for the EU’s position on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme (Fox and Godement, 2009; Vogt, 2012). Moreover, the challenge of the global economic crisis requires greater consensus and common action at the European level, which points to the strengthening of Chinese economic influence in the face of European economic decline.

The emerging power with arguably the most divisive political impact on the foreign policy of European states is Russia, despite being the main recipient of EU foreign direct investments and EU states’ third largest trade partner. The downturn in relations between European Union member states and Russia following the annexation of Crimea has transformed a difficult relationship into a direct confrontation. Relations between European states and Russia have been strained by the parallel expansion of the EU and NATO in 2004 and by Russia’s robust policy towards its former Soviet neighbours – particularly Georgia and Ukraine. Russia has shown little enthusiasm for the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy framework and which manifested into a direct and active opposition in the autumn of 2013 in the run up to the Vilinus summit of the Eastern Partnership.

Russia’s ascent from a weakened power in the 1990s to a robust economic and political actor in recent years has had a major impact on Europe–Russia relations. Disagreements between European states on how to deal with Russia have strained foreign policy-making, particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s refusal in the UN Security Council to endorse independence for Kosovo in 2007, and the Russian–Georgian conflict in August 2008. As with Europe–China relations, there is a tension between business and economic interests on the one hand and concerns about the lack of democracy and human rights in Russia on the other. The relationship is complicated by a crossing over of interests in the post-Soviet space, and Europe’s reliance on Russian gas and oil supplies.

Western European states’ approaches to Russia are shaped by history and geography, and cross the full spectrum from full support (Greece and Cyprus) to total hostility (Poland and Lithuania). The majority of Western European states take a pragmatic approach, but broadly fit in to two camps: those seeing themselves as non-critical, ‘special’ partners (France, Germany, Italy and Spain); and those regarding themselves as occasional partners that are more willing to be critical of Russian policy (Denmark, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the UK). This diversity of approach precludes a common EU policy towards Russia. The pattern of retreat to national positions and interests is particularly stark in this case (David et al., 2013). Russia’s August 2008 intervention in Georgia and the gas dispute with Ukraine in 2009 (during which Eastern Europe suffered reduced gas supplies), indicate that the Russian Federation is not likely to divert from its current robust foreign policy path. This was dramatically confirmed with the occupation of Crimea in February 2014. Russia can be seen to be leading a group of countries that reject the norms espoused by the majority of Europe, and that continue to criticize the democratic and human rights efforts of the only pan-European security organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Cooperation within the OSCE is waning as the organization is undermined and as long-term field missions are closed (for example, in Georgia, where the Russian government vetoed the extension of the mission in December 2008). Whether there will be a continued failure of the EU and individual European states to forge a common policy towards Russia will be a key issue following the recent events in Ukraine.

The power of emerging powerful states to resist a ‘Western’ agenda characterized by the promotion of liberal democratic norms and humanitarian intervention has arguably increased in a climate of global economic crisis (Flockhart et al., 2014). Russia and China have been influential in conditioning how European states respond to emerging and ongoing crises and conflicts across the world, and this shifting trend in the balance of global power is unlikely to wane in the foreseeable future.

The United States presents a different order of challenge for Europeans diplomacy. The ‘Strategic Pivot/Rebalance’ designed to rebalance the US military investment in Europe to a prioritization of East Asia, the region of its main strategic and political priority for the twenty-first century, presents a diplomatic and security challenge for Europeans (Stokes and Whitman, 2013). An earlier demonstration of this shift in priorities and resources was the US approach in ‘leading from behind’ during the military campaign in Libya in 2011. The implications for Europeans of a (relatively) diminished commitment of the United States to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring is of significant diplomatic importance.

The Arab Spring ushered in changes on the EU’s southern borders that in scale, pace and interconnectedness matched the changes in Central and Eastern Europe two decades earlier. The ousted regimes had provided the states of Europe with apparently stable partners and a superficially secure southern flank. In its place there is now a state of flux; one which may remain the predominant condition for Europe’s southern neighbourhood for the foreseeable future. Given both the region’s geographic proximity to Europe and the importance of the natural resources it commands, it will remain a key diplomatic challenge for the EU and its member states. Alongside the events in Ukraine from late 2013 the EU’s neighbourhood is a key challenge for the diplomacy of both individual member states and the European Union.

1.3 Inside Out: Balancing National with European Collective Diplomacy

In addition to all of the contemporary diplomatic challenges outlined above, Europeans also face the challenge of coordinating their diplomacy as a consequence of their collective commitment to the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) through the European Union.

Some commentators see in existence a distinctive European diplomatic system that draws the EU and its member states into an arrangement that embraces foreign economic policy, commercial policy and foreign and security policy in an interconnected diplomatic system which is distinctive in its characteristics and most especially in its impact on the participating states (Smith et al., 2014). For other observers Europe’s attempts to produce a common European Union foreign policy demonstrate an ongoing collective action problem in which attention is drawn to different national responses to key international challenges: the most significant of recent years being the US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan; the question of the independence of Kosovo from Serbia; the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crises in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa; the Russian intervention in Ukraine; and the events of the Arab Spring and its aftermath (Menon, 2011).

During the decades of the Cold War European states’ foreign policies were heavily conditioned by which side of the Cold War divide they were aligned to – or by attempting to stand aside from superpower conflict by pursuing policies of neutrality. The situation was transformed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. As argued by Christopher Hill, the removal of the ideological ‘straitjacket’ of the Cold War, that had constrained the foreign policies of European states for many decades, led to dramatic changes in both the domestic and foreign policies of states (Hill, 2003). Post-Cold War Europe was characterized by economic and political disparity between the wealthy West (underpinned by institutional membership of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)) and the struggling new democratic states in the East. European integration acted as a new conditioning factor on states’ foreign policies by transforming intra-European states’ relations through the progressive enlargement of the EU and by the attempt to build a collective foreign policy through the EU.

West European countries first developed new forms of foreign policy cooperation under the shadow of superpower confrontation; these mechanisms were developed into the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) after the end of the Cold War and then extended first to countries that had taken a neutral stance during the Cold War (with the accession of Austria, Sweden and Finland to the EU in 1995) and then to Central and East European countries with the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements.

All European states continue to pursue national foreign policies, but a distinction can be drawn between the 28 countries that have joined the EU and those who are not members. For member states of the EU their national foreign policies are characterized by intensive bilateral and multilateral relationships with other EU member states and cover a wide range of issues that straddle domestic and international politics, a variety of national and European institutions, sectoral ministries and sub-national actors. Whether this intra-EU diplomacy has now gone beyond diplomacy as relationships between member states have been ‘domesticated’ is a matter of debate (Hocking, 2004). Alongside this intra-EU diplomacy European states continue to pursue international politics individually, but also increasingly collectively, beyond the EU. For European states that are not members of the EU their foreign policies are often determined by whether they aspire to membership of the EU, or have close contractual relations with the EU under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Even for those European states that are not membership candidates (whether Switzerland in the West, or Ukraine in the East), the political and economic policies of the EU impact significantly on their national foreign policies. This chapter firstly examines how European integration has shifted and shaped European nations’ responses to the outside world. It then goes on to analyse contemporary foreign policy challenges by addressing how European states are responding to the following key developments: counter-terrorism and the transatlantic relationship; the emergence of new global powers; and contemporary crises and conflicts.

1.3.1 European Integration and National Foreign Policies

Europe is a significant part, or sub-system, of a wider international politics from which it cannot be analytically separated. European states contribute to over a quarter of global economic activity and are significant in the global political economy ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I THE EEAS AND NATIONAL DIPLOMACIES AS PART OF GLOBAL AND EUROPEAN STRUCTURES
• PART II NATIONAL DIPLOMACIES SHAPING AND BEING SHAPED BY THE EEAS
• Conclusions: Adaptation to the EU or to the Changing Global Context?
• Bibliography
• Index