The EU and the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Strategies, Policies, Actions

S. Blavoukos, D. Bourantonis, C. Portela, S. Blavoukos, D. Bourantonis, C. Portela

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137378439
• eBook ISBN: 9781137378446
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Much of the literature on the emerging role of the EU as a non-proliferation actor has only a minimal engagement with theory. This collection aims to rectify this by placing the role of the EU in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons within an analytical framework inspired by emerging literature on the performance of international organisations.

Part I

Introduction and Analytical Framework

Introduction

Clara Portela, Dimitris Bourantonis and Spyros Blavoukos

Over ten years have elapsed since the EU agreed on its first Strategy against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).¹ It was released in December 2003 simultaneously with the European Security Strategy (ESS), also the first document of its kind. Both documents are connected: the ESS identifies the proliferation of WMD as ‘potentially the greatest threat to our security’ (Council 2003). The adoption by the EU of a programmatic document outlining its priorities and action plan geared towards halting the spread of WMD was the culmination of an evolution in which the EU had dispersed efforts in various activities which were relevant to non-proliferation. These fragmented, low-visibility activities were meant to become orchestrated action thanks to the release of the Strategy. Like in so many other security-relevant fields, such as antiterrorism or security research and development, the impulse galvanising EU co-ordination originated in the context of transatlantic relations. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 provoked a transatlantic crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Beyond its impact on transatlantic relations, it also brought about serious intra-European tensions.

Three decades after member states had initiated informal co-ordination of their foreign policies, and more than a decade after they had formalised their aspiration to frame a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht in 1992, some member states positioned themselves against the US intervention in Iraq – notably France and Germany – while others like the UK, Italy, Spain, and Central and Eastern European acceding states positioned themselves in favour of the operation. The task of repairing relationships along two axes was taken up by a ‘post-neutral’ EU member with a pronounced pro-nuclear disarmament profile, Sweden. The fact that the purported existence of WMD programmes in Iraq had been used as a justification for the invasion of Iraq in contravention of the comprehensive ban on the use of force enshrined in the UN Charter compelled the EU to craft its own plan to address proliferation. How could the EU contribute to strengthen multilateral action and to optimise the current non-proliferation regime? When policies aimed at preventing WMD proliferation failed, how should it react? If the use of force in the absence of a mandate by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) was unacceptable to many member states due to its incompatibility with international law, how could the EU address non-compliance with non-proliferation norms? For the first time, the EU had to articulate an answer to these questions and create an all-European consensus on how to prevent, mitigate, and diffuse the dangers of proliferation without resorting to the unauthorised use of force. It had to be comprehensive and coherent enough to be presented as a viable strategy capable of dealing with proliferation challenges.

In the light of the specific historical context in which the Strategy was framed and of the rationales that gave rise to its adoption, the question of its relevance and effectiveness a decade after its adoption poses itself. To what extent has the strategy fulfilled its original objectives? How have EU goals and guidelines been translated into action, especially in the context of a transformed proliferation and disarmament environment? Has the EU developed into a non-proliferation actor on its own right? How well has it performed as such? The tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Strategy constitutes an optimal occasion to take stock of the EU’s performance in this field.

Research on the role of the EU in nuclear non-proliferation is not entirely new. As early as in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was pioneered by Harald Müller and his team at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (Hessische Stiftung für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung). Their work on the European states’ policies for countering WMD proliferation even pre-dated the emergence of an EU role in the field. It included a series of volumes exploring and comparing official policies and public attitudes among EU member countries, as well as other outputs looking at the European role in NPT conferences and threat reduction activities in the former Soviet Union – areas that later became key fields in this research strand (Müller 1993 and 1998; Müller and van Dassen 1997). The gradual upgrade of the EU’s role in this field that evolved in the years preceding the adoption of the Strategy caught the attention of some senior arms control researchers who were simultaneously advocates of the further upgrade of this role (Grand 2000; Tertrais 1999). Following the release of the Strategy, research on the EU and non-proliferation started to mushroom, primarily among young scholars intrigued by the emergence of a new field in the EU’s foreign and security policy (Portela 2003; Kienzle 2013; Dee 2012; Pacheco 2012; Jasper and Portela 2010; Zwolski 2011) or arms control researchers interested in the appearance of a new actor on the non-proliferation scene (Meier 2012; Sauer 2004; Rynning 2007). The development of EU policies in the field has attracted the attention of legal scholars (Denza 2005; Alvarez-Verdugo 2005 and 2006; Smis and Kingah 2008). The prominent role played by the EU in the management of the Iran crisis has given rise to a number of articles discussing its significance for EU foreign policy (Harnisch 2007; Santini 2010; Sauer 2007; Blavoukos and Bourantonis 2014; Kienzle et al. forthcoming). All along, the interest among policy researchers for this topic remains unabated (van Ham 2011), and it continues to attract the attention of young researchers exploring new facets of the EU’s role in the field (Grip 2014). Over time, the mix of nationalities in the field has diversified. The present generation of EU non-proliferation researchers certainly features nationals of the ‘big three’ and also from countries with a profile in anti-nuclear activism such as Sweden, but also citizens from small member states such as the Netherlands and Denmark, or member states situated in the Mediterranean or in Central and Eastern Europe.

Much of the existing literature purports to evaluate the EU as a non-proliferation actor. However, this literature is characterised by a marginal engagement with theory. The present work intends to close that gap. To this end, it applies performance theory, an emerging body of literature on performance of international organisations (IOs). It conceptualises performance of IOs beyond the notions of ‘presence’ and ‘actorness’ that had permeated debates on EU’s international action in its early years, and it also transcends the evaluation of EU action merely on the basis of effectiveness parameters. As Gutner and Thompson posit (2010), we ought to look at how an IO reaches its goals, examining the mechanism leading to either satisfactory or suboptimal performance. Thus, they define performance as the ‘process by which goals are pursued’, characterised in turn as the effort, efficiency, and skill put to task (Gutner and Thompson 2010: 232). In contrast to effectiveness, the concept of performance is not only about the achievement of set objectives, but considers intra-organisational processes. An organisation may meet the agreed objectives even when its overall performance is unimpressive. This may be a function of lack of ambition or simply awareness of internal and external constraints that impede the organization from delivering on the objectives. Conversely, a positive performance may not be considered effective because the original goals are overly ambitious in the first place or are incongruent with scarce organisational resources (Gutner and Thompson 2010: 231–232). Within the EU context, this point invokes the notion of the ‘capabilities-expectations gap’ that dominated the analysis of the Common Foreign and Security Policy failures in the 1990s (Hill 1993). Thus, effectiveness is only one possible indicator to evaluate the performance of an IO, and relying on effectiveness exclusively may be misleading in assessing the international performance of the EU (Jørgensen et al. 2011).

The international performance of the EU constitutes the ‘dependent variable’ of our research. Our volume’s analytical framework is based on the identification of three different performance perspectives, namely the output, outcome, and impact of the EU international activities. They constitute three distinctive analytical steps in a causal chain of events (Underdal 2002: 6). At the micro-level, the output perspective looks at intra-EU processes of policy formulation, focusing on the deliverables of internal political and institutional dynamics that inform the EU’s international engagement. This output could be a formal comprehensive policy document outlining the EU positions in a field or in international affairs more broadly, like for example the EES, or narrow documents such as statements or Council decisions on an intended course of action in a regional crisis. It could also take a more abstract form in the sense of outlining general norms, principles, and rules of action. In any case, it constitutes the starting point, offering a benchmark for the assessment of impact (Underdal 2002: 6). At the meso-level, the outcome perspective shifts attention to the implementation of the output and the deriving behavioural adjustment of the EU. It refers to the EU’s international activation along the output lines and captures how the EU takes this output to the international level. It may take the form of active international engagement of diplomatic, economic, and/or military nature in pursuit of a given objective. Additionally, it may comprise the creation or adjustment of international policies contributing to the build-up or reforms of IOs. These outcomes do not necessarily lead to problem-solving; neither does EU engagement suggest that a crisis will be solved nor that the EU efforts will bring about a new international order or deliver a more functional international organisation. The emphasis of the outcome perspective is on the EU efforts and actions and whether they carry out the agreed outputs rather than on their impact. Finally, at the macro-level, the impact perspective assesses performance on the basis of the effect of the EU’s international outcomes, that is, the result of EU activities either in handling individual crises or in the broader process of order formation. Here, the challenge is to establish causality between the EU’s actions and the changed environment in order to credit the EU with developments to establish solid claims about the EU’s performance record. The underlying counterfactual question to be addressed is what would have happened if the EU had not intervened.

The volume opens with an elaboration of our analytical framework by Spyros Blavoukos, situated in the theoretical context of research on the EU’s external performance. Blavoukos’ chapter is central in that it sets out the criteria and indicators for our evaluation of EU performance that are later put to task in the substantive part of the volume. By virtue of the sophistication of the theoretical underpinnings of the evaluation method, the analytical framework profiles the present volume as an original contribution to the existing literature on the EU as an international actor. What is more, it promises to deliver analytically-charged findings thanks to its dissection of performance in a variety of indicators at different stages of the decision-making process, allowing us to develop a more accurate and differentiated appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the EU’s international action. The presentation of the analytical framework is followed by a background section whose objective is to establish the context in which the EU operates. Firstly, Dimitris Bourantonis outlines the evolution and contours of the current nuclear non-proliferation regime. This chapter provides the historical background key to the understanding the tensions and compromises that lie at the root of the current imbalances and contradictions that permeate an international regime which is characterised by its universality as much as by its conflictual nature. In the following chapter, Clara Portela and Benjamin Kienzle analyse the development of a role in the field of nuclear non-proliferation by the EU. They articulate their account around the release of the Strategy against the proliferation of WMD, assessing the degree to which this landmark document introduced a change in EU action in the field. This introductory section is closed by a practitioner’s contribution: Gerrard Quille, a long-standing observer of the EU’s emerging security and defence realm, offers his view on the EU’s role in non-proliferation from the perspective of his experience as a Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Security, and Defence Policy at the Directorate-General for External Policies of the European Parliament.

Having set the stage for the application of the analytical framework, the volume leads the already informed reader on an exploration of the EU’s performance in key fields of non-proliferation over Parts III and IV. Part III looks at the EU’s performance in the multilateral strand. The multilateral framework is of particular importance for the EU. The ESS not only reiterates repeatedly its emphasis on this concept by coining the expression ‘effective multilateralism’, but almost elevates the employment of multilateral institutions to the level of an objective, rather than treating it as a means to achieve an objective. The first chapter by Megan Dee assesses the performance of the EU in the negotiations taking place in the main forum of the regime, the NPT Review Conferences. Her analysis challenges some long-standing presumptions about the EU; interestingly, individual member states have been more successful in affecting conference outcomes when acting through alternative formations such as the New Agenda Coalition or the Vienna Group of Ten than through the EU. Still, the EU has managed to have some impact in some recent conferences. This suggests a unique situation in which member states operate in a two-level game in which the formation of an EU position co-exists with rather than supersedes alternative groupings. The ensuing analysis by Oliver Meier contrasts the co-ordination and positioning of member states in informal arrangements. Within these groupings of little visibility but central importance such as the Nuclear Supplier Group, Meier uncovers highly surprising patterns, which sometimes sit uncomfortably with the rhetoric that prevails in the NPT context. This is followed by Lina Grip’s account of the EU’s performance in what has become one of the EU’s fields of choice: external non-proliferation assistance. As one of the first proliferation-relevant fields in which the EU became active historically, it has profiled itself as a donor and expanded the reach of its activities well beyond its original focus on the former Soviet Union. The final contribution in this part again benefits from the insights and ideas of an experienced practitioner. Lars-Erik Lundin, former Head of the EU Delegation to the IAEA, discusses and advocates the application the so-called ‘comprehensive approach’ paradigm to the EU’s dealing with the IAEA.

A second set of contributions leaves the multilateral arena to apply the analytical framework to the EU’s bilateral interactions and explore EU internal governance. While the EU has emphasised less bilateral frameworks than multilateral fora, the centrality of the transatlantic relationship in the field of non-proliferation is undeniable. While the ESS singled out the transatlantic partnership as ‘irreplaceable’ (Council 2003: 13) before listing other partners such as Canada or Japan, the WMD Strategy establishes a mandate to co-operate closely with the US to ensure the follow-up to the EU-US...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I  Introduction and Analytical Framework
• Part II  The EU Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policy: Background and Evolution
• Part III  EU Multilateral Interactions
• Part IV  EU Bilateral Interactions and Governance
• Part V  Conclusions
• Appendix I  Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
• Appendix II  EU Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Index