Predictability and stability are two of the most precious commodities in international relations. One of the most important contributions made by the EUâand indeed the whole process of integrationâhas been to facilitate both to a degree unrivalled in any other international organisation. In particular, in the more than a quarter of a century since it was established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has proven unique in terms of the intensity, transparency and frequency of co-operation and interaction it has facilitated between EU member states. At the same time, the CFSP has also provided them with an important platform from which to engage with partners and competitors around the world. Where they are able to agree on shared goals and a common purpose, the CFSP can enable member states to speak with a powerful collective voice and produce policy with significant impact, for example in responding to the challenge posed by Iranâ s nuclear ambitions and Russian action i n the Ukra ine. Even where they are not, the CFSP nonetheless plays an important role in moderating and mediating their interactions and disagreements, thereby contributing to what DuchĂȘne (1973) referred to as the domestication of member state relations. The CFSP has thus become a highly significant component of foreign policy-making in all member states.
Perhaps inevitably, one of the questions that arises from this concerns the impact of such a level of cooperation over such an extended period of time on the states themselves. Does it change the way they organise for and approach policy-making? Does it affect the way they articulate and pursue their interests and preferences? Is it possible that a more profound transformation is taking place in terms of how they conceive of and identify their interests and preferences in the first place, driven not only by cooperation in foreign and security policy-making but also by powerful processes of European integration that have drawn states closer and closer together across a much wider range of policy areas? These and related questions have provided the foundation for a wide range of scholarship in recent decades and have been addressed from a number of perspectives including International Relations Theory, Europeanisation and Comparative Politics. That this remains such a debated field underlines both the complexity and dynamism inherent in EU-level foreign policy co-operation and what it implies for the states involved.
This book seeks to contribute to this discussion by focusing on two of those states: Britain and Germany. They share a number of similarities. Both have global economic and diplomatic reach and ambition. Both have sought to benefit from the ability of the CFSP (and EU more generally) to multiply and amplify their international capacities at a time when they must increasingly compete with emerging and re-emerging powers around the world. And both enjoy positions of weight and influence in the EUâs foreign and security policy deliberationsâalthough in the case of the UK, Brexit will mean at the very least an end to any formal and institutionalised role. Equally, their interactions with the CFSP and their partners states over many years have provided ample evidence of the commonality of challenges and threats they face internationally; and the benefits in facing these of collective, multilateral responses, even if the EU is just one part of a wider multilateral security architecture.
Given their many similarities, what is interesting therefore is the differing views they have taken of the CFSP, not only in terms of its value and utility in achieving particular policy outcomes, but in the place it occupies in their more fundamental conceptions of how foreign and security policy should be made in the twenty-first century. Thus, for Germany the CFSP lies at the heart of everything it does in terms of identifying and pursuing its foreign policy goals, reflecting a deeply-rooted multilateralist and particul arly European vocation for cooperation. For Britain, meanwhile, the relationship has been more transactional, contingent and detached, based on a pragmatism that has on occasion viewed EU-level cooperation as a necessary evil rather than anything more idealistic or normatively worthwhile. Given this, how these states have engaged with the CFSP since its launch, and particularly their varying motives and objectives in doing so, is interesting not simply for what it tells us about their specific concerns and desires, but also for the insights that can be offered into the complexity inherent in any kind of foreign policy cooperation and how nation-states approach and seek to manage this complexity. The first aim of this book is therefore to draw out some of these insights by offering a comparative analysis of their history of engagement with the CFSP and the institutions, structures and processes they employ to do so.
The bookâs second aim is to contribute to the ongoing debate about how we theorise and explain member state cooperation in EU foreign and security policy. To this end it focuses on the application of constructivism to studies of CFSP and how this has contributed particularly to new supranationalist theorising on the transformative power of foreign policy cooperation on EU member states. While not contesting the importance and validity of Constructivism as a means of theorising international relations more broadly and European integration more specifically, what this book will challenge is the extent to which a whole-scale transformation has taken place at the national level as a consequence of cooperation in the CFSP, specifically in terms of the ideas, interests and preferences reflected in member state foreign policies. Thus, it questions a particular application of constructivist concepts that often privileges the institutio nalisation of cooperation at the supranational level whilst neglecting the continuing importance of the national level, not only in terms of the influence that member states continue to exert over foreign policy-making, but also of the importance of national-level institutions as generators of norms, preferences and interests in their own right. In doing so, it seeks to test Stanley Hoffmannâs exhortation that âthe nation-state is still hereâ (1966: 863) and what this means in the context of EU foreign and security policy cooperation.
Constructivism, Supranationalism and the CFSP
How then should we understand the implications and consequences of cooperation over the longer-term in foreign and security policy in the C FSP for member states such as Britain and Germany? In recent years two closely connected theoretical schools have become increasingly influential in seeking to answer this question: constructivism andâdrawing from and building on thisânew s upranationalism.
Constructivism emerged within the context of international relations theory in the late 1980s/early 1990s through the work of scholars such as John Gerard Ruggie (e.g. 1995, 1997), Alexander Wendt (e.g. 1992, 1994, 1999) and Peter Katzenstein (1996), partly in response to the âperceived failureâ of classic theories such as realism to explain the end of the Co ld War (Parsons 2010: 82). The insights it provides and the approach it encapsulates can be summarised in terms of two inter-linked aims. First, it seeks to address, analyse and understand the role and influence of i deas, no rms and identity within the theoretical debates relating to IR and integration. Second, and following directly from this, constructivism provides an extensive critique of what many of its exponents see as the essentially bipolar and binary nature of theoretical discussion in both these fields. Within IR theory this takes the form of the ongoing (neo) realist versus (neo) institutionalist debate, while its equivalent (if not analogue) within Eu ropean integration literature can be found in the ânarrow focus and sterilityâ of the debate between (liberal) intergovernmentalism an d neofunctionalism (Risse 2004: 159).
For constructivists, the starting point for an alternative analysis lies in understanding the importance of what Ruggie amongst others identifies as the âideational factorsâ that provide the basis for the âidentity and/or interestsâ of state actors but which neo-realist and neo-liberal institutionalist theorising take for granted (1998: 4). For example, Alexander Wendt, one of the most influential constructivist theorists, argues that notions of power and interest âare constituted by ideasâ whic h provide the basis through which states are able to relate to one another, simultaneously defining and determining who and what they are (1999: 371â2). Consequently, only by understanding the centrality of ideas to how we construct social reality can we determine the relationship between interests and power. In particular, it is only through our collective intentionality as members of society that concepts such as âthe stateâ, the ânational interestâ and âsovereigntyâ are imbued with meaning and validity (Ruggie 1998; Searle 1995). Thus, whereas realism and liberal institutionalism regard interests as exogenously given, a primary objective of the constructivist analysis is to ask how states âdefine their identity and interests in the first placeââwhat Ruggie considers the âfoundational questionâ (1998: 14). By answering this we can start to understand the social reality represented by the international system, including questions about how power operates within it. Moreover, these questions become particularly important when considering the nature of the structures and institutions that constitute this system, and how state actors construct and then behave in themâfor example, the EU and CFSP.
The potential b...