European Union and Strategy

An Emerging Actor

Kjell Engelbrekt, Jan Hallenberg

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781134106783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This edited volume sets out to explore the paradox that the European Union (EU) produces policies with strategic qualities, but lacks the institutions and concepts to engage in strategic reasoning and action proper.

The book has a two-fold agenda, exploring current EU external policies that are, or seem to be, linked to strategic priorities, and also studying the concept of strategy in the particular context of EU decision- and policymaking.

The volume first examines the character of the Union as a strategic actor at this stage of its development. It then explores the ability of the Union to act and otherwise influence both its periphery and the wider world, focusing in particular on how it is perceived by other actors. The final section comprises personal assessments by a group of contributors regarding the character of the union as a strategic actor in the present and future. When these are pieced together, a picture emerges of a European strategy in the making, albeit one that so far is modest and partial.

This book will be of interest to students of European Security, European Politics and IR.

Part I
Constraints and capacities

1
Machiavelli and the making of a European security and defence strategy

Kjell Engelbrekt

This book examines the paradox that the European Union (EU) on the one hand produces policies with strategic qualities, but on the other hand lacks many of the institutions and concepts that would enable it to engage in strategic reasoning and action proper. While suggestive of the eventual findings of our own collaborative research effort as well as that of others, this first chapter concentrates on laying out the conceptual and theoretical basis for exploring the paradox and a number of questions associated with it. It discusses the characteristics of the EU as a strategic actor using both a traditional, ‘Machiavellian’ understanding and a modern, holistic conception.

One of two premises of this collaborative research is that the evolution of a nascent EU strategy is chiefly visible on the output side of foreign, security and defence policy. In recent years the EU has demonstrated a distinct ability to develop long-term and goal-driven policies concerning world trade, the former communist states (Smith, M.E., 2004a), South-Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (Winn and Lord, 2001; Hänggi and Tanner, 2005; Smith and Webber, forthcoming), the Mediterranean region (Gomez, 2003), the environment (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006), and other issues. In particular, the strategic presence of the EU is increasingly felt all along its own borders (Wæver, 2000; Ekengren and Engelbrekt, 2006). Despite the recurring troubles of continental economies, the common European currency is having a substantive and growing effect on the political economy of all EU neighbours (Kaelberer, 2004). Also, many third world countries wish that the EU would be more closely engaged in economic development, institution-building and peace operations around the world.

The second premise of this research is that, by now, there have been sufficient developments in the EU’s overall governance system for us to begin asking probing questions about actorness and strategy (Vennesson, 2006). Many observers agree that the neat compartmentalization of EU policy-making and institutional landscapes into pillars, issue areas and organizational entities is gradually being rendered obsolete. In spite of (or even because of) a lack of political progress towards solidifying European integration since the failed French and Dutch referenda on the draft Constitutional Treaty in the summer of 2005, cooperation and information-sharing between EU institutions across organizational boundaries have been reinforced in the pursuit of concrete assignments, especially in the broader realm of external affairs.

One should in this context mention the conflation of military and civil intelligence tasks in anti-terrorist initiatives launched after 9/11, the enhanced linkages between external border regimes and domestic security arrangements, increasingly close cooperation between military personnel and civil administration officials deployed in the EU’s Balkan missions, and parallel involvement of the police, the defence forces and rescue services in disaster response preparation and crisis management operations. The Union’s governance system will no doubt continue to be complex and unwieldy for many years to come, yet the growing ambition to draw on the various resources of the Union (and its member states) is presently reinforcing the trend of accumulating aggregate capacity at the centre.

The EU as a ‘composite actor’

Historically speaking, the EU has in many respects come a long way already. It is clear that originally the EU was not a political entity to which many attributed ‘actor’ properties, let alone abilities to reason and act strategically. The beginnings of the EU grew out of a vision of bringing long-lasting peace and security to a continent ravaged by conflict and war for many centuries and, most devastatingly, by the two world wars of the twentieth century. Half a century later, the EU had in many ways achieved this objective, though it had done so almost inadvertently. A set of common political bodies with circumscribed mandates, a policy of expanding economic cooperation, and acceptance of a complementary legal order on common market issues constitute the cornerstones of this achievement. Notably, it would not have taken place without the facilitating roles of the United States, as benefactor of, and the Soviet Union, as a perceived threat to, West European democracy and free market society (Wallace, 1990).

‘Actorness’ was thus never a term that comfortably applied to a slowly unifying Europe, other than as an exogenously proffered rationalization. Instead, European integration served multiple national purposes during the Cold War (CW) era, to individual West European capitals as well as to Washington DC. Whereas the US government in the early days tended to treat the project of European integration as an outgrowth of its own containment strategy, decision-makers and business leaders in France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries were mainly interested in bolstering trade and establishing a common approach to the agricultural, energy and transportation sectors. Many times the impetus needed to gradually broaden the scope of cooperation came from the European Court of Justice rather than from political leaders.

However, after the treaties of Maastricht (1993) and Amsterdam (1999) had come into effect the EU could no longer plausibly be described as merely ‘an object’ of international relations. One possible characterization is that of a ‘composite actor,’ especially applicable to the sphere of foreign, security or defence policy. First of all, the Union is certainly a ‘composite actor’ in the obvious sense of being made up of 27 member states, all of which formally need to subscribe to a statement or a concrete measure in the said areas of external affairs. Foreign, security and defence matters continue to belong to the so-called ‘second pillar’ of the increasingly outdated Maastricht Treaty’s (1992) legal structure. Consequently, veto rights may only be circumscribed under the Common Foreign and Security Policy’s (CFSP) ‘enhanced cooperation’ procedure introduced through the Nice Treaty (2002), the use of which, in turn, requires a consensus among the 27 in the previous stage of decision-making.

Second, the EU is a ‘composite actor’ internally, involving a wide range of bodies that in one way or another deal with foreign, security and defence issues. Theoretical approaches developed in recent years have helped to highlight the ‘multi-level governance’ and ‘network’ character of Union policymaking (Christiansen, 1997; Kohler-Koch et al., 1998; Carlsnaes et al., 2004). Others have expressly discussed the issue of EU actorness in an international or global setting. For instance, a couple of years ago Bretherton and Vogler revisited the institutional requirements of EU actorness outlined by Gunnar Sjöstedt in 1977, reaching the conclusion that the EU today ‘is a global actor of some significance’ (Bretherton and Vogler, 1999: 253). In this context, Bretherton and Vogler singled out the EU’s role as a ‘security community’ in the terms of the influential social scientist Karl Deutsch, as well as a model of regional economic integration attractive to its ‘near abroad’ and to South America and Africa (Bretherton and Vogler, 1999: 256).

Some scholars are thus beginning to pursue the question of EU actorness analytically, and not just conceptually. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver suggest that Europe today is a ‘centred security complex’ and a region that ‘acquires actor quality through institutions’ instead of, as was the case during the CW, having its power structure determined by outside powers (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 62). Similarly, discussing the EU in a comparative perspective, Christopher Hill speaks of ‘a new layer of diplomatic activity superimposed on (but not replacing) that of the nation-states’ (Hill, 2003: 290). Hill proposes to analyse the EU ‘layer of diplomatic activity’ through policy-making processes in situations where ‘attempts at choosing and self-assertion are being made’ (Hill, 2003: 295). He specifically urges us to ask whether ‘collective diplomacy is genuinely emerging in parallel to that of nation-states,’ as well as what ‘independent impact on the international environment’ such diplomacy has (Hill, 2003: 295). Given the near-consensus that the EU lacks both the ‘hardware’ (organization and budget) and ‘software’ (common values and ideas about what objectives to pursue) for underpinning genuine actorness, Hill’s questions may help support our focus on the conceptual and institutional preconditions for Union policy-making.

Neither fox nor lion

However, even if some observers agree that the EU is an emerging actor in terms of observable patterns of international relations, is the Union still able to develop and sustain a genuine capacity to reason and act strategically? I submit that we can approach this narrower issue by means of consulting a founder of modern rationalistic and strategic thought, namely Niccolò Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli famously notes that political struggle exists in two basic forms, that of law and that of force, and that a ruler needs to acknowledge and be prepared to engage in the second as well as in the first:

You must, therefore, know that there are two means of fighting: one according to the laws, the other with force; the first way is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first, in many cases, is insufficient, it becomes necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore, a prince must know […] how to make good use of the nature of the beast, he should choose from among the beasts the fox and the lion; for the lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot defend itself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to be a fox in order to recognize the traps and a lion in order to frighten the wolves.

(Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVIII)

Many analysts already agree that the EU, on behalf of 27 of the continent’s states, has indeed evolved into a powerful actor in the way ‘proper to man’, that is, as legislator present both at the global and regional level (Smith, 2001). The most obvious example is that the EU, ever since the Kennedy Round of the 1960s – together with the United States – has been shaping the international trade system, including its transformation from the loose General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the more cohesive World Trade Organization (WTO) in the mid-1990s (Meunier, 2005). Another striking example is the way in which the Union’s enlargement policy during the last decade has expanded the geographic scope of its laws and regulations to Central and Eastern Europe, thereby placing the continent’s political economy on a new, common footing (Ekengren and Engelbrekt, 2006).

To the extent that the Union would need to call upon ‘the nature of the beast,’ however, very few commentators seem to believe that the EU is in a position to respond appropriately. Questions concerning the Union’s ability to reason and act strategically are an important part of such doubts, which often extend far beyond the Union’s present policy-making and implementation capabilities. Many sceptics not only feel that the existing rules and arrangements fall short of such ambitions, but argue that an international organization like the EU, regardless of its achievements in other areas, is inherently biased or flawed with regard to drawing on man’s ‘beastly’ qualities in order to advance its interests. The Union, in other words, is unfit to threaten or use violence or other coercive means of action.

Machiavelli’s famous analogy of the fox and the lion may therefore serve to render such scepticism more precise, in that it focuses our attention on specific properties related to strategy. It may be argued that the fox analogy speaks to the intelligence and decision-making components of strategy, i.e. to a capacity of strategic reasoning. The recognition of ‘traps’ including early warning, proper contextualization and explication of such dangers, and the formulation of well-conceived policy recommendations all belong to the notion of strategic reasoning. Also, if the devising of cunning schemes is a necessary component, strategic reasoning may also involve a capacity for deceiving and misleading opponents, and setting up ‘traps’ for others to fall into.

Furthermore, the analogy of the lion can be interpreted as referring to the capacity of strategic action, and particularly to the mobilization of resources of coercion, as the claws, teeth and predator muscles that potentially are brought to bear on an adversary. This is obviously where the coercive and military conception of strategy becomes directly relevant, and in particular its focus on the ability to use a variety of resources – including military force – in order to achieve political objectives. In Machiavelli’s conception, the lion’s properties are required ‘to frighten the wolves,’ a phrase that clearly denotes a strategy of deterrence. By implication, there is also a more selective use of force. This implies that the combination of the two analogies can be interpreted to mean that the lion’s properties would be used to eliminate as well as escape the ‘traps’ identified by the fox.

A capacity for reasoning and acting?

Beginning with its ‘fox-like’ properties, the present-day EU does not possess an elaborate capacity for strategic reasoning in Machiavelli’s sense. There is neither a well-staffed information gathering and assessment component, nor an adequately structured policy development and decision-making organization, on a par with what some larger member states maintain at home. The European Security Strategy (ESS) adopted in December 2003 provided, for the first time, a rough conceptualization of the Union’s strategic priorities, listing terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflict, state failure and organized crime. Yet it is a vague document that falls short of a strategy against which concrete initiatives could be measured, let alone that it forms a clear basis for implementation (Biscop, 2005: viii). The intelligence and policy-making activities envisaged in the frameworks of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and the CFSP cannot, despite significant improvements since 2003, make up for these institutional and conceptual shortcomings.

The enhanced intelligence cooperation of recent years can only partly remedy the situation, as a significant flow of high-grade intelligence today reaches – and is augmented in – Brussels. Some ten different crisis-monitoring units are said to already exist within the Community structure, and the Situation Centre created in the Council of Ministers is a particularly interesting addition (Duke and Ojanen, 2006/07). However, the problems of coordinating this flow, adjudicating between concrete pieces and sources of information, and deciding which portions should reach the decision-making bodies, are still awesome. Complex chains of command and structures of accountability represent an impediment to the emergence of a strategic reasoning capacity, especially one that operates effectively in a dynamic situation of strategic interactions, and qualified intelligence continues to be shared on a voluntary, case-by-case basis (Walsh, 2006: 635).

At least on paper the Union’s action capacity is more advanced, and some observers predict that the missing components will be added during the coming decade (Posen, 2006: 180). The June 1999 Euro...

Table of contents

• Contemporary security studies
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Constraints and capacities
• Part II Strategic entanglements
• Part III Actor on a global scale?
• Bibliography
• Index