1) Less time for foreign policy    

When your house is burning, this is a bad time to be chatting or engaging neighbours. When political leaders and administrations are engaged full time in managing the economy – saving the Euro, reducing public spending or stemming the tide of unemployment, foreign policy is pushed even more to the bottom of the list of priorities. Leaders simply have less time and desire to understand or strategise about how to react to foreign policy events – be it Putin’s return to the presidency, the latest turn in the political mess of Egypt, Tunisia or Ukraine. And foreign policy issues which sometimes need not just competent diplomatic management, but also high-level political drivers, is relegated to working level – where many issues cannot be solved. Foreign policy matters are then seen like issues that need to be put aside, postponed, thrown under the carpet and get out of the way until more urgent problems are solved.

2) Fewer money 

Foreign policy is costly. Some money need to be spent on military resources and other – on assistance. Both of these types of spending buy the EU various degrees of influence, power and diplomatic weight.

The amount of EU spending for foreign policy is the result of a trade off between moral commitments (to help those in need of humanitarian assistance, post-colonial guilt), self-interest (stabilise countries, use political influence to promote economic interests, give aid to reduce emigration) and politicians’ accountability to voters. With a growing pie – politicians and decision-makers could get a decent balance between these various imperatives. But with a shrinking pie, a more egoistic narrow-mindedly voter oriented behaviour is likely to come to the forefront. This will restrain EU member states’ desire to spend money internationally. The increasing number of those affected by unemployment or salary cuts might suddenly become much less altruistic internationally and put increasing pressures on elites to spend money at home. At the end of the day foreign aid recipients don’t vote and a generously funded foreign policy is likely to be increasingly seen as something of a luxury.

All this is a huge problem for all great foreign policy powers, but especially for the EU, which in the absence of hard power has relied so much on economic power, conditionality and financial aid as its main foreign policy tools. On this the EU is like an investor with a shockingly undiversified portfolio of investments, to use Nick Witney’s parallel.

The EU takes a lot of pride in the fact that it is the biggest donor in the world. But even before the acute phase of the euro-crisis the political relevance of EU aid in the emerging world was undermined by alternative sources of funding for many of the emerging countries –from China,Russia, or their own burgeoning economies. Now the EU not only has to compete for political influence with other aid donors which is debilitating in itself, but might also face the need to reduce foreign policy funding. This is EU’s foreign policy double dip: the loss of relative influence compared to the other powers (due to their rise), supplemented now with loss of foreign policy resources not just in relative, but also absolute terms.

A side-effect of this problem also relates to market-access related conditionality. For decades the EU used access to the EU market as a carrot which is exchanged for all kinds of concessions – economic or political (such as the human rights conditionality in EU association agreements). But now, this tools might also become problematic on two accounts. First, the ‘carrot’ of EU’s stagnating market might become less attractive in relative terms (again not least by comparison with faster growing alternative markets). And second, the ‘carrot’ might be put out of sight for some external partners as a result of potential protectionist backlashes inside the EU.

While other powers, such as the US or Russia are also affected by the crisis, in financial dire straits they are still left with raw military power or assertive high-quality diplomacy. The EU has little hard power, fewer money, a half-baked External Action Service and a disparaged collection of divided national foreign ministries. This is roughly like the (probably Chinese) saying that ‘in a famine a fat man looses weight, and a thin man dies’.

3) The euro-crisis of soft power

The third serious effect of the euro-crisis is on EU soft power, which is supposedly based on EU attractiveness as a prosperous, well-functioning model. I have argued before that ‘soft power’ has an element of free-riding to it. For the last twenty years the EU’s main foreign policy occupation has been teaching other how to live and making them want what the EU wants. This foreign policy model was reaching its limits already before the crisis as it was hitting the limits of cultural fascination with Europe which was much more valid in Central Europe in the 90s and the Balkans, than it is in the Middle East or much of the post-Soviet space (see ECFR report on the Limits of Enlargement-lite). But now this foreign policy model is evaporating. Few, if any foreign policy partners of the EU are likely to aspire to be like Europe. The fastest growing economies in Europe in 2010 were Turkey, Belarus and Moldova. Hardly a good advertisement for EU’s economic model.

Again, the draining of ‘soft power’ is costlier for the EU than for other powers like the US, whose ‘soft power’ also had to suffer as a result of the crisis, but whose ‘power portfolio’ is better hedged. The US at least retains hard power, whereas the EU had no hard power, and its ‘soft power’ might be entering into a coma.

Sometimes, countries are ‘friendly’ because they don’t care that much. They have little to share in terms of geography, complicated history or trade flows – and they have little to argue about. This is the case of ‘friendhips’ like the Spanish-Russian one. But most ‘friendships’ emerge because of interdependence. German-Russian trade and complicated history are at the basis of the German-Russian ‘friendship’. The need to manage (read reduce) migratory flows from the South to the EU is one of the pillars of the Franco-Italo-Spanish ‘friendship’ with Morocco-Tunisia-Libya. In many ways friends are those who care. But often they care most in ways that are rather unfriendly.

Scratching below the surface, and looking at various policy areas ‘friendships’ and actual policies often diverge. Take the issue of visa-free travel to the EU for Russian citizens. This is a key, perhaps the key, Russian priority in relations with the EU. On this specific issue though, traditional ‘friendships’ can quickly fall apart. Whereas countries like Poland and Lithuania would relatively easy accept a visa-free regime with Russia, Germany and France are much more reluctant because their domestic debates are much more anti-immigrations. They might be Russia’s friends on energy deals, but not on visa free-travel. Similarly, most of the new member states might not be Russia’s friends on issues like energy or the conflicts in Georgia, but they are quite friendly to the idea of visa-free travel with Russia (and other Eastern neighbours).

Looking to the south of the EU reveals a relatively similar picture. France, Spain and Italy might be the ‘best friends’ of the southern neighbourhood, but also they are the most unfriendly towards the southern member states on two key issues: immigration and trade, particularly in agricultural goods. To achieve sustainable economic growth and job creation, countries like Morocco and Tunisia need first and foremost trade, not aid. Yet, what France and Spain want to offer is mainly aid, rather than trade. The southern EU member states might have very good political relations with North Africa, and are pushing for more EU financial aid to the region (most of the cash comes from the Germany and northern EU member states, anyway). But they are most opposed to substantial trade liberalisation in the goods that matter most such as olives or tomatoes, since this would compete with what they produce. Normally, Sweden or the Netherlands which are not seen as the advocates of North Africa in the EU, on issues like trade are much less protectionist, and in essence ‘friendlier’ towards Morocco or Tunisia’s trade interests.

Needless to say there is also a link between EU’s trade protectionism and immigration pressures. EU’s protectionism in agriculture diminishes the potential for economic development (and job creation) in the southern neighbourhood and is at least partly responsible for the huge prosperity gap between the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean.  And what do people without jobs in North Africa do? Of course they try to immigrate.

Analysing or planning foreign policies in terms of ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’ countries is a pretty unhelpful way to go about it. The reality is that sometimes indifferent non-friends, or even ‘unfriendly’ countries can be as reliable as ‘friends’ on specific policy issues, and vice-versa.

Certainly, it is not youth movements, but authoritarian regimes and ‘ripe contexts’ that are the causes of revolutions. This sounds self-evident, but both revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries seem to often miss it (though it is impossible to know whether a revolutionary situation is ‘ripe’ before it actually happens). I still remember the avalanches of venom deployed against youth movements as ‘fifth columns of foreign powers’, not just in Russian, Azeri or Serbian media, but also in plenty of (leftish) European newspapers (the Guardian seemed to excell at that). Many of them implied that youth movements, not authoritarian mismanagement were the causes of revolutions. But it is also indicative how Kefaya failed to lead to anything meaningful in Egypt in 2005, whereas the 2011 protests toppled Mubarak without any Kefaya-like organisation.

I spent most of the last week in Morocco looking into how the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt affected the political dynamics there. The current wave of protests in Morocco are led by the ‘20 February movement‘ (or here), which stages big manifestations once a month (the first big demonstration was on 20 February), and smaller protests, sit-ins and flashmobs in between. Speaking to some activists from the movement (in their early twenties) I was pretty suprised that they never heard of Kefaya, let alone Otpor or their field manual Gene Shapr’s ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy‘. The current movements seem to be a different breed than the movements in 2000-2005.

From telegraph to sms to Facebook

One difference is how the media, the public and the protesters themselves talk of the way protests are organised. Remember – one of the first things the Bolsheviks did in 1917 was to seize the post and telegraph as the key means of communications. The failed 1991 Putsch in Russia and the 1993 stand-off between Eltsin and the Parliament saw big clashes at Ostankino, where the main Russian TV channels are. Controlling the TV was crucial for mobilising or keeping the public at home.

In 2003-2004 all the attention was on the hugely ‘innovative’ fact that protesters coordinated their actions or called for protests through sms (rather than more old-school leaflets, newspapers, radio or TV). Sms ‘democratised’, accelerated and simplified communication. Through sms protesters could circumvent TV and radio when they wanted to broaden their appeal and speed up coordination. It takes a few seconds to sms a dozen persons, and much longer to call them landline-to-landline. But sms is old-school now, as well. It is used of course, but does not excite the imagination of the media or the regimes. It is Facebook and Twitter that are the focus of attention (though the Russian FSB just said the already old-school Gmail, Hotmail and Skype are a threat to Russia becuase they cannot be ‘monitored’).

From ‘youth movements’ to ‘rainbow movements’

But the 2011 protesters are different not because just Facebook and Twitter replaced sms. They are different in a deeper sense. The current protest movements are not stricto sensu youth movements, but a blend of young urban middle-class facebookers, mild and not so mild conservative islamists, and (sometimes radical) leftists. Compared to the 2000-2005 wave of youth movements the current protest movements can be equally romantic, but they are less organised, with no chain of command, no training, and ultimately more fluid. This is sometimes a weakness (only the Muslim Bortherhood seemed organised enough to provide the public good of  crowd management during the protests in Egypt). But it is also partly a strength since they are also more inclusive and more open to people that are not urban middle-class kids and their social base is ultimately larger. This also makes them more dangerous to the regimes. Mubarak could outdo Kefaya, but not the fuzzier and less organised coalition without a name that took to the streets this year.

‘More for more’ stands for a more meritocratic ENP. It should lay the basis for proper differentiation between neighbours, not based on geographic criteria, but based on their performance. The concept is also supposed to change the way the EU is spending its money. Currently the EU pre-allocates most of its assistance to specific neighbourhood states (almost irrespective of their reform performance) in 7-years budgetary cycles. ‘More for more’ is supposed to make it easier to shift its more EU assistance from one neighbourhood state to another depending on their reform performance. Overall, the concept the concept of ‘more for more’ is laudable and fair, but also quite slippery.

More for more, but not that much

To begin with, the concept is not that new. Back in 2006 the EU launched a so-called governance facility – a pool of money that was supposed to be spent on the 1-2 most reformist neighbours. That was a ‘more for more’ in all but name. Morocco and Ukraine (Moldova joining later on) got most of it. The ‘governance facility’ funds were ‘more’, but still too little to alter reform trajectories in the neighbourhood states. And many reforms were not that sustainable, if not reversible, as the case of Ukraine showed. To be truly effective ‘more for more’ might need to be ‘much more money, for much more reforms’ to have an impact.

Geopolitics vs ‘more for more’

‘More for more’ runs up against geography and geopolitics as other key criteria for capturing EU attention. Geography is unbeatable in many ways. Belarus will always preoccupy more minds in the EU than Armenia, and Tunisia will preoccupy more minds than Jordan. In a sense the real geographic division inside the neighbourhood policy is not only between states that are South or East, but also between states that are closer or further away from the EU. In this sense the ENP states of Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Tunisia, Morocco are likely to be higher on EU radar screens than Azerbaijan, Syria, Jordan or Armenia, irrespective of the pace of reforms.

Even though the ‘more for more’ concept is pushing the debate into the right direction by focusing primarily on reforms delivery, not geography, the tensions between the two approaches will persist. Witness the recent letter by France, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta calling for a re-allocation of funds from East to South. Such an approach is a clear-cut challenge to the ‘more for more’ approach. Instead of calling for supporting reforms the letter calls for supporting the south. That is a rather self-serving approach. But it is strongly embedded in the thinking of many member states and the French can be quite ruthless in pushing for their agenda in the EU.

Then there are the other geopolitical priorities. A situation like Palestine is probably exempt from the ‘more for more’ approach, I suspect. Palestine is by far biggest recipient of EU assistance in the neighbourhood, yet this is assistance has been tied less to reforms and democracy, and more to state building and the Middle East peace process. EU assistance to Palestine is 75 eur/per person/per year, which is 3 times per capita more than Moldova gets, 5 times more than Jordan and ten times more than Tunisia under Ben Ali.

What is more and what is less?

‘More for more’ will run into tensions of what to consider more in those cases where democracy and reformism do not go hand in hand. In ‘more for more’, the second more actually subdivides into two types ‘more’ – one stands for ‘more reforms’ and the other for ‘more democracy’. Think of the following cases: Orange Ukraine was democratic, but not reformist. Georgia – was reformist, but less democratic. In the South – Lebanon is pluralist, Tunisia (under Ben Ali) was reformist, but less pluralist. When such a division exist – assessing what is more can become tricky.

Then, the question is whether ‘more is more’ also means ‘less for less’. This opens all kinds of questions related to how far the EU can go in expanding sanctions, pressures, negative conditionality and other forms of coercion against problematic states in the neighbourhood. I have serious doubts the EU has any appetite or desire to match ‘more for more’ with ‘less for less’.

Another question is who will define what is more? I suspect the neighbourhood states might often consider they deserve more than they get. Their reading of their reform performance might be more optimistic than that of the EU. ‘More for more’ is hard to quantify because the notion of more is relative.

The EU has tried to methodologically identify what is more back in 2006 but such criteria were hardly a compass for EU action. The EU forgot its criteria almost as soon as they were published. This time, perhaps an aggregated monitoring mechanism run by a coalition of European and neighbourhood NGOs lumping together all kinds of indicators and indexes – from the cost of doing business, the economist democracy index, freedom in the world, and corruption perception index – could help to at least partly de-subjectivise the notion of ‘more’. Such a monitoring mechanism could also monitor whether ‘more’ is done not just the neighbourhood states, but also by the EU.

How to get more?

Finally, the most important question is where to take money for ‘more is more’? With a few EU member states on the verge of bankruptcy, and a few others unwilling to pay for those on the verge of bankruptcy – increasing spending for foreign policy is rather unlikely. So most of the action will be reduced to nasty battles between proponents of spending in the south with proponents of spending in the east. However, the EU should start redirecting funds not so much between the eastern and southern neighbourhood, but rather from the non-neighbourhood to the neighbourhood.

‘More for more’ is a useful principle to be applied not just in the neighbourhood, but across the countries where the EU gives assistance. And some other countries should not receive EU assistance at all. Why should the EU spend money in the BRIC countries (except for student exchanges and public diplomacy)? The BRIC governments are all on shopping sprees in the EU and elsewhere investing in projects that many EU countries cannot afford, whereas the EU still offers them development assistance…

Recently the UK cut development assistance to 16 countries (including Russia, China, Vietnam, Serbia, Bosnia, Cameroon, Indonesia, Kosovo, Moldova etc). India was not one of them. Yet this provoked a debate as to why should a UK that that is about to fire 11.000 Ministry of Defence personnel including soldiers just returning from Afghanistan, cannot afford a space program and a nuclear program, and is forced to share aircraft carriers with France for lack of funds, offer development assistance to an India that has a space program and a nuclear program. Certainly paying for past colonialist abuses and alleviating poverty are serious considerations. But the point is worth raising.

The EU keeps offering preferential lending and direct development assistance to BRIC countries. It is not that much, but it still is a bad investment. Its political impact is zero. The same money would almost double the EU assistance to countries like Georgia or Tunisia. China spent on the Shanghai World Expo alone EUR 39 bn (USD 55 bn), which is more three times the amount of money the EU plans to spend in the whole of its neighbourhood in 7 years between 2007 and 2013. Russia’s planned Nord and South Stream pipelines would also cost more than two times the amount of EU assistance to the neighbourhood in 7 years.

It is true that development assistance to the BRICs is decreasing. But the picture is starker with lending money. The European Investment Bank financed the construction of the Beijing Airport before the 2008 Olympics with EUR 500 million and another half a billion for other projects. As the EIB website says the Bank’s ‘AAA credit rating enables it to obtain the best terms on the market. As a not-for-profit institution, the EIB passes on this advantage in the terms it offers to the beneficiaries of its loans in both the public and private sectors.’ The EIB is supposed to ‘make a difference to the future of Europe and its partners by supporting sound investments which further EU policy goals’. It is not clear how lending to modernise the Beijing airport for the Olympics helps achieve that goal, whereas lending a billion to develop neighbourhood countries would be make a bigger difference.

The era when the EU was the biggest bag of money in the world has ended. Others have more money than ever before, and the EU has less. Alleviating poverty cannot be a bigger priority for the EU than for the governments of the BRIC countries. It is time for the EU to focus its spending closer to home – where it needs to and can have an impact. And even if the EU starts spending more in the neighbourhood countries that deserve it, the even more difficult question is whether the EU has the will and the unity to become more of a political and security actor in this region as well.

This post is based on a conference presentation at the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 22 March 2011.

The Realist Consensus

For the few couple of years the realist consensus on democracy promotion seemed to be on a seemigly unstoppable (repeated) rise. It marked the end of two decades of noisy, often arrogant, but equally often concerned tough talk and action to promote human rights and democracy. The idea was that time has come to focus on achieving certain, rather quantifiable interests, such as ensuring security, fighting terrorism, expanding trade or managing migration, rather than adopting vague goals like promoting human rights and improving governance.

Obama’s foreign policy seemed to be a pretty visible embodiment of this realist approach to foreign policy. The formulation of the Obama administration primary foreign policy goals was restructured around a few clusters of issues – (more or less) achievale, quantifiable, measurable and tradeable (eg get an international consensus on Iran, make sure Russia plays a constructive role in Afghanistan etc). US partnerships with third states would be measured depending on how they help or complicate the achievement of certain goals, not by how those states were governed. The US-Russia reset was a clear example and testing-ground of this approach.

The EU was also by default moving in the same direction. Sometimes, well before the US did. Of course EU foreign policy was never as clear-cut and neat as that of the US, but as a ‘policy cloud’ it adopted the same trajectory – towards greater realism. EU policy on Russia, for example, has long ago abandoned any pretence of systematic support for human rights and democracy, except for scattered summit remarks for EU media here and there. The EU also started to engage Lukashenko in Belarus, arrived to a near complete cessation of any serious criticism (as opposed to occasional pro forma huffing and puffing) of human rights issues in not just in Russia, but also in China and even smaller places like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tunisia or Libya. The sanctions on Uzbekistan were removed, those on Belarus suspended (until January 2011) and the pressure – public or private – on other autocratic regimes or even democratic regimes with small authoritarian hiccups significantly scaled down.

All this was branded under the respectable-sounding name of ‘engagement’. I actually believe ‘engagement’ is a legitimate strategy to deal with dictators. I also do not think wishy-washy targeted sanctions and big public speeches are the only way to promote democracy. The primary function of many of these (like travel bans on Burmese generals – LOL) is to provide substitutes for action, placate domestic Western public opinion, the gung-ho media and preserve a modicum of self-respect, rather than achieve any specific democracy-promotion goals in tough places like Burma or Zimbabwe.

But ‘engagement’ is when you minimise public criticism and talk to a dictator in the hope that it opens up space for you to do some other useful things on the side like getting political prisoners out or supporting media and NGOs. But, unfortunately, the banner of ‘engagement’ is often used for pretty unprincipled stuff. In Tunisia such ‘engagement’ (see the post on Post-Revolutionary Tunisia) lead to a situation where Ben Ali was receiving hundrers of millions of euro, which allegedly ‘bought’ the EU the possibility to spend 100.000 eur/year on civil society (though a good chunk of it was going to fake NGOs set up by the government). ‘Engagement’ with Russia and China does not strike me as having been used to scale up support for civil society in these states. Quite the contrary. And it is this kind of fake engagement stemming from the ‘realist consensus’ that became increasingly dominant in democracy promotion (or lack of it).

The Unhappy Consensus

But the realist consensus was not a happy ‘consensus’. The reasons for the emergence of the Realist consensus were both tactical and structural. The gradual shift in power away from the West meant that the West cannot just shout around the world promoting democratic values. Its pressure was less and less effective, the targets of pressures could ignore the EU and US more and more without significant consequences. Countries like China and Russia, but also Brazil and India were happy to offer alternative trade deals, economic assistance and political protection in international fora to ‘the Mugabes’ of this world.

But the tactical factors also played an important role. Bush’s presidency discredited  democracy promotion as an explicit foreign policy goal. After Bush – going around the world talking democracy promotion rang all the wrong bells and was counter-productive. what is worse, the supposed riders of the democracy promotion wave have not proved terribly good swimmers either. Coloured revolutions in places like Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan or Lebanon dissapointed many, starting with its most committed activists. The few coloured revolutions also provoked a much wider counter-revolutionary backlash in other countries, adding to the negative side of the balance. (See Tymoshenko’s recent reflections on revolutions. Good, but not self-critical at all). All these factors put together have set the stage for the end of ‘post-Cold war’ democracy promotion. But the realist consensus, which seemed like an unpleasant, but still alternative, proved not to be one.

The (Happy?) Death of the Consensus

Just when most Western decision-makers finally (more or less) settled for this realist consensus – it all exploded in their face in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia and elsewhere in the Middle East. After such a wave of revolts, which do have a significant potential to open up the political space in many Arab states (not overnight, not in one go and not always successfuly) it would be stupid to continue with the realist consensus. But returning to 90s style democracy promotion is also not going to work. The West has fewer money and less relative political power to back up its support for democracy (not mentioning the allergy the US provokes in so many states).

They cannot go back to the 90s and most of 2000s policies on democracy promotion, but they can no longer settle for the minimalist ‘realist’ approach either, since it is out of touch with popular demands on the ground. What will come out of it is unclear, but will be an important conversation for the next couple of years or so.

Basically the logic of soft power is the following: ‘I am attractive, prosperous, nice, friendly, make good movies, have good schools etc and that is others you should do and want what I want’. This is a bit of a free-ride. Firts of all, soft power is not even designed as a foreign policy tool or an instrument of power. It is simply a useful potential side-effect of (EU and US, mainly) politicians responding to their voters’ needs. And one can be both attractive, and irrelevant in international politics. Second, when you try to use soft power, you basically expect others to do something not because you exchanged concessions, but just because you invest in making yourself nice. But being attractive and being able to achieve your goals are different things (think of Switzerland – attractive but bullied around by the likes of Gaddafi).

Today’s international politics are increasingly like a market-place where states trade concessions. This has been the case for most of history. States want to trade concessions and do deals with each other, not adapt unilaterally to whatever some country that is a source of soft power wants (be it the EU, US, China or Russia – and all of them have some soft power ambitions and ‘assets’). As a wikileaks cable put it ‘Africans don’t want conditions, they want options’. Now, you do not go to a market and expect that sellers will give you fruits just because you are nice and polite (ie have ‘soft power’). They might give you a discount or an extra apple for being polite, friendly and a constant client. But they still want something palpable from you (ie money). International politics is increasingly like that. (Increasingly – because during the Cold War the states that were members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact were not on the open market of trading concessions and basically had some degree of group solidarity – imposed or voluntary – that pre-determined many foreign policy outcomes. Though the ‘third world’ has been in the market place of international politics for decades.)

So going to the market with ‘soft power’ alone is not enough. This is why there is so much frustration with EU’s foreign policy performance (since the Balkans wars when each and every time the EU seemed like it finally said enough is enough and by the next crisis we will have hard power to back up our words/soft power. Still has not happened. I am not sure the lesson is internalised either).

I am not arguing soft power does not work. It does. And it does work in amazing ways when the recipients want to join or become like the EU (Central Europe, the Balkans and to a smaller extent, Moldova and Georgia). But then the effectiveness of that power has its source not in the EU, but with the publics of the states concerned. Moreover, the absolute majority of states not just in the world, but also in EU’s neighbourhood do not want to join the EU and do not want to become like the EU.

In other words, a state or a union of states, can have some soft power, but not be a soft power. Consequently soft power can and will only work on the margins and in support of other types of power – hard, military or economic. It is an enabling factor for the effective use of other types of foreign policy tools, but not a replacement for them.

“What is Europe’s role in this changed world? Does Europe not, now that is finally unified, have a leading role to play in a new world order, that of a power able both to play a stabilising role worldwide and to point the way ahead for many countries and peoples? Europe as the continent of humane values, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the French Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall… The European Union’s one boundary is democracy and human rights…  Europe needs to shoulder its responsibilities in the governance of globalisation. The role it has to play is that of a power resolutely doing battle against all violence, all terror and all fanaticism… In short, a power wanting to change the course of world affairs.”

The truth is that throughout most of its existence the EU was as frustrating and depressive for its supporters as is it now. And yet, it still is the single most successful international organisation in history. So how do we balance euro-pessimism and optimism, history and future, success and failure, analysis and wishful thinking?

The EU spent 7 years (or two decades – depending what’s your starting point) wrangling with endless institutional reforms. For the last few years the underlying feeling with many in Brussels was “just wait for us to adopt/ratify the constitution/Lisbon treaty and then we will show the world and anyone else what the enlarged EU is capable of… just wait a moment, this last effort and we will do wonders… we only need the new institutional set-up and the EU will enter a new historic phase.” Well not exactly. The appointment of Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton only confirmed the EU’s usual modus operandi based on a strong bias in favour of the lowest common denominator and against personalities with strong views and profiles.

But then I’ve finally managed to read Moravcsik’s entire book “The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht” – a detailed history (and theory) of European integration from the 50s to the 90s. Until my recent vacation, I only managed to read its 100 pages long introduction (ie the key theoretical part), 30 pages-long conclusions and scattered passages. Reading detailed  histrorical accounts of the EU is useful. It puts things into perspective. The more history I read, the more pervasive is my sense of deja vu and the fewer reasons to be pessimistic I have.

Just like history at school is a long list of wars, EU history often looks like a list of failed initiatives and unfulfilled ambitions. In the best case – it takes decades for ambitions to become realities. A common currency and a European Central bank were first proposed in 1969 (the Euro appeared in 1999). A president of the European Commission (Hallstein) called himslef the prime-minister of Europe already in the 60s. Ideas for a European Constitution and a European foreign minister were first muted in the late 70s-early 80s. Big launches such as the European defence community (of 1954) proved failures, while many “modest” initiatives that few bothered to notice at the time (like competition policy) proved to have a huge impact on European integration.

Any detailed account of EU history reads like an endless list of failures, dissapointments, backtracking, non-compliance with commitments, unfulfilled expectations, hard bargaining, dull and unimpressive bureacrats, selfish national leaders, egoistic states, ever-growing scepticism, blatant behaviour of  large member states, a ridiculous common agricultural policy, etc etc.

Just think of the following. In the 50s the adoption of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 was a backtracking from the mega-supranational nature of the European Steel and Coal Community of 1952. Euratom proved to be a fluf. Jean Monnet was not impressed by the Treaty of Rome. Then read the following paragraph in Moravcisk’s book (page 95) about the attitude of the German social-democratic party to European integration in the early 50:

“Though rhetorically pro-European, the SPD had opposed concrete steps toward European integration in the early 50s. The major reasons were geopolitical: integration, SPD leaders believed, undermined prospects for rapid reunification and promoted the integration of a rearmed army into Western military plans… By 1956 SPD started to shift…” not least because the European Communities were less supra-national than the ECSC. For SPD back then European integration was going against dialogue with the USSR with the aim achieving reunification.”

Then the 60s were dominated by De Gaulle’s triple veto of UK’s accession to the EU, the empty-chair crisis  and the Luxembourg compromise which introduced a right of veto for member states on issues of crucial importance without any legal basis in the treaties. Since the 70s the European Council further de-supranationalised (or re-nationalised) decision-making. The 70s-80s were considered even worse: two lost decades of Euro-sclerosis. The appointment of Solana in 1999 constrained even further the European Commission’s foreign policy ambitions. Almost every decade since the 50s witnessed often successful pressures towards less supranationalism in European integration.

And what of the dull bureacrats? The European Commission has had 11 presidents since 1958. But who remembers presidents Rey, Malfatti, Ortoli or Thorn? You might remember Santer, but for the wrong reasons. Hallstein and Jenkins are somewhere in the back of the mind, but far from being household  names. And only Delors looks impressive, but then many will tell you that he was appointed precisely because no one thought at the time he was a visionary.

And still the EU is somehow considered a big success. The truth is that the EU  has almost always been an institution of dull bureacrats pushing for incremental measures that mostly fail, and those that become successes are acknowledged as such only ten years later.

I guess, just like today, committed pro-Europeans have almost always had plenty of reasons to be depressed about the state of the EU. But the European integration somehow muddled through its way into being what it is – a huge success. I don’t know whether now it will be the same – through crises and apathy ad astra. But I am neither pessimstic, nor optimistic about the EU. Or I am both. I did expect more from the post-Lisbon environment, but then maybe there is some unerlying process, boring document or dull bureacrat that is working now on what in 10 or 20 years we will call a success. Or maybe not. The truth is that no one knows.

On Ukraine

There might be an increasing sense that Ukraine, Moldova, and perhaps Belarus will “of course” join the EU. Though with two caveats:  1) in the long run (defined as 20-30 years), and 2) “this should happen at our own pace, not due to geopolitical considerations”. The language is still more positive than I ever heard in Germany.

Much has been made about the fact that FDP’s election manifesto mentions an EU accession perspective for Ukraine. The Ukrainian foreign minister Poroshenko even says the new German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle (and FDP leader) gave him such a manifesto with the word “Ukraine” underlined and Westerwelle’s signature next to it. I tended not to overdo the importance of this point in the manfesto. But my FDP interlocutor stressed that the Ukraine point in the manifesto was thought through, discussed and “voted twice in an electoral year by the party convention, and this is not a backdoor policy paper, but a key document”.

Russia-China

This blog recently raised some aspects of the Russian-Chinese partnership (Russia’s Chinese neighbourhood and Russia’s vs China’s rise). In Berlin three persons raised this as well. One asked whether “it is in our interests to give Siberia to China? We are interested in a strong Russia integrated into European structures.” Another argued that “Russian foreign policy is a disaster. Russia’s problems with China can only be solved through cooperation with the West”. And another argued that Russia needs greater cooperation with the EU on Central Asia, otherwise Moscow cannot handle the situation on its own. This might be true or not. But as far as I am concerned I have not seen any pleas for EU or Western help in the Russian foreign policy debate (The answer I got to this was: “They still do not know it, but we know better”). So the point that Russia might be increasingly vulnerable vis-a-vis China is perhaps right, but there is a certain dose of paternalistic and mentoring attitude vis-a-vis Russia in it as well (which the Russians hate, and the Europeans often cannot get rid of).

Some people (predominantly in Eastern Europe) speak of the “Finlandisation of Germany”. This is not entirely right. Finland’s careful policies vis-a-vis URSS were based on a feeling (or fear) of Russian strength hence the need to accomodate the URSS. German approaches to Russia seem to result from an opposite assesment, namely that Russia is too weak. Hence the need to engage, prop-up and sometimes accomodate it in order to strengthen it.

And finally on Russia-China. No matter how sour Russian-Chinese relations might turn, I hardly imagine a Russian leader ever delivering a “Munich speech” on China… this probably tells something about Russian vulnerabilities.

A new Ostpolitik

Germany has had quite a number of “new ostpolitiks” over the decades. The most recent one came during the 2007 German EU presidency (see Gernot Erler’s the new EU Ostpolitik). Now there is talk of another “new ostpolitik” with the following nuances:

• Westerwelle’s first foreign visit was to Poland (rather than Paris as before)
• The coalition CDU-FDP agreement FDP-CDU talks of “In our bilateral realtions with Russia, we will respect the legitimate intersts of our neighbours.” And again this was stressed in conversations as well.
• Then I also heard of the need for Germany to invest more into the “EU-Russia partnership, not bilateral German-Russian relations” and the desire to “stronger embed German policies in the East into the EU.”

Of course, Germany wants to include Russia into the Eastern partnership projects (I do not see why Russian NGOs should not take part in the EaP civil society forum for a start and then expand this to other technical areas of cooperation). Though it is also true that Russian-EU bussiness, political and societal links are much more intense then the links between the EU and the Eastern partnership states, so I would not be afraid that Russia is being left behind.

(update) On public opinion and governmental policy

Germany’s policy on Russia highlights a certain paradox. German public opinion is among the most negative towards Russia, while governmental policies and business relations are among the most positive. This BBC opinion poll (page 8 ) shows that only 12% of Germans (compared to 18% in France and the US, 25% in UK) view Russia’s influence in world affairs in a positive light,  while 70% (vs 66% in France, 55% in the UK, and 64% in the UK) view Russia negatively. But Germany’s Russia policy is mainly decided at political and business elite levels (and its salience is relatively low). So discourses are rarely enough to fundamentaly shift policies.

Hence, one should not expect revolutionary changes in German foreign policy. How far such discoursive nuances will change policies remains to be seen. Until then, the foreign policy bits of the CDU-FDP coalition agreement reproduced below are an interesting read, at least.

Essential passages of the CDU-FDP coalition agreement

KAS.de

About EU and the neighbour-states (p.114)

The EU is strong as the member states are equal and worthy partners regardless of their size and economic potential. The interests of the small and medium EU member states will remain a trade mark of the German European policies.

The deepening and enlargement of the European Union will lead to a closer political coordination and an intensified exchange between our societies.

We know about the high importance of friendly, trustworthy and future-orientated relations with our neighbours.
About EU-enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy (p.117)

We advocate an enlargement policy according to sound judgement. There should not be a lowering of the criteria or even an automatism of accession e.g. through naming an accession date before the finalisation of the negotiations. The accession talks should be open-ended. The strict fulfillment of the Copenhagen criteria is the crucial condition for an accession as well as the ability of the candidates and the capacity of the EU.

We support an expansion of the European Neighbourhood Policy. We aim at a sustainable democratic, economic, social, constitutional and ecological development in our environment. These countries should experience peace and prosperity. On the basis of shared values, we want to ontensify our cooperation with the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

About NATO and Russia (p.119f.)

The NATO will remain our strongest anchor of our common security. It connects Europe and America and is the foundation for the collective defence and displays a unique political and military instrument to keep and restore peace. NATO is a means to accomplish political aims and encompasses the offer to cooperate in the field of security policy, disarmament, trust building and peaceful conflict resolution. Due to this strategic concept, the alliance will adapt to the challanges of today.

We want that the alliance will embrace the strategic partnership with Russia, as stated in the 1997 NATO-Russia-agreement. The NATO-Russia council should be used as a forum for issues concerning collective security policy. Our aim is a euro-transatlantic security architecture which – on the basis of the approved institutions, including OSCE and the European Council – encompasses a close relation to Russia. The German government wants the alliance to keep its door principally open and fosters the expansion of the partnerships.

We regard Russia as an important partner when dealing with regional and global challenges. These challenges include the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East just as the E3+3 talks about the Iranian nuclear programme, the challenge of international terrorism, climate change or global epidemics. Additionally, we will support Russia to consequently keep up the modernisation of the country and erase existing deficits concerning human rights, the rule of law and democracy. Furthermore, we want to foster the civil dialogue, expand economic relations and create energy security without one-sided dependencies. In our bilateral realtions to Russia, we will respect the eligible intersts of our neighbours.

The reply: “We understand that Russia has special interests in this space, and that Russia tries to preserve its influence, but only if this takes the form of a civilisational community, because these states are still independent states… Russia should treat these states as independent states from a legal point of view, and from the point of view of international norms.”

Lecturing Russia

Then another Chinese speaker started to ‘lecture’ Russia (page 3):

[in order to strengthen the cooperation between Russia and us the following things are necessary:] “First, is to elaborate new norms of international relations – move beyond spheres of influence thinking. Our countries should jointly create new norms of interstate relations that correspond to contemporary trends… more specifically mutual trust, benefits, equality, consultations, respect for the diversity of civilisations, a strife for joint development. The essence of these is mutual equality, respect, good neighbourly relations, pragmatic cooperation and peaceful co-existence, non-interference, common security and development. These new norms are qualitatively different not only from hegemonism and monopolism, but also from traditional spheres of influence thinking, which presupposes a desire to control and pursue relations based on inequality with small states. It also presupposes xenophobia… a controlled sphere of influence unavoidably provokes the dissatisfaction of the states of the region concerned and the resistance of other states. At the end of the day this damages the interests of the dominant state itself… And if such thinking is directed against strategic partners, neighbours, that are developing mutually beneficial cooperation in the region, then I think that this is entirely wrong. In reality when it comes to energy issues in Central Asia such a clash already happened…”

One might think this is Americans or Europeans lecturing (again) Russia again about the post-Soviet space.  I personally found striking just how similar is the Chinese discourse on its shared neighbourhood with Russia to the EU’s discourse. So here is Russia’s sphere of influence project squeezed between two neighbouring centres of power unwilling to accept a Russia sphere of influence neither East, nor West.

The end of the post-Soviet space

Certainly, some still have the illusion of a Russian sphere of influence. A Harvard-based Russian scholar argues that: “Though currently in a much-diminished state, a Russian sphere of influence is not simply the ambition of Moscow’s current leadership, it is geopolitical reality. Through its position on the Eurasian landmass, Russia controls many of these countries’ links to the outside world, including critical pipelines, railroads and ports. Russia also remains the destination for most of the region’s labor migrants and is the origin of large volumes of remittances, amounting to as much as 25-30% of some receiving countries’ GDP.”

Not exactly and not anymore. China is already a fast-growing economic and political actor in the post-Soviet space. And not just in the states of Central Asia which are very keen to play between Russia and China and diversify their energy exports to China (Turkmenistan just finished building its first gas pipeline to China). One curious recent news is a Chinese offer of a $1 billion for Moldova which dwarfed Russia’s offer of $150 , IMF’s assistance of $590 millions and US’s $262 million under the Millennium Challenge Account. Today, the EU is a bigger trading partner than Russia for Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Certainly, Russia is a very influential actor in the post-Soviet space and this will remain so. But having influence and having a sphere of influence are two very different things. Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Ukraine-Moldova-Belarus are not the post-Soviet space of the 90s anymore. This is something, Russia, China, the EU and the US will have to learn to live with.

• “The European Union (EU) is growing weaker as an actor in foreign politics. The EU common foreign and security policy is still at its infancy because of the diverging interests of the European Union member states, and their reluctance to increase defense spending and shoulder responsibility for keeping up international peace and security. For this reason, the EU cannot be viewed as significant player in the world’s political and especially military-political arena”.

This is from a new paper on Russia’s Interests in Relations with the US from the very influential, respected and mainstream Russian Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (SVOP) co-authored by Sergei Karaganov, Dmitri Suslov and Timofei Bordachev. The paper mainly concerns the US but provides a glimpse on how Russian elites see the EU and the eastern  neighbourhood as well:

• “Evolution of the post-Soviet space, which is Russia’s main foreign policy priority. Russia is interested in reintegrating of this space. It wants the majority of CIS countries to take part in the Russia-oriented security system (CSTO), and its integration project (EurAsEC). It is also interested in a leading role in the CIS countries’ energy complex.”

• “Russia’s vital interests include preserving a de facto predominant influence in the territory from Belarus to the Caucasus…”

Russia’s ‘declinistic’ views of the EU are certainly exaggerated. For example, Andrew Moravcsik gives a rather upbeat story of EU’s performance in times of crisis: ‘Today, it’s clear that the crisis has renewed European solidarity and seriousness of purpose. Europe is stronger than ever… The leading nations of Europe did not lose their nerve, and they did not work only to protect themselves, as many pundits predicted. Instead, they rushed to save their neighbors.’ But none of Moravcik’s claims refer to foreign policy.

Interestingly, back in 2005 interesting that a group of the 23 most prominent Russian experts on the EU lead by the same Karaganov and Bordachev who wrote the above report had an entirely different view of the EU back in 2005. In a ‘situation analysis‘ of EU-Russia relations published in January 2005 they argued that:

• ‘The EU is a viable project… it will widen and deepen. The EU acquis, norms and political culture will be increasingly influential in adjacent territories, and in the long-term on all the western post-Soviet states. This changes the context of almost all the issues facing Russian domestic and foreign policies…’

• (‘Russia should look for allies among EU member states as well as EU institutions, and create ‘coalitions of the willing’ to further EU decisions which are favourable to Russia.’)

• ‘Most experts (80%) agreed than in the long run (15-20 years) Russia could raise the question of joining the EU… Such a possibility would arise… because of the cultural and geopolitical realities. It will be difficult for Russia to develop and even survive in the current and future international context. The south is increasingly unstable, and a close union with China is impossible for a number of reasons. A majority, if not all the western and south-western former Soviet countries are joining or will join the Euro-Atlantic zone and the sphere of attraction of the EU…’

So why is there such a change in how the same Russian experts see the EU in 2009 as opposed to 2005? The price of oil played a role in boosting Russian self-confidence, and of course the constitutional failures played a role. But more important were two other factors. First, is an almost chronic lack of EU unity on Russia on way too many crucially important issues. Second, is a rather sclerotic neighbourhood policy where EU member states are quite reluctant to practice what they preach in terms of contributing to conflict-resolution, promoting visa-liberalisation or support for democracy.

The problem is not only whether EU foreign policy in the Eastern neighbourhood is effective or not per se. EU policies in the region are very effective in the economic sphere – trade balances with all of the Eastern neighbours (except oil-exporting Azerbaijan), are hugely in favour of the EU, and the neighbour’s economic interdependence with the EU is growing by the year (see page 38 of the recent ECFR report on the Eastern neighbourhood). Now, the EU is a bigger trading partner than Russia for all the Eastern neighbours (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia), except Belarus. But EU’s economic achievements have yet to turn into political relevance.

The problem is that external perceptions of the EU determine the policies of external actors vis-a-vis the EU. Russia’s perception of an ‘EU in decline’ defines Russia’s dismissive views and assertive policies vis-a-vis the EU.

Such a perception is not just arrogance. The EU itself has the foreign policy psychology (and instincts) of a small power. And Russia has the psychology of a great, even rising power. The result is a crisis-prone relationship between Russia and the EU. A relationship in which Russia constantly has the propensity and the incentives to test EU’s limits. Thus, EU’s perceived irrelevance creates problems for EU’s partnerships in the region – with Russia and the Eastern neighbourhood countries.

In tough international environments, reputation is a foreign policy resource in itself. And EU’s external reputation as a meager foreign policy actor is a serious problem. EU’s current mixture of  self-congratulating views on the success of the ‘European model’ and half-hearted political investment in EU foreign policy is not enough to promote European interests and values.