The road back to European Power: six realities that the EU must confront to develop a global strategy

In 2015, it might appear easier to define what divides Europe than what unites it. In recent months, former EU cheerleader Poland elected a Eurosceptic president, Greece’s Syriza-led government has pushed negotiations over the terms of their Eurozone membership to the limit, and David Cameron began his campaign to redraw the British relationship with the EU in earnest. The EU is in some ways further than ever from agreement on what it stands for and how to project that meaning beyond its borders, as shown by the argument between member states over how to fairly distribute the large numbers of migrants coming from the southern Mediterranean.

These problems are intrinsically linked to the challenges that we face on the global stage.  Brinkmanship over the Greek crisis, and a lack of solidarity for member states in the front line on the immigration crisis may have direct implications for the increasingly fragile unity around policy towards Russia, as the domestic costs of the sanctions fall heavily on the EU’s southern member states. So Federica Mogherini is exactly right in her characterisation of the world in phase one of the European External Strategy Review as more connected. More contested and complex also ring true. From understanding the opportunities and threats of a digital era, to responding to Russia’s overturning of the post-Cold War order and hybrid war tactics, to tackling the conditions of state failure that enable the rise of the Islamic State, European states are confronted with problems that require not mere adjustments but a complete rewriting of our foreign policy rule book.

In all its key relationships, Europe faces a new reality. As Russia overturns the post-Cold War European order, China increasingly dominates the international system, and the US demonstrates that the key pillars that we believed underpinned the transatlantic relationship no longer do,  the EU has been decentred.  In each region, Europeans still have significant interests and capacities, but we cannot operate as we have done up until now.

The good news is that the range of instruments at our disposal is wider than ever, from diplomacy to development, to security, to the use of economic power. As the adoption of sanctions in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014 showed, the EU as the world’s largest trade bloc can be an influential force in an increasingly geo-economic environment. Nevertheless, military power, and others’ perceptions of our willingness (or not) to use it, still matters. So too does a readiness to compete in the cyber arena. From this perspective, the continued decline in European investment in defence and technological capacity and growing intervention fatigue are worrying.

For the EU to find its place in the current global environment, member states need to face up to our diminished power. We need to resolve how far we can still expect to set the terms in each of the areas of our foreign policy. We may have to accept that we cannot shape the world in line with our vision; in some instances we may need to develop policies that fall short of the ideals that the EU aspires to project.

Getting to a more realistic policy is likely to require tough decisions to hone our objectives. However, as previous ECFR publications have argued, even before that, member states need to be honest about what is really driving their foreign policies.[1] Clarity at intergovernmental level about the priorities for and limits on member states’ willingness to protect values and interests is essential for coming to a common understanding of the world order that Europeans wish to promote.

In order to agree this goal, EU states will need to answer a range of questions about how they see Europe’s different relationships evolving. This brief highlights the six issues that we believe to be the most critical - roughly mapping on to the six challenges and opportunities that Mogherini’s paper “The EU in a Changing Global Environment” lays out - and offers some suggestions on how to move forward on them.

1.      Russia and the European order: operating in the new environment

The current situation with Russia is a long-term challenge that needs to be managed, because it cannot be quickly fixed. The origins of Russia’s problematic behaviour are multi-layered. Putin’s personality plays a role, influenced by his worldview and his interpretation of his experience with the West. The nature of the regime also contributes: lacking democratic legitimacy based on free elections it needs to create emotional legitimacy by mobilising the population against an enemy – real or imagined, internal or external. It may also stem in part from the economic model of an oligarchic petro-state. But Russia’s centuries-old self-identification is also crucial. Russia wants to see itself as a great power and its definition of great power includes spheres of influence – hence the persistent wish to dominate its neighbours. We cannot expect to achieve profound change just by removing one or two of these sources. Russia’s wish to dominate its neighbourhood has survived regime change before. It will ultimately disappear only when a profound rethink happens in Russia.

There is also a natural tension in Russia’s relationship with the Eastern Partnership countries. Since 1991, their independence has been hijacked by corrupt elites, resulting in stagnation, which was largely agreeable to Russia. Now, the Eastern Partnership societies are maturing and starting to demand better governance and rule of law. The EU cannot but sympathise with this effort just as Russia, fixated on corrupt elites, has little choice but to resist it. The societies’ attempts to democratize become an inevitable source of tension both inside the countries as well as between Europe and Russia – for as long as Russia’s soft power continues to be based on muscle mixed with corruption rather than attraction.

In these circumstances the EU should adopt a supportive approach towards the eastern neighbourhood, and tough love towards Russia. We should try to bolster the independence of Russia’s neighbours which in practice means expanding our policies towards them to include help in security-related fields: security sector reform, training of border-guards, special services. Where we can, we should also support their economic independence – for example in the fields of energy security and access to markets. All this will be complicated not just because of Russia but because many of the Eastern neighbours are still governed by self-serving elites.

On Russia, we should adopt a dual strategy of sanctions and outreach. Sanctions boost our credibility with Moscow, but also constrain Russia’s room for manoeuvre. At the same time, we should articulate that at the end of the day we want to have a functioning relationship with Russia – if not based on shared values then at least organised in ways that allow Europe not to undermine its own values. Cooperation between the EU and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) could well be one such element – if and when the EEU starts to work as a proper customs union and trade bloc.

2.      A new transatlantic bargain

Global power shifts -- the rise of the rest -- argue for an even more effective partnership across the Atlantic in defence of shared values and interests. Yet the current picture is one of continental drift, as Americans and Europeans become increasingly less capable or interested in working together effectively in an ever more contested world.

The transatlantic relationship is at once the relationship on which Europe most depends for hard security and yet also the relationship in which Europeans are most prone to idealistic visions. The shared values and culture across the Atlantic tend to promote such views, of course.  But they also stem from a belief that the long and successful history of transatlantic partnership has put into place a more or less permanent security bargain.  According to that bargain, the United States retains ultimate responsibility for peace and security in Europe, while Europeans contribute what they can and generally support the US politically on major international security issues. Many European governments, even as they complain of American policy in many areas, retain a belief—or at least a hope—that the old bargain still applies.

For better or for worse, however, the reality is otherwise. The old bargain is quite simply no longer on offer.  In a more contested world that America can no longer dominate, the United States is undertaking a fierce effort to husband its resources and prioritize its commitments. President Obama's ambition has been to disengage from wasteful conflicts in the wider Middle East and refocus American attention and efforts on the Asia-Pacific. In American eyes, Europe's role in the new transatlantic bargain should have been to facilitate this rebalancing by taking up the slack - assuming more responsibility for stability and security in its own backyard.

It is not just events - the rise of the Islamic State, the emergence of an aggressively recidivist Russia - which have dramatically slowed the intended rebalancing. Few Europeans have shown any appetite for new responsibilities - or even, for investing properly in their own defence. Europe, of course, remains a valuable, indeed invaluable, U.S. partner.  Recent cooperation on, for example, the development of sanctions on Russia have shown yet again that many aspects of US strategy can only be delivered in collaboration with Europe.

Yet too often in recent decades, Europeans have been content to tag along behind the US in international affairs. A new, more realistic, transatlantic bargain will require a stronger European sense of Europe’s own interests and identity.  In a world of many problems, America needs partners not followers. The development of a global strategy provides the right moment to agree to a more productive approach to the transatlantic partnership. There is scope, even a desire, in Washington for a new division of labour whereby the EU plays as central a role in transatlantic security relations as NATO, and in which Europe’s larger states – notably Germany – can leverage their geo-economic power to take on greater responsibility within the alliance.

3.      How to engage with the new geography of power in the Middle East

One of the key arenas in which the transatlantic relationship has dominated the EU’s approach is the Middle East. The proportion of the Middle East and North African region immersed in full-scale conflict has expanded further over the past year, including through the Islamic state’s extension of its territorial reach in Iraq and Syria and spawning of progeny in North Africa, the Sahel and beyond. The scope for Europe – and indeed the US - to play a significant role in handling this growing threat, or managing other aspects of the chaos engulfing the Middle East, is and should remain limited. Developments are orchestrated from within the region, largely among the triangle of GCC states, Iran and Turkey. But the implosion of major states (with Egypt, Iraq, Syria all sidelined as regional powers) has shifted the center of gravity of regional political power eastwards to an unprecedented degree, to the Saudi/Iranian fault-line. The nominal recognition by Iran and Saudi Arabia of the common threat posed by ISIS has not translated into a common strategy, but instead fuelled their blame game narratives and sectarian escalation.

European states are divided on how to position themselves in relation to these complex regional struggles, even as the blowback impact on Europe intensifies with the migration crisis, security threats from foreign fighters and terror attacks in European cities. Europeans maintain different and even competing sets of historical economic ties and contemporary profit opportunities in the region (GCC direct and funded arms purchases from France for instance add up to €14.2bln so far in 2015 as the Gulf became the world’s largest buyer of arms). Amidst the relentless turmoil, EU member states often disagree on the priority pressure points and alliances for de-escalating chaos.  America has not only turned inwards and Asia-wards, it is also dealing with the effects of a Congress so tethered to a small clique of donors that it has become more than ever divorced from global realities. The implications for the reliability of US Middle East policy and by extension for European thinking on that region are shown by the Republican senators’ letter to the Iranian Supreme Leader, to take one example.

EU states should encourage the trend of regional actors squaring up to take responsibility for their own neighbourhood. In any case Europe is unlikely to play more than a supportive role. But for now, absent a modus vivendi between local powers, the regionalisation of Middle East conflicts is exacerbating the situation, meaning Europeans need to be more engaged with de-escalatory diplomacy across a range of regional conflicts. Most of these involve the GCC states and Iran to varying degrees (although Libya sees GCC states at odds with each other and the UAE in particularly unhelpful mode). Different EU states, particularly among the Quint, can use the relative closeness of their relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran respectively to nudge and create openings for problem-solving progress. Europe should not be taking sides in this sectarian struggle, but instead should be thinking about how to build on an Iran nuclear deal to promote broader regional engagement, and at the same time reassure and support the capacity of Gulf countries while not ‘compensating’ allies in counter-productive ways.

Europeans will have to fortify their own national resilience against the likely backdrop of further extremism-motivated atrocities in European cities and provocations against EU citizens in the region. Europeans should not jump head-first into Middle Eastern quagmires: ill-conceived responses to past provocations have advanced the extremists’ agenda through European over-reaction and Islamophobic policies at home which sharpen distinctions and foment radicalisation. An improved European global strategy should not involve curtailing our civil liberties at home in response to supposed Middle Eastern threats. Europe’s role as a normative actor in a liberal rules-based system will only be further tarnished.

In this old/new Middle East, Europeans should find a way to coherently articulate the inter-play between interests and values; this includes acknowledging where the former are being acted on without performing summersaults to suggest that the latter is somehow uppermost in our mind. We will deal with Cairo, Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Tehran even if they do not share our values because it is in our interest to do so, but none should be showered with accolades or privileged partnerships while they continue to violate basic rights and international norms or to move in a repressive direction. Only lonely Tunisia is worthy for now of such support, which should itself be more meaningful. And we should recognise that our aid and assistance, while still necessary in many cases, will buy less, especially with the Gulf showering billions on pet projects ( for example $23bln in Gulf aid to Egypt in the 18 months after Morsi's ouster). We should therefore be more selective in where we deploy our limited largesse – continued subsidising of the Israel/Palestine status quo via PA funding might be a good place to draw a line.

4.      What is Europe’s role in a post-Western multilateral system?

Whether in the Middle East, Wider Europe, or in Asia, what passed for the post-war order and the institutions that supported it – and in some cases the post-Cold War initiatives to create new and higher norms – are being eroded. De facto, postwar borders are under challenge in Europe – and to some extent in maritime Asia. State structures are collapsing in the MENA region in a way unseen since the early 20th century. Beyond the much discussed power shift away from the West, there is clearly more competition for rule-making and implementation. Nothing symbolised the shift in international order better than China’s successful Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank proposal, which won the support of 56 nations – among them 14 European member states.

Many of the founders of the post-war liberal order are ready to work with new institutions, since adaptation of the existing international order seems blocked. But more often than not, the initiators of these new institutions are emerging states suspicious of international intervention and demanding norms, and they promote a scaled-down version of the international order focused on their own priorities: sovereignty, stability, growth. The EU needs to think about its approach to these new developments and bodies, individually and collectively.

While we have discovered that India too can say no, and Putin crystalises a popular rejection of the West’s encroachments, it is China that has done most to work towards a new, low-cost and incentive-driven international order. China promotes an international system driven by commercial and financial incentives, rather than soft or hard power. The order it is constructing minimises norms and legal enforcement while enshrining trade and capital flows from the protected vantage point of a self-styled developing economy on track to being the world’s number one. The question for China’s partners, and in particular the West and competitors among emerging nations, is where they should compromise in order to preserve China’s integration in the global system, and what points cannot or should not be negotiable. How far will China’s combination of competitive offers, growing military might and shirking responsibility compel others to minimise their own commitments to the international order?  Will military intervention become such a high-cost proposition (from the political as well as the humanitarian point of view) that the threshold is set higher and higher?

Sanctions and conditionality have been seen as Western weapons of choice, reducing actual conflict while achieving results. But in almost every case backdoors exist that have been used by China, with the justification that it resists conditionality and promotes win-win. More generally, how much will developed societies cut down their norms to match the less optimal set of rules that sustain the dynamism of emerging economies? Is “strategic caution” a consequence of the long-term competition with China? Finally, if diplomacy is about making compromises with people who do not share one’s views, the EU in particular needs to recalibrate its approach to projecting norms and values, and find the level most appropriate for coalitions of interest to further its objectives.

This is no easy task. ‘Becoming more like them’ is not an appealing option for a continent that has aspired to global rule-making for so long. And indeed European values remain attractive to individuals – over Ukraine as in the Mediterranean refugee crisis, Europe has in fact underestimated its attractiveness.  But in many other ways, Europe, as Japan in preceding decades, has priced itself out of the competition by insisting on a complex ‘empire of norms’ that is hindering its competitiveness, repelling many partner states and not answering the global demand for growth. Prioritising within the human rights and social agenda, refocusing on implementation and economic actors for environmental targets, deepening the European toolbox for international finance may be some of the starting points, along with a better integration of these goals at the European level.

5.      Moving beyond aid and peacekeeping: redefining the relationship with Africa

As European leaders seek solutions to the most immediate humanitarian aspects of the heavy flows of migrants trying to cross to the northern side of the Mediterranean, there is a clear longer term dimension to this crisis. How can the EU do more to tackle conflict, instability, the rise of terrorist networks, the effects of climate change, and create better economic prospects in the broader southern Mediterranean, Sahel and Sub-Saharan African regions, from which the migrants originate? This question goes to the heart of the need to redefine the EU’s relationship with Africa. In the early months of 2015, those coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, notably Eritrea, Ghana and Mali, were among the largest of the groups seeking to cross over to Europe.

The old pillars of Europe’s relationship with Africa – development aid, humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping – relate to another time for both partners. Although EU countries (individually and collectively) remain major donors despite the financial crisis, development aid is a declining source of influence. Chinese and other outside investment now overshadows the impact of EU aid and there is a growing debate about the value of aid among European states.  Meanwhile recent events across the Middle East from Syria to Libya are overwhelming humanitarian aid budgets.

The migrant crisis and instability in Mali and the Sahel also point to the limits of European powers’ efforts to build security in Africa by funding UN and African-led peacekeeping operations.  These multilateral operations have scored successes in stabilising countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, but struggled in cases such as Darfur, South Sudan and now Mali, where Islamist terrorist groups regularly ambush and kill UN troops.  The rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria has further underlined the potential for escalating chaos on the continent.

While many European governments are instinctively wary of sending their own troops to Africa, the convergence of humanitarian crises and terrorist threats on the continent is changing their calculations.  After France led the way in intervening in Mali and the Sahel, the Netherlands, Estonia, Scandinavian countries and even Germany have sent smaller numbers of troops to Africa in the last two years.  But these efforts are still often piecemeal and have only a limited impact – the same was arguably true of early European efforts to help Nigeria fight Boko Haram, which often seemed tokenistic rather than strategic.  The current EU plans to target people-smugglers off Libya display a similar short-termism.

There have also been mounting frictions with African governments over matters of principle, such as the International Criminal Court’s right to pursue cases against the presidents of Sudan and Kenya for their ties to atrocities.  But there are strategic opportunities for Europe in Africa too.  These include consolidating our ad hoc military interventions on the continent into broader long-term plans with African governments in the Sahel and Horn Of Africa for countering violent extremism – an area where common EU actions could be far more effective than individual bilateral initiatives – and using Europe’s aid in targeted fashion to support crisis prevention, governance and the rule of law in the continent’s most fragile states. Without progress toward these goals, other economic development initiatives are typically futile in any case.

6.      Division at home: the challenges to delivering a new strategy

There are no straightforward answers to any of the five challenges laid out above, and what exactly constitutes the ‘right approach’ to tackling them might be differently assessed in Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Warsaw and other EU capitals. National political concerns are, inevitably, paramount for EU governments, and their implications for foreign policy differ from member state to member state.  Concerns about the impact of austerity policies and immigration have fuelled a rise of the far right, of anti-EU, and of anti-establishment parties across the continent – some with some sympathy for Russia’s recent political actions in the European neighbourhood. The surge in support for these groups in the European Parliament elections a year ago,  the lurch towards ‘illiberal democracy’ in Victor Orban’s Hungary, the growth in strength of Podemos in Spain, and the election of Syriza in Greece all testify to this phenomenon in different ways, and contribute to the multifarious European political picture. Meanwhile, the after-effects of the Euro crisis continue to preoccupy EU states, contributing to deep internal divisions between creditor and debtor countries, and placing limits on how much member states are willing to spend on any aspect of foreign policy.

From this point of view, Federica Mogherini was right to spend significant time early in the European External Strategy Review process in the member states, listening to their outlooks on the world. Now that her review team have mapped the global picture, the indispensable next stage is for the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) to analyse where on this map their priority interests and threats lie, and to what extent the projection of their values might conflict with these interests. A senior government figure from each of the 28 states might be identified to represent their government in this frank exchange, which could operate as an intergovernmental convention on global strategy, free from the immediate time pressures on the FAC. Building on this exchange, the review team could identify the interests that are common to the 28 states, those shared between some of us, and those of individual or minority concern. This does not mean that we should be aiming for a collective foreign policy pitched at the lowest common denominator. Indeed as the example of the adoption of Russia sanctions in 2014 demonstrated, where Europe as a whole faces an overriding threat, it is capable of coming together around a strong policy, even one that has domestic costs. As part of the second phase of the External Strategy Review, however, there may be merit in exploring whether better EU institutional mechanisms are needed for establishing and sustaining unity on these issues, and ensuring that policy is followed through and implemented, in order that the burden of responsibility does not fall unduly on leading member states – in this case Germany.

Where collective interests and threats do not overlap so completely, ‘variable geometry’ - coalitions in which one or more member states are willing to lead - may provide an answer. But as the example of European inaction over the collapse of the Libyan state in 2014 showed, this cannot always be ad hoc. Although instability in Libya and its wider region is of direct concern to many countries in Europe, a sense that other countries would take the lead in shaping a European response ultimately resulted in no EU state or institution doing so – with significant consequences for Europe in terms of migration inflows and the expansion of the Islamic State.

Conclusion

The first phase of the External Strategy Review puts the EU foreign policy community in a strong position to develop a new Global Strategy. But this can only be done on the basis of a full understanding of Europe’s new, less central, place in the international system.  Having come this far, member states should be sure to devote time and effort at this point for an honest and clear discussion about where their foreign policy priorities lie, and where they have influence on the key issues confronting them. This must provide the foundation for a European global strategy if it is to be a functioning, living approach rather than an aspirational and declaratory document that the new realities of today’s world quickly render obsolete.

[1] ‘Why Europe needs a Global Strategy’, ECFR, various authors: http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR90_STRATEGY_BRIEF_AW.pdf

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