Strategizing on Europe’s foreign policy

Reacting to recent posts on Europe’s foreign policy, a well-informed reader writes in: [G]iven that the EU is still building its network of ambassadors and has very limited funds (so much so that the External Action Service will not be moving into specially built offices in Brussels but will turf translators out of existing buildings) ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Reacting to recent posts on Europe's foreign policy, a well-informed reader writes in:

Reacting to recent posts on Europe’s foreign policy, a well-informed reader writes in:

[G]iven that the EU is still building its network of ambassadors and has very limited funds (so much so that the External Action Service will not be moving into specially built offices in Brussels but will turf translators out of existing buildings) do you think it should be throwing its weight around on already controversial/difficult international issues like the Middle East and Darfur, rather than focusing on building up effectiveness in the bread and butter of international relations, particularly trade agreements (especially since the EU is above all about free trade)?

I suppose there’s a case for the EU biding its time on more difficult foreign policy issues, developing its diplomatic infrastructure, and concentrating on its core strengths. But I’m worried that even on issues very close to home and presumably within the EU’s comfort zone (such as Balkans policy), there’s an awful lot of drift. I’m not at all confident that the answer to Europe’s frequent foreign policy incoherence is going to be solved by more machinery and bureaucracy. (Moreover, it’s important to recognize that the EU itself created the expectation that it would play an active role on all sorts of foreign policy issues.)

Broadly speaking, I think we’re entering a "put up or shut up" phase in terms of EU foreign policy. As has been apparent in the IMF board debate and in the broader American push to rein in European representation in international fora, there is a growing frustration with the status quo, which features lots of individual European states at the table and a coordinated position on some but not all issues, but also a voice for the EU in many places (including in the G20, where Britain, France, Germany, and the EU all have seats). 

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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