Is European Foreign Policy Workable - Essay Example

Is European foreign policy workable Europe has always been a cultural center of the world, and nowadays it is even possible to speak about Eurocentrism, which has its beginnings and, probably its gradual wane. The concepts of European superiority emerged during the era of European imperialism, which started in the 16th century, developed in 17th and 18th centuries and reached its culmination in the 19th century. "The progressive character of European culture was contrasted with traditional hunting, farming and herding societies in many of the areas of the world being newly explored by Europeans, such as the Americas, most of Africa, and later the Pacific and Australasia" (Ginsberg and Smith, 2005, p.34). Even technology-oriented civilizations of the Far East, such as India, China and Japan were seen as underdeveloped comparing to European civilization, and were always identified as static. For a number of European writers of this period, the European history became paradigmatic for the rest of the world society. Other civilizations were characterized as having achieved the phase of development which Europe itself had already passed - for instance, hunting-gathering; farming; early civilization; feudalism; contemporary liberal-capitalism. Europe was the only part of the world which had reached the last phase. Hence, Europe was always believed to be responsible for technological, cultural and scientific progress which are the parts of the contemporary world. Moreover, scientific principles developed for better understanding the world were thought to have replaced certain religious doctrines with respect to the pure logic of European science. The degree to which the world science 'belongs' to Europe is still debated. Furthermore, it would be important to refer to Marx (Smith, Sandholtz, 1995), who studied the issue carefully. In his opinion, European hadn't had any innate superiority, but he nonetheless claimed that European model of the world is followed in many other countries and is characterized as a pattern of scientific attitude towards the world in whole. Europe was the place, where the world 'policy' emerged - in particular, the Ancient Greece, where policy was a main model of governing. Other writers explored certain issues and aspects of European hegemony, for instance, the development of trade and the issue of imperialism. "By the late 19th Century the theory that European achievements arose from innate racial superiority became widespread: justifying slavery and other forms of political and economic exploitation, even being used to validate genocide" (Ginsberg and Smith, 2005, p.41). Europe, where the phenomenon of policy emerged, is probably the conceptual political center of the world - this fact can be exemplified by a number of international organizations, which determine European foreign policy and influence each European country in pacrticular. Nowadays, European foreign policy is a subject of numerous discussions, since it seems controversial due to the number of organizations created in Europe over the last few decades. The greatest and most influential international political organization is European Union. The main values of European Union were clarified by Michael Emerson, who influenced the upgrade of European Constitutional Treaty. The treaty is directed to achieving a stronger position in the European Union with respect to the 'high' world politics. European Constitutional Treaty has already been ratified by twenty-five member states of the union. According to the Constitutional Treaty, Emerson draws out the ten standards of European Union. The greatest values include the domination of democracy, rule of law and human rights; the 'four freedoms' (basic human freedoms) (Smith, Crowe, 2006). Furthermore, Emerson highlights the importance of social cohesion, the abhorrence of nationalism, multi-tier governance, stable economic growth, multiculturalism, multilateralism and secularity of governance (IGCC Policy Paper No. 52, 2000). Among the international political unions, European Union is the most democratic (Engle, 2002). "Nevertheless the mechanisms of Brussels remain, by and large, administrative and appointive rather than democratic. The European Parliament wields little real power. That the EU suffers from democratic deficit is a well known fact" (ibid). The connotation of this fact is that Europe cannot realize military operations as they would lack legitimacy due to the international treaties, directed to sustaining peace in Europe. Popular support is a necessary precondition to conducting war, at least in democracies. As a result "the EU cannot, and should not, seek to conduct foreign military interventions - though it s member states can and should since the EU simply cannot" (Laurent and Maresceau, 1998, p.262) . For the reason that Europe lacks the evidence of realization of democratic principles, the EU's foreign policy has always been simply the sum of foreign policies of each particular member, or, as certain scholars claim, a "myth" (Peterson, Smith, 2003). It would be equally possible to say that European Union haven't had integrated foreign policy (Journal of European Public Policy, August 2004). The common European foreign and security policy (CFSP) to great extent is postulated in the Treaty of Maastricht. As the Treaty states, the CFSP will be totally supported by the members of European Union according to the principles of solidarity and loyalty. Moreover, the CFSP is thought as covering all spheres of foreign and security policy, and, to my view, the statement lacks clarity of concrete goals, which should facilitate the realization of those principles. Moreover, it would be nave to believe that CFSP would base on total consensus in the situation of crisis which need quick reactions and that national policies will be gradually weakening after the ratification of the Treaty. Finding shared interests and coming to 'European consent' and combining the features of different foreign policy is a quite complicated challenge. That is to say, the literature does not verify the neo-functionalist tradition, which claims that Europe has already integrated due to the creation of EU itself (Knodt, Princen, 2003). "Perhaps the biggest challenge to the EU is the success of the transatlantic institutions which helped maintain European peace during 40 years" (Papacosma, Laurent, 2003, p. 187). It is important to mention that European foreign policy has been influenced by many different organizations, the most influential of which are NATO and WEU. NATO is widely known as the most powerful defensive organization. "In so far as NATO has successfully transformed itself from cold-war defensive barrier to forum for transatlantic security able to react in the face of crises with cogent effective policies, it has become a mixed blessing" (Fligstein, Sandholtz, 2001, p.301). The success of NATO is determined by its 'preventive' (Defence Committee, 1998) policy (which equally deals with internal conflicts of each country and its external strategies). A curse in so far as its' rapid success explains partially - though not at all completely - why Europe is currently experiencing such problems in finding consensus. It is possible to say that European foreign policy is to certain degree is victim of NATO's achievements - and again this may be as well, because NATO is not concerned with third world intervention. The success of NATO has historical roots, as Engle claims (Engle, 2003). European community attempted to set up the European Defense Community during the 1950s, but these efforts failed because of the gaps between different regional and local policies, which started from the concept of national state, accepted by the majority of European countries throughout the course of Medieval and New European history. The paradox is that the nation state concept, proclaimed in the Treaty of Westphalia in the middle of 1600s stopped the universalist religious conflicts which in fact resulted in its establishment. On the other hand, it finally provoked even crueler nationalist revolts which rooted not from the need for the universal religion, but for the market share. "Europe risks to repeat this experience, replacing the Westphalian state system with a Continental System which would lead to wars for markets. This explains the necessity of effective security policies, and also why NATO is a mixed blessing" (Fligstein, Sandholtz, 2001, p.312). Present efforts to renovate the European Defense Community rotate around the Western European Union (WEU), which includes the countries, which do not belong to the EU. The European Union created the Petersberg declaration in 1992, but the restrictions of integrated foreign policy and on the EuroCorps (which is commonly seen as a military consent) point to the inability to realize this declaration. The CFSP, at least its episodic implementations, should be based upon military enforcement, in spite of the proclaimed de-militarization of Europe. "In theory at least Europe does have the means to conduct out-of-area military operations" (Balfour, 2004). The Eurocorps is probably the only example of common voice among the European countries. The author has no intension to concentrate on the military enforcement, but it is important to mention that available European military forces have always been considerable, which can be seen in the example of former Yugoslavian conflict, which showed well-organized intervention, in spite of the fact that they actually failed to resolve the conflict due to the 'higher' political issues (Europe's Foreign and Security Policy, 2003). Furthermore, I would like to examine the policies of certain European countries (Britain and France in particular, which represent the opposing poles of Europe) which to great degree determine the workability of European foreign policy. "As one of the few governments not delegitimated by the second European civil war, Britain has always been a "reluctant European". While "Briton" and "Eurosceptic" are not synonyms, it is little secret that Britons and the British government generally oppose the idea of federal Europe" (Engle, 2003). In the middle of 1974 British elite understood that the most preferable choice is integration into Europe. On the other hand, Britain has been surprisingly unsuccessful in influencing the European development. Whilst Britain maintained its support for the free trade market and free movement of capital, it was reluctant to accept free movement of marketing products, and even less keen to accept free movement of workforce (Security Cooperation, 1999). It may seem prejudicial, but Britain remains an island both metaphorically and geographically. It is possible to say that the population of Great Britain is either hostile or ambivalent to the idea of united Europe. Thus, in order to develop successful common policy, it is necessary to unite European countries; and British insularity is an significant barrier to effective political strategies of Europe. Whatsoever one may think of British unwillingness to create a federal Europe, it is nevertheless true that the United Kingdom has failed to restrict or control the European project, and gains almost no profit from the European Union. Even though Europe represents the impoverishment of British foreign policy and the lack of understandingamong the British privileged and non-privileged classes, French policy towards European unity is contrasting. France has been extremely enthusiastic over last seventy years and has organized the European community in order to hold up French foreign policy. Thus, accusations of British skeptics, who state that the European Union is a Trojan Horse consisting of Gaullists (Sjursen, 1998) is not necessarily prejudicial and can probably be matched to reality. "However that argument misses the point: favoring or disfavoring Euro-imperialism to national-imperialism is senseless because any imperialist policy is indefensible. Further whether merely national conceptions of the state remain realistic is now questionable" (ibid, p. 32). If the European Union concentrates merely on the reinforcement of imperialistic nation-states with respective beneficial market trade, than the imperialist trade wars, which took place in the last century, will return to Europe with graver consequences and on higher scale. For instance, European trade wars, which were waged during the Cold War between the two sides of barricade - socialistic and democratic, are now converting into the desire of leading members of European Union to get the control over the economies of newly-liberated Eastern European countries. Some countries of former socialist empire (such as Poland) are now accepted to the European Union, despite the fact that they are not ready yet to meet the demands of European countries, related to regional policies and economic development. Western European countries nowadays demonstrate their support for building democracy on the post-Soviet space, but such policy can be treated as the realization of hidden imperialistic strategies, which rooted from medieval European tradition viewing Europe as an entity. On the other hand, European community (not merely European Union, but other transnational organizations such as United Nations) doesn't provide any military support for resolving conflict in Chechnya, which is still a part of Russia; however it proclaimed its independence. European 'peace movement' is reinforced by regional and local policies of all European countries, which protect their citizens and are reluctant to send their professional military staff to 'hot places'. Transatlantic relations is one more important issue which is relevant today as well as the issue of European attitude towards the situation in Iraq. Anglo-French (and, wider, Anglo-European) cooperation is restricted by the British-American, which are considered to have been rivalry starting from the creation of the United States. Whereas the United States and France are aligned in ideological discourse and have a long history of mutual aid and cooperation, they are nonetheless divided due to a number of economic and political issues. On the other hand, it is important to note that the "English speaking countries cooperate more closely on security policy with each other than with the Francophone countries (on this point one should note the real opportunity for Canadian diplomacy to smooth relations between states which are after all liberal democracies, although as culturally different as they are similar)" (Forster, Young, 2003, p.206). The most important point of transatlantic relations is European political attitude towards the situation in Iraq. Europe has always been keen to give a good advice to the United States, but when it is high time to take actions, its advice becomes even more theoretical. Anyway, Europe has no credible means of wartime action, only the US have. Restating the metaphors, it is possible to say that a military conflict such as the situation in Iraq, even if officially supported by the United Nations, is essentially an American-led war, since only the world's military superpower has appropriate means for such intervention, while the ranks of Eurocorps are becoming thinner and thinner (Carlsnaes, , Smith). There was almost no response from European community (e.g. demonstrations) when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran and when he employed chemical weapon against the Iranian and Kurdish people in the northern part of Iraq. Peace movement is gradually turning into anti-Americanism and anti-globalization, which breeds new stereotypes and prejudices in the European society and causes much greater passivity (if not sincere hostility) in terms of the war in Iraq. As a Federal Union Paper for the European constitutional convention states, "The chaos of the European response to the crisis in Iraq has helped nobody except Saddam Hussein. Some countries have prioritized the elimination of weapons of mass destruction; others have emphasized the centrality of global decision-making processes" (A Federal Union Paper for the European constitutional convention, 2003). The paper recognizes the fact that the European countries (especially Western European countries) have been incapable of making any considerable contribution to the military campaign to force Iraq to disarmament. On the other hand, speaking separately about the Eastern European countries, which have unstable economies and huge external (and probably internal) debts and agree to have their military staff involved into the war, without forgetting about the financial benefits of the 'American war'. Thus, one can outline three hidden (but still obvious) conflicts, which Europe is now experiencing: the conflict between Eastern and Western Europe (which naturally, with respect to the current situation in eastern Europe and to the sunrise of democracy, attempts to control 'the Eastern younger brother'); the conflict between insular and continental communities and transatlantic relations, which are both conductive for the development of wider cooperation, and controversial. As for the European policy, it is possible to say that Europe in its political attitudes is Janus-like, as in spite of their political correctness, European leaders feel no threat from the East and have no need for aiding 'bloody American interests' - as an alternative, they continue their debates related to the united market policies and integrated economics, in which each country pursues its own goals. It would be wrong to say that European foreign policy is effective and serves the objectives of integration, cooperation and 'non-bureaucratic' fraternity. "Europe still lacks a unified foreign policy This is because Europe's contintental institutions are thoroughly elitist, and largely immune to "Europhoria". Institutional opposition to a unitary foreign policy is also due to history, linguistic divergence, or even religious division" (Cameron, 1999, p.362). On the other hand, due to their enthusiasm and active political position, European youth are those who are likely to renovate and to some extent re-animate European foreign policy, making it fitting the standards of the array of European declarations. Bibliography 1) Balfour, R. Rethinking the Euro-Mediterranean political and security dialogue. EU-ISS Occasional Paper, 2004. available at: 2) Cameron, F. The foreign and security policy of the European Union. )Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 3) Carlsnaes, W. , Smith, S. The EC and changing perspectives in Europe. SAGE Modern Politics series, vol. 24. (Uppsala University, Sweden, 2005) 4) The organisation of operational linksbetween NATO, WEU and the EU. WEU, Defence Committee, Mr. De Decker, Chairman and Rapporteur Document 1624, 9 November 1998 available at: 5) Engle, E. The Eurocorps. A European Army, 2002. available at 6) Europe needs a powerful voice in the world. 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