Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Österreichs Außenpolitik seit 1945 by Franz Cede, Christian Prosl (review)

Apart from Michael Gehler’s comprehensive 2005 analysis, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the topic of Austria’s foreign policy, at least as far as accessible monographs are concerned. It is therefore all the more to be welcomed that with the work under review two of Austria’s former top diplomats not only propose to fill that gap with a concise survey of the genesis and development of Austria’s foreign policy from 1945 to today but to do so in an “easily comprehensible manner” (p. 5). Franz Cede headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs International Law Office from 1993 to 1999, at a time when many of the articles of Austria’s State Treaty were becoming increasingly obsolete after the end of the Cold War. Before retiring from active service in 2011, Christian Prosl was Austria’s ambassador in Washington, having previously served in the same capacity in Berlin.

In this slim volume of less than 170 pages—which subsequently appeared in English translation, Ambition and Reality: Austria’s Foreign Policy Since 1945 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2016)—the authors present an admirably non-partisan survey of Austria’s foreign policy since 1945. They mince no words about one of Austria’s most cherished shibboleths in the field of foreign policy: neutrality: “Whether one wants to acknowledge it or not, Austria’s neutrality was reduced to a residual minimum by the country’s accession to the EU” in 1995. Accession marked the end of an “active policy of neutrality,” which is now eviscerated and “devoid of meaning” (pp. 12, 14, 35). No Austrian politician of any standing would be prepared to engage in such plain speaking. Any public discussion of the country’s foreign policy must be avoided at all cost, with many politicians “squinting mainly at the headlines of one of Austria’s print media” (p. 35). This is clearly a reference to the country’s most influential tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung, which is read by something like 40 percent of the population. Cede and Prosl raise the question of what might be considered to be a “unique feature” of Austria’s foreign policy (p. 35); they have to admit that they are at a loss for an answer.

What the authors do praise are Austria’s peacekeeping missions in the Balkans (p. 14), its contributions to stabilizing the region, and its commitment to a European perspective for these countries. This, however, does not alter the fact that no overall strategy is discernible in Austria’s foreign policy. Austria’s role within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (EU) is reactive rather than active. Although the authors are all in favor of giving Austria’s role clearer contours, they are also aware that caution is needed. A case in point is the 2010 designation of the Black Sea region as a focal point for Austria’s foreign policy (p. 109), a decision determined by economic considerations. The net result, however, was practically nil because of a lack of human resources and Austria’s insufficient presence in the region rather than because of more recent developments in the region.

The picture of Austria that emerges from Cede and Prosl’s account is that of an “inland country largely without international ambitions” (p. 117), which has, despite two decades of EU membership, only insufficiently adapted to the fact that it is now itself part of Europe and therefore potentially capable of contributing to the EU’s foreign policy within reasonable limits. One gets the impression that “perpetual” neutrality, apparently a salient feature of Austrian identity, is “carved in stone.” For Cede and Prosl this is clearly not the case. “Austria’s rights and obligations as a neutral state become effective already in peace and not only in times of war” (p. 31).

Why a new definition or a clear interpretation or reinterpretation of neutrality after the end of the Cold War continues to be so...