Europe's Uncommon Foreign Policy

Europe’s Uncommon ForemPolicy Philip H. Gordon I n early February 1996, after the United States had engineered a peace agreement for former Yugoslavia that the Europeans had failed to bring about after four years of intervention , a senior U.S. official concluded out loud what many other observers had already begun to think ‘TJnlessthe United Statesis prepared to put its political and military muscle behind the quest for solutions to European instability, nothing really gets done.”’ Only a few days later, after a successful U.S. diplomatic intervention to prevent a conflict between Greece and Turkey over an Aegean island, that same officialcommented that Europeans were “literally sleeping through the night” as President Bill Clinton mediated the dispute on the phone.* Five years after the European Union (EU) had signed a treaty announcing the creation of a common foreign and security policy (CFSP),the perception had begun to emerge-not only among Americans but among many Europeans as well-that the EU’s efforts had failed, and that the United States was more than ever the diplomatic and military leader of the Western world.3 Comparing the EU’s foreign and security policy to that of the United States is, of course, unfair. The CFSP project is far more limited than the creation of The author is Carol Deane Senior Fellow for US.Strategic Studies and Editor of Survival at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. This article was first presented as part of a Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on Europe and Transatlantic Relations in the 1990s. A different version of the paper, focusing more on European Union institutional issues and less on security than this article, will be published in Andrew Moravcsik, ed., The Prospects for European Integration: Deepening, Diversity, Democratization (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations, forthcoming 1998).I would like to thank Rosa Alonso, Amaya Bloch-Lain6, Fraser Cameron, John Chipman, Charles Grant, Charles Kupchan, Andrew Moravcsik,John Roper, Gideon Rose, and the participants in the Council Study Group for their comments and suggestions; responsibility for the arguments is of course mine alone. 1. Then-U.S. Assistant Secretaryof State for European and Canadian AffairsRichard C. Holbrooke, cited in William Drozdiak, ”Europe’s Dallying Amid Crises Scares Its Critics,” International Herald Tribune, February 8, 1996. 2. Cited in Lionel Barber and Bruce Clark, “USPolices Aegean ’WhileEU Sleeps,”’ Financial Times, February 9,1996. 3. This also seems to be the view of US. Defense Secretary William Cohen, who has said that Bosnia “was principally a European problem to be solved. The Europeans did not move. It pointed out that the Europeans do not act in the absence of American leadership.” Remarks reported by Barbara Stan; “Cohen Establishing His Doctrine as Clinton and Congress Look On,”lane’s Defence Weekly, February 5, 1997, p. 19. International Security, Vol. 22,No. 3 (Winter 1997/98), pp. 74-100 0 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 74 Europe's UncommonForeign Policy I 75 a political-military capability like that of the United States; CFSP mechanisms and procedures have been in place for only a short time; and the obstacles to foreign policy cooperation among longstanding sovereign states with their own histories, perspectives, interests, and bureaucracies are obvious. Yet the comparison-and the disparaging remarks from abroad40 serve to highlight just how far the European Union is from possessing the sort of unity, credibility , and military power necessary to be an influentialactor in global diplomatic and security affairs. Those who had hoped in 1991that the EUs C E P would be worthy of such a name-and there were plenty of them at the time-have been largely disappointed! Whether or not the European Union is able to develop into a unified and effective foreign and security policy actor is important, not only for those Europeans seeking to enhance their own influence on the world stage but for the structure of world politics itself. An EU of nearly 400 million people and a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $8 trillion that was able to unite its diplomatic and military potential could easily challenge the...