Assessing European Foreign Policy

Correspondence Assessing European Foreign Policy Ian Davidson Philip H. Gordon To the Editors: In his stimulating article, “Europe‘s Uncommon Foreign Policy,”’ Philip Gordon presents a powerful and sobering account of the persistent failure, over many years, of the member states of the European Union (EU) to make any serious progress toward a common foreign policy.The 1991Treaty on European Union ostensibly raised the ante, with a grand new commitment to develop a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), but the results so far have been derisory. Indeed, in relation to the massive crisis of the Yugoslavcivil war, Europe’s failure to act effectivelytogether is even more scandalous than it was before. Gordon‘s conclusion that this pattern is likely to continue appears to be uncontroversial . The process of European integration may continue, he believes, but there is little likelihood that it will spread significantlyto the field of foreignand securitypolicy. Even if this conclusion is broadly correct-and it may well b e h i s analysis is based on a number of propositions, mainly related to traditional academic theories of economic integration, that are inadequate, or even misleading, when applied to the problhatique of a common European foreign policy. As a result, his articleis ultimately unsatisfactory as an explanation of what has been going on in the real world, and why. Profound differences exist between the process of internal (mainly economic) integration and the process of external (mainlypolitical) integration. It is these differences that explain why there has been much more progress in the first category than in the second. The process of internal (mainly economic) integration has six essential and distinct ingredients: a closed system, with a known set of participating countries; the concerted choice of discrete policy areas for integration; the negotiation of explicit bargains with predictable consequences; the option of offsetting side bargains; the enactment of these bargains in legislation; and the justiciabilityof these bargains before the European Court of Justice. The central feature of internal (mainly economic) integration is thus the key characteristicof predictability.Academic theorists may expatiate about spillover,convergence,and momentum, and over time they may seemto be right. However, at any given juncture in the integration process, the governments believe they know what they are doing, they believe they have a discrete choice, they believe they can broadly predict the consequencesof the bargain being offered, and if they step forward it is because they believe the bargain will be advantageous. Ian Davidson, a journalist and author, is former foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. Philip H. Gordon is the Carol Reane Senior Fellow for U.S. Strategic Studies and Editor of the journal Survival at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. 1. Philip H. Gordon, “Europe’s Uncommon Foreign Policy,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Winter 1997/98),pp. 74-100. Subsequent citations to this article appear in parentheses in the text. International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 183-188 0 1998by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 183 International Security 23:2 1 184 None of these ingredients are present in the process of foreign (mainly political) integration. The EUs member states are not dealing with a closed system, they do not have the power to determine the outside participants, they do not have the power to determine which policieswill affect them, they cannot be sure of being able to negotiate explicit bargains with outside interlocutors, they mostly cannot formulate these bargains in legislation (i.e.,treaties),and they mostly will have no court to which they can appeal. In other words, by contrast with the process of internal integration, the key characteristicof the process of foreign policy integration is that the governments cannot know in advance what they are letting themselves in for. Thus the more ambitious the particular foreign policy being proposed, in terms of the intensity of its interactionwith the rest of the world, the less the governments can know in advance where it will lead them. It is therefore not surprising that foreign policy integration has not made much progress so far. Those who believe that the EU has a vocationto acquire the full...