Assessing European Foreign Policy

Abstract

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 1991 Treaty 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 Yugoslav civil war, Europe’s failure to act effectively together 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 significantly to the field of foreign and security policy. 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 article is 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 (mainly political) 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 justiciability of these bargains before the European Court of Justice. The central feature of internal (mainly economic) integration is thus the key characteristic of predictability. Academic theorists may expatiate about spillover, convergence, and momentum, and over time they may seem to 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 consequences of the bargain being offered, and if they step forward it is because they believe the bargain will be advantageous.