Competing structural powers and challenges for the EU's structural foreign policy

Abstract

This article contends that, in order to understand global affairs, not only crises and conflicts need to be examined, but also long-term processes which result from the competition between structural powers. These structural powers have the potential to set or influence the organizing principles and the rules of the game in other countries and regions as well as the international system in general. The article focuses on the European Union's potential as a structural power. Examining where the EU has succeeded and where it has failed to behave as a structural power, it argues that the EU is losing the structural power game against competing structural powers in its neighbourhood, specifically Russia in the EU's eastern neighbourhood and the multifarious phenomenon of “Islamism” in the EU's southern neighbourhood.