Rescuing the liberal international order: crisis, resilience and EU security policy

Abstract

Abstract This article reflects on how European Union (EU) narratives of the crisis of the liberal international order (LIO) have reshaped its resilience approach and its foreign and security policy more broadly. Drawing on qualitative textual analysis, we trace the evolution of the EU's resilience approach over time and the way it has been shaped by crisis narratives. While the idea of resilience was introduced in EU foreign policy to foster the resilience of crisis-affected societies from the bottom up, the perception of an increasingly contested world first led to a reinterpretation of resilience in pragmatic ways, with values and interests combined selectively to protect the rules-based international order. More recently, on the grounds of a worsening crisis of the LIO, resilience has taken a defensive turn, adopting a more geopolitical stance to strengthen the EU's own resilience and that of the LIO. We argue that EU crisis narratives about the LIO thus serve to sustain and to rescue it. Furthermore, we conclude that the defensive reinterpretation of resilience is eroding the normative character of EU foreign and security policy. It also challenges the persistence of the LIO in the long term.