The European Crisis of Liberal Internationalism

Abstract

The liberal international agenda promoted by the Union is in crisis. At a time when America is rediscovering the merits of multilateralism, engagement, and diplomacy, Europe is slowly acknowledging that its ethical and moral foreign policies have reached their limits. Clearly, a liberal international agenda is filled with strategic dilemmas, political frustrations, and mixed results. Nonetheless, the current crisis runs deeper than the ordinary and familiar vices of liberal internationalism. As demonstrated below, Europe has a problem of mindset, commitment, and capabilities. This article will review these issues with a special emphasis on military developments, and in particular, the security and defence policy (ESDP) side of current EU external actions.Some caveats are, however, in order. First, the security and defence policy framework - the adjective common has now replaced European in the official documents, a dubious hyperbole to say the least-is still in its infancy and remains a work in progress. Considerable achievements have been made in the last io years, yet important gaps and inadequacies remain. Institutional developments have been numerous, some more formal than others, but they have once again been put on hold since the Irish to the Lisbon treaty last June. Second, there remains significant room for improvement. Learning by doing is the favoured incremental method in defence matters; learning from failure is the main internal dynamic behind foreign policy initiatives.1 After each crisis, new and greater ambitions are set, new tools and institutions are created, and fresh practices emerge. It took German reunification to launch a monetary, and a stronger political, union; the Balkan fiasco to initiate a defence and security policy; and the divide over Iraq to craft a security strategy. The current crisis, however, is latent and the lessons are not so clear as to trigger a new impetus. Third, any assessment of military and security developments is by nature a subjective undertaking. Specifically, to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a military tool is by definition an educated guess at best. The relevant evaluation belongs either to Europe's eventual adversaries or potential allies. conservative assessment of security tools will look at the ambitions and responsibilities they are designed to fulfil, but the Union is a special case. The union has adopted a security strategy but there is no organic link between this strategic framework and the shape of forces. There is no white paper comparable to those that defence ministries at the national level publish on a regular basis. Nonetheless, the December 2003 Solana document - A secure Europe in better world - offers a clear benchmark to assess ESDP capabilities and missions to the overall strategic framework.2With these caveats, this article will review the strategy broadly defined by the Solana paper, analyze its limitations in theory and practice, and offer some tentative conclusions.THE ORIGINS OF EUROPE'S LIBERAL STRATEGIC FRAMEWORKAs noted above, foreign and security policies are relatively new features developed by the Union, most of them imposed by external factors and shocks. The Saint-Malo agreement, which launched the ESDP process, was first and foremost a consequence of Europe's failures in the Balkans. In the same vein, the Solana document was a direct lesson from the divide about Iraq. The security strategy was a clear reminder to member-states that disunity has a strategic cost and that Europe's influence ultimately rests on its capacity to get its act together. Drawing up a security concept involved difficult dilemmas: to reach a broad consensus while acknowledging the different strategic traditions and cultures of member-states, to map strategic threats while recognizing that they affect member-states differently, and to outline an overall approach in addressing them while taking into account the union's particular acquis and specific identity. …