Global Europe

How would you describe the European Union's role in today’s international affairs, with regards to its neighbourhood as well as to the wider world?

Europe, singly and collectively, is the most underrated actor in world politics today. How many times must we read that in the 21st century the US, China, India are the only great powers? This is nonsense. In fact, the world is bipolar. Europe and the US are the only two global superpowers. This will remain true for the foreseeable future. Indeed, European power is rising.

This fact is disguised by the persistently pessimistic discourse that comes out of Europe, which only serves to fuels the generally non-comprehending views that prevail in Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow and Washington.

European integration, far from being moribund, has seen two decades of extraordinary success: the single market, a single currency, an expanded Schengen zone, launching a common defense, enlarging from 12 to 27 members, developing an internal security policy, establishing European agencies, leading the world in fighting climate change, and now -- with the immanent passage of the constitutional treaty -- streamlining its decision-making. It is the most ambitious and successful international organization of all time, pioneering institutional practices far in advance of anything elsewhere.

The same goes for foreign policy. European nations, singly and collectively, are the only other states in the world today, besides the US, to exert global influence across the full spectrum from “hard” to “soft” power.

Europe is comfortably established as the world’s “second” military power, with 50,000-100,000 combat troops active throughout the globe over most of the past two decades. European-led operations in Lebanon, Congo, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere are, so US studies report, more effective than those of any other country. In nuclear power, air power, weapons production, or naval power as well, no one except the US comes close to European power projection capability. Certainly not rising Asian powers.

Even more impressive is Europe's "civilian" power: The EU is the world's largest economy, trading throughout the globe, possesses a single currency that can challenge the dollar, sets regulatory standards, donates nearly half the world’s public and private foreign aid, dominates almost every multilateral organization and legal process, educates more foreign students, is diplomatically active throughout the globe, and embodies a set of values that pose an attractive political and social ideal. When countries set about to draft a constitution or adopt international legal norms, they tend to use European, not American or Asian, models.

Perhaps most impressively, the policy of European enlargement has been the single most cost-effective policy for spreading peace and security employed by anyone in the world since the end of the Cold War. And European leaders are bravely continuing it even in the face of low popular support.

No other country or region -- certainly not China, Russia or India -- can match Europe's range of instruments of global influence and impact in terms of promoting global events. Europe is the “Quiet Superpower.”

What role would you like to see the EU play on the world stage? On what regions and issues should the EU focus in its foreign relations?

Europe has a global presence in diplomacy peacekeeping, trade, money, international law and organization, global values, the environment. In diplomacy: For years Europeans were the only Western governments speaking with Tehran. Or in military affairs: Over 40 percent of the combat deaths in Afghanistan to date are non-American and 1/3 are European. Or in trade: Europe trades more with China than the US, and its balance is more favorable. German exports alone are almost as large as those of China. Europe leverages its trade power not just in its neighborhood, but in the Middle East, in Latin America, in the WTO, and across the globe.

Moreover, once we get away from trade statistics and think about more sophisticated measures of global economic power, such as investment, finance, research and development, multinational firms, and intra-firm trade, European and the US are the global powerhouses. All this constitutes a global presence of which Chinese, Indians and Russians can only dream.

Yet, in order to be effective and sustainable, a foreign policy should be focused primarily on areas where a country or region has its most intense interests. When actors promulgate policies well beyond their means, those policies threaten to become inconsistent and ineffective -- a lesson the US has learned the hard way over the past generation.

One of the great virtues of European foreign policy is that it matches means and ends. It is focused more narrowly than that of the US on its own region broadly defined -- Europe, the immediate eastern and southern neighborhood, the Maghreb, and former African colonies.

The result: European policy is, by and large, more cost-effective and sustainable. Rather than seeking to transform Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran into democracies using military force, Europe has helped transform 15-20 European neighbours into democracies using civilian instruments. The latter task may be somewhat easier -- though hardly less politically controversial at home! -- yet it has also been much more effective. Tailoring ends to means is the essence of a prudent and realistic foreign policy.

This is why European enlargement and neighbourhood policy should remain the archetypal EU policies: Civilian in means and limited in scope. Both have been extraordinarily successful. There is no question that enlargement from 6 to 15 to 27 has been a success. More recently, even without the prospect of immediate membership, European diplomacy in Turkey, Montenegro, and Serbia, as well as Morocco, Ukraine, and Libya, has brought about substantial improvements in local conditions.

It would of course be helpful to see Europe involved wherever it can be helpful across the globe, but the primary focus should be on places where European interests are most immediately engaged, which tends to be in its broader neighborhood.

Fast forward -- do you expect that in 2020 the EU will speak with one voice and act in concert?

Wrong question. In Beijing and Washington -- and even Brussels -- too much attention is paid to this old-fashioned way of posing the issue. In fact it does not matter very much whether Europe is centralized. Most problems facing Europe do not require united action by EU members to be solved. And the EU’s power is not primarily a function of centralization. These federalist fantasies of the 1950s should be discarded for once and for all.

To be sure, centralization is useful in exceptional areas, such as trade and enlargement. (Perhaps a case can be made for energy policy, though I rather doubt it.) In these areas, a measure of centralization may contribute to effective policy-making. Yet these issues are already centralized. And many of the other successes of European foreign policy discussed above have been achieved without centralization.

Yet much criticism of EU policy today rests on the view that centralization is required for European foreign policy success. This is a fantasy. It is simply absurd to claim that European military involvement in Lebanon, the Congo or Afghanistan; diplomatic engagement in Kosovo, Libya or Iran; or modern financial engagement with the Euro or banking reform would work better if all 27 countries were required to agree within in some more rigid, centralized framework.

To the contrary, Europe not only would not stand benefit much from more centralized foreign policy-making, but might stand to lose quite a bit in terms of flexibility. Often flexible arrangements permit more effective policy-making, as in recent diplomacy toward Iran, recognition of Kosovo, encouragement of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the turnaround toward Libya, and almost every military operation Europe has led. The commonplace myth that European diplomacy with regard to the former Yugoslavia or Iraq would have been more effective had Europe been more centralized, but the idea cannot withstand empirical scrutiny. Rather, it would have been gridlocked into impotence.

Today, rather than seeking greater institutional centralization, European governments should encourage vanguard groups, flexible geometry and coalitions of the willing suited to specific issues, problems and conditions. We see sensible first steps toward such a structure in the Treaty of Lisbon, which streamlines a system for coordination based essentially in the intergovernmental Council.

This is in tune with the times. The 21st century will not be a century of rigid hierarchies; it will be the century of networks. Policy will be made by governments acting in networked concert on issues of common concern. The EU, with its unique network form of organization, is well-poised to take advantage of it.

To be sure, in order to fully realize these advantages, European governments will have to make some tough choices. Among them are rationalizing their defense industrial base, streamlining their energy sectors, and continuing to pursue enlargement. None are easy; each is a function of domestic political will. But no amount of institutional centralization can substitute for those essentially domestic commitments.