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The Foreign and Defence Policy of the European Union and the European Security System

inglese



UNIVERSITà DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA

FACOLTà DI SCIENZE POLITICHE

CORSO DI LAUREA IN SCIENZE POLITICHE

INDIRIZZO POLITICO INTERNAZIONALE








The Foreign and Defence Policy of the European Union and the European Security System







TESI DI LAUREA







The Foreign and Defence Policy of the European Union and the European Security System


Introduction  1


1st Chapter

CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN SECURITY


Defining security  6

The changed nature of threats  10

Towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the

European Union    17

1.3.1 The Maastricht Treaty 22

1.3.2 The Amsterdam Treaty    28

1.3.3 From Saint Malo to Cologne 33

The new security dimension    41

Foreign and security policy as interest-driven 47


2nd Chapter

ENLARGEMENT AND THE COMMON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY


Understanding the Common Foreign and Security Policy   54

Enlargement as foreign policy 64

The challenge of enlargement: internal and external actors   75

The CFSP, enlargement and the transformation of

European political space  80


3rd Chapter

A FUTURE SECURITY AGENDA FOR EUROPE


European security: myth or reality?    87

One security policy or several? 90

Federalist or Intergovernmental policy 95

Continuity and change in the European security agenda 98

The collective European security agenda: future

developments 102

New challenges facing the European security system 110


Conclusion   115


Bibliography    120

"We, the members of the European Council, are resolved that the

European Union shall play its full role on the international stage. To that end, we intend to


give the European Union the necessary means and capabilities to assume its

responsibilities regarding a common European policy on security and defence".


Cologne European Council - June 1999



Introduction



With the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the East-West relations characterised by co-operative dependency, structural conditions and behavioural patterns, concepts concerning European security have changed fundamentally. Developments such as the political revolution in the east and its consequences upon domestic and foreign policies, German unification, re-vitalised European integration and the reduction of U.S. power and influence in Europe have been cumulative and reinforced each other. In the field of foreign policy, European Governments face the problem whether and how to adapt to these structural changes.


The European Union has made considerable progress over the last years, not just because there was a practical need for it, but also because it was increasingly felt that the growing European identity should find expression in the field of foreign and security policy. Closer European co-operation, which met with fierce political resistance in various member countries in the past, is forced on by events today. Consequently, the old fear of loss of national sovereignty is being relegated to the background by the development of practical co-operation. The EU has, therefore, steadily grown as an actor in international affairs but its power and influence are still predominantly in the domain of 'soft security'. It has important political, economic, trade and financial instruments but it still has not developed a credible military capability to support its diplomacy. As a central element of this union, a Common Foreign and Security Policy is expected to turn the Community into a more consistent and more influential international actor. There are, however, encouraging signs that this may be changing. The turnaround in British attitudes towards European defence and the changed views in Germany and France have led to a larger convergence on security issues than was conceivable just a few years ago.


However, it is one thing to agree that something should be done to improve the EU's ability to act and another to achieve a consensus on exactly what should be done and to ensure that it is done. On the eve of a new millennium the construction of Europe is an unprecedented historical experiment where it is not yet clear what form it will eventually take. Europeans have important choices to make as to what kind of Union they wish to have and what role this Union should play on the world stage. Given the modest beginnings of co-operation in the sensitive field of foreign and security policy, it is perhaps worth asking the question whether the EU still needs a CFSP. The answer is 'yes' for a number of reasons. First, the voice of Europe will only be heard in world affairs if there is a single voice, otherwise it will not be heard at all. Secondly, the end of the Cold War has dramatically changed the European Union's strategic situation. The Soviet threat has disappeared, but many different new risks have appeared. They are risks that need to be handled collectively by the Union otherwise they cannot be handled in an effective manner. Thirdly, the United States has reduced its military presence in Europe and pressed the EU to take on more responsibility for its own 'regional' security. This means that history now not only demands a new design for European security, but one that also allows for major improvements in comparison to the past.


The research consists of three chapters. The first chapter starts out by tracing the gradual building of the CFSP, trying to explain why integration in the second pillar of the EU is proving to be such a difficult task and examines how the reluctant growth of EU integration in the security field has developed since the end of the Cold War. The second chapter covers the European defence system and the related enlargement issue. It starts out by highlighting different approaches to understanding the CFSP, it examines then the various issues raised by the prospect of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe and finally discusses the implications of the enlargement for longer term trends in the development of the CFSP. The third and final chapter deals by looking towards the future and discusses the problems and challenges that will need to be addressed and faced successfully if the EU's CFSP is to have any credibility within the fields of EU expansion.


All in all, today difficulties are seen as challenges which have to be met in a way which is compatible with the particular characteristics of Europe. The mood of Europessimism which prevailed only a few years ago has given way to a growing determination within the Community to shape our common destiny and this new mood justifies renewed faith in the future of Western Europe.


















1st Chapter


CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN SECURITY


Defining Security


Apart from 'federalism', there are few words used as often as 'security' in international relations which suggest different meanings to different audiences. For the armed forces, security usually has a  military connotation; for the inhabitants in most parts of Europe, security is primarily viewed as freedom from criminal activities while for the planners in foreign ministries, security is conceived in a wider context involving multilateral aspects.


According to Arnold Wolfer security should be defined as "the absence of threats to acquired values" (Baylis 1997: 195). Expanding on this David Baldwin (1997: 5-26) consid 959c26j ers security to be a situation in which there is "a low probability of damage to acquired values". In international relations the state has almost automatically been considered the "referent object" of security. As for the values to be defended, these have also been taken for granted: ultimately it is the territorial integrity and political independence of the state that is to be protected.


These specifications to the concept of security are closely linked to a particular model of the international system: the Westphalian model. According to this model, striving for security is in many ways the ultimate concern of the foreign policies of states. This is linked to the assumption of anarchy in the international system. There is no superior authority that can 'lay down the law' from a more independent or objective position than the individual states. The international system is, in other words, seen to be in a 'state of nature'. In such a system, politics is a struggle for power where each state must look after its interests as best it can and with all available means. Questions of values or of morality are, therefore, considered to have little or no place in such a system: they only belong to domestic politics (Lenzi 1997).


During the Cold War the security and defence policies of West European states were to a large extent formulated according to the logic of the Westphalian model. It was during the post-Cold War period that the content of security was broadened and became more protean and ambiguous. An increased number and intensity of links in international society and a far-reaching institutional change in the European security space definitely initiated and marked the end of this single-coloured security concept. As a result the significance of the military dimension decreased as well. The necessity to use nuclear threat as a deterrent in the face of an obvious inferiority of conventional weapons no longer existed. The notion of security policy, consequently, was extended to cover contingencies for other types of threats. In addition to clear military elements, security started to contain political, economic, social, human and environmental dimensions, as the threat emerged from different sources. An effort to counter an increasing number of various threats required, therefore, common or at least concerted policies adaptable to the nature of a particular threat.

All this has contributed to the development of a 'new' security concept which gains in relevance as the complexity of our modern society grows.


















The changed nature of threats


During the forty years of the Cold War, the threats and dangers to security in Europe were of an almost exclusively military nature, purported by the propaganda as the "Iron Curtain" with very specific urban features, such as barbed wire, mined bridges and ramparts and notably the Berlin Wall. The end of the Cold War constituted, therefore, an important challenge to prevailing security and defence policies and perceptions of security in Western Europe. With the collapse of the Warsaw pact, the perceived threat on which much of West European security and defence policies had been built since the end of the Second World War disappeared almost over night. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to underline how the end of the Cold War - and the subsequent nullification of the Yalta agreement - brought new significant improvements and structural changes to the traditional European security threats (Sperling and Kirchner 1997: 155-70).


Moving away from the emphasis on defending the territory of the nation-state from an external military threat, discussions on security and defence policy increasingly began to focus on so-called non-territorial threats and to refer to an "enlarged" security concept. With the vanishing Soviet threat a political re-definition of 'threat' started to take root. The narrow traditional definition of 'security threat' as the product of damage and probability seemed legitimate in scenarios of all out nuclear warfare, bloc-confrontation and arms races. The changes in the East, however, not only downgraded the political relevance of the military but at the same time up-graded the importance of non-military threats, which until now were either non-existent, or constituted problems to a specific bloc and not to the entire security order. These non-military threats were considered to take the form of terrorism, drug-trafficking, nuclear waste and also ethnic conflict that might spread beyond a particular state-territory. Therefore, as the military threat declined, one has to move from a narrow to a broader understanding of security threats, which does not underestimate military ones but includes political, economic and others.


New and more diverse security threats have emerged, some indeed as a legacy of the communist era. Nearly all present-day conflicts are, in fact, 'within' rather than 'between' states. Among the most serious of these new threats are political and economic instability, the ethnic and border problems, organised crime and environmental degradation.

Organised crime, in particular drug trafficking, is much more serious than many issues that have traditionally been seen as a threat to national security because it poses a threat to security at three levels: the individual, the state and the international system. Organisations that deal in drugs can also traffic in technology and components for weapons of mass destruction. Whether the recipients of such transfer are terrorist organisations or 'pariah' states, the link between criminal activities and security is obvious. If non-proliferation and other regulatory regimes are to function effectively in future, it will be necessary to curb the activities of organised crime. This, of course, will not be easy.

Tackling many of the environmental threats, which have often risen as a result of years of communist neglect will also not be easy. All over the former Soviet Union the degradation of the environment is dramatic and can also have more important security risks than the threat of external military invasion. If used by political leaders to mobilise groups through appeals to group identity, disputes over land, water and other natural resources could quickly lead to the radicalisation of those groups, with disruptive effects on the political process.

Equally no one State can deal with the problems that characterise the regions on Europe' s periphery. For example, the problems on the southern shores of the Mediterranean are immense: high unemployment, low economic growth, high debts, low exports, poor infrastructure and degradation of the environment - all fuelled by a population explosion resulting in an age structure in which 50% of the population is under 15. This is a potentially explosive situation with obvious implications for European security.

EU policy[1], including assistance, to the region is far more effective if carried out by the Fifteen acting together, as in the Euro-Mediterranean (Barcelona) Process, rather than on an individual basis. The growing willingness of the EU to work together on such security issues is shown by the change in the agendas of meetings of EU Foreign Ministers. While ten years ago they spent most of their time discussing political-military issues, today the emphasis is on trade agreements, technical assistance, sanctions, closing down unsafe nuclear reactors, balance of payments support, humanitarian aid and similar issues (Cameron 1998: 69).

Increasingly, the focus turned from the 'state' to the 'individual' as the "referent object" of security, and as to the values to be defended, these were no longer only the territorial integrity of the state. In fact, in several instances, this integrity was challenged in the name of principles of human rights. However, the most important changes to the specifications of security had to do with the types of threats that Western Europe was expected to have to face. As a result of these changes a debate also developed about the legitimacy of the use of military means outside the territory of the nation state, with the aim of protecting international norms and rules.

The changes in the specifications of security also led to changes in the perception of what instruments might be most appropriate in security policy. Whereas the favoured instrument of the Cold War was the military, this is no longer necessarily considered the most efficient or appropriate instrument to maintain security (Le Gloannec 1997: 83-98). Indeed much of the discussion on security policy in Western Europe was a discussion about how to reallocate resources from security to other policy objectives. To the extent that military means were still considered important, most West European states did in the 1990s begin considerable changes to the way in which they structured their armed forces and their strategic doctrines (Gasteyger 1996: 18-22).


No one doubts that the military dimension will de facto continue to change the nature of the European Union and its ability to exercise influence outside the Union. A page has already been turned, and the Europeans cannot now return to what for forty years was a position of very comfortable irresponsibility. But this qualitative leap in the exercise of power will also call for many, possibly painful, adjustments of inherited cultures, mechanisms and habits.



















Towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the European Union


The history of European integration since 1945 is indissociable from the history of attempts to create a relatively autonomous European security and defence identity (ESDI). For decades, in fact, the question of European defence had the dual and somewhat strange quality of being both a necessary condition for and an obstacle to political deepening of the European Union. It was a condition because only the possession of a minimum of military means would ensure the credibility and effectiveness of any international action by the Union. It was an obstacle since political divergences between member states on the Union's very legitimacy in defence matters were structural, permanent and irreconcilable, notwithstanding the skilful diplomatic discourse to which the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties today still bear witness.


The Treaties of Dunkirk (1947) and especially of Brussels (1948), were primarily geared to forging a security community which would banish any further prospect of war. But the demands of sovereignty and the sheer complexity of European security problems, including early German rearmament and the need for a transatlantic alliance, ruined the first attempt at defence integration, the European Defence Community (EDC) and a European Political Community (EPC) in the early 1950s[2]. Thereafter, for almost fifty years, defence was a taboo subject within a purely European context. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s further efforts to make foreign policy co-operation into the core of European integration and various proposals for the European allies to play a greater part in NATO's activities by creating a discrete 'European Pillar' were floated periodically. Security and defence co-operation was defined into an Atlantic context: NATO became the central organisation for security and defence in West Europe and the United States became guarantor of European security. As for foreign policy, it remained within the realm of the nation state. The Europeans focused on using economic instruments as a tool to integrate at the European level and their projects concentrated on generating greater balance in influence and leadership. This did not mean that the idea of European co-operation on foreign and security policy disappeared. At the EU summit in The Hague in 1969, the idea of political co-operation was relaunched and led to the establishment of European Political Co-operation (EPC) in 1972. After this, the system of foreign policy co-operation was gradually expanded, both in terms of its institutional framework and its policy content. EPC became important in the Helsinki process which was launched in the early 1970s, both in terms of co-ordinating the positions of West European states and in setting the overall agenda. EPC also developed a distinct position on the Middle East, most clearly defined in the Venice declaration of 1980. EPC's capacity to react to situations of crisis was strengthened in the early 1980s but still, all these developments took place outside the treaties (Ginsberg 1989: 23). It was only with the 'Single European Act' that EPC was formally included in the treaty framework and that the commitment of the member states to consult and co-operate in foreign policy became a legal obligation (Nuttall 1992: 41-43). Also, EPC developed in the shadow of NATO and of the peculiar constraints of the Cold War. Yet, in large part because of the impossibility of discussing defence and even security issues within the member states, none of those scenarios offered any realistic prospect of recasting the underlying balance of influence and responsibilities inside the Alliance. This meant that the EPC could not be a serious actor in the international system and, consequently, reinforced the image of EPC as the insignificant 'brother' of transatlantic co-operation.


The end of the Cold War radically changed the security framework in Europe. From being potential enemies, the previous Warsaw Pact states became potential partners both to the EU and to NATO. Assessments of the most important security challenges for Europe were gradually redefined: the likelihood of European states, in particular West European, needing to turn to military power to defend their territories appeared as minimal or non-existent. Focus shifted to more 'diffuse' security challenges, such as international crime, ethnic conflicts, terrorism, spread of nuclear weapons as well as humanitarian and environmental crises.

In parallel, a debate developed in Europe about the legitimacy of using military power in other contexts or for other purposes than to defend national territory. In this context, the EU emerged as a natural security actor in particular in situations where collective solutions were sought as well as in situations where there was a need for political and economic instruments and not military force. In a sense the EU can be seen as the embodiment of the co-operative approach to security encouraged by the 'new' European security agenda. In key respects it has successfully 'domesticated' security amongst its own member states. NATO, on the other hand, which was built on a traditional perspective on security and defence, was expected to have outlived its role. The statement of the Luxembourg foreign minister Jacques Poos[3] during the Luxembourg presidency of the EU in the first half of 1991: "This is the hour of Europe, not the hour of the Americans" is symbolic for this period.




The Maastricht Treaty


The Maastricht Treaty on European Union sought to revitalise European influence on international events by replacing European Political Co-operation (EPC) with the so-called Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) that would encourage the dozen, and later fifteen, member states to speak with one voice on the world stage. The aim of developing a policy that covered 'all areas of foreign and security policy' and that should be supported 'actively and unreservedly by its Member States in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity' was, clearly, stated into the Treaty. Thus, at a difference from the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty went further than to just write existing practice into the Treaty, and actually laid out new patterns for development in foreign and security policy (Grunert 1990).


As a follow-up to the Maastricht Treaty, the WEU started to strengthen its own institutions and develop military capabilities. In 1992, the so-called Petersberg declaration[4], which defined the WEU's security tasks to include peace-keeping, crisis-management and 'soft security' , was issued. Institutional adaptation to external change did nonetheless not take place with the expected, or desired, efficiency. The 1990s were dominated by intense discussion about 'alternative security architectures' in Europe and different institutions often appeared to be competing over the same tasks. It also became evident that even though the security challenges to Europe had changed, the actors' preferences for solutions were still influenced by some of the same factors as during the Cold War. These were the view on the United States' role in Europe and the view of the purpose and future development of the EU as an organisation. Behind the formulations in the Maastricht Treaty, there were still divergent views, not only about how to develop a European security policy, but whether or not the EU should have such a policy at all (Corbett 1993). Besides, the text of the Maastricht Treaty was vague enough to create disagreement between two factions, the 'Integrationists' led by France and Germany, who wanted to see stronger integration in security and defence, and the 'Atlanticists' led by the United Kingdom, who wished to continue with status quo. The question of whether or not the EU could give direct instructions to the WEU was particularly unclear. The Maastricht Treaty also stressed that the development of a common European security policy should not in any way prejudice or challenge Atlantic security co-operation (Geoffrey and Nuttall 1994).


Expectations about the disintegration of NATO after the 'loss' of its enemy did not come true. In fact NATO, under General Secretary Manfred Wörner, turned out to be far more efficient in redefining its role and its organisational structure after the Cold War than the EU. From being a traditional military alliance whose purpose it was to protect the territory of its member states against an external threat, NATO developed a more flexible strategy, which amongst other things would allow it to conduct peacekeeping operations outside NATO territory. The continued relevance of NATO to European security was strengthened at the NATO summit in Berlin in June 1996, where it was decided that a 'European Security and Defence Identity' (ESDI) should be developed inside the framework of NATO[6]. A central element in this strategy was the creation of mobile forces, the so-called 'Combined Joint Task Forces' (CJTF). It was agreed that these forces would be available to the WEU for European operations, in situations where the United States itself would not wish to participate. This decision was interpreted as a victory for the Atlanticists in the struggle over the development of security structures in Europe. Any European use of NATO forces was dependent on recognition from the Atlantic Council. Hence, it looked as if the WEU would foremostly be connected to NATO rather than become the defence arm of the EU (Jopp 1997: 153-169). The Berlin agreement was to a large extent made possible by France's decision to move closer to the military co-operation within NATO . This was interpreted as a signal that France had abandoned its ambitions about developing a European security policy with the EU at the core, and chosen instead to expand the European security identity inside NATO.


The struggle about the development of EU foreign and security policy was also influenced by external political events. The flaws, in fact, became obvious during the war in Bosnia, where it was somehow demonstrated that any progress in this domain would hardly be achieved without the aegis of NATO. The lack of political will among EU member states was, in fact, so striking during the Bosnian crisis that many European government leaders realised the weakness of the EU as an international actor and definitely turned to the United States for leadership in the Balkans.

The 'new NATO' was presented as an institution which was far better suited to tackle the challenges that Europe was facing at the end of the Cold War than the EU. As a result, expectations about EU capabilities in foreign policy in the early 1990s were more and more frequently described as unrealistic. Even external political affairs commissioner Hans van den Broek had to admit: "This policy is in its infancy and so far has registered only partial success"[8].

Inside the EU attempts to follow up the ambitions of the Maastricht Treaty moved slowly. The 1996-7 Intergovernmental Conference[9], which resulted in the Amsterdam Treaty, was expected to clarify some of the uncertainty about the relationship between the WEU and the EU. Nonetheless, the result was seen as a victory for the Atlanticists. The independence of the WEU was maintained and the organisation seemed more and more as a protection against a too independent security role for the EU rather than as a defence arm directly subordinated to the EU.











The Amsterdam Treaty


The Amsterdam Treaty did not change the fundamentals of decision-making in foreign and security policy. A careful attempt was made at expanding qualified majority voting in the second pillar of political co-operation by writing into the Treaty that, after unanimous agreement on common strategies, the Council may proceed with majority voting for 'joint actions' and 'common positions' (Duff 1997: 14-16). This provision was restricted by a provision allowing member states 'for important and stated reasons of national policy' to oppose the adoption of a decision by qualified majority voting. Incidentally, this means that the French interpretation of the Luxembourg 'compromise' of 1966 was for the first time formally included in the Treaty, even though in a particular policy area. The principle of flexibility, which allows member states to refrain from participation in certain policies has sometimes been presented as a solution to the difficulties and complications resulting from increasingly divergent views on the further integration within the EU. This principle was not extended to the CFSP. Nonetheless, the possibility of 'constructive abstention' that was introduced in the Amsterdam Treaty does in practice allow a limited number of states to take initiatives in foreign policy without the full participation of all member states (Whitman 1999).


Another way of strengthening integration and efficiency in foreign policy decision-making would be to strengthen the role of the Commission. At the same time, this would also help resolve the problem of inconsistency between pillars in external policy. From being almost completely excluded from the former EPC, the Treaty of Maastricht had increased the Commission's influence in the CFSP. Although the changes fell short of the Commission's own ambitions in foreign policy, it did for the first time become 'fully associated' to all aspects of the EU's foreign policy and was given the right to propose policies. In response to this increased recognition, the Commission's services were reorganised. A group composed of the six Commissioners with involvement in external affairs was established and began to meet regularly under the chairmanship of the new Commission President Jacques Santer (Cameron 1996). However, this trend towards a stronger role for the Commission was not taken any further with the Amsterdam Treaty. It has even been suggested that Amsterdam represented a setback for the Commission in foreign policy, after a period of gradual encroachment on the territory of the Council and the Political Directors. It is possible that the Commission's active role in the early 1990s produced a backlash, with the Member States again being more reluctant to increase its influence in foreign policy (Smith K. 1995: 398). The ability of the Commission to play an effective role in foreign policy was also hampered by problems of legitimacy. With no real democratic accountability for the Commission and little sense of clear EU foreign policy interests which the Commission could claim to represent, it has often been considered difficult to justify the Commission taking centre stage.

Presently, the new Commission, under the leadership of Prodi, seems to be making progress in terms of strengthening the legitimacy of the Commission. In the longer term this might facilitate a stronger role for the Commission in foreign and security policy (Cameron 1997).


In terms of enhancing the cohesion and efficiency of the CFSP pillar, leadership is important. So far, the Presidency has played a crucial role in this respect. Nonetheless, it has been difficult to ensure consistency in the EU's external representation with leadership rotating every six months. There is some concern that this will become even more of a problem after the enlargement to Eastern Europe. The EU will then have an even larger number of smaller member states. Furthermore, there are some signs that the larger member states have increasing reservations about subordinating their foreign policy to the successive leadership of the smaller member states. It was not possible for the EU member states to agree on Presidency reform at the 1996-97 Intergovernmental Conference (Anderson 1998). However, an effort was made to strengthen the cohesion in the EU's external representation, and to give the EU a single visible voice in the international system. It was decided to nominate a 'High Representative' of the EU in the person of the Secretary General. This reform is considered, by the Commission as well as by France and Britain to be potentially the most important change to the CFSP that came through in the Amsterdam Treaty (De Schoutheete 1997: 16-25).


Overall, the first assessments of the Amsterdam Treaty were fairly negative. Most observers stressed that the member states had only made minimal adjustments compared to the Maastricht Treaty and that the principal weaknesses in the CFSP framework were still there (Seidelmann 1998). At the same time, it was argued that one should not exclude the possibility that the Treaty would allow the EU to develop a more cohesive foreign policy. Much was seen to depend on the way in which the institutional changes proposed were implemented, as well as on the political commitment of member states to use the new provisions. Regelsberger and Wessels (1996: 42-43) for example considered many of the problems of the CFSP to stem not from the rules or institutions alone, but from the member states' reluctance to 'play by the rules of the game which they themselves established'.



From Saint Malo to Cologne


An important turning point came in the autumn of 1998 after France and Great Britain issued the Joint Declaration at the summit held in Saint Malo on strengthening co-operation within the framework of CFSP[10]. The Saint Malo process, leading via the June 1999 Cologne EU Council to the December 1999 Helsinki Council, did imply such a rebalancing and gave impetus to numerous activities, prompted by frustration caused by the Kosovo crisis.

The declaration, preceded by the statement made by Tony Blair at the European Council held in October in Pörtschach regarding the development of the European defence capacity, that did not preclude the possibility of combining the WEU and the EU, became a milestone in "full and rapid implementation of the Amsterdam provisions on CFSP". With the Franco-British 'Saint Malo declaration' work on strengthening the EU's security and defence capacity was, therefore, given new life. In turn, this also increased the speed in implementing the institutional provisions of Maastricht and Amsterdam. The changes in the British position were partly a result of Blair's desire to lead an active European policy, partly a result of increasing British frustrations with the USA[11].

This revolution has made it possible to remove, one by one, the political barriers that prevented the Union from assuming any responsibility for post-Cold War crisis management. The generation of real momentum involving all Fifteen member states is now, as far as European defence is concerned, one of the most tangible and essential achievements of the last years. The fact that all countries of the Union - whether "large" or "small", from the north or the south, members of NATO or not belonging to any military alliance, with a tradition of foreign intervention or not - now subscribe to the political and operational objectives set out in Saint Malo, no doubt represents a major political breakthrough in the deepening of European integration. In the words of a senior British defence official, the removal of the UK veto on defence and security discussions within the EU 'let the genie out of the bottle' and automatically opened up more ambitious vistas than those implicit in a 'mere' pillar of the Alliance. Louis Gautier (1999), defence advisor of the French prime minister, explained the reasons: "The authors of the declaration are the countries that have powerful conventional and nuclear defence mechanisms at their disposal, as well as special international statute defining political and military responsibilities they are prepared to assume. They have decided to join their military potentials towards making a concrete progress of the EU towards its objectives, since up to that moment they had held traditionally different views about the European defence". The logic of Saint Malo instantly carried within it the seeds of EU-US tensions. It is, therefore, appropriate to review the progress made towards and the prospects for the creation of a genuinely European security and defence policy and capacity since the breakthrough Franco-British summit.


Foreign and security policy is one of the areas Britain most easily can promote in order to strengthen its own influence inside the EU. In this area the Franco-German axis is weaker and France does in many ways have more in common with Britain than with Germany on foreign and security policy. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, with strong overseas interests and with a military capacity that includes nuclear weapons, France and Britain distinguish themselves from most of the other EU member states in this policy area. At the same time, co-operation in this particular policy sector has become far less sensitive domestically in Britain than some aspects of economic integration, such as monetary union. In security and foreign policy it is still possible to talk about 'co-operation' instead of 'integration'. As a result of the change in the British position, one of the most important blockages to the strengthening of the CFSP was finally overcome.


The Saint Malo declaration was followed by systematic discussions amongst the member states of the EU on the practical shaping of co-operation in security and defence. The main decisions taken were essentially two: the European Council was to be given responsibility for framing a common security and defence policy under the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy and the EU was to be given the capacity for autonomous action enhancing at the same time the robustness of the Atlantic Alliance. The issues which emerged from Saint Malo are, therefore, at the heart of the new European defence challenge.


The European Council meeting in Cologne in June 1999 has lent a 'European character' to the Franco-British declaration from Saint Malo. The Cologne summit conclusions stressed that the EU must develop the necessary capabilities to fulfil the objective of a common security and defence policy, and that the EU must have the capacity to act autonomously and be supported by credible military forces[12]. Furthermore, the EU's own capacity for analysis and intelligence should be strengthened. In this connection the German presidency suggested 'regular (or ad hoc) meetings of the General Affairs Council, as appropriate including Defence Ministers'. In addition they were planning to establish a permanent body in Brussels consisting of representatives with political-military expertise; an EU Military Committee consisting of Military Representatives making recommendations to the Political and Security committee and a EU Military Staff including a Satellite Centre .


The Cologne summit also agreed to redefine the Eurocorps, which is composed of forces from France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain, into a European crisis reaction corps directly connected to the CFSP. With regard to the role of the West European Union, the expected outcome was that it could disappear as an independent institution and that it could be integrated, partly or as a whole, into the EU. European security policy will then be developed through discussions between the EU and the United States inside NATO or through independent EU initiatives[14]. The content of the EU's security policy is still defined with reference to the 1992 Petersberg declaration. In other words, it is concerned with crisis management, peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.


Despite these changes and clarifications, the relationship between NATO and the EU still remains ambiguous. This is obvious if one compares the texts issued at NATO's Washington summit in April 1999 with the declarations from the EU summit in Cologne. In the NATO declaration, European use of NATO capabilities is still seen as dependent on acceptance by the Atlantic Council and the EU's security policy is presented in a way that suggests that it is only a supplement to NATO[15]. The Cologne summit, on the other hand, signalled ambitions about developing separate European resources and capabilities so that the EU can finally act independently of NATO.


In the space of few months, from Saint Malo to Cologne, the European Union has made more progress on common defence than during the previous forty years of the European construction. The pace of these developments is as striking as their seriousness and scope. Much more than a technical reaction to the circumstances of the Kosovo crisis, the decisions taken at Saint Malo and Cologne are on the one hand a reflection of fundamental political developments in most European countries: the conjunction of a United Kingdom that is more European, a France that is less anti-American, a Germany that is more sensitive to the very notion of national responsibility, and the evolving views in all countries of neutrality or the Union's role in the world, present for the first time the opportunity for major compromises on the European Union's political configuration. This body of converging circumstances should on the other hand allow the Union from now on to play its role as a comprehensive actor with the benefit of a complete range of instruments: from trade to diplomacy, from economy to defence and from humanitarian to military action.











The new security dimension


Whatever pressure events may bring to bear, the terms of reference for any co-operative security system will necessarily follow an intergovernmental pattern. Contrary to widespread opinion, much ground has however already been covered by Europe's oft-declared ambition to stand taller. Many dramatic developments - maybe decisively the Kosovo crisis - have contributed to pushing the EU to the fore on the security stage. So much, so that no one can any longer pretend not to notice that, slowly but surely, the Europeans are at last 'putting their act together' even in the 'second pillar' of their integration (Jones 1998).


The development of a foreign and security dimension to the EU has been dependent on two factors in particular: the first is the EU's relations to the United States and NATO and the second is the internal EU disagreement and insecurity about the general purpose of European integration. Traditionally, closer co-operation or integration on foreign and security policy has been connected to the idea of a Political Union (Rummel 1992). Hence, the issue has been difficult for those member states who were primarily interested in the economic dimensions of European integration, as well as for those who have been concerned with protecting national sovereignty from the intrusion of supranational institutions in Brussels. At the same time, the debate about the development of an EU foreign and security policy reflects conflicting views inside the EU on what kind of influence the United States should have on European affairs. This has meant that the dividing lines on EU's security and foreign policy co-operation have often been different from those in other policy areas (Nuttall 1992).


France has often played the role of the driving force in foreign and security policy, but has received far less enthusiastic support from Germany here than on other issues. This is primarily because of Germany's close ties to the United States in security and defence (Rummel 1996: 40-67). Great Britain has been particularly sceptical to the development of an independent security and defence role for the EU. This scepticism must be seen as a consequence partly of the country's close ties to the United States and partly as a consequence of British reservations about developing a European organisation with a strong political dimension. To the extent that Britain has supported the development of a foreign and security policy in the EU it has been on the condition that this policy will be formulated on the basis of consensus amongst member states and without interference from the Commission and the Parliament (Wyn 1996: 231-246).


The CFSP has changed both in terms of its institutions and in terms of the content of policy. The changes in the content of policy are fairly unambiguous. From concentrating exclusively on foreign policy, the CFSP now also discusses security and to a certain extent defence policy (Hurd 1994). This change is connected to broader developments in the international system. The main purpose of security policy is no longer seen to be to defend the territory of nation states from an external threat. It is expected that European security tasks in future will focus increasingly on non-territorial threats and operations in third countries. This change is evident when one looks at the EU's efforts to define its security role. The role of the EU is linked exclusively to these 'new' security tasks. The EU's purpose is not to become a military alliance in the traditional sense. However, this change is also evident inside NATO. Thus, the institutional changes have been less important than what was expected in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. Likewise, the institutional mechanisms of the CFSP have only been marginally adjusted. NATO continues to be an important security institution in Europe. At the same time, it is no longer the only security institution in Europe. The role of the EU, both independently and as a forum for co-ordinating a European position inside NATO is strengthened. This is a tendency that is likely to continue in the future.


What is perhaps most striking about the developments in EPC-CFSP in the 1990s are the extreme swings in the assessment of its future prospects. The optimism with regard to the strengthening of the CFSP in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, which was replaced by pessimism after the Amsterdam Treaty has, after the Saint Malo declaration, returned. Anyway both internal and external factors will influence the future development of the EU's security and defence policy. Assessments of which factors should be considered most important do however depend on what kind of process we consider the EU to be. They depend on what kind of driving forces that we see as most influential in the development of the CFSP (Lodge and Flynn 1998). It is possible to distinguish between two fundamentally different perspectives on political processes in the international system: a realist perspective and a cosmopolitan perspective. These should be seen as analytical models, not empirical descriptions of reality. Thus, they are 'ideal types' that provide different concepts allowing us to analyse different dimensions of foreign policy co-operation in the EU. If one restricts oneself to one of these basic perspectives, some dimensions of the EU's foreign policy are likely to be ignored, because we lack the concepts necessary to capture them. The first approach tends to see co-operation as interest driven whereas the second approach focuses on discourse and sees the increased co-operation as the product of the spread of supranational norms and identities. These two analytical models are thus likely to have diverging perceptions of the question of the resilience of the CFSP.


The time has come to reassemble ideas and initiatives at centre field, where the core concepts of the CFSP should now emerge as the indispensable premise of any European Security and Defence Identity.













Foreign and security policy as interest-driven


From the perspective of the first analytical model, policy is seen as driven by material self-interest. From a classical realist perspective, interests are defined in terms of power (Morgenthau 1948: 45-58). Here, the international system is seen to be composed of sovereign states that act on the basis of material self-interest, without reference to common norms, identities or values. The international system is defined as anarchical, in other words, there is no overarching authority to identify common rules. Order is considered to be maintained as a result of a balance of power rather than as a result of a common authority as the case is in domestic politics. What counts in the end is power, measured in material terms as economic or military capabilities, not an assessment of whether or not actions are normatively right or 'good'. International institutions are, therefore, not attributed any independent role in his perspective. Co-operation will only be possible if states face a common external threat, as they did during the Cold War, or if their national interests coincide. When their interests cease to coincide, co-operation will also disintegrate. When other groups of states emerge as more attractive in terms of serving the national interest, loyalty to the EU will disappear (Buzan 1991).

Many studies of the CFSP, although not always explicitly theoretical, implicitly rely on the basic assumptions of this perspective (Hill 1996, Pijpers 1991, Ifestos 1987). In these studies, a clear distinction is drawn between the classic 'community method' of pillar one and foreign policy co-operation in pillar two. The intergovernmental structure of the CFSP decision-making process is seen as a manifestation of the limits to foreign policy co-operation in the EU.


The CFSP is often criticised for having a slow decision-making system and for being incapable of acting decisively, in particular in situations of international crises, such as Kosovo, Bosnia or the Gulf war. The CFSP is often also seen to be incapable of letting words be followed by action: an often-quoted example is the Venice declaration of 1980 where the EU officially recognised the Palestinians' right to self-determination. This happened at a time when the United States was far from accepting such a principle. Yet, it was not followed up with concrete policy initiatives. The United States was still seen as the actor that determined the policy-agenda in the Middle East and any symbolic value of the EU declaration was not considered. The CFSP has also been criticised for failing to take the lead in European politics at the end of the Cold War. This role was filled by the United States, it is argued, not by the EU and its new Common Foreign and Security Policy. These difficulties and weaknesses with the CFSP can easily be understood with the help of interest based theories. The institutional network of the CFSP can from this perspective only be seen to reflect the interests of its member states. It can not be expected to put any limits on the foreign policy initiatives of the member states, to shape their interest or bring them to stick to the common framework if it collides with their own interest. However, it seems likely that EU membership will modify the unlimited effects of states' self-interest also within the foreign policy and security area.

Most importantly, interest-based perspectives can not explain why the CFSP occasionally succeeds, or why it exists at all. They do not explain why the CFSP has proven to be so durable. It becomes difficult from this perspective to understand the criticisms that emerged towards Germany after its decision to unilaterally recognise Croatia as a sovereign state. If one expects that the CFSP will not create any ties on member states and that states at all times will act according to their own interest, this kind of action should neither be perceived as surprising nor unacceptable, but rather as a legitimate and logical action.


The classical power politics perspective has been further elaborated upon and modified into the neo-realist and neo-liberal perspectives on international relations. A central difference with the power based theories is that from the neo-realist and neo-liberal perspectives, the different strategies of negotiation, the calculations of actors, also contribute to explain the outcome in international politics. In the older, or 'classical realist' perspectives, the focus is mostly on the power resources of actors. Negotiation strategies are usually not taken into consideration when foreign policy is analysed. Amongst themselves, neo-realists and neo-liberals disagree on the likelihood of co-operation. Both perspectives accept that the anarchical nature of the international system put particular constraints on co-operation. Yet, neo-realists consider international anarchy to represent a greater hindrance to inter-state co-ordination than the neo-liberals do. The two perspectives also disagree on whether or not states have a common interest in co-operating: the neo-realists consider states to be mostly interested in relative gains, whereas the neo-liberals stress states' interest in maximising their absolute gains. Nonetheless, when it comes to their basic assumptions about what are the central driving forces in international politics, the differences between these perspectives are small (Risse-Kappen 1995: 20-23). According to Risse-Kappen (1995: 26), neo-liberal institutionalism should not be regarded as part of the liberal paradigm. This 'co-operation under anarchy' perspective shares all realist core assumptions, but disagrees with structural realists on the likelihood of international co-operation among self-interested actors. Furthermore, their starting point, that material interests are the central driving forces in foreign policy, is one that they share with the classical realist perspective. Actors are seen to calculate rationally on the basis of their interests. Indeed, it has been suggested that the differences between the classical realists and the neo-realist liberals is principally one of methodology.


Neo-realist and neo-liberal perspectives have rarely been applied directly to the CFSP or the EU. Nonetheless, one of the dominant theories of European integration, neo-liberal institutionalism draws on elements from both these approaches. Neo-liberal institutionalists pay little attention to the CFSP, arguing that foreign policy co-operation in the second pillar is different in character from the first pillar. In other words, the idea of a fundamental distinction between high and low politics and a separation between the two pillars, based on differences in their decision-making system is maintained in some of the most influential present day theories of the EU. Hence, in terms of providing an alternative perspective from the classical realist position on the CFSP, these recent theories are of limited use. In order to highlight such issues, we need a different perspective on international politics altogether. This perspective takes as its starting point that the international system is more complex than what interest based theories assumes.



































2nd Chapter


ENLARGEMENT AND THE COMMON FOREIGN
AND SECURITY POLICY

Understanding the Common Foreign and Security Policy


Little attention has been paid to the relationship between enlargement and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union. Discussions about the widening of the EU largely refer to its implications for the Community pillar (the 'first pillar'), although, eastern enlargement also poses important challenges to the CFSP or 'second pillar' (Avery and Cameron 1998). Not only does it raise questions about the CFSP's ability to function effectively, but also, by redefining the EU's borders, it promises to introduce new issues and new tasks into the scope of the CFSP.

It has often been pointed out that the CFSP, as well as its predecessor European Political Co-operation, is 'poorly served by theory' (Holland 1991: 2). Scientists of international relations have not yet succeeded in developing concepts and theories that fully allow to understand foreign policy co-operation within the EU and the EU's role in the international system. Much of the literature on this dimension of European integration identifies itself as 'pre-theoretical' (Hill 1993). Also, the focus is often on the intergovernmental nature of the CFSP: it is seen, at best, as little more than the sum of the foreign policies of the Member States. In addition, given its limited capabilities in security and defence, the CFSP is considered to be much less influential in foreign affairs than individual member states. The failure of the CFSP to resolve the crisis in Yugoslavia gave renewed ammunition to its critics. The wave of optimism about the European Community's ability to forge a new and more influential place for itself at the international arena at the end of the Cold War died down. Although traditional security and defence capabilities were seen to matter less, the EU's dependence on the United States in situations of crisis did not seem to have declined. Furthermore, by 1995 NATO had started to develop the kind of collective security mechanisms that many had expected to see emerge within the EU framework. The more ambitious CFSP of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht had increased expectations of a strengthened performance in foreign policy (Hill 1993). What had previously been a relatively modest attempt at co-ordinating the foreign policies of EC states within EPC was supposed to develop into a common foreign and security policy for the new European Union in the context of the end of the Cold War. Nonetheless, the EU continued to be divided on foreign policy issues, and the development of a common, cohesive European foreign policy seemed to remain remote. Jacques Poos' exclamation on the eve of the Yugoslav war that the 'hour of Europe' had arrived, seemed mostly to indicate a considerable lack of realism in the EU's foreign policy ambitions.


If we draw exclusively on realist assumptions about international relations, the difficulties of the CFSP are unsurprising: in an anarchical world 'national interests' will inevitably clash and co-operation will remain the exception to the rule. However, there is also an increasing body of literature that points to the considerable influence exerted by the EU, if not in the international system, then at least in Europe. Despite the EU's obvious difficulties in handling international crises, it is often seen as a key force in the longer term reshaping of international politics in Europe after the end of bipolarity. The vast number of applicants wishing to join the EU is a further sign that external actors perceive the EU as an influential actor in the region. In other words, the empirical 'reality' does not seem to fit entirely with theories available in international relations literature. There is a risk that, in assessing the CFSP, the pendulum has swung too far the other way after the enthusiasm at the end of the Cold War. Political co-operation has actually proved extremely durable.


Allen and Smith, have emphasised the difficulty in studying Western Europe's international role as long as "the notion of a 'foreign policy' carries with it a conceptual framework which is inseparable from the state-centric view of world politics" (Allen and Smith 1991: 95). They claim that we tend to get stuck in this state-centric view when analysing European foreign policy, and therefore find it difficult to account for the growing significance of the EU's international role. They suggest that by using the concept of international 'presence', it is possible to study the impact of the EU in different policy areas of the international system, and to show that the EU 'has considerable structure, salience and legitimacy in the process of international politics' (Allen and Smith 1991: 116). Building on the notion of the EU's 'presence' in the international system, as well as Sjøstedt's (1977) analysis of the EC's international actorness, Hill has suggested that the EU is best seen as a system of external relations in which: "the Europeans represent a sub-system of the international system as a whole... a system which generates international relations - collectively, individually, economically, politically - rather than a clear-cut 'European foreign policy' as such" (Hill 1993: 120). This European sub system has three dimensions to which we should pay attention: the national foreign policies of the Member States, the CFSP and the 'external relations' of the first Community pillar. Such interpretations of the EU's international role are often based on 'non-rationalistic' assumptions about politics and international relations (Matlary 1997: 201-213). Rather than defining states as 'billiard-ball' actors whose interests are defined exogenously, and regarding the decision-making process within the EU as one of bargaining between conflicting interests, the possibility that states' interests are shaped through interaction is considered. This 'non-rationalistic' literature includes factors such as ideas, values and identities which are often set aside in the rationalist analytical tradition. It is suggested that states can gradually become socialised into a shared community of values. Applied to the EU, such approaches indicate that foreign policy making within the CFSP is a dynamic process where interests and objectives emerge as a result of interaction at the national, European and international level. Consequently, the clear distinction between the 'national' and the 'European' might gradually be blurred, even in the area of 'high politics'. A process of 'Europeanisation' of foreign policy in which shared norms and rules are gradually accumulated might be closer to describing accurately the CFSP than the image of rational bargaining leading to agreement on a policy of the lowest common denominator (Hill 1996).


Some evidence of a 'Europeanisation' of foreign policy can be found in the literature on national European foreign policies. Tonra (1997: 197) has found that, in the cases of Ireland, Denmark and Holland: "political co-operation improved the effectiveness, broadened the range and increased the capabilities of foreign policy making". Hill and Wallace (1996) refer to an 'engrenage effect' in foreign policy co-operation: they point out that the preparation of foreign policy now takes place in the context of European consultation and that, as a result, 'Officials and Ministers who sit together on planes and round tables in Brussels and in each others' capitals begin to judge «rationality» from within a different framework' (Hill and Wallace 1996: 12). A classic example would be the so-called 'co-ordination reflex' between Political Directors so often mentioned even in the early literature on EPC.

However, this does not mean that the CFSP is a common foreign policy in the sense prescribed by the Treaty of Maastricht. According to the Treaty, the CFSP shall be 'supported actively and unreservedly by its Member States in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity'. Furthermore, the CFSP is supposed to cover 'all areas of foreign and security policy'. Yet it would be naive to pretend other than that national foreign policies remain strong and that reaching a consensus, in particular in situations of crisis which require rapid responses, remains difficult. Identifying shared interests and reconciling different national foreign policy traditions is a challenge. Thus, this literature does not confirm traditional assumptions about integration. It does not see an automatic link between economic integration and the development of a common foreign policy. Neither does it suggest, in neo-functionalist fashion, that it is only a matter of time before control of foreign policy is moved from the national to the supranational level. It merely points out that it is possible to detect a gradual process of change even in foreign policy making. Furthermore, it suggests that we need to pay closer attention to the dynamic interaction between the national and the European levels in order to understand political co-operation. We do not know the end station of this process and we must reflect on the possibility that it may never lead to one single European foreign policy in the traditional sense of the word.


This literature is not directly concerned with enlargement. However, the different approaches are likely to lead us to different conclusions about the impact of enlargement on political co-operation. If one takes an intergovernmentalist perspective, it seems probable that enlargement will 'atomise' the CFSP (Graham and Cameron 1998). Successful inter-state bargaining is more difficult with twenty or twenty-five Member States than with fifteen. However, if one considers foreign policy-making within the EU to be a process where national and European levels interact and mutually influence each other, different conclusions may be reached. The neo-functionalist perspective does address the relationship between enlargement and foreign policy co-operation (Spence 1994). Schmitter (1996) uses the concept of externalisation to suggest that integration has negative effects on actors outside the EU, and that their application for membership should be seen as a direct response to a fear of exclusion from European co-operation. In turn, he expects increased membership to strengthen activities in external relations as a result of the new trade and diplomatic relationships brought into the EU's 'orbit' by the new Member States (Schmitter 1996). Hence, the concept of externalisation 'partially explains why non-members press the EC to act as a unit; what effects this outside charge has on the EC; and the outcome of EC foreign policy actions that are executed in response to outside pressure' (Ginsberg 1989: 25). As we shall see later, the notion of externalisation and spillover does seem to have some relevance for enlargement. One does nonetheless have to be careful to avoid the sense of inevitability of such developments. Whatever the external pressure to enlarge, it did not lead to a strengthening of the CFSP framework in the Amsterdam Treaty. Before looking more closely at this issue it is useful to examine how the enlargement process in itself is an important foreign policy instrument for the EU.










Enlargement as foreign policy


The eastward enlargement, or, the expansion of the European Union is one of the most important and difficult challenges facing Europe in the post-Cold War period and is likely to transform the political and economic landscape. Enlargement has, in fact, been at the heart of the European Community's (EC) identity from the start and the EU has defined itself as a 'widening' organisation in so far as any 'democratic nation' of Europe was a potential member. The acquis communautaire provides an important normative basis for expansion eastward,[16] although the current potential is qualitatively different in scope than past accessions, which have only involved a few countries at a time.


So far, the European Union has absorbed new members and more than doubled its membership from the original six signatories to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This has not been done without difficulties, but it has been done without radical changes to the institutional structures of the EU. Generally, the existing members have shared a common historical, political and economic culture and the framework of the EU has been able to accommodate the tensions which have inevitably existed. The accession of Austria, Sweden and Finland have challenged the EU but did not necessitate changes in the relationship between, and the structure of, the institutions by which it is governed. This will not be true for future enlargements of the Union and the smooth continuum witnessed so far, will not be possible in the future.

The question is of the utmost importance, because the EU enlargement was not clearly envisioned in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The EU had taken steps, with the Single European Act, the common market project of "Europe '92" and the Maastricht Treaty, to deepen European integration; many saw the potential of widening to a group of 'fragile democracies' in the East as undesirable if not destabilising. The decision to enlarge the European Union to the Eastern European Countries (EEC), which has effectively been taken, will therefore challenge the existing arrangements to a greater extent than any enlargement undertaken so far, and it seems far from certain that the existing institutional framework of the European Union will be able to meet this challenge unchanged. The way in which the EU handles the enlargement issue will have profound consequences not only for the many applicant states, but also for the EU itself as well as its neighbouring 'non-applicant' states. The risks involved in the enlargement process are well known to the EU. In fact "...the lengthy process of eastern and south-eastern enlargement is a prospect which is prompting a good deal of nervousness among practitioners". Not only does enlargement threaten to disturb the internal order of the EU, the new external borders that will follow from the expansion could also create new divisions on the European continent and thus foster instability in Europe at large (Wallace H. 2001).


Enlargement of the European Union is, in itself, a form of EU foreign policy. It puts the EU in a position to shape large parts of applicant states' domestic and foreign policies. Traditional principles of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states seem to be set aside in this process. At the same time, because enlargement aims at including external actors, it is ultimately only a passing phase in a longer process which 'domesticates' what were previously foreign relations. In turn, enlargement is often then seen to threaten the very foundations of the policy that made it possible. As Karen Smith notes, after the Eastern enlargement it is possible that: "the logic of integration will stall, having produced the very policy that now renders uncertain its future vitality" (Smith K. 1995: 404).


Despite the fact that it was only officially put on the EU's agenda at the Copenhagen European Council summit in 1993, the issue of enlargement became the predominant theme in the EU's policies towards Central and Eastern Europe immediately after the end of the Cold War. As the communist regimes collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe, the new governments made the 'return to the West' one of their principal foreign policy objectives. Assessments of the EU's policies in response to these demands diverge. To many, EU policies towards Central and Eastern Europe confirm the general failure of the EU's foreign policy and demonstrate the EU's inability to play a central and positive role in constructing a 'new' Europe in the aftermath of the Cold War (Wallace W. 2001). Such criticisms come in particular from the applicant states in Central and Eastern Europe but also from the academic community in the West (Kramer 1993, Allen 1998). Critics point to the EU's initial reluctance to accept the idea of enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe, and to the fact that, after accepting it in principle, the EU dithered in the face of demands for a timetable for the opening of membership negotiations. Early versions of the Europe Agreements have been criticised for focusing too much on protecting EU markets and not enough on helping Central and East European economies improve their competitiveness (Kramer 1993). Changes have since been made to these agreements, but restrictions to trade in so-called sensitive sectors such as textile and agriculture still exist, and are often taken as indications of the EU's reluctance to adapt its present structures and policies to a new political context. Perhaps unfairly, the EU and its Member States are accused of being more interested in ensuring the continued success of economic integration within the existing EU than in expanding its benefits to the rest of Europe, and of merely reacting to external events rather than developing a clear strategy towards Central and Eastern Europe.


Others see the EU's policies towards Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 as evidence of the EU's ability to construct a common, coherent external policy in situations where it shares common interests (K. Smith 1995, Pelkmans and Murphy 1994). They highlight the importance of the Commission in formulating an external policy for the EU as a whole, as well as the interplay between the CFSP pillar and the external relations of pillar one. According to Karen Smith, EU policies towards Central and Eastern Europe are not the result of agreement on a 'minimum common denominator'. Rather, by representing the middle ground, the Commission successfully upgraded the Community interest in the EU's policy towards Central and Eastern Europe, thus partly confirming neo-functionalist expectations about a connection between external pressure and further integration (Smith K. 1995: 399). The G7 decision in 1989 to give the European Commission the task of co-ordinating Western aid to Poland, Hungary and later also the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, is often considered as the event that propelled the Commission forward in this area. It certainly led to a considerable strengthening of the Commission's international status. In the words of Nuttall: "for the first time the Commission was a foreign policy actor in its own right" (Nuttall 1996: 142). In turn, this helped reinforce the Commission's role inside the EU and gave it a central role in developing the EU's own policy responses to the rapidly changing political landscape of Central and Eastern Europe. The difficulties that the EU has experienced in developing coherent, long term strategies towards Central and Eastern Europe are logical, given the general surprise in the West at the collapse of communism and the need for time to readjust to new political realities. In this sense, the problems encountered by the EU in relations with Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War are not radically different from those that national foreign policies had to grapple with.

The divergent assessments of the EU's policy towards Central and Eastern Europe are in part the result of conflicting views on how the EU should balance the choice between what it ought to do and what it is able to do. The Commission argues that enlargement is both costly and time consuming and that not only the EU but also the applicant states would lose out economically as well as politically by starting the process too soon. Yet, at the same time, the key role played by the Commission in moving the enlargement issue forward on the EU's agenda should not be underestimated. The Commission has not, however, been able effectively to communicate its views to prospective Member States and to convince them of the legitimacy of its approach. Furthermore, Member States have given somewhat contradictory signals to Central and Eastern Europe about their positions on enlargement. This has at least contributed to create the large gap that now exists between the way in which the applicant states perceive the EU's initiatives and the way in which the EU itself views the same issues. This is a general problem in the EU's external policies. It has been captured in Christopher Hill's (1993: 305-328) concept of a 'capabilities-expectations gap' in the EU's foreign policy. In its relations with Eastern Europe the EU has a tendency to talk up its capabilities in foreign policy, and thus to create expectations that it can not live up to. This reinforces the heavy historical baggage of East-West relations in Europe: the image of the West abandoning Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War remains powerful and continues to colour East European perceptions of Western policies.


On the positive side, the experience in Central and Eastern Europe does seem to suggest that the economic and political dimensions of the EU's foreign activities are better integrated than is often assumed. Finding institutional mechanisms to ensure coherence and consistency between the Community's external relations and the CFSP were a central concern in the negotiations leading to the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. It is only recently that Member States have become more relaxed about the possibility of using external relations instruments to support the CFSP. Relations with Eastern Europe have principally been handled through the Europe Agreements. They are so-called mixed agreements which means that the first pillar rather than the second pillar has most of the initiative. However, the CFSP has also been involved in the development of the EU's policies towards Central and Eastern Europe through the Stability Pacts. As one of the first so-called 'joint actions' of the CFSP, aimed at promoting peaceful mechanisms for dispute settlement, the Stability Pacts became a means of bringing new life into the CFSP after what was considered a dismal performance in the former Yugoslavia. Originally ridiculed as a futile attempt at conference diplomacy with little real impact, the Stability Pacts have since been considered a fairly successful enterprise (Sedelmeier and Wallace 1996).


To what extent is this experience applicable to other areas of the EU's foreign relations, Karen Smith suggests that Eastern Europe is a special case where the production of a common policy with supranational elements was feasible due to Eastern Europe's geographic proximity, the sense of a shared history between East and West in Europe and a belief that the EU has a particular responsibility for events in Central and Eastern Europe. These particular circumstances can not easily be reproduced in other areas of the EU's external activities. Michael Smith (1998: 77-94) has given this a different interpretation by suggesting that the CFSP is in fact marginal to the EU's external policies. Against the backdrop of the wider process of globalisation, the 'special status' of foreign policy is being reduced. What matters increasingly in the international system are economic and trade issues. Consequently, according to Smith, it is through its external economic relations that the EU develops its presence in the international system and it is here, rather than at the CFSP, that we should be looking when examining the EU's external role.












The challenge of enlargement: internal and external actors


The prospect of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe presents the CFSP with a number of challenges. Developing a cohesive foreign policy will be far more difficult at twenty or twenty-five than at fifteen. As a result of their geographic location and different historical experiences, the new Member States in Central and Eastern Europe will bring new foreign policy perspectives and interests into the EU. Together with different foreign policy interests also come new neighbours and different relations with third states.16


We do not as yet know enough about how interests are formed at the EU level, and we need to reflect further on how the interests and ideas of new Member States affect, and are affected by, the overall dynamic of foreign policy co-operation. Experience from previous enlargements seems to suggest that Member States' perceptions of their interests undergo change as a result of membership. Consequently, taking presumed 'national interests' as a starting point for examining possible effects of enlargement on the CFSP may not be satisfactory. Before the 1995 enlargement to Sweden, Austria and Finland, there was much concern about the consequences of the inclusion of three neutral states for the EU's plans to develop a common security policy. The expectation that the inclusion of these states would prevent further initiatives by the EU in the security field was, in part, misguided. Sweden and Finland contributed to the strengthening of the security dimension in the 1996-97 IGC by proposing the inclusion of the Petersberg tasks into the new Treaty. For these states the meaning of neutrality has changed with the end of the Cold War and with their membership in the EU. In Finland, the status of neutrality was seen as irreconcilable with EU membership given the nature of the EU and its implicit assumptions of solidarity between Member States. In Sweden similar debates on the country's traditional stance of neutrality have emerged, with former Prime Minister Carl Bildt supporting the idea of Swedish membership in NATO. However, if the CFSP were to move towards a 'common defence' these states might still have difficulties.


Security issues are also likely to come into focus as a result of enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. Security concerns are often cited as an important factor in motivating these states to join the EU. What this will mean for the EU's ambitions to develop a security and defence policy is nonetheless uncertain. It is possible that membership in the EU as it stands is considered a sufficient security guarantee, and that there will be no particular desire on the part of the Central and East European states to strengthen European security policy. It is equally possible that the Central and East European states - in particular those who will also become members of NATO - will see the United States and NATO as the most useful guarantors of security in Europe. In terms of increased interaction with third states, enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe will bring relations with Russia and its former Republics to the fore. So far, the EU has only taken limited initiatives towards Russia and the former Soviet Republics, concentrating instead on relations with applicant states. Despite their focus on relations with the West, the Central and East European states' connection with their Eastern neighbours remain an inescapable factor in their external relations, and this will be brought into the EU.


Even if the EU were to succeed in strengthening the institutional network of the CFSP, this may not in itself be enough to ensure a common foreign policy - and particularly not in a larger EU. The CFSP already has difficulties identifying common interests, and it is not at all certain that institutional provisions, on their own, would suffice to change this. A coherent foreign policy would also require some basis in a common identity. In this respect the challenge of the Eastern enlargement is larger than with previous enlargements that took place in the context of fixed political borders: Europe was neatly divided into two opposing military blocs. Comfortably within one camp, certain fundamentals, such as the EU's identity as 'Western' and the geographical limits to the EU's extension, were unproblematic. As the EU enlarges eastwards, it will contribute to draw new institutional, political and economic boundaries in Europe. The EU will find itself at the front-line in the on-going process of redefining the structures of the international system after the end of the Cold War. The idea that enlargement is simply a matter of moving the borders of the West further East will not necessarily be helpful. There is a risk that the new borders of the EU will be more fragile and contested than what they have previously been. There may also be disappointment amongst those that remain outside. Dealing with this issue will be one of the principal tasks of the EU's external policies. The challenge is no doubt partly 'material' in the sense that it will be important to develop economic and policy instruments to strengthen relations across the new borders. Nonetheless, the perennial issues of 'what is Europe' and who the EU can legitimately claim to represent will inevitably arise. They go to the core of the EU's efforts to develop a foreign policy. Answers to questions such as what type of borders will the EU have, how permeable will they be in economic and human terms, and how will they be perceived on the outside, should ideally emerge as a result of systematic debate, but nonetheless, the EU's tradition for incrementalism seems likely to prevail.

The CFSP, enlargement and the transformation of European political space


According to Allen the CFSP suffers from an inherent contradiction: "the determination to preserve national foreign policy is ultimately at odds with the ambition to create a European foreign policy" (Allen 1998: 64). He suggests that two 'cultures' compete for control of European foreign policy - one representing the desire to preserve national autonomy in foreign policy (institutionalised in the Council) and one aiming to create a common foreign policy (represented institutionally by the Commission). The possibilities of strengthening the EU's performance in international relations while maintaining what is essentially an intergovernmental framework are considered limited. Nonetheless, neither the Maastricht nor the Amsterdam Treaty made serious attempts at moving beyond intergovernmentalism. The changes introduced to the institutions can be characterised as further 'tinkering' with an essentially intergovernmental framework. Against this backdrop, logic would suggest that the CFSP will become more ineffective after the Eastern enlargement, and that it might even be brought to a complete standstill. The struggle to identify shared interests in foreign policy will be even more complicated at twenty or twenty-five than at fifteen. Likewise, the basis for a common 'identity' will be further diluted.


We have suggested that the relationship between enlargement and the CFSP is more complex than what is suggested by the widening-deepening dichotomy. There are also indications of change in European foreign policy that cannot be captured by concentrating exclusively on the institutional characteristics of the CFSP, and which suggest that enlargement does not have to atomise political co-operation. One dimension to the changes taking place in European foreign policy is what Allen (1998: 41-58) has referred to as the process of 'Brusselisation' of European foreign policy. Although foreign policy remains in the control of the nation state and has not been transferred in any substantial way to the European Commission, it has become more difficult for the foreign ministries of the Member States to control the foreign policy process. Foreign policy is increasingly made in Brussels, by national representatives. This gradual transfer of decision-making from national capitals to Brussels has developed in parallel with efforts in the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam to increase cohesion between the first and the second pillar. One consequence has been that rivalries have developed between the Political Directors (who traditionally deal with the CFSP) and the Permanent Representatives. In terms of enlargement, this tendency towards Brusselisation suggests that centrifugal forces within the EU are quite strong and that the foreign policies of new member states are likely to undergo important changes after enlargement, rather than that the CFSP will break down.


Without the corresponding development of a shared identity, the 'Brusselisation' of foreign policy is unlikely to lead to a cohesive foreign policy. In this area, the signals are mixed. There is no European foreign policy identity. Nevertheless, the identities of Europe's 'nation states' seem increasingly ambiguous. Laffan (1996: 82-101) has suggested that issues of identity have re-emerged at three levels in Europe: within states, in the European Union and at the wider European level. It is often argued that the nation state is too small to handle the consequences of economic globalisation on its own. According to Laffan's thesis there is a parallel development according to which the nation state is too large for issues of identity, that now emerge at regional level. We must at least reflect on the possibility that the very fundament of national foreign policy is changing. Still, it is not clear that this will lead to a transfer of loyalty to 'Europe' or to an effective 'European' identity that may underpin the CFSP. At the height of the war in Yugoslavia, public opinion called for Europe to 'do something' to stop the war, thus suggesting a view, in the public at large, of the EU as a community of values with a right and duty to take initiatives in foreign policy. At the same time, the support for further European integration seems fragile and the domestic foundations for a European foreign policy are limited (Forster and Wallace 1996: 411-435).

Traditionally, the EU's external identity has been built around the notion of a civilian power. According to Waever (1996), the efforts to build a European identity are now given a slightly different meaning. He argues that efforts to build a European identity are increasingly being linked to the issue of security. This, according to Waever gives a sense of urgency to integration: its alternative - fragmentation - is presented as destructive to the whole European project (Waever 1996: 123).


Efforts to build an identity based on the idea of integration as a process of securitisation seem close to the perspectives of the applicant states in Central and Eastern Europe. In other words, enlargement will not necessarily hinder efforts to build a European identity on this basis. They might, nonetheless, provoke less desirable counter-effects outside the EU. After enlargement, one of the principal tasks of the CFSP and the EU's external relations will be to develop external policies that do not create a sense of exclusion in the rest of Europe.


It may still be that enlargement will provoke new divisions between existing Member States and thus lead to changes and even blockages within the CFSP. Françoise de la Serre (1996: 32) has pointed to such concerns in France. She argues that there are two 'contradictory fears' in French EU policy: "seeing Germany dominating the Community and distancing herself from the EC in order to have a very active policy in Central and Eastern Europe". The Stability Pact, or the Balladur plan as it was originally known, is often seen as an expression of such concerns and as a French attempt to regain the initiative in policies towards Eastern Europe, in particular in comparison with Germany.


The CFSP is unsettled. It is being 'constructed' against the backdrop of a broad and complex process of change in European inter-state relations. Inside the EU, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish between domestic and foreign policy. Increasingly large parts of what was traditionally under the control of foreign ministries is now taken care of by 'technical' ministries. In this context, it is often suggested that a system of 'multilevel governance' is developing in Europe, but such analyses are rarely extended to cover the EU's foreign relations. It is nonetheless difficult to imagine that the CFSP can totally remain immune to the broader process of Europeanisation. Although, with enlargement, more states will be brought into the CFSP, the process of foreign policy co-operation is unlikely to break down altogether.


This chapter has highlighted the different ways in which the CFSP is assessed, both by policy-makers and in the academic literature. It has suggested that although Europe does not have a common foreign policy in the traditional sense, foreign policy co-operation within the EU has a significant impact both on the foreign policies individual member states and on the world outside. Consequently, enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe certainly promises to influence the content of the EU's external policies and raise important challenges to the CFSP for example in terms of how to manage relations with new neighbours, but it does not need to be seen as a threat to the continued functioning of the CFSP. Indeed, the applicant states themselves have an interest in keeping the CFSP going.





3rd Chapter


A FUTURE SECURITY AGENDA FOR EUROPE



European Security: myth or reality?


European security policy, its security structures and institutions, have for the last several years been in a state of rapid transformation. The many moves by the Western nations in the field of security and defence, at times contradictory, must be seen in the context of these changes and in the context of the need to adapt to developments in the international environment taking place at breathtaking speed.


The quest for more communality in security and defence matters among the Western European nations is mainly motivated by the desire to take on a leadership role in European security affairs at a time when the two superpowers of the Cold War have either disappeared, or - as in the case of the USA - seemingly have renounced the claim to be the "primus inter partes" of the Western camp. The end of the Cold War, however, has not only increased the possibility to establish independent and European common foreign and security policy, but at the same time has also decreased the ability to actually reach this goal (Eliassen 1998). The difficulties to establish a  European security policy has, on the one hand, given its NATO allies in Europe more room to manoeuvre politically and, among other things, has opened the way to a deepening of European security integration, independent from, but still allied to the USA, more or less in line with the "Gaullist" perspective of the 1960s. On the other hand, the evaporation of the threat from a presumed aggressive Soviet Union has deprived the would-be European partners in defence of any view as to what are the most urgent challenges to security. So, while the Western European nations are continuing to work in order to set up the structures for a foreign and defence policy, its very foundation - a common security perspective - is still lacking.


As the title of this paragraph indicates, the analytical point of departure is that there may be, on the one hand, a "myth" of European security integration and, on the other side, are political "realities" that to some extent contradict the "mythological" version of the issue at hand. Building on this supposition, the short analysis of this third chapter will attempt to investigate the conflict between the ideal of European integration in the sphere of security and the political realities as they emerge in terms of more or less conflicting views on the central security and defence issues of the last years. The analysis will, furthermore, focus on the continuity and change as well as to the future challenges and developments that the European security agenda will have to face in the next future.











One security policy or several?


Considering past experience there are grounds to question whether exists any viable European security alternative. The fundamental preference for a future European security integration, not directly linked to NATO and not based upon an American security guarantee, is based on a common European security system, which is strong enough to compel the Europeans to act in concert to achieve common goals (Brotons 2000). Events since 1991 have, regrettably, proved otherwise. Foremost on the list of failures is the mismanagement of the break-up of the Former Yugoslavia. The CFSP, established by Maastricht, immediately proved itself inadequate in dealing with the crisis in eastern Europe. This failure marked, therefore, a turning point in the development of the international system not only because the West was improper in freeing itself from the constraints of 'realpolitik' and UN legitimacy, but also because it demonstrated the limits of the still diversified European security interests. All the way from the question of whether or not to recognise the emerging new states, to the issue of military intervention in Bosnia, the lifting of the arms embargo or to the recent debate on withdrawal of UN troops, European Union members have been spectacularly divided and unprepared to face these tragic events (Petersen 1993).

In addition to this, European nations did not frequently 'trust' each other. The reluctance to act and possibly to pay the costs in Bosnia and elsewhere, spelt out the message that a purely European security system would not be credible. What the Bosnian crisis showed was, therefore, that because of this inherent weakness, Europe would have continued to lean on the NATO - and consequently on the US - for its security. So, paradoxically, the firepower of the United States remained the principal support for the European Union's pretensions to world-power status.


A factor that cuts across party lines is the question of what role the United States should play in the 21st century world (Bluth, Kirchner and Sperling 1995). There are those who believe that the United States has no choice but to assume the mantle of global leadership that fell on its shoulders at the end of the Cold War. They might disagree on exactly how to pursue this role, but would not differ on the fact that the United States is 'indispensable' to the stability of the international system. This perspective also acknowledges that the United States cannot do everything, and so effective allies and alliances are absolutely critical to US interests. This approach could be called the 'US leads with allies'.

On either side of this perspective there are diverging views. In a view that could be called the 'do it our way', there are those who believe that the United States should pursue its global role with only minimal reference to the views of other nations or the role of international institutions and multilateral co-operation.

In a contrary perspective, in what might be called the 'you do it' school, some scientists argue for a much more minimalist US global leadership role, allowing the nation to tend to its domestic problems while allies and others take care of their own security problems.

The first perspective sees a potentially important place for European contributions in alliance with the United States. From this point of view, how Europe organises its defence role is less important than the quality and quantity of the contribution, and the fact that it is effectively synchronised with US efforts. Some in the 'do it our way' school are inclined to see the European security system as a threat to US pursuit of its national objectives overseas; others may simply see it as unlikely to challenge US primacy. The 'you do it' school clearly hopes that European efforts will allow the United States, in effect, to take European security for granted and devote far fewer budget dollars to its Europe-related military role.


Therefore a truly European security policy is, according most of the international doctrine, not likely to emerge for many years. Unless and until the members of the European Union have achieved something approaching political union, a stable European security system will, in fact, remain under NATO hegemony and subject to the wide range of perceptions of national interest that exist among current and potential EU members (Heisbourg 1999). The US should, therefore, continue the process of handing over Balkan operations to the European members of NATO, but should also insist that the operations remain within NATO frame of reference under predominantly European leadership to demonstrate that a European pillar need to be constructed outside the Alliance in order to allow Europe more room for authority and leadership in security policy.

















Federalist or intergovernmental policy


The obvious answer to the problem of strengthening European security integration is to strengthen the supranational character of the EU in the sphere of security and defence. Evidence that this is exactly what is being thought in certain quarters, is to be found in a recent report commissioned by the European Union and prepared by a panel of 14 government officials and private experts which states that: "European security landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last five years but the European Union's institutional structure is stuck in the past. (...) The European Union must assume a role in foreign and security policy equal to that of its authority in the economic sphere".

The recommendations of the report are, among other things, that the operational responsibilities of NATO's Military Committee should be replaced by an "invigorated" WEU, and that consultation among national capitals on approval of military intervention, should be transferred to a body of the WEU to be decided by a majority vote. Working on the 'functionalist' presumption that integration is self-supporting and tends to expand to new area once set in motion, these proposals seem perfectly rational, but restricted by the limitations set by the insistence on national sovereignty on security issues, such a development will most likely be extremely hard to come by. So, while this move would solve today's problems in co-ordinating European security policy, such a 'federalist leap' goes much too far for today's EU-members to accept. Predictably, UK (former) defence minister Malcolm Rifkin , affirmed that: "La politique de défence européenne doit rester intergouvernementale, parce que nous parlons d'envoyer nos jeunes soldats dans des pays où leur vie peut être en danger. On attend dans chaque pays que cela soit decidé par le gouvernement et les parlements nationaux".


Even though the goal of a common security system remains in place, European security co-operation will probably remain intergovernmental and dependent upon the framework of NATO for the foreseeable future. On the other side, the European pillar will have to become more integrated and less dependent on Washington with the lessening of American contributions to the defence of Europe and the parallel increase in European security ambitions. The problem of course, as pointed to above, is that this development is by no means automatic or anything to be taken for granted. Anyway, the field is still open. Whereas a common security system among fifteen is extremely unlikely, perhaps a solution involving only a few may be possible. This would make security policy not common any longer, but instead it raises the perspective of a Europe that move toward unity at variable speeds. What will be the consequences of such a development one can only speculate about, but should it become a manifest political reality it would signal the renouncement of the ambition of building a true European security system encompassing all of the EU/NATO countries.






Continuity and change in the European security agenda


The changes to the specifications of security should not be seen as the exclusive result of the end of the Cold War. They must be understood in the context of broader changes in the European system of states (Baldwin 1997: 5-26). Also, these "alternative approaches" to security were not new with the end of the Cold War. They constituted the basis on which for example the Helsinki process (now the OSCE) was launched in the early 1970s. However, it was only with the end of the Cold War that these ideas gained a wider acceptance (Van Eekelen 1998).


A principal consequence of these broader changes to the international system is that the privileged status of the state is challenged. With these challenges to the state the very basis upon which security policy has been built is also questioned. It is possible to note three conditions that illustrate the internal and external challenges to the state. Firstly, the emergence of new issues at the international political agenda in Europe. Following from this, the conventional hierarchy of policy issues that gives priority to security and defence issues also seems to be abandoned. The second condition is the emergence of new transitional, supranational, economic, political and security actors in addition to the state, at the European level. What many of these actors have in common is that they do not have a territorial base and that they act without reference to a specific national interest. A consequence of this change is that it has become more difficult for the state to control economic and political activities across national borders. Various groupings may, to varying degrees, seek to defend their interest through European institutions outside the nation state. The third condition is the strengthening of a normative and legal dimension in the international system. In a complex international system characterised by interdependence, order is the result of a network of agreements and international institutions and not exclusively of a balance of power. Such networks of international institutions cover a wide spectre of themes from environmental issues and human rights to defence issues. As a consequence, decisions on international issues are no longer left exclusively in the hands of national governments. Norms and rules at the international level do increasingly influence state behaviour and set standards for appropriate behaviour both between states and within states.

These challenges to the state constitute an opportunity to (re-) open the questions of the basis on which security policy should be formulated. When the referent object of security - the nation state - can no longer be taken as a given, the legitimacy of a security policy that relies exclusively on national security is also questionable. Hence, the question of the basis on which we should develop European security policy - which interests, values, norms should be promoted and protected - comes to the fore. The normative dimension to security policy becomes visible.

It must, however, be added that although most agree that European security is changing, there is considerable uncertainty in assessments of the extent of change to the conception of security as well in the evaluation of the implications of such a change. A sense of security or insecurity is subjective to a large extent. An important question thus becomes the direction in which policy-makers chose to take the issue. To summarise, security policy in Western Europe now seems to hold three dimensions: the first dimension is the traditional conception of security and defence policy where the purpose is to defend the territory of a nation state or a group of states from a clearly identified external military threat (Howorth and Menon 1997). The second dimension considers the idea of mutual interdependence between states. Thus, national security is seen to depend on overall international stability and respect for international norms. With this dimension the focus in security and defence policy shifts towards non-territorial security threats. Sources of insecurity are often not considered linked to other states but to issues such as ethnic conflicts, international crime and terrorism. In turn this leads to a discussion of the legitimacy of use of military means in situations which are not concerned with defending national territory. The third dimension points to social and economic imbalances, humanitarian crises, and environmental disasters as larger security challenges than military threats. The tendency in the European security agenda, as it has been emphasised in the first chapter, has been to move away from the first dimension of territorial defence and towards the third dimension of an enlarged security concept.


The collective European security agenda: future developments


It is a truism to observe that if 'security' is placed above everything else, fundamental principles of democracy and respect for human rights can easily be jeopardised. As we know, reference to the primacy of security has, and still is, used as a mean to repress dissent. This means that introducing an enlarged security concept could be a mixed blessing. Turning new issues, for example issues of immigration, into questions of security is obviously problematic. Such initiatives can easily spill over into other dimensions of domestic politics such as treatment of minorities, asylum and immigration policies. The net result might be to create internal enemies and have these replace the external enemies.


The EU's aim of developing "an area of freedom, security and justice" represents serious risks of impeding on the individual liberties of the citizens of Europe (Monar 2000: 129-147). It may also lead to the creation of a fortress Europe and thus to higher insecurity for non-citizens of third country nationals through strict asylum and immigration policies as well as visa-regimes. These individuals may also be subject to unequal treatment within the EU. Furthermore the arguments used to justify European integration more generally also rely to an unreasonably large extent on a security argument. It is in other words implied that the security argument is deliberately used to ensure the success of a political process favoured by those in power. Political and economic issues are redefined in terms of security in order to underline their urgency or their particular importance. Hence, Ole Waever has suggested that the process of domesticating security in Europe is being used as an instrument to construct a European political identity with the EU at its core. He argues that "Europe" is built "through a peculiar security argument. Europe's past of wars and divisions is held up as the other to be negated, and on this basis it is argued that "Europe" can only be if we avoid renewed fragmentation." (Waever 1996: 103-132). Such observations have led to the suggestion that it should be an aim in itself to avoid in so far as possible to define issues as security issues.


However, returning to a "narrow" definition of security is not in itself enough. Or to put it differently, it is not the enlarged security concept or the domesticating of security that is the problem. What matters are the basis on which security policy is developed and the purposes that security policies are supposed to fulfil both domestically and internationally. What is taking place in Europe is a change in terms of how the West European nation states respond to these questions. The nation state has become woven into a complex network of dependency with other nation states as well as transnational actors and supranational institutions (Zürn 2000: 183-221). As a consequence of this, it is not only the capacity of the sovereign state to be autonomous that is challenged, but the privileged status of the state - institutionalised through the principle of sovereign equality - that is at stake. This means that the traditional role of security policy as a policy that aims to uphold the principle of external sovereignty also comes into question.

If we consider political processes exclusively as processes of competition for power and actors as interested only in maximising self-interest the interpretation would nonetheless be that there are few "real" changes to security in Europe and that an emphasis on an enlarged security concept only reflects a change of strategy by the "real" powers in Europe. If we instead define politics as a system with rights and duties that place additional requirements on actors than simply the one of satisfying self-interest the interpretation will be different. Here one would underline the role of laws, principles and processes of deliberation within an institutionalised system. Such a model of politics relies on a conception of rationality where actors are seen as rational when they are able to justify and explain their actions, and not only when they seek to maximise their own interests. A further important assumption for this perspective is that actors are not just self-interested but reasonable. This is indeed a condition for the functioning of liberal democracy, where citizens are expected to be able to distinguish between different forms of justification for policy-choices and to assess which of them are acceptable and which are not. The question then is whether or not such a definition of politics as a system with rights and duties is suitable also at the international level in Europe (Wessel 1998).


The potential for such developments seems stronger today than previously because of the high degree of institutionalisation at the supranational level. Traditionally, international law was not seen as an instrument that should protect individuals from abuses of power but as an instrument that would guarantee the sovereign control of the state over a specific territory. With the strengthening of the United Nations, the principles of human rights have gained more force in international politics in general. However, unless these principles become positive legal rights it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that they only reflect the self-interest of the most powerful: "Things look different when human rights not only come into play as a moral orientation for one's own political activity, but as rights which have to be implemented in a legal sense. Human rights possess the structural attributes of subjective rights which, irrespective of their purely moral content, by nature are dependent on attaining positive validity within a system of compulsory law." (Habermas 1999: 270). A move in this direction is particularly visible in Europe. European states have, through the EU but also through the Council of Europe, moved further than most states in terms of establishing international organisations that demand a committed international co-operation between sovereign states. The EU has developed common legal system with a higher status than national law.


The expectation of legitimisation of political choices vis à vis "the other" is therefore particularly strong in a European context. National choices are more visible at the international level. In addition, national choices concern the other directly. There are now agents outside the nation state that can sanction illegitimate abuses of power and that citizens can appeal to if national decisions seem unacceptable. This is visible both in the EU's charter and in the European human rights. Hence human rights are not just moral categories, but also positive legal rights. It is expected of European states today that they respect human rights and basic civil and political rights (Zürn 2000). In such a context security policy increasingly becomes an instrument to uphold the law rather than an instrument to defend self-interest in a system of anarchy. Respect for democracy and human rights become conditions for security.


It has been suggested, in the first chapter of this research, that the changes in the European political system open up for the possibility of rethinking the basis on which security policy is formulated. During the Cold War the security policies of West European nation states were primarily based on what David Held has defined as pragmatic considerations (Holland 1987: 182). Bipolarity and the need for a balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was taken as a given. This situation was not necessarily considered satisfactory from an ideal normative perspective, however, it was accepted as inevitable. Indeed the assumption was that the situation could not be any different.

With the combined effects of the end of the Cold War and the increased influence of supranational institutions, the political context is changed. What were pragmatic responses during the Cold War might not be pragmatic responses in this different political context. To change established policies is however not self-evident. Vested interests in maintaining status quo may be strong. Furthermore, large institutions such as states are often reluctant to undertake important processes of change. Hence, although there seems to be a rational consensus around the idea that security policy should be built on a different basis, there is no guarantee that reason will prevail.


Hence, it has not been suggested in this research that competition for power and conflict of interests do not matter in politics. Such a suggestion would be naive. However, it would be equally unrealistic to assume that an analysis based only on these premises can capture political processes in all their complexities. What has been suggested here then is that security policy can be seen as an expression of a particular view, at a particular time, of how political relations should be organised. And furthermore, that this particular view is now different from what it was in the period called the 'Cold War'. The new political context suggests that those exercising power also at an international level need to refer to a legal and rational basis for their decisions. The continued predominance of this view will depend on how the West Europeans go about building and expanding their collective security institutions.





New challenges facing the European security system


It was in the space of a year, from Saint Malo to Helsinki, that the European Union has made more progress on common security than during the previous forty years of European construction. The pace of these developments is as striking as their seriousness and scope. Much more than a technical reaction to the circumstances of the Kosovo crisis, the decisions taken in Saint Malo, Cologne and Helsinki are, on the one hand, a reflection of fundamental political developments in most European countries: the conjunction of a United Kingdom that is more 'European', a France that is less 'anti-American', a Germany that is more 'sensitive' to the very notion of national responsibility and the evolving views in all countries of neutrality or the Union's role in the world, present for the first time the opportunity for major compromises on the European Union's political configuration. This body of converging circumstances should, on the other hand, allow the Union from now on to play its role as a comprehensive actor with the benefit of a complete range of instruments: from trade to diplomacy, from economy to defence and from humanitarian to military actions.


Of course the list of challenges that the Fifteen will collectively have to face in the coming years is impressive. None the less, the drawing up of guiding principles for meeting these challenges does not seem to be something that is out of reach. Depending on the subject at issue, the main challenges could be stated as follows: 'co-ordination essential and subordination unacceptable': the establishing of relations between the Union and NATO will without doubt be one of the most delicate issues to be settled for the maintenance of transatlantic harmony. The Union cannot see its status reduced to that of NATO subcontractor any more than the Alliance can be treated as a secondary organisation in matters of European security. If the United States is earnest in its wish to share the burden of crisis management, it will have to acknowledge the European Union's political autonomy. If the Europeans wish to act in partnership with the US, it is from within the Alliance that they will be able to exert the greatest influence.

'Discrimination prohibited and differentiation legitimate': since all the European countries are involved in the future of the Continent, all must be able to participate in the European Union's military activities. But because the Union is at the same time something other than a crisis-management organisation, associating the NATO non-EU members with the EU's common defence policy will be difficult to manage according to military criteria alone.

'No defence without a CFSP': all the armies in the world and all conceivable institutional arrangements would be of dubious effectiveness in the absence of a true common foreign policy that allowed them to be used. Now, the CFSP mechanisms are not necessarily best suited to achieving a consensus among the fifteen member countries. Neither flexibility nor enhanced co-operation appears on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference, it is, therefore, difficult to see how the Union will be able to continue to evade the question of the way it makes decisions on foreign policy issues, in other words of the conditions under which its military instruments are to be used.

'No capabilities without cash': the question of military expenditure is without doubt the most politically difficult for all the democratic governments of the European Union. Overall it is of course for the Union less a matter of dramatically raising defence budgets than of allocating available national resources in a different way. But since the defence expenditure of European nations varies widely, it is hard to see how the credibility of military forces can be maintained without more or less painful efforts in the end being taken by all of them.

'No instruments without a strategy': by definition, and following past practice, the European Union has so far not really developed a common strategic culture. Of course, by political choice the question of collective self-defence, in other words a European union 'article 5', does not arise, and therefore asking it serves no purpose. On the other hand the autonomous management of the Petersberg missions presupposes that member countries acquire and develop common principles on the use of force, its legitimacy, the role of the UN, the notion of interference and the principle of sovereignty, and that they form a common vision of the Union's strategic ambition, the areas in which it might intervene, a doctrine on the use of its forces, etc. None of these questions was resolved at the time of the Western intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. Nor can any be left buried if the Union really is to assume strategic responsibility in peacemaking on the European continent.


Of course, a lot remains to be done before the EU security system will be up and running. First and foremost EU analysis and planning capabilities must be developed, common strategies and communications systems improved but, above all, relations with NATO, non-EU NATO members and EU candidates clarified. However, the fact that so much progress has been achieved in such a short time is certainly spectacular in its scope, pace and momentum and clearly shows that the political will to act in the defence field is now a reality. A EU role in defence and security issues has definitely been accepted and there is no way back to this inexorable revolution.




Conclusion


The year 2000 marked a decade since the formal ending of the Cold War period and the outset of transformations of the Cold War bipolar international system. A decade is a sufficient interval to take stock of the changes that the old international system had undergone and to assess how far the creation of the new one has progressed. The layout and functioning of the newly shaped security structure and the degree of the security it provides are the key elements for appraising the nature and the real outcomes of the changes made so far.


Today the European Union is a positive factor for peace not just in the wider Europe but around the world. Experience has, nonetheless, clearly demonstrated the need to develop a more effective foreign and security policy. The EU undoubtedly offers a model for regional integration as a guarantee for peace, is a potent symbol of reconciliation between former enemies and stands for democratic values. But the challenge goes beyond and begins playing an active role in ensuring that the world is more secure and stable, with the political will to use all the available existing instruments in a more co-ordinated and coherent way, and finally making the best use of all the resources at own disposal. Moreover, the Union committed itself to defend its common values and shared interests to strengthen the security of the Union, to preserve peace and to strengthen international security in accordance with the principle of the United Nations Charter, to promote international co-operation and, last but not least, to develop and to strengthen democracy and the rule of law as well as the respect of human rights.


It is true that pooling sovereignty in the area of foreign policy is still a sensitive issue for some, but there is a new and widespread recognition that the problem's of today's world can only be tackled by working together. The EU has today a political and legal framework to adopt common strategies and decide on common actions in foreign and security policy. The core of this policy has to remain the full integration of all countries of the region into the political and economic mainstream of Europe.

Apart from those countries which are already candidates most of the others benefit from the network of Stabilisation and Association Agreements. These Agreements must have sufficient flexibility to respond to the specific and changing needs of each country in the region. It is, therefore, useful to place sufficient emphasis on the need for conditionality, but at the same time to be ready to offer generous terms, for example in the field of trade, where this is going to have a direct impact on economic development and stability. This has not always been the case so far. One of the key results of the Helsinki European Council in December 1999 was to set an objective to provide the Union with sufficient military and non-military capabilities to intervene in humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping and crisis management. The Union, both through the Commission (ECHO, the European Community Humanitarian Office) and all Member States, has long been the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid. But it also has to develop new capabilities to be able to respond more effectively. At Helsinki, European leaders committed themselves to being able, by 2003, to put into the field a rapid reaction force of up to 60.000 troops to undertake the full range of humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks. Since then, new permanent political and military bodies will be established to ensure adequate political accountability as well as rapid and effective decision-making procedures for managing day-to-day operations.


Important steps have also been taken to ensure that appropriate measures are in place for the consultation and co-operation with non-EU European allies and with NATO. All Member States have agreed that the Union is not in the business of creating a European army. ESDP is not about collective defence and the Union has no ambition to take over or duplicate the work of NATO. Establishing a military capability is an important element of a properly functioning CFSP. But if it is to deal with the types of humanitarian crises for which it is intended, it will also have to be accompanied by the development of adequate civilian capabilities. Many of these are already available and are being used in response to crises. The Union and the Member States have considerable experience in the fields of civilian policing, humanitarian assistance, electoral and human rights monitoring. Through the creation of military capabilities and the enhancement of the existing civilian capabilities, the EU will be able to play a unique role across the full range of humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks. This will require a strong political will and financial commitment.


It is, therefore, in our own interests to work for greater peace, stability and security, not only in Europe but also beyond our own frontiers. The results will be more reliable partners, more secure investments, more stable regions and fewer crises in the next future.













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In this research, I use "European Union (EU)" or "the Community" whenever I refer to the organisation in general or to current events. I use "European Community (EC)" for events before 1994.

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Presidency Report on Strengthening of the common European policy on security and defence. Press release: Brussels (03-06-1999) Nr.122/99.

Declaration of the European Council on strengthening the common European policy on security and defence, Press release: Brussels (03-06-1999) Nr.122/99.

Washington summit communiqué. Press communiqué NAC-S (99) 56. Washington, 24 April 1999.

The acquis communautaire or, the shared properties of community law and legislation has come to be the guiding framework for enlargement procedures in particular. Indeed, the accession acquis has been identified as the oldest form of acquis, entailing "the whole body of rules, political principles and judicial decisions which new Member States must adhere to, in their entirety and from the beginning, when they become members of the Communities".

For example, after the 1972 enlargement, Britain's former colonies were brought into the EC's external relations framework. This led to a reorganisation of the EC's trade agreements with the third world. The so-called Yaoundee agreements, wich mainly covered France's former African colonies, were replaced by the Lomé Agreements.

Le Soir, 10 July 1993, interview with Mr. Malcom Rifkin




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