EUROPE
Why the EU Needs a New Global Strategy to Speed Up and Empower Early Action by Professor Christoph Meyer
When looking back to the European Union’s first ever security strategy of 2003, a sense of nostalgia is inevitable. Then, Javier Solana, the EU’s first High Representative was articulating and implementing a vision of Europe as a global power despite divisions over Iraq, backed up by key member states, including Britain. The first and largely successful EU military missions had just been launched in Macedonia and Congo to signal the emergence of an autonomous European Security and Defence Policy. The EU had played an essential role in the stabilisation and transformation of Central and Eastern Europe and was hoping to repeat its greatest foreign policy success in its wider neighbourhood. The Convention on the Future of Europe articulated an ambitious vision for strengthening the EU, including a European Foreign Minister –all of this against the background of a growing economy and rising demand from Asia. Today, the EU’s current High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, makes the case for the EU to adopt a new global strategy by 2016 to adjust to a substantially changed environment; the “arc of instability” in its neighbourhood, the increasing assertive and indeed aggressive Russia, the challenge of migration and refugee flows, the grievous human rights violations on its doorstep and the threat of home-grown but foreign inspired jihadist terrorism to name but a few challenges. The long-term picture looks hardly better with Europe’s relative decline vis-à-vis China, India and other rising powers, growing migration pressure arising from population growth in Africa, and expanding vulnerabilities of Europe’s open and interconnected societies to attacks from technologically empowered non-state actors. Strategies, as Lawrence Freedmann argues, are loved by those far too weak or marginalised to reach their goals in the near-term and who therefore have to chart intermediate steps to bridge the gap between the reality and the utopian future they hope to achieve. The EU fears rather the decline or loss of its power in world affairs, but its strategy needs to avoid sounding defensive in the face of new threats and defeatist vis-à-vis tales of its forecast decline. But how can it convincingly promise a better future at a time of stagnating economic performance, a simmering Eurozone crisis and growing populist and EUphobe movements in many member states? The first task of the new EU strategy must be to effectively make the argument for acting together given the scale of
the problems, whether through common institutions and instruments or through EU coordinated or supported coalitions of the willing. It needs to persuade the sceptics that early and vigorous action in foreign affairs, through the EU, is the key to avoiding the much larger costs and risks affecting its citizens down the line. This case has never been as compelling as it is now when the consequences of war, sectarian violence, mass atrocities, political oppression and economic deprivation in the EU’s neighbourhood are visible for all citizens to see, at their borders and in their towns and villages. While many citizens have opened hearts, homes and wallets for refugees, concerns over being overwhelmed have become politically toxic in many countries, whilst national leaders argue in Brussels over quota systems and strengthening external borders, neither of which is likely to solve the problem. The solution can only be advanced through a more forward-looking and vigorous foreign policy that addresses the “push” factors of flight and migration. While a strategy is not and should not be a tool for crisis management, it should persuade citizens that the EU can make a difference when it matters. Like no other actor, it has the tools to do so as it has demonstrated with its actions against piracy at the Horn of Africa, which combined a naval mission with a strategy to address the political, economic and social causes of the burgeoning “trade”. Over the years, the EU has become better at acting more quickly in the face of crises, reducing the lead time for spending and the deployment of key instruments. Yet, it has not succeeded in tackling some of the key obstacles to rapid preventive actions to be taken before a crisis develops and has oftentimes failed to grasp opportunities to avert crises. This problem is not unique to the EU, but also afflicts most states. Acting early requires accurate forecasting techniques that are by their very nature burdened by uncertainty. The Arab Spring has caught most professional observers off guard, and so have the actions of Russia in Ukraine – some strategic surprises are inevitable, but our understanding of the driving forces of conflict and mass atrocities have improved substantially as has our understanding of common analytical errors such as cognitive biases. Moreover, the EU can and should learn from forecasts that are by their nature more reliable, relating to environmental and demographic changes as well as other mega-trends such as the global expansion of education and information. The EU therefore needs to equip itself with the ability to
Dialogue by KCL Politics Society ————————————————————- Page 14 of 46