Union exhorted to flex its muscles on the world stage

Date: 12/09/1996

“We really have to do better if we want a common foreign and security policy,” Commission President Jacques Santer warned EU foreign ministers last weekend as they squabbled over how to respond to the recent US bomb attacks on northern Iraq.

The signs of disarray were all too evident as the ministers met informally in a Victorian mansion in County Kerry, with discussions on how to make progress at the Intergovernmental Conference - including moves to bolster the CFSP - overshadowed by the disagreements over Iraq.

But while all the talk after the Tralee meeting was of division and dispute, the meeting may eventually prove to have been another important stepping-stone on the road towards the creation of a joint EU planning and analysis unit.

Although Saddam Hussein's incursions into the Kurdish safe zone and the US cruise missile retaliation might not have been easily foreseen, the past few months have strengthened the case for such a unit.

The meeting in Ireland exposed the flaws in the fabric of common foreign policy not merely because member states were divided, but also because they were only reacting to events, not leading them.

If they had been forging foreign policy, ministers would have been too busy to spend the better part of a day bickering over how to react.

They did manage to emerge with a call for the resumption of a United Nations policy allowing Saddam to get around a trade blockade of his country by exchanging oil for food.

But that seemed to be more an attempt to paper over other differences than to provide an inspiration for the Middle East. It was also a way of getting the UN to ask Washington to stop the bombing instead of asking the Clinton administration directly.

The main result was to demonstrate how unprepared the EU is to cope with unexpected world events.

At the beginning of this year, EU officials and diplomats were extremely concerned about the outcome of Russian elections in which a regressive Communist party might have reversed the country's democratic advances. Russia, all agreed, would be the policy challenge for 1996.

After all, everything else was in pretty good shape.

EU-US relations were glowing after last December's bilateral summit pledged everlasting cooperation on everything from soup to nuts. The other piece of the transatlantic pie, Canada, was also on a smooth path towards a similar agreement. Turkey was joining a customs union with the EU and would therefore be not only stable but easily influenced, and the Union would also have more leverage over Cyprus as a result. The Middle East peace process was on track and Shimon Peres seemed a sure bet to win the Israeli elections.

Since then, the picture has changed significantly.

Boris Yeltsin and democracy won the Russian elections on 3 July, but everything else has fallen apart. Transatlantic strings are chafing after US President Bill Clinton put sanctions against Europeans dealing in Cuba, Libya and Iran into law. The EU-Canada accord was not ready for signature at the planned ceremony in June. Turkey has a moderate, but unexpected, Islamist government and escalating violence in Cyprus has dealt a blow to growing optimism that the island's problems could be solved through Union efforts.

Perhaps the biggest shock to the EU system was Peres' defeat on 29 May at the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu. The Union was so stunned that it remained silent on the subject for three long months.

Even in Bosnia, with elections taking place this weekend (14-15 September) on ground which not long ago was soaked in blood, there are huge uncertainties.

“What happens there next is anyone's guess,” said an Irish diplomat.

That, said another EU diplomat, was why the Union needed a common analysis and planning unit, adding that the weekend's debate over Iraq was symptomatic.

“The problem is you have different analyses in different capitals. A common unit would not necessarily produce a common policy, but it could be helpful,” he said.

The Netanyahu victory took the Union by surprise, but it should not have been unprepared.

“A good planning unit would look at all the scenarios and prepare. Maybe that happens in the capitals, but it does not happen on a European level. Sometimes the EU is caught off guard.”

For three months following Israel's elections, the Union could only stammer “let's wait and see” - a sage reaction but hardly a muscular one. A planning unit might not have provided an immediate response after the elections, but it could have helped.

“We will never be like the United States, with questions and answers ready within a few hours,” said one diplomat, “but (a unit) might speed up the response.”

Now EU governments are getting on their high horses about a forthcoming troika visit to the Middle East, insisting on meeting Palestinians in Jerusalem. It will be interesting to see whether Netanyahu caves in.

If he does not, it will be a severe blow to the Union's pride. Only last weekend, it was unfavourably compared to the US by no less than German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who said: “The fact is that we do not have a foreign policy forged with one piece of iron like that of a world power like the United States.”

In defence of the Union, the Irish diplomat said it would be unfair to expect the EU to alter world history. “There have been slippages since January, but the situation is not so bad. You do not control the world. Nobody does. It would be expecting CFSP to do what cannot be done. We should not be asking for the impossible.”

A Danish diplomat said the EU did get its priorities right by concentrating on Russia - and put its eggs in the right basket. EU governments united behind Yeltsin and their efforts paid off. And while they have a few jitters at the notion of Yeltsin on an operating table, they take comfort from the fact that Premier Victor Chernomyrdin is regarded as pro-western and, more importantly, that Russia seems to have consolidated democracy.

International High Representative Carl Bildt says the Union made another good call in Bosnia.

“What has been achieved in former Yugoslavia has been one of the silent success stories when it comes to shaping common foreign policy,” he said in Tralee.

But British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind cites Bosnia as proof that CFSP as an institution is not needed.

“We did not have a CFSP, but Britain and France worked more closely than they ever have in their history,” he boasted.

Rifkind insisted that the CFSP chapter of the revised Maastricht Treaty would not contain any revolutionary words. Asked in which areas the current state of IGC talk came closest to what the treaty would look like next year, he cited the CFSP and defence - in other words, those are the areas he expects to change the least.

Rifkind even said he would try to exclude the non-controversial 'Petersberg' tasks of peacekeeping and humanitarian aid from the treaty chapter on foreign policy, on the grounds that once in the treaty, they would no longer be flexible.

But there is widespread speculation that the UK's stance stems at least in part from anger with Helsinki for not raising the idea with London before putting forward a formal joint proposal (with Stockholm) to incorporate these tasks in the treaty.

Politics like that will have to be kept at bay if the Union is to progress.

The Bosnia story is not over. By their own estimation, EU governments will have to keep up the pressure there for another two years. Bildt says this will be the hardest part. Coherence from the Union will be critical as the EU attempts to teach Bosnian factions how to share power.

It will be interesting to see what they preach about power-sharing, and whether they practise what they preach.