Europe’s foreign policy. Uncommon disarray

Date: 22/02/03

But Europeans should keep trying to co-operate where they can

IT HAS been one of the worst months imaginable for those who believe that Europe's assorted nations, from modest minnows to vainglorious machos, should be moulding a common foreign and defence policy that could match the clout of the world's greatest powers. Rarely, since the second world war, has Europe been in such disarray as it is now over Iraq. Yet it is still a desirable and not ridiculously Utopian aim that Europeans should, when possible, pool their minds, wallets and at times even perhaps their guns for the promotion of their own interests and the betterment of the world at large. There is no need for them to turn their backs on each other. Indeed, there is still a lot that they can do better together.

What makes the current row look so much worse than previous ones is that it comes at a time when the European Union has been grandiloquently striving for speedier and tighter integration across the board, including in foreign policy. The 15 countries already in the EU have been drawing up a new constitution that posits, among other things, a foreign minister for Europe answerable to its governments and a system of “qualified majority voting” even in foreign policy. The latest guess in Brussels, where a new Euro-constitution is being drafted at a special convention, is that these ideas may well be realised.

Yet imagine the chaos and bad blood that would ensue over an issue such as, well, Iraq. A too ambitious majority-vote system, with Europe divided slap down the middle, would be blown to smithereens. The Euro-optimists point out that issues touching on military matters, such as Iraq, will be exempt, and devices found to let pricklier countries who care passionately about particular issues, even non-military ones, opt out. Yet the line between military and other issues is invariably fuzzy (outsiders were first drawn into the recent Balkan wars on a humanitarian mission). The discord over Iraq shows how a supposedly joint policy, wrapped too tightly in an institutional straitjacket, can instead cause ever greater anguish and mistrust.

Still plenty to be getting on with

And yet there are useful lessons. Jacques Chirac, France's president, with his abusive language towards the countries likely to join the Union next year, has unwittingly illustrated how Europe's centre of gravity has shifted away from the old French-German alliance. Meanwhile, Europe is still doing a lot of collective work: most importantly, in the Balkans, where - be it noted - it failed dismally in the 1990s until America insisted on decisiveness; in world trade negotiations; in groping towards settlements between Israel and Palestine and on Cyprus; and in deploying the civilising “soft” power of aid-giving, nation-building and even peacekeeping, in regions far and near.

To build on all this, Europeans need to give more careful thought to where majority voting can usefully be applied. Then ways need to be found to ensure that, come next year, minnows like Malta or Latvia cannot stop the EU's other 23 countries acting together, but also that countries, especially the big ones with exceptionally strong interests in particular issues, cannot be steamrollered. Not common enough? The alternative, if not a bust-up, would be an endless search for the lowest common denominator, producing only the feeblest of policies. It is a fine thing to strive for unity where possible among Europeans in world affairs. It is quite another to expect it to exist everywhere - especially in a real crisis.

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