Emerging Paradigms in the Shifting Foreign and Domestic Environments

Editor’s Note: The following is AEI Fellow Dalibor Rohac’s contribution to the edited volume.

The Mirage of the Geopolitical Commission

Summary: Despite efforts to provide the EU with a shared foreign policy outlook, significant differences on key geopolitical issues exist both between and within its member states. The common European institutions – the European Commission, the European External Action Service, and the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy – are ill-suited to either bridge the existing disagreement or to act autonomously on behalf of the EU. The examples of the EU’s recent engagement with China, Belarus, and Russia illustrate the shortcomings of looking to common European institutions for answers. Instead, the EU member countries need to foster horizontal relationships between themselves, as well as with like-minded non-members, build capacity, and learn to deploy “normal” tools of power politics.

Introduction

“The era in which we could fully rely on others is over,” Angela Merkel told her German supporters in 2017, urging Europeans to take fate into their own hands. Her campaign speech came just days after a tense G7 summit, dominated by the mercurial figure of the former US President, Donald Trump.

The strained transatlantic relations during the Trump era provided a new impetus to ongoing efforts to give Europe a unified voice on the global stage. The 2008 Lisbon Treaty already laid the institutional basis for the EU’s foreign and security policy by creating the role of a High Representative and the European External Action Service (EEAS). While EEAS was built on the foundations of the previously existing external relations department of the European Commission (EC), the new structure was granted organisational and budgetary independence and led to the upgrading of former EC delegations around the world into embassy-type European missions.

It was only logical that geopolitics and foreign and security policy would be a priority for the new Commission, which came to office after the 2019 European election. As a peace project based on rules and cooperation, the EU is distinctly threatened by the resurgence of great power competition and by a weakening of the transatlantic partnership. As she introduced her Commission to the European Parliament, the new EC President, Ursula von der Leyen, emphasised the need for Europeans to take on a much more significant role in the world: “The world needs our leadership more than ever. To keep engaging with the world as a responsible power. To be a force for peace and for positive change.”

Alas, the EU’s own modus operandi – seeking to replace power competition and conflict with a rule-based order – limits the effectiveness of European institutions as vehicles for foreign and security policy, which both require making politically contentious judgement calls in real time. The current “geopolitical” Commission is no exception. It prioritises the process, multilateralism, and compartmentalisation of different policy issues over prudent European self-interest, strategic thinking, and the willingness to deploy hard power. This is not necessarily the fault of the Commission or the EEAS. The intentions behind the Lisbon Treaty notwithstanding, neither institution was truly designed to make strategic decisions or to forge the compromises between member states needed to sustain a unified foreign policy outlook. Member states, who continue to have substantial disagreements on foreign policy questions, have also displayed little willingness to delegate such decisions to European institutions. Accordingly, the appointments of High Representatives, recruited from second tiers of national politics, have reflected lowest common denominator compromises, rather than a genuine yearning for European leadership. Last but not least, the absolute lack of capacity, both at the national and European level, is a binding constraint on the amount of weight that the EU is capable of throwing around on the world stage.

This essay proceeds by briefly examining the EU’s – and the Commission’s – approach to Europe’s three recent pressure points: its relationship with China, its engagement with Belarus following Lukashenko’s stealing of the 2020 presidential election followed by a crackdown on opposition and civil society, and the ongoing challenge posed by Russia. In all of these areas, the EU’s actions have been shaped by its fundamental structural shortcomings, leading to moves that were ineffectual or internally inconsistent. The conclusion offers thoughts on how a common European foreign and security outlook could be cultivated in spite of the existing constraints.

Download Dalibor Rohac’s chapter