European Strategy in the 21st Century: New Future for Old Power (Routledge Studies in European Security and Strategy)

by Sven Biscop

in order to safeguard one’s vital interests. Whereas our values determine which kind of grand strategy is acceptable and which is not, our interests decide what our strategy needs to address in the first place.

Has Europe, the old power, forgotten what power is? That question is the starting point of this book. Europeans are no longer used to looking at the world through the strategic process that I have just outlined. We no longer systematically think about strategy, about what our objectives should be, and about how we can use our power to achieve them. Even when lecturing for diplomats and officers from EU Member States and institutions, as I regularly do,2 I often get the question: is strategy really necessary? The answer must be: “the need for strategy never sleeps!” (Gray, 2016, p. 29).

the EU is the world’s biggest economy, it has the most egalitarian society, and except for

the US it spends the most on defence. But we have forgotten the importance of power, so w...

Others don’t see Europe as a power and therefore don’t treat it as one.

That certainly applies to the great powers, i.e. the powers with global reach: the US, China, and Russia. But it holds true for many regional powers as well, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. That does not mean that they are always successful, but it does mean that they know very well what it is that they want.

“Where there is actual or potential conflict, when interests collide and forms of resolution are required”, then strategy really comes into play (Freedman, 2013, p. xi).

If the states of Europe do not just want to undergo all of this, but want to actively shape the world, in order notably to play a stabilising role, then they can only do so together, as the EU or at least as a core group within it. For several years now, the EU has not exactly been in good shape, but no single European state today can hope to influence world politics in any significant way. That is why in this book I will mostly talk about the EU, as the only way in which Europe too can be a great power.

Europe can play a distinctive part in the world, which respects the values on which our own society is based and promotes them in the rest of the world. But only if it learns again how to use its power, which it still has. To quote former President of the European Commission Jacques Delors: the biggest intellectual mistake of our time is that we have begun to mistake our humanitarian aid for our foreign policy.3

The question should probably have been asked whether Ukraine was ready, given the state of its political and economic development, to conclude such a deal, which requires adopting an enormous amount of existing EU rules and regulations. But once the Commission got started, not a single mistake was made. Except for the one catastrophic mistake to wage these negotiations as if they were taking place in a strategic and geopolitical void, as if it were a mere technical matter, that could easily be left to the technicians. In reality this was an eminently political issue.

Russia did not see the trade negotiations as a technical matter at all, but as a geopolitical challenge on the part of the EU. In Russian eyes, the EU, using its economic

the countries of the former Soviet Union. A sphere of influence implies exclusivity: it means that in that region Putin wants Russia to be the only power. Whether it wanted to or not (and it was probably the latter, as the EU had simply not thought about the geopolitical context), Brussels had thus entered into a geopolitical competition with Moscow. For which, obviously, it did not have a strategy.

The next part of the story is well known. Russia began to exert enormous pressure on Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who in November 2013 gave in and suspended the negotiations with the EU. That directly led to an escalation of the domestic political turmoil. Ukraine was a very divided country: if the western half rather looked to Brussels, the eastern half was mostly oriented on Moscow.

One should never have forced the country to choose between tho...

The Russian strategy to create an exclusive sphere of influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union predates the Ukraine crisis. In 2008 already there was a war between Russia and Georgia, which was moving far too close to the West to Russia’s taste. That war led to two territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, breaking away from Georgia; only Russia recognises them as independent states. That gives an idea of what might be the future of the Donbass. Tensions with Russia were probably inevitable therefore, except if the EU had reduced relations with all of its eastern neighbours to a minimum,

But if it hadn’t been for the EU’s precipitation towards Ukraine and its well-nigh unconscious, a-strategic use of its economic power, we might not have found ourselves in such a severe crisis with Russia. The comparison with those sleepwalking into World War One is not that far-fetched (Clark, 2012).

The first lesson is that it is dangerous to close one’s eyes for the negative aspects of international politics – “the dark side of the force”. That is what the EU has been doing in recent years, as if geopolitics didn’t matter anymore and power politics no longer existed, and all the world’s problems were going to be solved by cooperation between

The Russian–Georgian war was a first warning, but it was not enough to awake Europe from its slumber. The then-Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was not very popular in Brussels, and many felt that he had brought the war upon himself by his provocative policies. Although several East European Member States pleaded for a strong reaction against Russia, the EU very quickly returned to business as usual.

The mounting tensions between China and its neighbours over the sovereignty over the islands and waters of the South and East China Seas are another example of a classic geopolitical issue that Europe cannot ignore.

Alas, Europe is rather unique in its “postmodern” identity. Robert Cooper, a former British diplomat and afterward one of the leading officials of EU foreign policy, already wrote as much in 2003 (Cooper, 2003). That was the year in which the EU published the European Security Strategy, its first strategic concept (Solana, 2003). Drafted under the leadership of Dr Javier Solana, the first High Representative (the EU equivalent of a foreign minister), Cooper was one of the key co-authors of this document.

is still very much living in the “modern” age, in which states compete with all means at their disposal in order to defend their interests in the geopolitical struggle. Part of the world is even stuck in “pre-modernity”: “failed states” where the state has collapsed, or where there has never even been a well-functioning central authority. Here we find chaos and anarchy, and the law of the jungle. To remain blind for this, consciously or unconsciously, is to take a big risk, for then the drivers of international politics cannot be understood.

then becomes all but impossible. Yet all too often geopolitics is seen as an obsolete concept, a burnt notion from the last century, used only to justify shameless and aggressive power politics. One almost feels morally superior by ignoring geopolitics. But that is to the detriment of strategy.

In reality, geopolitics is founded on an entirely objective and neutral fact: a state’s geography. That inevitably influences the state’s interests, so one had better taken it into account.

British can leave the EU, but not Europe, and therefore have to continue to take the geopolitics of Europe into account. This is not the return of geopolitics, as it is often said these days. Geopolitics has always mattered – Europeans just chose not to see

Because of its geopolitical position Europe must care far more than the US about the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Mali, which may directly threaten Europe’s trade routes and energy supply. Moreover, many EU citizens have joined the Islamic State (IS) and other groups and militias in Syria and Iraq as foreign fighters (Coolsaet, 2015).

In addition, Europe must pay attention to the free worldwide access to the seas, air space, space, and cyber space (the global commons), which is vital to its prosperity.

That is why the EU must urgently reintroduce geopolitical analysis – not to imitate actors such as Putin, but to understand them.

When the Cold War ended, we did seem to have arrived in an age in which such competition between the great powers had ended as well. The US was the only remaining superpower, Russia was absorbed by domestic change, and China was by far not yet the great power that it is today. Europe can be forgiven for assuming that cooperation had become the new paradigm of international politics.

In today’s multipolar world the great powers still cooperate, for example, on climate change or on trade. But at the same time competition has greatly increased. Cooperation and competition coexist.

play a part. Another reason why Europe has forgotten how to think strategically is that during the long period of the Cold War, from the creation of NATO in 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it largely left strategy to the US. After a while, both sides of the Atlantic saw the advantages of such an arrangement. Americans wanted faithful yet pliable allies that met their NATO commitments for defence expenditure without demanding too much of a say in decision-making. Europeans, as long as they spent enough, were assured of an American security guarantee, including the nuclear umbrella, against the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw

The year before president Charles de Gaulle had withdrawn France from NATO’s integrated military command structure, one of the greatest disruptions in the history of the Alliance. France remained a member of NATO, but not until 2009, under president Nicolas Sarkozy, did it join the military structures again.

A simple geopolitical analysis demonstrates that with the end of the Cold War, this attitude has become meaningless. With the demise of the Soviet Union the centrality of Europe in US grand strategy came to an end as well. The US still shares many interests with the EU, but it also has its own geopolitical concerns that are quite different from ours. For us in Europe our security is, of course, a vital interest, but for the US the security of Europe is essential – not vital. There is no automaticity therefore: in a multipolar world the US will not always take the initiative and come and solve our security problems for us.

the very optimistic 2003 European Security Strategy (Biscop, 2005). The first time that the EU attempted to formulate a comprehensive strategy for all dimensions of international politics (economic, political, and security) it did not arrive at a strategy against somebody else, but at a strategy in favour of a very positive agenda. Hence the strategy’s subtitle: “A secure Europe in a better world”. The objective, of course, was to keep Europe safe; the best way to do that was to make the world a better place. Wasn’t that nice?

“The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states. Spreading good governance, supporting social and political reform, dealing with corruption and abuse of power, establishing the rule of law and protecting human rights are the best means of strengthening the international order”. This is a very motivating agenda that can appeal to people outside the EU as well. Moreover, it is simply true that most of the security problems that Europe is confronted with today find their origin in states that are neither democratic nor very well governed.

The revolution in Tunisia, which fortunately cost very few lives, heralded the beginning of the Arab Spring. But the hope for peaceful change in the region that it generated was blown away by the storm of violence that erupted in Libya and Syria. The Arab Spring turned out to be more like a Belgian spring: stormy and unpredictable.

In an age of increasing geopolitical tensions, the proverbial carrots (e.g. development aid, free-trade agreements, investment, visa-free travel to the EU) are insufficient to spread good governance and democracy. If

One could summarise the 2003 strategy as: the more the rest of the world becomes like us, the better for everybody.

The credibility and effectiveness of the European model have been gravely undermined by the EU’s slow response to two crises in which it has shown far too little solidarity: the financial crisis (especially the case of Greece) and the refugee and migration crisis.

Such a nation state is entitled to its place under the sun, which the strong leader is there to ensure. Putin consciously opposes very specific aspects of European society, such as the recognition of gay rights, which are denied in Russia and presented as evidence of the “decadence” of the West.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese narrative as well is leaning more and more towards authoritarian nationalism. In China, propaganda is everywhere. Television is full of images of fighter jets and aircraft carriers (except on the single English-language channel, which imperturbably lauds the natural beauty and cultural refinement of China).

part in this growing awareness as well. The dream of 2003, to build a ring of friends around Europe, sadly turned out to be an illusion. Last but certainly not least, the steep rise of China was important in convincing EU Member States that a strategic update was now really necessary. In 2003 everybody expected that China

In June 2015, the European Council (the Heads of State and Government of the EU Member States) tasked the current High Representative, the Italian Federica Mogherini, with the writing of a new strategy. Mogherini made it clear from the start that a different, more pragmatic approach was necessary. “We need a strategy to protect proactively our interests, keeping in mind that promoting our values is an integral part of our interests”, is how she put it at a conference that launched the consultation process on the future strategy in October 2015 (Mogherini, 2015). Interests clearly no longer was a dirty word.

Many of the bilateral partnerships were anchored in a multilateral framework. On our eastern flank, the EU created the Eastern Partnership with six countries; in our southern periphery, the Union for the Mediterranean with 11 countries; together they constitute the scope of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

There is a separate policy framework for the Balkan countries. Furthermore the bilateral relations with ten great powers and regional powers have been upgraded to so-called strategic partnerships.

An approach that works in postmodern Europe and the countries that want to join that approach does not necessarily work in the rest of the world. In practice the EU began to deviate from its rhetoric, and on the ground that explicit idealism often turned into implicit pragmatism. That is both cause and effect of the lack of success of “positive conditionality”.

Authoritarian regimes eagerly point out to their publics what they dub the failure of democratic decision-making in order to justify their own system. Every European scholar visiting China, for example, has been confronted with a strong sense of Schadenfreude.

truth. Denying that would show neither much realism, nor much strategic insight. What is clear is that the European narrative will not appeal to the rest of the world if Europe itself does not remain faithful to it.

influence the strategic debate. All of this points to a third gap, between two European objectives that can be mutually exclusive:

The conclusion of this analysis of recent strategy is not that the EU is cynically hiding behind its rhetoric, and in reality is pursuing its interests regardless of the values that it advocates. The European belief in its idealist agenda and the promotion of its values is sincere. But the pragmatic implementation of this agenda on the ground is a reality too. Because this pragmatism has remained implicit, it has produced inconsistency. That should push us to question ourselves. The objective: a new strategy.

The most controversial value that the EU is trying to promote is democracy. Many of the states with which the EU maintains diplomatic relations are not democracies. For them, democratisation amounts to regime change – to a revolution. Hence putting democracy front and centre of our diplomacy means that we inherently antagonise many governments just as we are reaching out to them. Once again Kissinger perfectly captures this dilemma. The conviction that our values are