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Abstract
Germany emerged as the leader of EU crisis management efforts during the Ukraine conflict in 2014 and 2015. Traditional conceptualisations of German foreign policy – from civilian to hegemonic and geo-economic power – have not been able to sufficiently explain this new German leadership role. By applying a comprehensive taxonomy of power, this analysis aims at untangling the different ‘shades’ of German power, arguing that German ‘Machtpolitik’ is much more nuanced and subtle than previous conceptualisations and theoretical schools suggest. Taking Germany and EU foreign policy during the Ukraine conflict as a case study, this article contributes a new theoretically grounded perspective to the question of German power and influence within the European Union. The aim is to bring back power as a category into the analysis of member states’ relations within the EU since power politics have only been tamed, but not excluded from the European project. By combining and applying different ‘shades’ of power, Germany has become the central axis of policy-making between the European Union and Russia during the Ukraine conflict, decisively shaping discourse and content of EU policy towards Russia.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liana Fix is a PhD student at the Justus Liebig University Gießen. Previously, she was a doctoral fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and received scholarships from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. She has an MSc in Theory and History of International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Notes
1 See for example Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post, February 20, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/germanys-central-role/2015/02/20/d1119cd4-b8f8-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html
2 The German think tank publication “Neue Macht. Neue Verantwortung” (http://www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/projekt_papiere/DeutAussenSicherhpol_SWP_GMF_2013.pdf) and the Foreign Office Review 2014 process are examples of this debate, taking place within and outside Germany.
3 Barnett and Duvall’s taxonomy has also been applied in a paper by Tom Casier to analyse and explain the power relationship between the European Union and Russia in the run-up to the Ukraine crisis (see presentation at UACES (Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies) in panel 106: “How Regional Integration Turned into a Contentious Issue: The Different Faces of Power in EU–Russia Tensions over their Common Neighbourhood”).
4 Hanns Maull himself refers to a google search from May 2013, in which the term ‘civilian power’ yielded 381,000 google results (Maull Citation2014).
5 ‘Germanification’ was first applied as a term by Post and Niemann (Citation2005) in an analysis of German and EU asylum policy.
6 Barnett and Duvall have been criticised for implicitly privileging the meta-logic of constructivism (through the underlying idea of ‘social relationalism’ as opposed to ‘material relationalism’) and therefore only pretending to develop a neutral and inclusive framework which incorporates the faces of the power debate (Mattern Citation2008).
7 For a more in-depth analysis of the German conflict management framework during the Ukraine conflict, see Fix (Citation2016).
10 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10679802/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html
17 European Council, Conclusions, March 19 and 20, 2015, euco 11/15, Brussels, March 20, 2015.
20 http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Rede/2015/02/2015-02-07-merkel-sicherheitskonferenz.html
28 Interview with German diplomat in Warsaw, May 20, 2016. See also Piotr Buras, “Has Germany Sidelined Poland in Ukraine Crisis Negotiations?” Ecfr Commentary, August 27, 2014. http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_has_germany_sidelined_poland_in_ukraine_crisis_negotiations301.
29 Kristi Raik, “No Zero-Sum Game among EU Foreign Policy Actors.” fiia Commentary 8, March 2015.
31 The threat environment has not changed for Germany itself, since the conflict took place outside Germany’s immediate neighbourhood – in Ukraine, a non-EU and non-NATO member.
38 Statement by the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy on further EU restrictive measures against Russia, euco 175/14, Brussels, September 8, 2014.
39 Interview with Polish diplomat in Brussels, March 23, 2016.
44 Für gemeinsame Werte eintreten: Interview mit Angela Merkel, FAZ, May 16, 2014. http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/de/Interview/2014/05/2014-05-16-merkel-faz.html
45 Interview with German diplomat in Berlin, August 9, 2016.