Constructing the Mediterranean in the Face of New Threats: Are the EU's Words Really New?

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, the discourses and practices of the EU towards the Mediterranean have emerged as an important area of study with regard to attempting to explain and analyse how Europe and the Mediterranean are reconstructed. This mutual reconstruction of two selves in the so-called Mediterranean relationship appears as a new type of praxis, a broadened self, following the model of European success in forming a regional security community. However, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Mediterranean idea has been constructed by exploiting the new threats facing the West and Europeans. In this paper it is assumed that the discourse and practice of the EU in constructing the Mediterranean self can be seen as an extension of long-standing European policies of constructing Europe as an area of security. In the light of this evaluation, this paper focuses on the threat perceptions of the EU, the related power asymmetries in the Mediterranean relationship and the enduring asymmetry in the perception of the European and Mediterranean self in the face of ‘new’ insecurities.

Notes

1. For example see David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1998); William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1991); Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of Other (New York: Harper and Row 1982).

2. Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall, ‘Introduction: Constructing Insecurity’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds.), Cultures of Insecurity, States, Communities and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1999), p. 10.

3. Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 66.

4. Mark A. Heller, ‘Prospects for Creating a Regional Security Structure in the Middle East’, Journal of Strategic Studies 26/3 (2003), p. 125.

5. Kalypso Nicolaidis and Dimitri Nicolaidis, ‘The Euro-Med beyond Civilizational Paradigms’, in Emanuel Adler, Federica Bicchi, Beverly Crawford and Rafella A. Del Sarto (eds.), The Convergence of Civilizations, Constructing a Mediterranean Region (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press 2006), p. 337.

6. Pinar Bilgin, Regional Security in the Middle East, A Critical Perspective (London: Routledge-Curzon 2005), p. 140.

7. See Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continent, A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley and London: University of California Press 1997), p. 65.

8. Bilgin, Regional Security in the Middle East, p. 144.

9. A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy, Brussels, 12 December 2003, available at http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 8.

10. NATO, Strategic Concept, Brussels, 1999, Article 20.

11. In the words of Eduard Soler i Lecha, actorness refers to the capacity of political entities to develop presence, to become identifiable, aggregate interests, formulate goals and policies and make and implement decisions. Eduard Soler i Lecha, ‘Turkey's Potential (and Controversial) Contribution to the Global “Actorness” of the EU’, in Nursin Atesoglu Guney (ed.), Contentious Issues of Security and the Future of Turkey (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007), p. 34.

12. For instance see Fulvio Attina, ‘The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Assessed: The Realist and Liberal Views’, European Foreign Affairs Review 8/2 (2003), pp. 181–200; Federica Bicchi, ‘Our Size Fits All: Normative Power, Europe and the Mediterranean’, Journal of European Public Policy 13/2 (2006), pp. 286–303; Frédéric Volpi (ed.), Transnational Islam and Regional Security, Cooperation and Diversity between Europe and North Africa (London: Routledge 2007).

13. Frédéric Volpi, ‘Introduction: Strategies for Regional Co-operation in the Mediterranean: Rethinking the Parameters of Debate’, Mediterranean Politics 11/2 (2006), pp. 122–3.

14. Alberto Bin, ‘NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue: A Post-Prague Perspective’, Mediterranean Politics 7/2 (2003), p. 115.

15. Annette Jünemann, ‘Security Building in the Mediterranean After September 11’, in Annette Jünemann (ed.), Euro-Mediterranean Relations After September 11 (London: Frank Cass 2004), p. 12.

16. For instance see Richard Gillespie and Richard Youngs, ‘Themes in European Democracy Promotion’, in R. Gillespie and R. Youngs (eds.), The EU and the Promotion of Democracy: The Case of North Africa (London and Portland: Frank Cass 2002), pp. 8–9. The emphasis on the weakness of the South is enduring after the 1990s. See Commission of the European Communities, Reinvigorating EU Actions on Human Rights and Democratisation with Mediterranean Partners: Strategic Guidelines, COM (2003) 294 final, Brussels, 21 May 2003 available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/omk/omnsapir.so/pv2?PRG=CALDOC&TPV=PROV&FILE=20040212&TXTLST=1&POS=1&LASTCHAP=13&SDOCTA=10&Type_Doc=FIRST&LANGUE=EN accessed in September 2007.

17. Michael Pace, ‘The Ugly Ducking of Europe: The Mediterranean in the Foreign Policy of the European Union’, Journal of European Area Studies 10/2 (2002), pp. 203–5.

18. For instance in 1995 Willy Claes, then NATO Secretary General, identified Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to European Security comparable to Communism while announcing a new NATO initiative towards the Mediterranean. Etel Solingen and Saba senses Ozyurt, ‘Mare Nostrum? The Sources, Logic and Dilemmas of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’, in The Convergence of Cvilizations (note 5), p. 54.

19. Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, ‘Normative Power: The European Practice of Region Building and the Case of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’, in The Convergence of, p. 13.

20. Ulla Holm, ‘The EU's Security Policy Towards the Mediterranean, An (Im)possible Combination of Export of European Political Values and Anti-Terror Measures?’, DISS Working Paper, No. 2004/13, Copenhagen, 2004.

21. See ‘Final Declaration of the Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference of 27– 28 November 1995’, available at http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/r15001.htm, European Council, Common Strategy of the European Council of 19 June 2000 on the Mediterranean Region, 2000/458/CFSP, available at http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/r15002.htm accessed in September 2007.

22. Helle Malmvig, ‘Cooperation and Democratisation? The EU's Conflicting Mediterranean Discourses’, DISS Working Paper, No. 2004-8, Copenhagen, 2004, p. 11.

23. European Council, Common Strategy of the European Council.

24. Malmvig, ‘Cooperation and Democratisation?, p. 9.

25. Annette Jünemann, ‘Repercussions of the Emerging European Security and Defence Policy on the Civil Character of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’, in Jünemann (ed.), Euro-Mediterranean Relations, p. 39.

26. Solingen and Ozyurt, ‘Mare Nostrum?’, p. 55.

27. That is why security community making depends not only on the impacts of normative European model but also on the ‘precipitating conditions’, namely changes in technology, demography and economy. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), p. 38.

28. For a view from the South see Nassif Hitti, ‘New Security Challenges in the Mediterranean’, in Sonja Hegazy (ed.), Egyptian and German Perspective on Security in the Mediterranean (Cairo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 1998), pp. 37–40. Also see Gamal A.G. Soltan, ‘Southern Mediterranean Perceptions and Proposals for Mediterranean Security’, EuroMesco Briefs, 8 February 2004.

29. Helle Malmvig, ‘A New Role for NATO in the Middle East: Assessing Possibilities and Barriers for An Enhanced Mediterranean Dialogue’, DISS Report, 2005:8, Copenhagen, 2005, p. 14.

30. Cited in Bilgin, Regional Security in the Middle East, p. 141.

31. See for example Stephen Biscop, ‘Opening up the ESDP to the South: A Comprehensive and Cooperative Approach to the Euro-Mediterranean Security’, Security Dialogue 34/2 (2003).

32. Cited in Volpi, ‘Introduction: Strategies’, p. 122.

33. Cited in Thanos P. Dukos, Nato's Mediterranean Dialogue: Prospects and Policy Recommendations, available at http://www.eliamep.gr/eliamep/files/PP03.03.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 53.

34. See Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003), p. 213.

35. Solingen and Ozyurt, ‘Mare Nostrum?’, p. 54.

36. After 9/11 both the USA and the EU came up with various kinds of geopolitical designs in order to address perceived threats stemming from the Southern Mediterranean. In 2003 the US launched its ‘Middle East Initiative’ by using freedom and democracy discourse. The geographic area of this initiative is ranged from Morocco to India. Then this initiative was renamed as the Greater Middle East Initiative and covered the states of the North Africa. Some European countries—read as France—and many Arab states in the region objected to initative project as being sole British-American. As a result, on the one hand, in March 2004 the EU Interim Report An EU Strategic Partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East was published (available at http://consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/Partnership%20Mediterranean%20and%20Middle%20East.pdf accessed in September 2007). This document brought the concept of Mediterranean into the policy area of ENP and European Security Strategy. See Ulla Holm, ‘EU's Neighbourhood Policy: A Question of Space and Security’, DISS Working Paper, 2005/22, Copenhagen, 2005, p. 11. On the other hand, in the June 2004 G-8 Summit, the Broader Middle East and North African Initiative (BMNAI) was launched. Along with this BMNAI, just after the Iraq War the USA proposed a free trade agreement between itself and Middle Eastern countries. That is evaluated as challenging the EMP's goal of setting a free trade agreement in the Mediterranean by 2010. For a debate on soft competition or soft balancing between the transatlantic capitals see J. Joffe, ‘Continental Divides’, The National Interest 71 (2003), pp. 157–60.

37. Adler and Crawford, ‘Normative Power’, p. 35.

38. A Secure Europe in a Better World, pp. 2–4.

39. Prior to 9/11 the term terrorism was generally used as a pejorative term for any insurgency campaign of which we disapprove. However, even in this conventional usage of the term, at least since the 1970s, terrorism has had both international and transnational dimensions. Paul Wilkinson, ‘Implications of the Attacks of 9/11 for the Future of Terrorism’, in M. Buckley and R. Fawn (eds.), Global Responses to Terrorism, 9/11 Afghanistan and Beyond (London: Routledge 2003.)

40. David C. Rapoport, ‘The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of Terrorism’, Current History (December 2001), pp. 419–24.

41. See for details, Guido Steinberg and Isabelle Werenfels, ‘Between the “Near” and the “Far” Enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’, Mediterranean Politics 12/3 (November 2007), pp. 407–13.

42. Of course throughout the 1990s radical Islamists had carried out some terrorist actions in European countries. The most prominent example is the GIA's (Armed Islamic Group) attacks in France. However, these transnational assaults aimed to stop the French government's assistance and support to the westernised regime of Algeria rather than to affect French policies anywhere else in the world. Therefore, suicide bombing and ‘martyrdom’ is rather a recent phenomenon and perceived as an expression of global terrorism in Europe. Ludo Block, ‘Devising a New Counter Terrorism Strategy in Europe: Devising A New Counter Terrorism Strategy in Europe’, Terrorism Monitor 4/21 (November 2006), available at http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/uploads/TM_004_021.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 5.

43. Steinberg and Werenfels, ‘Between the “Near” and the “Far”’, p, 411.

44. Sami Zemni, ‘Islam between Jihadi Threats and Islamist Insecurities? Evidence of Belgium and Morocco’, Mediterranean Politics 11/2 (July 2006), pp. 231–53; Javier Jordan and Nicola Horsburgh, ‘Spain and Islamist Terrorism: Analysis of the Threat and Response 1995–2005’, Mediterranean Politics 11/2 (July 2006), pp. 209–29.

45. For instance see, EuroMesco, ‘Getting It Right: Lessons of the “Cartoons Crisis” and Beyond’, Annual Report 05/2006 (May 2007).

46. Fred Tanner, ‘North Africa, Partnership, Exceptionalism and Neglect’, in R. Dannreuther (ed.), European Union Foreign and Security Policy towards a Neighbourhood Strategy (London: Routledge 2004), p. 145.

47. These are the words of a British defence planners and cited by F. Bicchi and M. Martin, ‘Talking Tough or Talking Together? European Security Discourses towards the Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Politics 11/2 (July 2006), p. 195.

48. Council of the European Union, The European Union Counter Terrorism Strategy; Prevent, Protect, Pursue, Respond, 30 November 2005, Brussels, available at http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/05/st14/st14469-re04.en05.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 2.

49. For instance this was the advice from EU's counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs van de Vries; see Address by Gijs de Vries, European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator European Conference on Active Participation of Ethnic Minority Youth in Society, Copenhagen, 8 September 2006, available at http://www.nyidanmark.dk/NR/rdonlyres/F457D5BC-8D55-442A-B2EB-6A0DC29927D9/0/de_vries_speech.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 4.

50. A Grünert, ‘Loss of Guiding Values and Support: September 11 and the Isolation of Human Rights Organizations in Egypt’, in Jünemann (ed.), Euro-Mediterranean Relations, pp. 133–52; S. Stetter, ‘“Democratization without Democracy?”: The Assistance of the European Union for Democratisation Process in Palestine’, in Jünemann (ed.), Euro-Mediterranean Relations, pp. 153–73.

51. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1998).

52. Council of the European Union, The European Union Counter Terrorism Strategy.

53. Council of the European Union, The European Union Strategy for Combating Radicalisation and Recruitment to Terrorism, Brussels, 24 November 2005, 14781/1/05, available at http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/05/st14/st14781-re01.en05.pdf accessed in September 2007, p. 2.

54. It was written in the ESS as ‘The most recent wave of terrorism is global in its scope and is linked to violent religious extremism’. Besides, Islamic fundamentalist groups connected to Al Qaeda in the European states were cited as among the key threats against the Union. A Secure Europe in a Better World, p. 3.

55. In the European Union, terrorism is seen as a threat to societal security. On the one hand, after 9/11 the dominant discourse in the Union constructs terrorism as ‘counter to all the values on which the European Union is founded’. From the speech by B. Ahern, the President of the European Council, 2004, cited by Holm, ‘The EU's Security Policy Towards the Mediterranean’, p. 8. On the other hand in the European documents terrorism is perceived as against the universal values of humanity which are accepted as modelled in the Union. Therefore terrorism for the Europeans became a threat that would jeopardise not only the strategic interests of the EU but also Brussels’ global role as a civil power.

56. For the divergent view points of Brussels and Washington on terrorism issue, see Visne Korkmaz, ‘Global Terrorism and the Western Agendas: The Convergences–the Divergences’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, 20 April 2006, available at http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p139131_index.html accessed in September 2007.

57. For instance European Parliament resolution on the Barcelona Process assumed that the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership should promote religious dialogue as part of the fight against terrorism. See European Parliament resolution (2005/2058(INI)), 27 October 2005, available at http://www.euromesco.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=36&lang=en, accessed 20 September 2008.

58. Holm, ‘The EU's Security Policy Towards the Mediterranean’, p. 7.

59. For last version of the list see Council Decision on 28 June 2007, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:169:0058:0062:EN:PDF accessed in September 2007.

60. Bicchi and Martin, ‘Talking Tough, p. 191. During the Barcelona Conference of 1995, the Arabs—foremost Syrians—tried to insert the right of resistance to foreign occupation while the Israelis resisted any kind of change or limitation in the concept of terrorism. In the Barcelona Declaration the brokering of the EU provided a delicate balance: Syrians dropped their proposal and Israelis retreated from its demand for political pressure on Damascus related to terrorism.

61. Richard Gillespie, ‘Onward but not Upward: The Barcelona Conference of 2005’, Mediterranean Politics 11/2 (2006), p. 274.

62. Bicchi and Martin, ‘Talking Tough’, p. 203.

63. See European Parliament resolution on the Barcelona Process revisited (2005/2058(INI)).

64. This term is used by Derek Lutterbeck, and indicates that both paramilitary police forces and external security forces of European states were involved in the securing of Europe's Mediterranean borders both as national naval exercises and joint NATO exercises. Derek Lutterbeck, ‘Policing Migration in the Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Pollitics 11/1 (March 2006), p. 64.

65. According to the numbers that were given by ICMPD, approximately 100,000 irregular migrants cross the Mediterranean each year, with about 35,000 coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, 55,000 from the Maghreb, and 30,000 from the Mashreq. Cited by Lutterbeck, ‘Policing Migration’, p. 61.

66. Informal Meeting on Mediterranean Transit Migration, Vienna, 5, 6 February 2004, Conclusions by the Chairs, available at http://www.icmpd.org/809.html?&tx_icmpd_pi2[document]=457&cHash=1f1ad7cd47 accessed in September 2007. Frontex is the Warsaw based EU agency that was created to coordinate the operational cooperation between member states in the field of border security. Although external border security and the prevention of clandestine migration flows are not the same thing technically, the are closely related to each other. Frontex is an important area of cooperation. However, there are still important divergences related to the immigration issue between the two shores of the Mediterranean. The southern partners emphasised that xenophobia and racism in the Union States are the real threats and greater human mobility will be helpful to bring the real spirit of partnership. Due to the impact of the Southern reaction to the securitisation of immigration, the EU decided to deal with this issue in the framework of Justice and Home Affairs within the third basket of the EMP structure. However the economic sticks used by the European states to impose the European agenda of immigration on the eve of the Valencia Conference proved that the cooperation between the North and the South will be highly fragile. Richard Gillespie, ‘Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 2001’, in Jünemann (ed.), Euro-Mediterranean Relations, pp. 22–3, 31–2.

67. Jef Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity, Fear, Migration and the Asylum in the EU (London and New York: Routledge 2006), pp. 45–80.

68. IISS, Strategic Survey 2003/4 (London: IISS 2004), pp. 151–5.

69. See Michael Collyer, ‘Migrants, Migration and the Security Paradigm: Constraints and the Opportunities’, Mediterranean Politics, (2006) p. 11.

70. Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity, p. 81.

71. See F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London: Fontana 1972–73).

72. Thierry Hentsch, The Imagined East, The Western Political Vision of the Eastern Mediterranean (in Turkish) (Istanbul: Metis 1996).

73. Gillespie, ‘Reshaping the Agenda?’, p. 25; Nicolaidis and Nicolaidis, ‘The Euro-Med’, p. 340. Indeed, sharing political norms while keeping divergences in the sphere of culture is accepted as the foundation of the EU itself. Therefore the EMP was designed on the model of unity in diversity as an extension of ‘integration in diversity’ of the EU project. Hence, EMP might be seen as a vehicle for the Brussels in order to broaden stability existing within the Union's boundaries to its immediate neighbourhood.

74. H. Malmvig used this urgency matter to explain how securitisation of inter-cultural dialogue took place. Helle Malmvig, ‘Security through Inter-cultural Dialogue? Implication of the Securitization of Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue Between Cultures’, Mediterranean Politics 10/3 (2005), p. 357. For the Crete Declaration, see Presidency Conclusions, Mid Term Euro-Mediterranean Conference, Crete, 26–27 May 2003, available at http://www.euromed-seminars.org.mt/archive/ministerial/interim_crete.pdf, p. 1.

75. See also, Council of the European Union, The Hague Programme: Strengthening Freedom, Security and Justice in theEuropean Union, 16054/04, 13 December 2004, available at http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/doc/hague_programme_en.pdf, p. 3.

76. Michael Pace, ‘The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the Common Mediterranean Strategy? European Union Policy From A Discursive Perspective’, Geopolitics 9/2 (2007), p. 293.

77. Perti Joenniemi, ‘Towards a European Union of Post Security’, Cooperation and Conflict 42/1 (2007), pp. 138–40.

78. Thomas Diez, ‘Europe's Others and Return of Geopolitics’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17 (2004), pp. 319–35.

79. Thomas Christiansen, Fabio Petito and Ben Tonra, ‘Fuzzy Politics around Fuzzy Borders: The European Union's “Near Abroad”’, Cooperation and Conflict 35/4 (2000), p. 393.

80. A Secure Europe in a Better World, pp. 5, 7.

81. Council of the European Union, The Hague Programme, pp. 13–17.

82. For the intellectual relation between core–periphery structuring and the Wider Europe–ENP, see Raffaella A. Del Sorto and Tobias Schumacher, ‘From EMP to ENP: What's at Stake with the European Neighborhood Policy towards the Southern Mediterranean?’, European Foreign Affairs Review 10 (2005), p. 27.

83. Chiara Brambilla, ‘Europe–Africa Border(s) and the Immigration Policies of the EU: Overcoming the ‘‘Double-Bind’’ towards a Pluriversal Citizenship’, GLOMIG WORKSHOP, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 20–21 October 2006. Available at http://www.ru.nl/ ncbr/html/files/brambillastatement.pdf, accessed 20 September 2008.

84. Pace, ‘The Ugly Duckling of Europe’, p. 203.