The context and anatomy of crises

Abstract

‘Sarah Raine’s deeply informed, crisply written and authoritatively argued book will, I predict, swiftly become the indispensable analysis of Europe’s prospects as a strategic actor. The fact that she is clear-eyed (and dryly humorous) about the flaws and failures of European foreign and security policy makes her take on its strengths and possibilities all the more compelling.’

Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe

‘Love it or loath it, there will be no European Army any time soon: this is one of the conclusions of this well thought-out assessment. It factors in the transformational impact of Europe’s internal travails against a rapidly deteriorating and unforgiving strategic backdrop. The book is required reading for anyone who wants to form an educated opinion on Europe’s ability or inability to face these challenges in terms of policies, capabilities, money and organisation.’

François Heisbourg, IISS Senior Adviser for Europe; former commission member of France’s White Paper on Defence and National Security

‘The book brilliantly takes the reader through the strategic challenges facing Europe and makes the unfashionable argument that Europe has scored some notable successes as well as the well-known disappointments. Europe must act quicker, be more joined up and solve the tension between national policies and collective outreach. Sarah Raine makes a cautiously optimistic case that it may indeed do so.’

Peter Round, former capabilities director, European Defence Agency

Europe has suffered a decade of crises, with sovereign-debt troubles leading to austerity policies that exacerbated divisions inside member states and between them. Thereafter the Union was confronted with the challenges posed by a revanchist Russia in Ukraine and by a surge in migration from the Middle East and other conflict zones. The June 2016 United Kingdom vote to leave the Union threatened further damage to an institution that acknowledges it has failed to punch its weight in the spheres of foreign, defence and security policy. While that is a chronic shortcoming, its impact is becoming more acute as economic power moves east and Europe can no longer count on the steadfast support and leadership of the United States. The costs of Europe’s failure to achieve strategic coherence and effect are steadily rising.

This Adelphi book addresses the consequences of Europe’s multiple crises for its standing as a strategic actor, acknowledging its unique character and capabilities. It argues that strategic thought and action are belatedly being informed by the deteriorating security environment, and that nascent initiatives have the potential to effect a step-change. There are grounds for cautious optimism, visible in the success of stabilisation and counter-piracy operations as well as coordinated diplomatic activity. Also, the continent’s leading powers are becoming more pragmatic about how cooperation is organised within and beyond the Union. These developments offer the possibility that Europe might meet its aspirations to be a strategic actor of consequence, despite a long-track record of disappointment and the still-considerable obstacles that lie in its path.

Notes

1 Gilles Grin, ‘Shaping Europe: The Path to European Integration according to Jean Monnet’, Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe, Debates and Documents Collection, issue 7, March 2017. For GDP and population figures, see https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2017/html/ecb.sp170504.en.html.

2 Jean Monnet, ‘L’Europe et la nécessité’, Archives de la Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe, May 1974.

3 François Duchêne, ‘The European Community and the Uncertainties of Interdependence’, in Max Kohnstamm and Wolfgang Hager (eds), A Nation Writ Large? Foreign-Policy Problems before the European Community (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973), p. 19. Duchêne later became a director of the IISS.

4 Hedley Bull, ‘Civilian Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, December 1982, p. 151.

5 John McWilliam, House of Commons Debate, 10 April 2002, Hansard HC series 5, vol. 383, col. 24WH (10 April 2002), https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo020410/halltext/20410h02.htm.

6 Donna G. Star, ‘An Analysis of European Political Cooperation During the Persian Gulf Crisis’, Penn State International Law Review, vol. 10, no. 3, art. 4, 1992, p. 452.

7 Quoted by Craig Whitney, ‘Gulf Fighting Shatters Europeans’ Fragile Unity’, New York Times, 25 January 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/25/world/war-in-the-gulf-europe-gulf-fighting-shatters-europeans-fragile-unity.html.

8 For more on the Petersberg tasks, see http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/petersberg_tasks.html. The Petersberg tasks were named after the hotel in Bonn where they were signed. The original tasks can be found in the Petersberg Declaration of the Western European Union, Council of Ministers, Bonn, 19 June 1992, ch. II, para. 4.6. The updated Petersberg tasks are set out in Article 17.2 of the TEU.

9 Cologne European Council, Presidency Conclusions, Annex III, available at http://ue.eu.int/en/info/eurocouncil/.

10 See, for example, Jan Zielonka, Explaining Euro-Paralysis: Why Europe is Unable to Act in International Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), p. 229.

11 For discussion, see Helene Sjursen, ‘Missed Opportunity or Eternal Fantasy? The Idea of a European Security and Defence Policy’, in John Peterson and Helene Sjursen (eds), A Common Foreign Policy for Europe? Competing Visions of CFSP (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 95–112.

12 For more information, see the Civilian Headline Goal for 2008, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Al33239.

13 See, for example, TEU Declarations 13 and 14, which declare the changes ‘do not affect the responsibilities of Member States as they currently exist’, and do not ‘prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of member states’. For more on the Treaty of Lisbon, see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/5/the-treaty-of-lisbon.

14 The mutual defence clause is Article 42.7 of the TEU. The mutual solidarity clause is in Part V, Title VII, Article 222 of the TFEU.

15 High Representative and European Commission, ‘The EU’s Comprehensive Approach to External Conflict and Crises’, Joint Communication to the EU Parliament and Council, JOIN(2013) 30 final, 12 December 2013.

16 See, for example, the EC statement on enlargement as ‘the Union’s most successful foreign policy instrument’. Commission of the European Communities, ‘Communication from the Commission: Wider Europe – Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours’, COM(2003) 104 final, Brussels, 11 March 2003, p. 5.

17 Romano Prodi, ‘A Wider Europe – a Proximity Policy as the Key to Stability’, speech to the Sixth ECSA-World Conference, Brussels, 5–6 December 2002.

18 See, for example, Hilmar Linnenkamp and Christian Molling, ‘A Doable Agenda for the European Defence Council 2013’, SWP Comments, no. 28, August 2013.

19 George Soros, ‘The Future of Europe’, remarks delivered at the Global Economic Symposium, Kiel, Germany, 10 January 2013.

20 Peter Spiegel, ‘How the Euro was Saved’, Financial Times, 11 May 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.

21 Ibid.

22 Mario Draghi, speech at the Global Investment Conference in London, 26 July 2012.

23 Thomas Wright, ‘Europe’s Lost Decade’, Survival, vol. 55, no. 6, December 2013–January 2014, p. 7.

24 The crisis is sometimes portrayed as a sovereign-debt crisis, but some argue that the crisis was more often the cause of these deficits rather than vice versa. Spain and Ireland, for example, had fiscal surpluses and low debt-to-GDP ratios before the crisis hit. Meanwhile, Belgium and Italy, which had extraordinarily high debts, made it through without requiring a bailout. For more on this, see, for example, Joseph Stiglitz, ‘How to Save a Broken Euro’, Euractiv, 1 July 2014, https://www.euractiv.com/section/euro-finance/opinion/stiglitz-how-to-save-a-broken-euro/, or R.A. London, ‘The Euro Crisis was not a Government-debt Crisis’, Economist Free Exchange, 23 November 2015, https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2015/11/23/the-euro-crisis-was-not-a-government-debt-crisis.

25 Only a month earlier, Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallon had already publicly expressed his personal scepticism about the logic of sanctions. Explaining Spain’s interest in mending ties, he had argued that the EU needed to take Russia’s interests in Ukraine into account in its own interactions with Ukraine. See Andrew Rettman, ‘Spain: Russia Sanctions Beneficial for No One’, EUObserver, 10 March 2015, https://euobserver.com/foreign/127940.

26 Timothy Garton Ash, quoted in Neil Buckley and Andrew Byrne, ‘The Rise and Rise of Viktor Orban’, Financial Times, 25 January 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/dda50a3e-0095-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5.

27 See, for example, the late 2017 threat by the Hungarian foreign minister to block every issue important to Ukraine in international organisations. For more on its motivation and consequences, see Peter Kreko and Patrik Szicherle, ‘Why is Hungary blocking Ukraine’s Western Integration?’, Atlantic Council UkraineAlert blog, 16 January 2018, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-is-hungary-blocking-ukraine-s-western-integration. Orbán’s early political career was characterised by a fiercely anti-Russian stance. This shifted from around 2010 with his espousal of an ‘Eastern Way’.

28 Emmanuel Macron, speech at Humboldt University, Berlin, 10 January 2017.

29 Angelos Chryssogelos, ‘Euro Crisis Eroding EU Foreign Policy’, Chatham House Expert Comment, 15 May 2015, https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/17679.

30 Statement by UNHCR Commissioner Navi Pillay on 12 February 2013, reported in Ashley Fantz, ‘Syria Death Toll Probably at 70,000, U.N. Human Rights Official Says’, CNN, 13 February 2013, https://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/12/world/meast/syria-death-toll/index.html.

31 Andrew Rettman, ‘EU Sheds no Tears over Morsi’s Departure’, EUObserver, 4 July 2013, https://euobserver.com/foreign/120758.

32 ‘Joint Statement on Fighting near Gharyan, Libya’, 4 April 2019, https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2019/04/290918.htm.

33 For a European Council briefing on how individual member states responded to this activation, see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_BRI(2016)581408.

34 Julia Lisiecka, ‘After the Arab Spring, What’s Changed?’, EU Institute for Security Studies, May 2017, https://www.iss.europa.eu/sites/default/files/EUISSFiles/SMS_3_Arab_Spring%281%29.pdf. In 2015, 84% of EU money came from just four donors – the EU (33%), Germany (22%), the UK (15%) and France (14%).

35 ‘European Neighbourhood Policy And Enlargement Negotiations: Southern Neighbourhood’, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/neighbourhood/southern-neighbourhood_en.

36 Foreign Fighters: An Updated Assessment of the Flow of Foreign Fighters into Syria and Iraq (New York: The Sofan Group, December 2015), available at http://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/TSG_ForeignFightersUpdate3.pdf.

37 Arab Human Development Report 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality (New York: UN Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States, 2016), pp. 175–6.

38 For a full timeline of these sanctions and their contents, see https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/30963/eu-restrictive-measures-response-crisis-ukraine_en.

39 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 February to 15 May 2017, 15 May 2017, p. 2, available at https://www.refworld.org/docid/5940f16f4.html.

40 See the Global Internal Displacement Database at http://www.internal-displacement.org/database/. For more on this, see Beth Mitchneck, Jane Zavisca and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Europe’s Forgotten Refugees’, Foreign Affairs: Snapshot, 24 August 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2016-08-24/europes-forgotten-refugees-0.

41 Mike Elleman, ‘The Secret to North Korea’s ICBM Success’, IISS Voices blog, 14 August 2017, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2017/08/north-korea-icbm-success.

42 The increase in interceptions can also be attributed to NATO’s enhancement of its air policing. See Damian Sharokov, ‘NATO: Russian Aircraft Intercepted 110 Times above Baltic, in 2016’, Newsweek, 4 January 2017, https://www.newsweek.com/nato-intercepted-110-russian-aircraft-around-baltic-2016-538444.

43 Dmitri Trenin, ‘The Revival of the Russian Military’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 95, no. 3, May–June 2016, p. 28.

44 For more on Zapad, see ‘The wider implications of Zapad 2017’, IISS Strategic Comments, vol. 24, no. 2, 17 January 2018.

45 Jochen Rehrl, ‘Migration and CSDP’, in Jochen Rehrl (ed.), Handbook on CSDP, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Vienna: Directorate for Security Policy, Austrian Ministry of Defence and Sports, 2017), p. 112.

46 ‘Irregular Migration via the Central Mediterranean: From Emergency Responses to Systemic Solutions’, ESPC Strategic Notes, no. 22, 2 February 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/epsc/publications/strategic-notes/irregular-migration-central-mediterranean_en.

47 For a current list of Schengen states who have reintroduced internal border controls, see https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen/reintroduction-border-control_en.

48 International Organisation for Migration, ‘Flow Monitoring: Europe’, http://migration.iom.int/europe/. Data as of 27 August 2018.

49 European Commission, ‘Relocation: Commission refers the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to the Court of Justice’, press release, 7 December 2017, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-5002_en.htm.

50 In 2017, in Italy alone, there were five hotspots operating across its main islands, offering a collective capacity of 7,450 ‘reception facilities’. For one brief on hotspots and the concerns surrounding them, see ‘Hotspots at EU External Borders: State of Play’, European Parliament briefing by the European Parliamentary Research Service, June 2018.

51 Médecins Sans Frontières, ‘Families Trapped on Islands on the Brink of a Humanitarian Emergency’, press release, 5 December 2017, http://www.msf.org/en/article/greece-families-trapped-islands-brink-humanitarian-emergency.

52 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, press release, 14 November 2017,http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22393&LangID=E.

53 International Organisation for Migration, ‘Flow Monitoring: Europe’.

54 Ivan Krastev, ‘Germany’s Problem is Europe’s Problem’, New York Times, 4 October 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/opinion/germany-europe-east-west.html.

55 Amnesty International, ‘EU: New Migration Plans “Dangerous and Self Serving”’, press release, 29 June 2018, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/eu-new-migration-plansdangerous-and-selfserving/.

56 Boris Johnson, ‘The Only Continent with Weaker Economic Growth than Europe is Antarctica’, Telegraph, 29 May 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/29/the-only-continent-with-weaker-economic-growth-than-europe-is-an/.

57 The Electoral Commission, ‘EU Referendum Results’, https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/electorate-and-count-information.

58 Discussion with British official, December 2015.

59 European External Action Service, ‘Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe – A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy’, June 2016, available at http://europa.eu/globalstrategy/en.

60 G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Plot against American Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 96, no. 3, May–June 2017, pp. 2–9.

61 ‘Remarks by Secretary Gates at the Security and Defense Agenda, Brussels, Belgium’, 10 June 2011, http://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=4839. For one take on this, see Hans Kundani and Jana Puglierin, ‘Atlanticist and “Post Atlanticist” Wishful Thinking’, GMF Policy Essay, 3 January 2018, http://www.gmfus.org/publications/atlanticist-and-post-atlanticist-wishful-thinking.

62 Heiko Maas, ‘For a Balanced Trans-atlantic Partnership’, Handelsblatt, 22 August 2018, available at https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/maas-handelsblatt/2129154.

63 Peter Wise, ‘Portugal Grows at Fastest Rate Since 2000’, Financial Times, 14 February 2018., https://www.ft.com/content/cd5642e2-1175-11e8-8cb6-b9ccc4c4dbbb

64 Charles Forelle, Pat Minczeski and Elliot Bentley, ‘Greece’s Debt Due’, Wall Street Journal, 19 February 2015, http://graphics.wsj.com/greece-debt-timeline/.

65 Matt O’Brien, ‘Greece’s Economic Crisis is Over Only if You Don’t Live There’, Washington Post, 26 April 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/26/greeces-economic-crisis-is-over-only-if-you-dont-live-there/?utm_term=.1a99e4ed84cf.

66 Draghi, speech at the Global Investment Conference in London, 26 July 2012.

67 ‘Russian Security Chief Warns Ukraine Could Lose Statehood’, Tass, 15 January 2019, http://tass.com/world/1040080.

68 Laura Smith-Spark, ‘Illegal Migration to EU Falls to Lowest Level in 5 Years – but Spikes in Spain’, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/05/europe/migrant-figures-drop-europe-intl/index.html.

69 International Organisation for Migration, ‘Mediterranean Migrant Arrivals Reach 113,145 in 2018; Deaths Reach 2,242’, press release, 21 December 2018, https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-reach-113145-2018-deaths-reach-2242.

70 Drew Hinshaw and Anita Komuves, ‘Hungary Bucks US Push to Curb Russian and Chinese Influence’, Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/hungary-bucks-u-s-push-to-curb-russian-and-chinese-influence-11548626080.