Policy paradox
Dear Editor,
It is a pivotal moment in international affairs. The world has braced for war in Iraq, the spectre of a nuclear North Korea is coming into sharper relief, and incidents of terror continue around the globe. Amidst this turbulence, it is easy to miss the historical political changes taking place in Europe.
For as the international community moves loudly from crisis to crisis, the European Union is grinding away quietly at some of the most significant institutional changes in its half-century existence. At the top of the agenda is the negotiation of an EU constitution. Such a document would reflect nothing less than the most basic social, economic, and political rights of EU citizens and (if it is drafted well) would provide the clearest picture yet of the purposes and structures of the club.
Europe's leading luminaries consider the creation of a common EU foreign policy to be a central component of this constitutional undertaking. While the precise contours of the idea have not yet been drawn, the proposal contemplates the transfer of a vast amount of control over diplomacy and defence from individual member states to the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. It is a monumental and unprecedented idea. It is also an idea that, sadly, is destined to fail.
The predecessor of the modern EU was created almost 50 years ago by a small group of countries which believed they could achieve greater things acting together than they could acting alone. Over the years the body's powers have expanded in scope, and the group has grown from six to 15 countries. Yet despite its ever-deepening integration, it has never been suggested that the EU's members would be anything less than independent, sovereign states. Therein lies the paradox of a common EU foreign policy.
A common foreign policy, in any real sense of the term, cannot succeed because it is contrary to the EU's inherent identity as an organisation of sovereign states. There is no more fundamental component of state sovereignty than the authority to decide how to deal with those outside the borders. When a country yields its power to make foreign policy, it therefore surrenders its most elemental sovereignty. Thus, if the vision of a common EU foreign policy is to be realised, if the responsibility for conducting diplomatic and military affairs is to be moved to the supranational level, the EU's member states must, by definition, be deprived of their sovereignty.
The development of a common EU foreign policy is not only problematic in theory, it is impossible in practice. If the debate over how to deal with Iraq has taught us anything, it is that the countries of Europe will go to great lengths to differentiate themselves in urgent foreign policy matters. While the transatlantic rift gets the most press, it should not go unnoticed that the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain (to name just a few countries) have all spent considerable political capital asserting their individual national views.
Moreover, these national differences will only grow in the coming years, as up to 12 countries in central and eastern Europe join the EU. No one should expect these states to unflinchingly adopt any real or imagined EU vision of foreign policy. Countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic States - which will be among the first entrants - have vastly different diplomatic and military heritages than the states of western Europe. They did not survive the will of the Soviet Union for so many decades only to submit entirely to the (albeit kinder) will of the EU, and so the likelihood that they will express independence in foreign policy should not be underestimated.
Jonathan S. Kallmer
Attorney
Hogan & Hartson
Washington, D.C., USA
It is a pivotal moment in international affairs. The world has braced for war in Iraq, the spectre of a nuclear North Korea is coming into sharper relief, and incidents of terror continue around the globe. Amidst this turbulence, it is easy to miss the historical political changes taking place in Europe.
For as the international community moves loudly from crisis to crisis, the European Union is grinding away quietly at some of the most significant institutional changes in its half-century existence. At the top of the agenda is the negotiation of an EU constitution. Such a document would reflect nothing less than the most basic social, economic, and political rights of EU citizens and (if it is drafted well) would provide the clearest picture yet of the purposes and structures of the club.
Europe's leading luminaries consider the creation of a common EU foreign policy to be a central component of this constitutional undertaking. While the precise contours of the idea have not yet been drawn, the proposal contemplates the transfer of a vast amount of control over diplomacy and defence from individual member states to the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. It is a monumental and unprecedented idea. It is also an idea that, sadly, is destined to fail.
The predecessor of the modern EU was created almost 50 years ago by a small group of countries which believed they could achieve greater things acting together than they could acting alone. Over the years the body's powers have expanded in scope, and the group has grown from six to 15 countries. Yet despite its ever-deepening integration, it has never been suggested that the EU's members would be anything less than independent, sovereign states. Therein lies the paradox of a common EU foreign policy.
A common foreign policy, in any real sense of the term, cannot succeed because it is contrary to the EU's inherent identity as an organisation of sovereign states. There is no more fundamental component of state sovereignty than the authority to decide how to deal with those outside the borders. When a country yields its power to make foreign policy, it therefore surrenders its most elemental sovereignty. Thus, if the vision of a common EU foreign policy is to be realised, if the responsibility for conducting diplomatic and military affairs is to be moved to the supranational level, the EU's member states must, by definition, be deprived of their sovereignty.
The development of a common EU foreign policy is not only problematic in theory, it is impossible in practice. If the debate over how to deal with Iraq has taught us anything, it is that the countries of Europe will go to great lengths to differentiate themselves in urgent foreign policy matters. While the transatlantic rift gets the most press, it should not go unnoticed that the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain (to name just a few countries) have all spent considerable political capital asserting their individual national views.
Moreover, these national differences will only grow in the coming years, as up to 12 countries in central and eastern Europe join the EU. No one should expect these states to unflinchingly adopt any real or imagined EU vision of foreign policy. Countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic States - which will be among the first entrants - have vastly different diplomatic and military heritages than the states of western Europe. They did not survive the will of the Soviet Union for so many decades only to submit entirely to the (albeit kinder) will of the EU, and so the likelihood that they will express independence in foreign policy should not be underestimated.
Jonathan S. Kallmer
Attorney
Hogan & Hartson
Washington, D.C., USA
