The EconomistAugust 1st 2020 Europe 43T
o depress an eudiplomat, lay out a map of Europe. On one
border is Russia, posing a physical threat to the bloc’s eastern
members and a digital one to the rest. To the south-east the west-
ern Balkans remain a mess. Turkey has evolved from partner to
awkward neighbour to menace. In Ukraine a war still rumbles on,
while Belarus, previously a place of autocratic stability, looks wob-
bly. Around the Mediterranean a line of unstable or failed states
stretches from the Middle East to north Africa.
A coherent foreign policy in such circumstances would make
sense. Instead the euhas a contradictory one. Russia is regarded as
an existential threat by the likes of Poland, but a potential ally by
France. Turkey is viewed in a similarly erratic way. Countries in the
western Balkans should be hugged close or shoved away, depend-
ing on whom you ask. In Libya, perhaps the apogee of euforeign-
policy bungling, member states managed to find themselves on
different sides of a civil war, while both Russia and Turkey carved
out a foothold on the eu’s southern underbelly.
The euis a victim of geography when it comes to foreign policy.
But it is also a casualty of its own policy failures. To understand
these problems it is worth remembering how it handled another
predicament: the euro-zone crisis. The two have more in common
than first appears. In both cases an indispensable national govern-
ment lurks as the cause of, and solution to, the bloc’s problems.
During the euro-zone crisis this role was played by Germany, ar-
gues Alexander Clarkson of King’s College London. A near-hege-
monic economic power, Germany was often the biggest obstacle to
reforms that would have shored up the euro, such as mutual debt
issuance. At the same time its stern preference for balanced bud-
gets and low debt limited the bloc’s economic policy options.
When it comes to Europe’s collective geopolitical clout, France
plays a similar role, says Mr Clarkson. France is the closest thing
the euhas to a global power. After Brexit, it is the bloc’s sole nuc-
lear power and only member with a permanent seat on the unse-
curity council. The French government has been a noisy advocate
for European sovereignty—essentially demanding that the euget
its act together to a point where it can happily ignore the demands
or threats of China and America. In practice, however, this has
tended to manifest itself in an expectation that the eushould sim-
plyfollowFrenchpolicy. A paradox has emerged: while France
calls most loudly for a canny European strategy, it is often the first
to undermine it. In the western Balkans, it fought a rearguard prot-
est against North Macedonia and Albania taking a step towards
joining the bloc, despite the region’s importance. In the case of Lib-
ya, France was the eu’s main sympathiser for Khalifa Haftar, a
rogue general who launched an assault on the un-recognised gov-
ernment in Tripoli, which ostensibly had eusupport.
The euis trying to fix the problems at its borders with the trap-
pings of a foreign policy but not its actual tools, just as politicians
tried to save the euro without always having the right institutions
in place. The euro’s designers built the currency on the expectation
that further integration would inevitably follow, which it did, albe-
it in a sometimes chaotic manner. This strategy was known as the
Monnet method, after Jean Monnet, one of the eu’s founding fa-
thers. But when it comes to foreign policy the tactic has so far
failed. The euis left with a botched Kevin Costner project: they
built it, but nobody came. An euforeign policy exists only so far as
member states allow it, with any decision requiring unanimity. In-
stead the union offers Potemkin diplomacy, with missions across
the globe flying euflags and staffed with well-paid diplomats but
with little in the way of strategy to promote. As a result the bloc is
burdened by responsibility without power: expectations that it
should do something rise, while the capacity for the bloc actually
to do anything remains static.
A final similarity with the euro-zone crisis is an unwillingness
of governments to admit that their fates are bound together. It took
a pandemic-induced recession for Germany to learn this lesson,
but learn it did. After opposing common debt issuance to solve the
euro-zone’s ills, the German government at last gave the nod earli-
er this year, paving the way for the biggest federalising step the eu
has taken since the euro’s creation. Even those countries which
protested compromised, leading to a €750bn recovery fund, with
€390bn handed to governments as grants. (While all eucountries
were involved, the main targets were euro-zone economies in the
bloc’s south.) It was a step towards the eubecoming a little more
recognisably state-like. But in foreign policy no such break-
through is visible. Member states do not yet believe that the pain of
a shared foreign policy—with contentious issues settled by quali-
fied majorities, backed by a proper military capability—is worth
the benefits of one.The euro was the easy bit
There are differences between the foreign-policy crisis and its
euro cousin. Unlike euro policy, the eu’s foreign policy is not en-
tirely in its gift to solve. There is no obvious buzzer marked “Fix
Libya” that euleaders are refusing to press. Markets cheer when
the eushows a modicum of political unity over the future of the
euro. Given a similar breakthrough in foreign policy, leaders in
Turkey and Russia would probably simply shrug. Likewise, while
economic concerns are always at the top of voters’ minds, foreign
policy appears only when something goes badly wrong. There is
less political impetus to boost the eu’s geopolitical standing.
A totemic belief for euofficials is that crisis breeds integration.
It is a view first put out by Mr Monnet that Europe is “forged in cri-
sis”. Such an attitude can lead to complacency but in the case of the
euro it stood the test. The currency bloc stumbled but never fell,
with politicians taking necessary steps, albeit belatedly. A similar
path is available when it comes to the eu’s foreign policy. After all,
there are plenty of crises to test the theory on. Just look at a map. 7Charlemagne Euro crisis (with guns)
euforeign policy suffers from the same problems that once bedevilled the euro zone