The EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy in Germany and the UK: Co-Operation, Co-Optation and Competition

313 Pages·2019·3.094 MB·English

by  Nicholas Wright

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN GERMAN POLITICAL STUDIES
THE EU’S COMMON FOREIGN
AND SECURITY POLICY IN
GERMANY AND THE UK
Co-operation, Co-optation and Competition
Nicholas Wright
New Perspectives in German Political Studies
Series Editors
William E. Paterson
Aston University
Birmingham, UK
Thomas Saalfeld
Universität Bamberg
Bamberg, Germany
Far reaching changes are now taking place in Germany. Stability lay at the
core of the German model and much of the writing from Peter Katzenstein
and Manfred Schmidt onwards sought to explain this enviable stability.
Changes in the external environment have created a number of fundamen-
tal challenges which pose a threat to that stability. Germany is now
Europe’s central power but this has generated controversy about how it is
to exercise this new power. Although attention is often centred on German
power the migration crisis demonstrates its limits. New Perspectives in
German Political Studies aims to engage with these new challenges and to
cater for the heightened interest in Germany. The Editors would welcome
proposals for single-authored monographs, edited collections and Pivots,
from junior as well as well-established scholars working on contemporary
German Politics.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14735
Nicholas Wright
The EU’s Common
Foreign and Security
Policy in Germany and
the UK
Co-Operation, Co-Optation and Competition
Nicholas Wright
Department of Political Science
University College London
London, UK
New Perspectives in German Political Studies
ISBN 978-3-319-93469-3 ISBN 978-3-319-93470-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93470-9
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For Julie
P
reface
The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is famously reputed to
have once asked ‘who do I call if I want to call Europe?’ Regardless of
whether he actually said it, the story is popular among academics and stu-
dents alike and provides a useful starting point for any discussion of EU
foreign policy, how it is made, where, by whom, and for what purposes.
These are not new questions, but as anyone who has worked in EU studies
in recent years will know, they remain a source of continuing fascination
and debate amongst scholars—something to which the large number of
conference panels, journal articles and books devoted to EU foreign pol-
icy in recent years attests. They remind us of the challenge the ever-
evolving European foreign policy-making environment poses as an object
of study. They also highlight a number of wider issues we must address.
These include: the nature of foreign policy-making in a highly interdepen-
dent and multilateralised world; the role of nation-states as actors within
this world as well as important sources of foreign policy in their own right;
and when states do decide—as they have done in the context of the EU—
to cooperate closely and intensively over the longer-term, what the conse-
quences of this might be. It is these questions that lie at the heart of this
book.
Studying EU foreign policy and foreign policy-making also offers an
important means of analysing and seeking to understand our increasingly
complex world. This book started life almost a decade ago as a doctoral
research project. At the time, the primary international question was how
to respond to the global financial crisis. The years since have seen the EU
rocked to its core by a succession of further challenges. The crisis in the
vii
viii PREFACE
Eurozone triggered by the 2008 financial meltdown brought the whole
integration project perilously close to unravelling at times with its underly-
ing causes as yet unresolved. The actions of a resurgent and revisionist
Russia to the East resulting in the annexation of The Crimea, the ongoing
conflict in The Ukraine and its involvement in Syria have resulted in much
soul-searching about defence and security cooperation and what role the
EU could and should play in this. And it has struggled to deal with the
mass movement of people from Africa, the Middle East and beyond flee-
ing a combination of poverty, hunger, drought, political instability and
war, most notably the Syria conflict. The EU’s clumsy and often highly
imperfect efforts to mitigate and manage the consequences of these crises
have contributed to the emergence of strong populist forces in many EU
member states that are, amongst other traits, vociferously Eurosceptic and
quick to blame an aloof and out of touch ‘Brussels elite’ for their national
travails. The UK’s decision in June 2016 in favour of Brexit is the most
dramatic expression to date of this loss of faith in the European ‘project’—
and has itself been added to this list of crises which the EU must address.
In some form or another, each have challenged EU member states to
come up with a collective, unified response in the context of its Common
Foreign and Security Policy, although the responses have not always
resulted in meaningful policy actions.
Together, these crises also highlight another longer-term problem: the
threat posed to the EU by the decline of the post-war international system
and the institutions established to manage and maintain it. Indeed, this is
perhaps the most significant long-term risk it faces. The EU is at heart a
system of law codifying the commitments its members have agreed to
make to one another to facilitate and sustain their cooperation and mutual
trust. Its engagement with the international community is largely predi-
cated on the acceptance by its international partners of a functioning rules-
based international system and arguably one of the EU’s most significant
international successes has been its contribution to the construction of
precisely this. Today, however, this system is under strain as never before.
The US, which did more than any other individual power to establish the
post-war international order in the first place and was for so long Europe’s
ally in defending and sustaining it, is today questioning its merits and
worth. Meanwhile, other big actors like China, India and Russia are push-
ing back against attempts to constrain their growing international power,
whether economic, political or military. But at precisely the moment when
the EU should be vigorously defending and promoting the rules-based
international order upon which so much of its international influence
PREFACE ix
depends, it finds itself diplomatically, economically and institutionally
weakened after years of crisis that have occupied so much of its political
bandwidth. Whether it can overcome this remains to be seen—but if it is
to once again demonstrate the value of institutionalised cooperation
between states both internally and externally, then it must. Given this, the
need for a genuine Common Foreign and Security Policy has arguably
never been clearer although the challenges to making it reality remain
significant. Equally, in light of this, the value of studying and understand-
ing how EU member states make collective decisions around foreign and
security policy is as pertinent as ever. This book is offered as a contribution
to this effort at increasing our understanding of these processes.
In writing this book I have amassed many significant debts of gratitude.
First and foremost I must thank all those who agreed to be interviewed for
the project. The majority of them must remain anonymous, but the offi-
cials in foreign and defence ministries in London, Paris and Berlin, in the
European Commission, General Secretariat of the Council, European
External Action Service and in various Permanent Representations in
Brussels were hugely generous with their time and candid in responding
to my questions. I hope I have done justice to their answers—their insights
will, I hope, be this book’s most significant contribution. Next I would
like to thank the many academics who have helped make this project real-
ity. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Hussein
Kassim and Dr Vassiliki Koutrakou (my PhD supervisory team at UEA),
Professors Anand Menon (KCL) and William Paterson (Aston) who exam-
ined the thesis, and Dr Christine Reh at UCL: their sage and honest advice
and their encouragement over several years have been invaluable. I would
also like to thank the many excellent academic colleagues who have read
and commented on different parts of the text, especially the anonymous
reviewer whose suggestions and comments were extremely helpful and
greatly appreciated—to be clear, any mistakes are my responsibility and
mine alone. The team at Palgrave Macmillan—Ambra Finotello, my edi-
tor, Imogen Gordon Clark and Oliver Foster—have guided, supported
and advised by turns (as well as demonstrating enormous reserves of
patience!). My parents and sister give me constant and enthusiastic sup-
port for everything I do. And finally, my deepest and most heartfelt thanks
go to my wonderful family—Julie and Nathaniel. Their love and support
is the foundation of everything.
Wymondham, UK Nicholas Wright
May 2018
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Constructivism, Supranationalism and the CFSP 3
Rules, Norms and Socialization 6
Europeanization and the CFSP 8
Explaining the Institutionalisation of Cooperation in the
CFSP 10
‘The Nation-State Is Still Here’—Why the National Still Matters
in CFSP 14
Policy Coordination 15
Europeanisation and ‘Uploading’ 17
The Continuing Challenge of the Capabilities-Expectations Gap 19
Socialisation in the Council 20
How Member States Engage with the CFSP 22
The Development and Institutions of the Common Foreign and 
Security Policy 23
Structure and Organisation of the Book 28
A Note on Sources 29
Bibliography 30
xi