Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
complex institutional structures and the historical experience of its own integration
process. As is well known, the EU is somewhere between a nation-state and a
standard intergovernmental organisation. Its common foreign and security policy
(CFSP) is largely, although not purely, intergovernmental. It consists of coopera-
tion between national governments, which pursue their own national diplomacy in
parallel with EU cooperation. Coordination commitments in the
eld of defence
are more limited. International trade policy is largely supranational and managed by
the Commission; as we will see, the Commission holds signi
cant powers in the
elds of development aid and energy and climate policy too.
The EU has long been seen as embodying the epitome of cooperative approa-
ches to security. Most commentators and diplomats de
ne the EU as a multilateral
strategic actor, drawn by its very nature to positive-sum and holistic security poli-
cies. The EU has regularly repudiated zero-sum power politics. The EU has been
de
ned as a
'
collective power
'
that does not act in its own narrow, sel
sh interest
but considers the general interest of the international system.
1
As early as 2003 the European Security Strategy laid out an impressively all-
inclusive and forward-looking approach to security. This document committed the
EU to a strong engagement in the full range of security challenges, through a
balanced use of economic, social, political and military instruments. The EU
'
s
much-commented-on self-de
nition as a post-modern security actor lays claim to a
conviction that European interests are served not by seeking to maximise relative
power but by assisting other states to become stronger, more prosperous and more
e
ectively governed.
2
The EU stresses that rules-based behaviour is the constitutive cornerstone of its
geo-strategic identity. It proclaims soft power to be the most e
ective form of
strategic power. In 2003 Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida famously wrote that
European opposition to the invasion of Iraq revealed a
rmly rooted and distinctive
EU foreign policy identity
one wedded to the principles of cooperation, non-
intervention and soft power, and utterly di
-
erent from the US
'
s international
le.
3
Together, the Commission and member states are the world
pro
'
s lead development
donors. The EU has contributed greatly to expanding the de
nition of security
beyond traditional notions. From an early stage and in all
erent regional
partnerships, the EU has insisted that security cannot be reduced to traditional,
defensive concepts but must be broadened to include soft security questions such as
economic development, the combatting of cross-border crime, counter-radicalisation,
human security and environmental questions.
4
It is commonly argued that realist theories cannot explain the progression of
European foreign policy cooperation and that a range of other analytical frame-
works are better suited to CFSP. Indeed, the latter has become something of a
its di
