Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
member states and divergent national diplomacy has shifted over time and varies
between issues.
Many academics insist that the habits of cooperation and shared problem-solving
in foreign policy have progressed too far to be easily reversible. Such habits have,
they insist, withstood the eurozone crisis well. The EU has developed gradually
over
that the economic
crisis in unlikely to undo.
18
Noted theorists argue that even if the crisis weakens
certain EU institutional structures it is unlikely to unravel the deeper roots of this
European
fty years into a strongly embedded
'
security community
'
: peace is ensured though deep interdependence,
shared values and the cement of other institutions such as the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).
19
Indeed, prominent academics detect a broad resuscitation of neo-functionalist
dynamics, with the crisis pushing forward the
'
security community
'
across a whole
range of issues.
20
The history of European integration shows that unity tends to
solidify in moments of crisis and that the EU has been capable of re-inventing the
rationale for cooperation.
21
Moreover, the reshaped world order requires the kind of pragmatic joint man-
agement of new challenges that will bring EU governments closer together. Thus,
some theorists insist that there is both a remoulded structural realist motive for
deeper coordination, and an internal self-sustaining momentum to deeper foreign
policy convergence exogenous to and counteracting the eurozone crisis.
22
In fact, formal proposals for deepening the institutional structures of foreign and
security policy cooperation have become more prominent in recent years. Propo-
sals for political union have included plans for a fully supranational foreign and
security policy. A report produced by eleven foreign ministers in September 2012
marked a notable attempt to map out a vision for a more integrated CFSP, along
with a European army. At the end of 2012, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and
Poland agreed to support a new
'
integration frontier
'
'
military structure
'
to oversee common European
con
ict resolution missions.
23
Foreign and security policy is one of relatively few areas where the UK remains
relatively strongly committed to productive engagement at the EU level. Indeed,
for London cooperation on foreign policy may be seen as necessary to help com-
pensate for the UK
s marginalisation from the core economic union. In turn,
Germany and France have looked for areas to keep the UK from drifting too far
apart; foreign and security policy is the most obvious possibility.
Many other observers, however, observe growing disunity. Former German
foreign minister Joschka Fischer laments that EU foreign policy today su
'
ers from
creeping
'
renationalisation
'
and
'
provincialism
'
.
24
Charles Kupchan writes of the
'
renationalisation of European politics
'
that has distanced the EU even further from
'
the collective governance that Europe needs to thrive in a globalised world
'
.
25
