SECURITY & DEFENCE
Solana’s security review should introduce “structural” foreign policy
Autumn 2008
Javier Solana’s review of the European Security Strategy’s review now looms large. Stephan Keukeleire argues that much more than just an update it needs to reflect structural foreign policies that better reflect the needs of non-EU countries
At last December’s European Council meeting in Brussels’ EU leaders gave Javier Solana 12 months to review his four year-old European Security Strategy (ESS) “with a view to proposing elements on how to improve the implementation and, as appropriate, elements to complement it.”
His update will probably increase the focus on energy and the environment, which back in 2003 were largely skimmed over. The EU’s relationship with Russia, China and other emerging powers will also feature more prominently, providing that a formulation can be found to accommodate member states’ divergent views. The updated strategy was also due to reflect the innovations in the EU’s foreign policy mechanisms foreseen by the Lisbon Treaty, so where that will go is now unclear.
The challenge in revising the EU’s security strategy is to use more systematically Community-based policies as instruments of foreign policy. These cover such areas as partnerships and association agreements with third countries, the EU’s many assistance programmes, its development and stabilisation tools, the Union’s huge structural and economic power and, not least, its external actions budget of over €6,6bn.
Brussels needs to endow its first pillar foreign policy toolbox with a much sharper strategic direction. And adopting a so-called structural foreign policy as a new paradigm for a revised ESS would be one means of achieving this, along with the partial merger of the EU’s pillars through the European External Action Service, together with the Lisbon Treaty’s merging together of the Council’s functions of High Representative with an external relations vice-presidency of the Commission.
A modern and effective foreign policy depends on much more than international players being able to pursue strategies that yield direct advantages and allow them to tackle such traditional challenges as a diplomatic crisis or armed conflict. Structural foreign policy suggests that effectiveness also depends on an ability to shape, influence and define viable structures. In other words, to redefine the “rules of the game” that in the longer-term will determine how players behave and relate to each other.
A structural foreign policy should be a long term approach that seeks to shape sustainable political, legal, socio-economic and security structures. These are structures that characterise not only nations and the international system as a whole, but also the societies they are made of, too often a point overlooked by policymakers.
The EU has, in cooperation with other international entities, already developed a number of successful structural foreign policies. Perhaps the best example has been toward the countries of central and eastern Europe that culminated in the 2004 “big bang” enlargement. Another, even though it is still very much a work in progress, is the EU’s policy towards the Balkans. Kosovo has in many ways become the litmus test of the EU’s structural foreign policy in the Balka