EU policy towards Middle East

Academy of Direct Democracy | Академія прямої демократії

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EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS MIDDLE EAST

Maria Ivanova, Kingdom of Academic Investigation

I’ve chosen for my paper the Middle East theme as the most blood shed area of modern history. This is the question of personal credit for each state to stand on a certain position on the subject of serious imbalances that plague our planet and drive disadvantaged groups in a cultural and religious seclusion thereby seeking refuge in extremism and murder.
At my point of view realistic approach is the most adequate lens to look through while analyzing European Union foreign policy.
Each state in the foreign policy elaborating bases on the rational choice model: being single on the world’s arena the state is a monolithic unitary actor, capable of making decisions based on preference ranking and value maximization.
The main value according to the realistic approach is safety. That’s why the defense items are the defining in the foreign policy objectives formulating.
This approach lets us define the states-members of the EU as rational players who define their costs and benefits from every step in the common European policy, foreign policy in the first rank.
The problem which European states were faced just a couple of years ago was the attitude and policy elaborating in the touchy field of violent conflicts in the Middle East – the most trying subject of the states’ international relations since the end of the cold war.

The Middle East has recently become the area of the intense US influence and for the EU this is the question of vital importance to be united in its position towards Middle East questions. US and Europe may declare to be partners but united Europe has always wanted to counterbalance the American domination at least on its own European territory.
The necessity of making the really important political decisions on the EU level (as opposite to national) proved the complete inability of the EU members to delegate their national sovereignties for actions coordination in the foreign policy field.
Where real human blood is being shed no compromise can be accepted: the international actor is either on one side or on the other. EU proved its partial nature which will not become one whole in the nearest future.
The American invasion to Iraq was the most corner-stone question for the EU members recently. Britain declared full public support and British troops entered Iraq with the US. France refused to support US without its concessions and acted as the state not caring much about EU’s CFSP. The most important question those days was UN Security Council authorization and EU disappeared from minds of the officials as soon as they entered the UN Security Council hall.
We still remember the Belgian government initiated summit, 2003, April, Tervuren, attended only by the French, German, and Luxemburg heads of government. And Washington policy-makers celebrated the division between ‘old Europe’ and ‘new Europe’, as Donald Rumsfeld dubbed them. This was internationally significant that EU was unable to unite on this important question and the initiative of people’s attitude formulating and thus forming went to the US and proved its leadership in the world – there was no force to counter its decision.
European Union cannot be the subject for rational decisions as the agents constituting it are much more powerful and self aware than we might have assumed.
Each member had strong enough relations with US or high enough moral standards (defined actually by the public opinion within their countries which shows whether citizens are inclined to trust their sovereignty to them on the next elections or not) not to be interested in taking into account position of the other members of the EU in this question. (Guess not one leader thought those days ‘thank god they’ve been too clumsy to work out CFDP’. If not ‘let’em stay as vague in CFDP as they’ve been by now’.)
This fragile consensus between European governments on the edge 2002/2003 showed that common policy is the one worked out during long negotiations and formed ad hoc while single policy with single decision-making authority is a veiled in mist looming ideal.
The Lebanon crisis (following Hezbollah attacks on Israel used for starting new Israeli invasion in Lebanon) can be another example of the EU common foreign policy elaborating problems.
Of course, the issue is not that problematic as the Iraqi case used to be but still it caused some confusion. The position of the EU has become more or less clear on the 1st of August while the outbreak of the new hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah started on 12 July 2006. And the position of the EU was “the demand for an immediate cessation of hostilities to be followed by a sustainable cease-fire” which was less than “the demand for an immediate cease fire”, which had been first proposed. The pressure from the GB, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic and Poland blocked the draft resolution proposal.
And while disagreements on the position were mainly overcome, the position on the peacekeepers had been left open: the question of sending EU joint peacekeeping forces or not to guarantee the cease-fire remained open after the specially called council of EU foreign ministers.
Coming from East to closer item of Ukraine I’d like to mention that our country is getting more and more touchy partner for EU to cooperate as well while Poland (being our close neighbour and bearing historically very close relationship) advocates one policy direction for the EU and other members are much more cold-blooded towards Ukraine’s membership and general close relationship such as free-trade area creation.

Literature

W. Wallace. Foreign and Security Policy: The Painful Path from Shadow to Substance.

EU demands "cessation of hostilities" in Lebanon. http://www.euractiv.com/en/security/eu-demands-cessation-hostilities-lebanon/article-157087
Andreatta, Filippo, Theory and the European Union’s International Relations, in: Hill, Christopher/ Smith, Michael (eds.), International Relations and the European Union, Oxford 2005, pp. 18-38.
Lynch, Dov, EU-Russia: Prospects for a Common Security Space, in: Eurojournal, Chisinau 2005, http://eurojournal.org/files/eu-russia.pdf

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