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Since the mid-1990s, the European Union has defined the Asia-Pacific as one of its key strategic targets on its ambitious road towards global power. The EU has ever since made consistent efforts to implement strategies, policies and activities in the Asia-Pacific. Over the past decades, big changes have taken place on both sides and the wider world. It is high time to evaluate the EU’s performance in its Asian policy. In fact, the EU is at crossroads with its Asia Pacific policy. On several aspects, the EU is compelled to redefine its interests and roles, and rethink its strategies and policies towards the dynamic and ever-important Asia-Pacific region of the contemporary world. This volume addresses this theme, by elaborating the general context, major issues and countries in the EU’s Asia-Pacific policy. It covers issues and areas of traditional security, economy and trade, public diplomacy, and human security and focuses on the EU’s relations with China, Japan, the ASEAN countries and Australasia.
This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia since the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it explains the EU’s contribution to post-conflict stabilisation and conflict resolution in Bosnia. The book demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and that institutional legacies and unintended consequences have shaped CFSP impact over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way.
The concluding chapter summarises the findings and further reflects on the institutional and political challenges to the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia. It reviews the impact of institutionalisation on the EU’s foreign and security policy, the politics of coherence and effectiveness and the overall contribution of EU foreign policy to conflict resolution in Bosnia. The case study of Bosnia provides evidence to support three key findings. First, that institutions have had a crucial impact on levels of coherence and effectiveness over time. Second, that contrary to rationalist assumptions about the purported efficiency of institutions, the increasing CFSP institutionalisation has not done away with problems of coherence and effectiveness and in some cases it has raised new ones. Unintended consequences, path dependency and obstacles to the institutionalisation of learning can be blamed in this regard. Third, the concluding chapter also provides evidence that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played a key role in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy.
interrelationship: what we have learned to call the European ‘security architecture’. The final section of the chapter deals with the issue of the Union’s role in world politics post-Cold War. European foreign and security policy This section presents a detailed analysis of European foreign and security policy as it has emerged after nearly fifty years of efforts by the EC/EU, dating back to the early 1950s with the European Defence Community (EDC) saga, and bringing us up to the Amsterdam and Nice reforms of October 1997 and February 2001, respectively. Attention is given not
foreign and security policy. In sum, by examining the coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s intervention in Bosnia, this book contributes to the assessment of post-conflict stabilisation and resolution in Bosnia as well as the complex and changing nature of EU foreign and security policy. More specifically, the book defends the position that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant
; circulating intelligence on member states and formal EU documentation to departmental players; maintaining the permanent representation and wider network of overseas embassies; serving as the lead department for institutional matters and European foreign and security policy; and developing public diplomacy at home – articulating and explaining national EU policy to the wider public. The FCO’s role was further enhanced under Blair as it was given responsibility for driving forward the ‘Step Change’ programme. This was enshrined as a five-year public
to take the 84 G position as lead nation. The general in command was German, as were most of the deployed soldiers – 600 out of a total of 1,000.8 In the parliamentary debates preceding the votes on Essential Harvest and Amber Fox, the government emphasised the need to live up to Germany’s European and Atlantic responsibility and signal commitment to the further development and consolidation of a common European foreign and security policy.9 Moral and historical reasons were also invoked. To vote ‘no’ to the missions in
opposition – SPD and the Greens – supporting the deployment. The deployment was framed by its proponents as intimately tied to ‘broader and higher issues’, namely the creation of a common European foreign and security policy, and the credibility and perception of Germany around the world. The success of the Government’s strategy of gradually but decisively extending the Bundeswehr’s remit appeared to be further consolidated with enhanced parliamentary support for IFOR in November 1995. This time the majority in the Bundestag in support of deploying the Longhurst, Germany
existence of such national interests has often been seen as the most serious obstacle to the emergence of a truly common European foreign and security policy. Before EPC had even been established, Hoffmann (1966) warned that a ‘logic of diversity’ in the sphere of foreign policy would not only prevent the integration process from spilling over into this traditional area of ‘high politics’ but would also, ultimately, put a brake
state did inside Europe. Ireland was, by any standard, cautious about supporting and playing a part in a more developed European foreign and security policy. On any issues related to defence and security matters there was deep reluctance to engage at an early stage with Europe, given that domestic public sentiment continued to favour neutrality. There was also a concern about the role of large states, who were perceived as reluctant to take on board the concerns of small states. The state’s participation in Europe, and the development of elements of a European foreign