Editor’s note: For another perspective, check out staff writer’s Andrew Ma’s article, “Europe’s Decline.”
If the 19th Century is known for European hegemony, the 20th Century is known for European division. For decades, the continent served as a center of multilateral conflict, ethnic tension, and wildly divergent foreign policies and ideology. Now, however, for the over 740 million residents of Europe, the Iranian nuclear deal has demonstrated the success of continent’s new foreign service bureaucracy, which is serving to bring a more peaceful and stable world. Led ably by Baroness Ashton, the continent and its political union punched well above its weight on the global stage when Ashton chaired the power five plus Iran (P5 +1) meeting which led to the breakthrough interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear power. This deal demonstrates Europe’s ever more constructive role in foreign affairs in the 21st Century.
For the European External Action Service (EEAS), which was set-up in 2010 as a figment of the European Union’s desire for closer links in aid, security and foreign policy, the agreement comes as a coup. A change of perception is appropriately and immediately afoot; gone is the offensive mocking of the irrelevancy of Ashton and her agency, replaced by widespread congratulation from previously skeptical diplomatic circles and the scathing popular press alike, including John Kerry’s statement that he is “grateful for her stewardship of the talks.”
There are three crucial factors in Europe’s new rise on the global stage:
1. A new foreign policy force
Institutional change has catalyzed the sweeping evolution in Europe’s foreign policy. The European Union holds complex diplomatic relations with almost all nations across the globe, and since the 2009 Lisbon treaty the EEAS has been charged with taking control of those relationships away from the ever-rotating European Presidency. Formally launched in December 2010 under the leadership of its High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, British Baroness Catherine Ashton, to little applause, the agency was thought of as a wasteful encroachment on member sovereignty. However, like a conductor of an orchestra, the service’s coordinating role, large size and bureaucratic, apolitical nature allowed it to shyly inch forward the Geneva nuclear agreement. From their headquarters in the Triangle Building of Europe’s technocratic Mecca of Brussels, Belgium, the media-averse Baroness Ashton and her agency are notably aloof to the public relations and democratic catfights which plague usual governance.
Their competitive advantage became clear when the initial talks between Kerry and the big 5 powers broke up in early November. Rather than advocating a kind of fashionable public diplomacy, the service’s ultra low-key approach saw Ashton holding face-to-face meetings with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who favored her sitting in bilateral negotiations and coordinating the P5+1 talks. William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, offered high praise to Ashton’s work in the House of Commons speaking to the “indispensable role” she her and service had played, stating that “she has handled things brilliantly, particularly in creating confidence between the Iranian negotiators and the European Three plus 3 (The United States, China, and Russian) team.” This highly technocratic approach, matched with a huge mandate, staff, resources and power have allowed the EEAS to step forth and command the trust needed to co-commandeer the Geneva deal.
2. A Europe United
It is very easy to remember the days of the Iraq War. The war highlighted in the most powerful terms the fundamental differences varying European powers had with their neighbors. Germany and France aggressively opposed the United State’s policy; Blair’s Britain stood behind its special relationship with the United States; and Italy, Spain and Poland also explicitly supported military action. On the Iranian deal Europe was not exactly in unison. The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was notably more hawkish on Iran, demanding stricter restrictions on enrichment, whilst Britain’s William Hague supposedly was more of a dove. The role of the EEAS was mediating, allowing the European half of the P5+1 to act more usefully in sync. Whilst European foreign policy shall never, and ought never, to be identical as per differing national identities, values, and agendas, the Service’s conducting of the Union’s common foreign and security policy clearly had an impact in smoothing over intra-European roadblocks to success in the Geneva deal. The very collaboration of EU member states’ embassies in Tehran through the EEAS despite the absence of an official EU delegation in the city, as well as the work the service had done in strengthening co-operation and knowledge regarding Iran’s nuclear program and human rights record, show that European states are now working together productively.
3. An unmatched global network
Europe is a continent as diverse as is it is large. With GDP per capita ranging from US $91,000 in Luxembourg to a little over US $16,000 in Romania, it is also a continent of some of the oldest and newest functioning democracies. A patchwork of culture, ethnicity, and ideology, it could be reasonably argued that European-wide coordination is as miraculous as it is real. When in 2012 the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the causes of peace, reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe, it can be said that like Obama’s 2009 award, it represented unfilled potential as much as actual achievement. Europe’s diversity is one of its two core foreign policy strengths. For the European Union’s leverage is almost omnipresent; the incredible range of missions, embassies and interests of the member states make its potential influence stratospheric.
Combining the interests of EU member states proves strategically indelible, both in the Iran talks and in other situations. The EU was the biggest trade partner with Iran before the deal, a crucial fact as Iran faces the possibility of economic meltdown. In a more general sense, in almost any international dispute or dilemma a plethora of member states will be relevantly engaged, thereby facilitating EEAS involvement. The External Action Service has powers of international engineering and engagement significant reach that are unmatched. Its second core strength comes in real resources. The European Union has the world’s largest GDP, and thus the extremely generous €489 million budget (in 2012, and rising significantly since) matched with growing control over Europe’s vast defense and foreign aid investments will allow the Service to capitalize on its pervasive global connections to aide peace and stability globally.
With this first step in international agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the European Union via its External Action Service has played a far greater role than anticipated. Its huge global network will allow it to garner and deploy leverage in new ways, whilst its institutional and leadership’s ability to be self-effacing will enable it to traverse some of the world’s toughest issues. The Service has great amounts of work to do in solving the urgent dilemmas closer to home in the Balkans and in terms of European Enlargement, but the Geneva deal demonstrates that the Service has a bright future in pertaining a new relevance and greater influence for Europe on the global stage.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons