David Miliband’s blog links to something I missed in the FT last week: the formation of a new European Council on Foreign Relations, as a complement / competitor to its American counterpart. The article announcing its launch – penned by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, Mark Leonard and Mabel van Oranje, is candid about the EU’s foreign policy failings:
Despite these successes [single market, generous aid budget, lots of peacekeepers, uses incentives instead of threatening to invade people, leadership on WTO, Kyoto, International Criminal Court and so on], the EU continues to underperform on the world stage. Since the Iraq war and the French and Dutch No votes on the constitutional treaty, the EU has shown the faltering confidence of adolescence. European leaders, who struggle to adapt to a new global environment characterised by a weakened US, a resurgent Russia and a rising China, have too often turned inwards.
Instead, they continue, Europe needs to get its act together on issues like enlargement, Russia and the Middle East. To do this, it needs to rally behind Javier Solana; take a more co-ordinated approach; and think hard about additional incentives to draw the EU’s immediate neighbours into its sphere of influence.
