At the June Summit,
which will take place after the UK Referendum, the High Representative of the
Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, will present
the results of her global review of external strategy. As part of the review process,
the Human Security Study Group, at the LSE, which is convened by Mary Kaldor and Javier Solana, has presented a report
entitled From Hybrid Peace to Human
Security: Rethinking the EU Strategy Towards Conflict together with twelve
background research papers .
Conflicts are at the sharp end of
contemporary crises. Refugees, extremist ideologies, criminality and predation
are all produced in conflict. Contemporary conflicts are sometimes known as
‘hybrid wars’ or ‘new wars’ in which classic distinctions between public and
private, government/regular and rebel/irregular, and internal and external
break down. They are best understood not as legitimate contests of wills (the
twentieth century idea of war) but as a degenerate
social condition in which armed groups mobilise sectarian and
fundamentalist sentiments and construct a predatory economy through which they
enrich. Identifying
ways to address violent conflict could open up strategies for dealing with
broader issues.
In this special openDemocracy series, the Human Security Study Group outlines the main conclusions of our report in our introductory essay together
with six essays based on some of the background papers. These essays include:
an analysis of the conceptual premises of the Global Review (Sabine Selchow);
three essays on specific conflict zones – Syria (Rim Turkmani), Ukraine (Tymofiy
Mylovanov), the Horn of Africa (Alex de Waal); the importance of the EU’s
justice instrument (Iavor Rangelov); and how EU cyber security policy is human
rights focused rather than state focussed (Genevieve Schmeder and Emmanuel
Darmois).
European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini at the EU Council building in Brussels, Feb., 2016. Virginia Mayo / Press Association. All rights reserved.
In June
2016 High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy (HR), Federica Mogherini, is expected to present a new EU Global Strategy
on foreign and security policy. This new strategy will replace the 2003
strategy A
Secure Europe in a Better World (ESS 2003). The
development of the new EU Global Strategy
was designed as a consultative and inclusive process, with a dedicated online platform that featured a variety
of studies and commentaries, aiming to feed into the process of formulating the
strategy (#EUGlobalStrategy). “I want a strategy that responds to the ideas, the
fears, and even the dreams of the European citizens, the young and the older
generations”, Mogherini explained in 2015.
The foundation
for the new EU Global Strategy and the consultative process surrounding it is
the document The
European Union in a changing global environment: A more connected, contested
and complex world. This document
assesses the EU's security environment and its threats. It was prepared by “an informal working
group, including representatives from the European External Action Service, the
European Commission, the Council Secretariat and the European Council”, and presented to the European Council and the
public in June 2015.
Strategic documents, such as The European Union in a changing global environment, are worthwhile
objects of scholarly examination – as long as one is clear about what their
analysis is able to provide. It is clear that their analysis cannot provide
insights into what the authors think, or, for that matter, what HR Mogherini
thinks. Neither are documents, such as The
European Union in a changing global environment, able to be read as
explicit indications of, let alone blueprints for (future) policies. Yet, what
their analysis is able to provide are
insights into “interpretative
dispositions” that are
manifest in the text – that is, broad conceptions of the world, which shape
what is ‘natural’ and ‘thinkable’ to begin with. Of course, a single document,
like The European Union in a changing global environment, is
only ever one discursive moment among many others. Yet, endorsed by HR
Mogherini as the basis for the development of EU global strategy, The European
Union in a changing global environment, sits in
a particularly influential position.
Starting
on these premises, a systematic analysis of the conception of the world, that is, the EU
strategic environment and the EU as a global security actor, in The European Union in a changing global
environment – presents what turns out to be a fascinating
picture. This is a picture that is shaped by two countervailing tendencies:
we see a notable opening towards unconventional conceptions of the world, on
the one side, and a symbolic conservation of EU institutions and programmes, on
the other side.
The
opening is grounded in the framing of the world as a “complex” post-post-Cold
War environment. In contrast to the ESS 2003, in The European Union in a changing global
environment it is not just ‘problems’ or ‘causes’ that are ‘complex’ but
the world as such. In this
understanding of the world, complexity runs through everything; it captures the
very state of the world.
This is
expressed in the following features of the document:
- Established institutions, such as the
UN, the World Trade Organisation and the G20, are no longer equipped to deal
with the new ‘complex’ realities (p. 138). - The traditional distinction between ‘internal’
and ‘external’ is obsolete (p.140, 145, 150). - Existing concepts, such as ‘borders’ or
‘polarity’, fail to grasp the new reality. “The world system is no longer bipolar,
unipolar or even multipolar, the very notion of ‘polarity’ is in question” (p. 136). The same goes for the
concept of ‘power’. Power is no longer readily identifiable as it “no longer resides within actors
but circulates among them”
(p. 136). - Discursive boundaries no longer capture
the state of social reality, e.g. ‘tourists’ & ‘terrorists’ and ‘students’
& ‘refugees’, who are conventionally ‘at home’ in different discourses, are
symbolically merged under the label “human mobility”, which is a constitutive feature of the ‘complex’ new reality
(p. 128-9). - There is no clear normative centre in
this ‘complex’ world, one that determines who or what sets the rules to begin with:
“We know that
variable geometries of state and non-state actors will shape the world in new
ways. What we do not know are the rules of global interaction and who will set
them.”
(p. 138) - In the ‘complex’ world, power is
diffused: “We
live in an age of power shifts at a global level and power diffusion at all
levels – away from governments and towards markets, media, civil (and less
civil) societies and individuals.” (p. 135). While security actors such as the US, China and
the EU remain ‘influential’, none of them will dominate the scene in the
‘complex’ world: “The
combined effect of rising literacy, jobs and disposable incomes, along with the
accelerating rate of technological progress, is expanding the number of
stakeholders in world affairs.” (p.
135) - »Region« is the guiding organisational
category in the new ‘complex’ world: While the world of the document of the ESS
2003 consists mainly of ‘nation-states’, the one in The European Union in a changing global environment consists of
‘regions’, which are in themselves dynamic. “Power configurations change across time
and place, making regions themselves dynamic concepts” (p. 136). The prominence of ‘regions’
as an organisational category puts the spotlight on issues such as ‘identity’
and ‘ideology’ as drivers of conflict (p. 136). At the same time, it stresses the essentially
contextual nature of the challenges the EU is facing, in contrast to ‘abstract’
global threats, which feature in the ESS 2003. For instance, climate change
exists in the ‘complex’ world of The
European Union in a changing global environment as a trigger of regional
conflicts, rather than as an external or ‘global’ threat to the EU as such (p.
126).
While,
taken together, these points reveal a notable opening towards unconventional
conceptions of the world, The European
Union in a changing global environment simultaneously symbolically conserves
existing EU institutions and programmes. They are not subject to a fundamental
rethinking.
This is
manifest in the following features of the document:
- The geographical compartmentalisation
of the world into ‘regions’ draws a clear line around the EU, which is seen as
being “surrounded
by an arc of instability”
(p. 123). Despite the fact that, in other respects, the
internal/external-dichotomy is presented as failing to capture the ‘complex’ world,
the EU is oddly distanced from and quarantined against the developments that
surround it. - Interlinked
with the first point, is the perception of the EU as a political actor, which
is by nature uniquely positioned and well equipped to deal with the ‘complex’
world: “The very nature of the EU as a
construct of intertwined polities gives us a unique advantage to help steer the
way in a more complex, more connected but also more contested world” (p. 128). Given that the EU is perceived to be uniquely positioned
for this new ‘complex’ world, its very nature must be defended and conserved. On
this basis, European integration becomes an explicit foreign policy and
security strategy. - There are “five sets of challenges” that the EU is facing [i) Redoubling
the commitment to our European neighbours; ii)Rethinking the EU’s approach
towards North Africa and the Middle East (MENA); iii) Redefining our relationships with Africa; iv) Reviving Atlantic Partnerships; iv) A rounded
approach to Asia]. Taken together, these challenges are, first, constructed as the
‘regional
manifestations’ of the nature of the ‘complex’ world. Second, they are presented
as challenges to existing EU programmes.
In other words, they are not challenges to the existence of the EU, as such,
but to the “major
external action instruments and policies” that are already in place, such as the
CFSP, the CSDP, the counter-terrorism and counter violent extremism measures
etc. In contrast to the ESS 2003, which refers to a variety of threats to the
EU, in the world of The European Union in a
changing global environment, there are challenges to already existing measures, which require a “re-doubling of commitments”, a “re-thinking of approaches”, a “re-defining of relationships” etc. - Paradoxically,
although it is the unique, integrated nature of the EU that is regarded as the
foundation of its strength in the contemporary ‘complex’ world and, although
‘regions’ play a central role in the imagination of the world, the concrete EU external
approach is guided by ‘international thinking’, at the heart of which is the
idea of the nation-state as the guarantor of peace. “Beyond
the imperative of fostering democracy, human rights (including the rights of
minorities) and good governance, the conflict over Ukraine underlines the need
to bolster the statehood prerogatives of our neighbours. These include
recognised and protected borders, a sustainable fiscal capacity, as well as
functioning customs services and police and military forces”(p. 132)
Taking all of this together, The European Union in a changing global
environment exposes two contradictory tendencies. On the one side, the ‘interpretive
disposition’ in the text effectively rules out any questioning of existing EU
institutions and programmes – they are strictly symbolically conserved. On the
other side, The European Union in a
changing global environment challenges established conceptions of the world,
for instance, by bringing in the concept of a world of ‘human mobility’ or by
deconstructing and rewriting established concepts, such as ‘polarity’ and
‘power’.
It is the latter aspect that is fascinating
and that makes the document significant: The
European Union in a changing global environment opens an ‘authorised’ discursive space, which actors
can enter and take advantage of to radically re-think the world, moving beyond
conventional understandings of it and, with that, to potentially pave new
pathways into the future, such as a future in which EU security is shaped by a
second generation human security approach to conflict. Whether and
precisely how this is done in practice is an empirical question. Once the new
EU Global Strategy is released we will be able to see if, how and by whom this
discursive space is filled, (re)shaped or, perhaps, left unoccupied and ‘unused’
after all. We will also be able to see if it perhaps widens enough as to permit
the future possibility of fundamentally rethinking existing EU institutions and
programmes.