The EU must redefine itself as a defensible civilian power in an international environment. In doing so, it faces two revisionist superpowers that are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine came as a reality shock. Widespread assumptions by politicians and researchers alike have been disproved. Prioritizing security together with Russia and neglecting security preparedness against Russia has proven to be a momentous political mistake. Russia’s willingness to use military force for revisionist goals was obviously underestimated. Strengthening Europe’s energy partnership with Russia instead of enhancing European energy security comes at a high price. It severely limits the options for action and sanctions against Russia.
The difficult negotiations on an oil embargo by the European Union against Russia in its sixth sanctions package are stuck. A gas embargo is not in sight. Economic interdependence has not had the assumed stabilizing and peace-building effect ; instead, it fills Putin’s war chest on a daily basis. On the bridges built by means of energy relations between Europe and Russia now lie the corpses of Butscha.
The world view of many politicians in Brussels and in the countries of the EU, but also of European researchers and representatives of the political science sub-discipline of International Relations has been shaken. They were not prepared for this reality shock of a Russian neo-imperialism acting with military means of power. Their world is that of a liberal, rule-based international order with strong international institutions, effective multilateralism and global governance institutions.
Redefining the role of power in the international system
In this world actors strive for absolute gains, not relative gains. It’s the pursuit of comparative cost advantages that drive actors, not the primacy of security interests. Now, however, the deep caesura of the Ukrainian war demands that the EU’s European and international policy review assumptions and take leave of previous habits. EU must redefine its role as a power in the international system.
When the European Union has been thought of as powerful, it has preferably been thought of as a “normative power”. The latter saw EU’s power and international influence as rooted primarily in its impact as a model for a successful form of peaceful coexistence among its member states based on a solid foundation of norms, institutions and values, not in the use of concrete means of raw power to pursue European normative goals and interests. The intellectual paucity of this argument has always been strangely disproportionate to its prevalence.
Much of the literature on the EU’s external relations after the end of the East-West conflict was imbued with an unshakable optimism. The exemplary role of European regional integration for other world regions, promotion of democracy and respect for human rights from outside, the Europeanization of third countries, and the EU’s contribution to international norm change were high on the list of research topics. The EU was seen as a model for shaping interstate, transnational, and domestic relations in a globalized, interdependent world. Soberly critical minds countered this with the reality of a “declining power Europe” (Douglas Webber) with quite limited power to shape events. Civil powers are committed to the normative goal of civilizing international relations, a goal for the realization of which they are willing to actively use power – their market power, financial incentives, contractual relations with third states, promises of accession, but also economic sanctions up to military means of power.
Strong partners are needed
The term civilian power means the EU’s international role in terms of its goals, nonmilitary means. A civilian power has a clear preference for peaceful means of conflict management and dispute resolution, but may feel compelled to threaten and use military force as a last resort in order to civilize international relations.
Europe as a civilian power wants to push back power in favor of rule-binding and the legalization of international relations. To do this, it needs strong partners and functioning international organizations. In recent years, however, the EU as a civilian power has been confronted with eroding multilateral rules and regulations, paralyzed international organizations such as the WTO, and a declining number of democracies worldwide. The United States, a strong partner of the EU as a civilian power, not only failed at times, but also damaged or destroyed bilateral and multilateral rulebooks, for example in the areas of arms control, non-proliferation, trade and climate policy, especially under President Donald Trump.
Today, EUs civilian power must act in an international system in which the relegated great power Russia and the rising great power China want to replace law with raw power and pursue revisionist foreign policy goals but with military threats (put to action way sooner than the EU and NATO), up to barely veiled threats of nuclear weapons use by Vladimir Putin. The normative pillars of the European security order have been bombed by Putin’s Russia for more than hundred days. The People’s Republic of China, which otherwise never tires of defending the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, steadfastly refuses to condemn the most blatant violation of use of force, territorial integrity and state sovereignty of any country since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, stressed his country’s rock-solid friendship with Russia and the contribution of their cooperation “to world peace, stability and development”.
Russia acts as a spoiler, not a shaping power
This sheer cynicism illustrates that China, like Russia, also has an exclusively tactical-instrumental relationship to core principles of the United Nations Charter and to basic pillars of a rules-based international order – even as Beijing maneuvers within a complex cost-benefit trade-off in determining its position on the Ukraine war.
For years, Russia has acted, not only in Syria but in the international system as a whole, as a spoiler rather than a power shaping country that contributed to maintaining and strengthening international order. With regard to China, there was still a longstanding hope in the EU to include Beijing in the rules-based international order by establishing and expanding resilient bilateral and multilateral treaty-based relations. However, doubts about the strategy of assigning China a role as a responsible stakeholder and thus making it a shaper of global governance grew even before the Ukraine war. Now China’s attitude toward Moscow irrevocably raises the question of the extent to which China is available as a partner for stabilizing a rules-based liberal international order and producing international public goods.
Already in recent years, the realization has spread in Europe that China violates international rules, for example through territorial expansion in the South Chinese Sea in violation of international law, or selectively uses them to its own advantage, as it does within the WTO international trade regime. Beijing has also increasingly and confidently used its economic clout as a weapon in pursuit of foreign policy goals.
EU shows willingness to take risks
In any case, the People’s Republic of China has long made no secret of its long-term goal of replacing the liberal international order of the West, at least in parts of the world, with an order in which it plays a dominant, rule-setting role within the framework of asymmetrical power relations. Threats against Taiwan to unify with the People’s Republic by force if necessary have been unmistakable for years. China perceives democracies in its immediate vicinity as a threat, just as Russia perceives a democratic Ukraine.
The EU must therefore redefine its role in an international environment in which two revisionist superpowers have been massively rearming for years. China and Russia are appearing ever more aggressive externally and becoming ever more repressive internally, even to the point of neo-totalitarian claims to power and massive human rights violations. It must face the fact that Russia and China are the main actors of a de-civilization and a slight relapse into barbarism in the sense of the strongest prevail, both domestically and in international relations.
The Ukraine war has breathtakingly accelerated the process of redefining the EU as a power in the international system. For the first time in its history, it has used a comprehensive set of economic sanctions. Moreover, it is using close economic and financial linkages and dependencies on its part as a weapon against an aggressive great power. The longer the war lasts, the more the willingness of its member states to support Ukraine.
Overcoming naivety
For the first time, the EU itself is also financing the military equipment of an attacked warring party that is exercising its right to self-defense. In doing so, it is taking sides and demonstrating a willingness to take risks. Using funds from its European Peace Facility, it has launched four support packages totaling two billion euros in favor of Ukraine to procure weapons for the Ukrainian military. By altering the balance of power on the battlefield through the availability of military power up to its use can open the door to diplomatic conflict settlements, should the aggressor be unable to achieve its goals on the battlefield. In doing so, the EU and its member states recognize that diplomacy and military means of power are not mutually exclusive. Diplomacy then often remains hot air if it is not underpinned and supported by a military capacity to act that exists at least in theory.
Not only regarding Russia, but also vis-à-vis China, the EU is finally in the process of overcoming its naivety. It strengthened its trade defence instruments against dumping and subsidized goods exports from China in 2016 and 2017. An EU regulation on investment screening in 2019 set a framework for national governments to screen third-country investments for threats to security and public order, such as investments by Chinese companies in critical network-related infrastructure in the EU.
After ten years of negotiations, the EU Council and EU Parliament reached a political agreement on the so-called International Procurement Instrument on March 15, 2022. It is intended to increase the pressure on third countries – above all China – to grant European companies the same access to their public procurement markets that they in turn enjoy in the EU. Otherwise, there is a threat of severe price surcharges or complete exclusion from public tenders.
Last year, the Commission stepped up the pace against China with two further legislative proposals. Firstly, it wants to prevent highly subsidized company takeovers by third-country companies in the domestic market, as well as highly subsidized bids by Chinese companies in public procurement markets in the EU. Secondly, it is proposing a much needed anti-coercion instrument to respond to China’s use of economic instruments of power for foreign policy purposes by imposing trade and investment restrictions.
Learning the language of power
The path of linking the openness of the internal market to imports and investments from China more strictly to reciprocity conditions should be pursued consistently. In addition, the Union should consider tightening export controls on dual-use goods (civilian and military) beyond the latest 2021 amendment if it does not want to indirectly contribute to arming the Chinese People’s Army with high-tech capabilities. To do so, it should also make use of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council launched in 2021, which has established a working group on export controls. The EU should also selectively reduce its economic dependence on China where it could be used as potential blackmail against the EU. This applies, for example, to the purchase of individual raw materials, but also to the dependence of entire branches of industry, such as the automotive and chemical industries.
Should the EU define itself as a geopolitical power in this radically changed international environment, as suggested by speeches by the Commission and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell ? It should indeed learn strategic thinking and the language of power. But a self-description as a geopolitical power would remain indeterminate in content, at least beyond the approvable goal of self-assertion in power politics. However, the goal of civilizing international relations has lost none of its normative appeal as the core content and compass of foreign policy. In view of the current slight relapse into barbarism on European soil (which many thought that was something that we would never re-live after World War II), it is more necessary than ever.
However, the EU will realistically only be able to play a civilian power role for the offensive transformation of international relations in the sense of universal values and norms such as human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the protection of minorities in parts of the international system with any prospect of success after the deep caesura of the Ukraine war. Defensive imperatives for action are paramount regarding Russia and China : protection of its own military and economic security as well as protection of fundamental Western values and democratic governance against aggressive great power by system rivals. The resilience of our own liberal democratic societies and their economic systems should take precedence over economic efficiency calculations.
Security from Putin’s Russia
On the basis of a credible guarantee of security and strengthened economic and social resilience against economic blackmail and disruptive shocks, the EU could continue to explore scope for cooperation for mutual benefit with a China that is strongly intertwined in the global economy and benefits fundamentally from a rules-based order. However, it should not naively give Beijing relative power gains that could be used offensively against itself or against other states.
But could a Russia under Putin’s rule be a possible and reliable partner for (re)building a European security architecture in the foreseeable future ? Would treaties with Russia be worth the paper they were written on ? It seems that security has priority for the time being.
The civilian power of the EU should redefine itself as a defensible one. This requires accentuating defensive goals : Europe must confront decivilization and barbarism, equip itself with the necessary instruments of protection to do so, and command the means of power to ensure its own ability to defend itself and support possible victims of aggression. This can be selectively combined with an offensive policy that imposes high costs on the main state and private perpetrators and profiteers of de-civilization through offensive sanctions.
Do not lose sight of fundamental goals
External threats, systemic rivalry and a relapse into barbarism have the potential to stem the centrifugal forces and disintegration tendencies in the EU that have become increasingly evident in the past decade and to promote a return to central goals of European integration : ensuring the security and prosperity of citizens and standing up for a pluralistic democracy based on the rule of law and committed to human rights.
The latter forms the internal foundation and the counterpart of a credible civilian power role externally. As a defensible civilian power, the EU must document its corresponding capabilities both internally and externally. Domestically, defensible democracies must confront the enemies of open society and the opponents of pluralistic, constitutional democracy in government offices, for example in Poland and Hungary, more decisively. In its enlargement policy, too, the EU must not sacrifice its normative requirements regarding democracy and the rule of law in the accession candidates on the altar of geopolitical calculations without denying its civilian power character.
Externally, the EU’s self-image as a defensible civilian power can help it fundamentally renew the means and instruments of its foreign and security policy and strengthen its military component without losing sight of its fundamental goals.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26593546
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
