{"id":239081,"date":"2023-07-17T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=239081"},"modified":"2023-07-11T05:26:39","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T04:26:39","slug":"analysing-eu-foreign-policy-on-russia-before-the-2022-invasion-of-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/analysing-eu-foreign-policy-on-russia-before-the-2022-invasion-of-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysing EU Foreign Policy on Russia before the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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E-International Relations<\/p><\/div>\n

28 Jun 2023 – <\/em>At the end of the Cold War, assumptions that world peace needed to be underwritten by a balance of power, or more accurately, a balance of terror between heavily-militarised adversaries, began to fray. Expectations that states must conduct their affairs under the shadow of violence were challenged by the emergence of an alternative paradigm, which Francis Fukuyama proclaimed \u2018the end of history\u2019 (1989:3-18). Europe was ready to reject Machtpolitik<\/em>. Instead, diplomacy, universal values, international laws and trade would be the handmaidens of peace.<\/p>\n

The trajectory of the EU represents an attempt to reconceptualise power, rejecting the notion that power requires a capacity and willingness to instrumentalise violence. This has led to alternative definitions of the EU as an \u2018ethical power\u2019 or \u2018postmodern superpower\u2019 (Aggestam, 2008:1-11, McCormick, 2006:1ff). Fran\u00e7ois Duch\u00eane, an influential theoretician at the outset of Europe\u2019s unification, commented that \u2018where history ends, administration begins\u2019 (1972:47), and under the protection of NATO, the European Commission has busily concentrated on defining social and economic policy, and developing normative authority. Although Article J\/11 of the Maastricht Treaty contained a vague expectation that the EU would evolve from political cooperation to form a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), convincing member states to elevate national security capabilities to a supranational level has proved difficult. Over time, marginal advances in the EU\u2019s security architecture have gradually developed, accented by \u2018turning points\u2019 such as the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, which introduced permanent structured cooperation in an attempt to convene largely reluctant member states around a more coherent security strategy, but such developments have tended to mirror the fluctuation of Europe\u2019s political challenges with the rediscovery of the argument for \u2018military power Europe\u2019 only surfacing in times of crisis (Braw, 2022).<\/p>\n

Today, \u2018Military Power Europe\u2019 is once again \u00e0 la mode,<\/em> and the reason can be attributed to the return of history. Since 2014, the EU\u2019s strategic environment has deteriorated alongside a crisis of democratic legitimacy and a rise of ethnic populism. In 2014, Hungary became the first EU country to backtrack on democracy, whilst Russia annexed Crimea, and in 2016 the UK began exiting from the EU, withdrawing substantial diplomatic expertise and firepower. The chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 provided a humiliating reminder of Europe\u2019s reliance on the US\u2019s hard power to maintain its influence abroad. As Russian storm clouds gathered on Ukraine\u2019s borders in 2021, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, warned of \u2018an era of regional rivalries, [with] major powers refocussing their attention towards each other\u2019. Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, went further, claiming that \u2018if you want dialogue, diplomacy and multilateralism to succeed, you need to put power behind it [\u2026] we must relearn the language of power\u2019. These comments conveyed a growing sense of Europe\u2019s insecurity and a desire for the EU to assert itself militarily. The first incursion of Russian troops into Ukrainian sovereign territory in Crimea caught the EU by surprise; after all, it was the first such breach of international law since 1945, but leading up to the full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian restiveness was much more apparent. President Putin had previously declared that he would rather destroy Ukraine as a functioning state than see it fall under Western control (Mearsheimer, 2014:82). The EU had ample opportunity to reassess its diplomatic postures towards Russia and find a way to reduce the peril for Ukraine. Instead, the EU\u2019s eastward expansion discourse continued to aggravate the Europe-Russia rivalry. Why?<\/p>\n

Suppose the Russian problem and future security challenges are to be addressed through collective rearmament. In that case, the EU must also prepare to re-evaluate its own conceptual and political identity. This introspection would conflict with its established liberal narrative of leading Europe away from great power politics. This is the paper\u2019s central theme, whether discussions on militarisation have so far overlooked how forming a capable EU army would modify the emotions and group identity projected onto EU foreign policy. This research explores whether the \u2018normative\u2019 and \u2018civilian power\u2019 tributaries which flow into EU foreign policymaking lead to actions consistent with that of a \u2018rational actor\u2019 and whether the EU\u2019s power image creates an exploitable gap between the discourse of the EU and its geopolitical reality. The EU\u2019s power image has been the subject of so much debate that the discourse now appears cyclical. This research seeks to go beyond a case of \u2018old wine in new bottles.\u2019 Following the launch of the Strategic Compass proposals in 2021, and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much attention has been given to the structural and financial implications of military integration or the advantages of an EU army as a blunt instrument of containment (Brooks and Meijer, 2021:7-43). Less attention has been given to how these proposals could change the cognitive policymaking patterns within the EU, which could mean embracing a fundamentally different foreign policy outlook. The invasion of Ukraine could mark a Zeitenwende<\/em>, a new era for European security, but this may mean going beyond Borrell\u2019s plea to \u2018relearn the language of power\u2019 to embrace the logic of power also.<\/p>\n

Is the EU a Power Maximiser?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a cogent argument that EU states, conditioned by their violent history, have no interest in acquiring power at all, instead modern Europe seeks to influence and shape its environment by default rather than by design (Buzan & Little, 2000:359, Maull, 2005:778). Therefore, a useful starting point for this discussion is establishing if the pursuit of power is a cardinal element of EU foreign policy. Whilst \u2018power\u2019 is a central theme in IR, the main concepts and pathologies of power are highly contested. Power may be defined narrowly or semantically as a type of authority or influence; it may describe resources or a willingness to coerce (Gilpin, 1981:13, Forsberg, 2013:22-43, Mattern, 2008:691-697, Strange, 1996:3-15). As the West\u2019s confrontation with Russia escalates, debates over the architecture of European power from researchers such as Stephen Walt (2021) and Brooks and Meijer tend to discuss power in terms of the \u2018institutional capacity to independently plan and conduct military operations\u2019 (2021:7-43) and largely ignore the psychological basis of power which scholars such as John Mearsheimer (2014:77ff) and Robert Kagan (2003:27-42) argue may be of better use in understanding and explaining why certain geopolitical tendencies generate dangerous counter-currents. The canons of realism situate the pursuit of power as the central wellspring from which all other political laws and foreign policy arrangements flow. Hobbes locates the perpetual desire for power in the shifting fortunes and anxious condition of human nature:<\/p>\n

The cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath at present, without the acquisition of more (Leviathan, pt. 1, Ch.11).<\/p>\n

In an international system characterised by a Hobbesian vision of anarchy, where self-interested states are uncertain about the intentions of others and which lack a supreme authority to govern over them, states operate under a condition of perpetual motion, organising themselves for optimal security by constantly acquiring and extending power. Thus inevitably, according to E. H. Carr, \u2018international politics are always power politics\u2019 (1946\/2016:97). This essentialist logic may lead to a zero-sum calculation of how power is constructed in the international system. The liberal critique claims that such a priori<\/em> realist predictions ignore the humanist and idealist traditions that have helped shape political thought and are lacking in morality as they legitimise an uncritical defence of militarisation, conquest, nationalism, and colonialism (Donnelly, 2008:150-162). Against this, Hans Morgenthau argues that \u2018the appeal to moral principles in the international sphere has no concrete universal meaning\u2019 as politics always reflects a specific group interest and across many moral principles, no consensus among groups exists (1982:55). Rather than morality and power politics being two conflicting aspects as averred by Carr (1946\/2016:92) or a restraint on power \u2018guiding political action to political failure\u2019 as claimed by Morgenthau (in Filary, 2008:3-20), it can also be contended that the antithesis between morality and power politics \u2014 and by extension, between morality and militarisation \u2014 is analytically misleading. Instead, there is a moral purpose to be found within the instrumentalisation of coercive power, an idea that Hedley Bull, Bernard Williams and \u2018the English School\u2019 take up when they situate morality within an \u2018ethical-realism\u2019 framework by identifying the \u2018first political question\u2019 that a legitimate government must solve for its people, and for which coercive power may be justly applied, that is \u2018the securing of order, protection, safety and trust\u2019 (Williams, 2008:3-8).<\/p>\n

Williams and Bull channel a Weberian \u2018ethic of ultimate ends\u2019, rejecting moral absoluteness in world politics. Therefore, it can be seen as morally necessary for the EU to instrumentalise coercive power in its own interests and to advance human rights globally. The EU already deploys coercive methods of securing a European order by leveraging its laws, institutions and sanctions as a function of power (Merlingen, 2007:449, Mearsheimer, 1995:5-59). This behaviour in consistent with Bull\u2019s assertion in The Anarchical Society<\/em> that power emanates from order built on common interests, which emerge not from authority but from the practices, routines, and customs that characterise interactions between social groups and on which stable emotional structures, principles, and rules can be built. Later, these may be codified in administrative devices (1977:58). Since the end of the Cold War, the Western liberal order has dominated international politics, characterised by customs of economic openness, multilateralism, and democratic expansion, anchored in the values of the US, and, as Bull predicted, these routines have evolved into formal edifices of governance, and economic and political centralisation, such as the EU. Research by Karaganov and Suslov (2018) concludes that the breakdown of these common customs and rules drove the EU-Russia tension over Ukraine. The factors contributing to the crisis of the liberal international order are outside the scope of this research; however, a growing collection of high-quality texts provide a helpful commentary (see Babic, 2020:767-786, Diamond, 2020:1-14ff, Ikenberry, 2018:7\u201323ff). Karaganov and Suslov suggest that this crisis led directly to the EU needing a more assertive role in its strategic environment. According to Bull, an international order, defined by agreed \u2018rules of the game\u2019, is essential for stability and security (1977:51-54), but arguably, such security is only temporary as an established order may be fundamentally challenged through confrontation. To mitigate, a preponderant actor may extend its order-defining norms over neighbouring or politically-aligned nations by forming a \u2018sphere of influence\u2019 [SOI] in an attempt to achieve strength by drawing satellite nations into its intellectual and cultural orbit and, crucially, into its security arrangements.<\/p>\n

\u2018Sphere of influence\u2019 is a familiar term in IR but remains abstract and undebated. In practice, SOI is a political discourse tool rather than one of international law, but it helps reveal how great powers understand their relationships. The SOI concept appears to fall short of the formality of Bull\u2019s international society; however, in advancing SOI as an explanatory device to describe European tactics, it is helpful to synthesise Bull\u2019s constructivist social-theory concept of how the order is produced through ideational and economic assimilation, with a structuralist interpretation provided by Amitai Etzioni, who describes a geopolitical zone of control where SOI are \u2018international formations [wherein] one state commands superior power over others\u2019 (2015:117). Does the EU command a sphere of influence? It would prefer not to think so. SOI has pejorative connotations in the European mindset as it contradicts the Westphalian narrative and is reserved in Western rhetoric to describe something distinctly Russian; Moscow\u2019s irredentist claims over its \u2018near abroad\u2019, quite opposed to the EU\u2019s benevolent influence within its \u2018neighbourhood\u2019 (Leonard and Popescu, 2007:5-29, Rutland, 2012:343-354).<\/p>\n

In European discourse, SOI is replaced with the concept of \u2018enlargement\u2019, a metaphor which lends itself neatly to the EU\u2019s internal normative purpose of liberal democratic momentum. Still, the distinction between \u2018enlargement\u2019 and \u2018expansion\u2019 is not easily transportable to a Russian mindset. Importantly, expanding an SOI can be seen to develop ontological security for the EU, that is, in \u2018perpetuating efforts to safeguard the survival or persistence of a sense of self in contexts of recurrent uncertainty\u2019 (Giddens, 1991, in Johansson-Nogu\u00e9s, 2018:529). Europe\u2019s enlargement provides substance and permanence to its identity and enriches its \u2018storyline\u2019 over an opposing Russian storyline (Kinnvall et al., 2018:249-265, Johansson-Nogu\u00e9s, 2018:530). Greater regional interdependence allows the EU to influence migration and markets, but at a fundamental level, Diez argues that the Europeanisation of practices, customs, interests, and even the revision of world histories, rationalises the EU\u2019s bid for regional hegemony (2013:194-210). On the whole, the EU may consider the eastward expansion of its political influence to Ukraine as benign, and from the point of view of the EU, the process of enlarging a regime that is compatible with liberal values can be seen internally as morally justified and strategically vital in solving the \u2018first political question\u2019. This is a valid rationale for the pursuit of power but should also be recognised as an implicitly anti-Russian strategy, as Moscow believes that it is also tackling the \u2018first political question\u2019 in protecting what it regards as Russian interests in what it considers a vassal state, and in the securing of the defensive gateway across the North European plain and access to the Black Sea. According to Samuel Charap, the war in Ukraine is far more than a contest over cultural particulars, economic preferences, or even a strategic buffer zone; the struggle for Ukraine is \u2018fundamentally about the set of rules, norms, and institutions that govern the region: the regional order\u2019 (2019:1ff<\/em>). It is a contest over storylines.<\/p>\n

These imagined storylines are essential to both Russian and EU conceptualisations of themselves as influential great powers, both domestically and externally (Deyermond, 2014), even more so considering how these two states have traditionally suffered from status anxiety. Russia\u2019s ontological storyline is threatened by the EU\u2019s expansion eastwards into territories which until recently belonged to the Tsarist and Soviet spheres, whilst instability in the East undermines the EU\u2019s binding narrative of a neighbourhood of integrated liberal democracies, which are manifestly destined to triumph over unreformed autocratic regimes. It can be argued that the EU has a fundamental compulsion to pursue more and more power, an ambition that is morally and strategically vital to its identity and security and to solving Europe\u2019s \u2018first political question\u2019, securing a normative European Order bound by common interests. The EU maximises its power and strengthens its identity and \u2018actorness\u2019 through efforts to enlarge a European presence in the world by expanding its SOI eastward in competition with Russia.<\/p>\n

Understanding the EU\u2019s Power Image<\/strong><\/p>\n

Building on the Hobbesian principle, the structural-realist orthodoxy introduced by Kenneth Waltz set out that in an anarchic world where consequential states will go to any lengths to expand the power and preserve the power they have, they must also prepare military capabilities to fend off opposition from challengers (1959:160). The corollary is that as Russia modernises its military to the extent that it is capable of delivering a massive strike of blunt force on Europe\u2019s periphery, it must be balanced by Europe generating enough of its own capability to exhaust, dispirit, and ultimately defend an attack on Europe and its allies. Interestingly, Waltz did not subscribe to the idea that states are inevitably power maximisers; \u2018the first concern of states is not to maximise power but to maintain their position in the system through the balance of power\u2019 (1979:26). Balance of power theory is concerned only with avoiding the possibility of confrontation with a compelling physical deterrent to political subjugation and the seizure of territory (Posen, 2006:155), a theory which finds its fulfilment in the doctrine of \u2018mutually assured destruction\u2019 and continues to shape discourse and policy on tackling the Russian problem. H. R. McMaster insists that \u2018a combination of actions, initiatives, and capabilities should aim to deter Russia by denial \u2013 by convincing the Kremlin that it cannot accomplish its objectives through the use of military force\u2019 (2020:80). Nonetheless, Waltz\u2019s \u2018defensive realism\u2019 theory contains an internal paradox as it attributes the cause of war to the fragile structure of an anarchic international system, whilst also foregrounding domestic, \u2018non-realist\u2019 reasons as the main causes of wars. In contrast, Mearsheimer\u2019s \u2018offensive realism\u2019 simply states that \u2018the structure of the international system forces great powers to engage in intense security competition [\u2026] and initiate wars\u2019 (2018:221). Both agree on the primacy of military power, but Mearsheimer argues that it is a bedrock assumption that \u2018fearful great powers must inherently possess some offensive military capability\u2019 (2003:30). A conventional security logic was built into the Maastricht treaty and in early attempts to forge a CFSP; for example, the 1999 Cologne Declaration of the European Council on Strengthening the Common European Policy on Security and Defence, stated: \u201cThe Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so\u201d (June 3rd 1999).<\/p>\n

Despite the realist leanings of these founding articles, why has the EU\u2019s military ambitions and power image decoupled from conventional conceptions of power? The reason may be traced to the \u2018liberal moment\u2019 and the unfolding NATO security umbrella, which emboldened Europe to embrace an alternative worldview where economic integration and soft power would transcend more than 450 years of realist orthodoxy. Fran\u00e7ois Duch\u00eane established the body of scholarship that affixed the term \u2018civilian power\u2019 to a nascent European Economic Community [EEC]. Duch\u00eane envisioned an administrative Europe that would reject \u2018the age-old process of war and indirect violence [and] in a sense [Europe] could be the world\u2019s first civilian centre of power\u2019 (1972:43). Maull articulated the features that would enable Europe to become a capitalist civilian proto-superpower; advancing democracy, peace, and prosperity through trade policy, international law, and supranational institutions (1990:92-3). Whilst Duch\u00eane\u2019s civilian power concept made clear that \u2018the one thing Europe cannot be is a military power\u2019 (1972:37), Whitman suggests that Duch\u00eane\u2019s notion left room for economic coercion, positioning the EU as \u2018market power Europe\u2019 (2013:174). Meunier and Nicola\u00efdis characterise the EU as a \u2018conflicted trade power\u2019 covertly aligning its trade policy to a Eurocentric geopolitical agenda that selectively prioritises material interests over human rights (2006:906-925), which means positioning the EU much closer to realist thinking than to Duch\u00eane\u2019s prima facie Kantian liberalism. At the same time, structural-realist predictions would seem to be confirmed by attempts to develop CFSP alongside civilian-economic power, such that Duch\u00eane\u2019s original concept became supplanted by expectations for the emergence of a less-than-distinctive civil-military superstate (Kupchan, 2001:4-5, McCormick, 2006:174).<\/p>\n

It is questionable just how much emerging Europe was ideologically attached to this concept of civilian power. As a Cold War security consumer, the EU was technically a civilian power by default. It was the US-NATO balance against the Soviet Union and subsequent European disarmament which assigned the EU its civilian power status rather than any intrinsic commitment. This echoes Hedley Bull\u2019s pivotal \u2018Contradiction in terms\u2019 critique, which insisted that any power accruing to Europe was conditional on the US aegis. Bull had argued that for Europe to acquire actual power, it needed military self-sufficiency but conceded that such an ambition was unfeasible due to the rigidity within the Westphalian international system, as the national interest would always take precedence (1982:151). More recently, Brooks and Meijer have built on this premise to focus their research on the \u2018strategic cacophony\u2019 of profound, national-interest divergences across European states as the insurmountable barrier to achieving EU militarisation (2021:7-43). However, contrastingly, Lightfoot (2009) points out that NATO has continuously managed conflicting interests between trans-continental members, such as different threat perceptions, \u2018out of scope\u2019 missions (Afghanistan), tensions over command structures, burden sharing, and Alliance nuclear policy. The NATO experience would suggest that the central barrier to military integration in Europe is more ideological than technical, financial, or strategic.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, Duch\u00eane and Bull provided the coordinates for the opposing arguments on Europe\u2019s power profile, coordinates which still remain useful to the military power debate. A third coordinate was introduced by Ian Manners in 2002, marking a conceptual shift which has influenced the EU\u2019s self-image and decision-shaping ever since: \u2018Normative Power Europe\u2019 [NPE]. The NPE concept focuses on Europe\u2019s \u2018ability to shape conceptions of \u2018normal\u2019 in international relations\u2019 (Manners, 2002:239). Through an NPE lens, the EU can be seen to set standards on \u2018liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law\u2019, the moral principles articulated in the preamble of Maastricht. These normative convictions, the commitment to diffuse them, and the rejection of realism\u2019s state-building imperialist trappings form the basis of the EU and guide its actions, and accordingly, Manners argues that the EU represents a unique and distinctive political form, which cannot be limited to conventional great power analysis. Although civilian power and military power concepts both rely on maintaining a Westphalian status quo, the EU is a hybrid of supranational and international forms, allowing its influence to \u2018float\u2019 across conventional boundaries (Manners, 2002:238-240). Manners suggests that the EU\u2019s power should therefore be analysed in terms of what it is rather than what it does. Clearly, this has empirical ramifications when considering the practical nature of foreign policy in a fragmented world. NPE theory also attempts to transcend the dichotomic debate on military power or civilian power, which both instrumentalise material resources, by instead insisting that the EU\u2019s norms are diffused through \u2018contagion\u2019, a form of political enchantment with European liberal ideals, rather than through political pressure. Unlike conventional powers, NPE emphasises the transference of norms through multilateralism and intense cultural-economic interdependence (Ibid:236-237).<\/p>\n

Manners does not disregard the usefulness of military power altogether but relegates it to an optional peacekeeping extra, dismissing the idea that normative power requires a willingness to use force to back it up (Ibid:242). Manners\u2019 concern is that the development of military capabilities could lead to a \u2018Great Power mentality\u2019, which is problematic considering Europe\u2019s need to understand the character of its powerful neighbour and its own place as a Great Power. Absent a national mythology to draw upon, normative power theory provided the EU with an identity-shaping narrative whilst reframing its hard power insecurity into something positive. This explains why the concept was embraced by political elites and the supportive epistemic community as it nourishes an explanation of what is distinctive about the EU\u2019s role in the world (Orbie, 2006:123, Della Salla, 2010:1-19). NPE theory also accepts an idealistic vista of a world which is consistently convening around liberal principles and a declining need for confrontation. Robert Kagan detects a hidden realist logic in this reconceptualisation of power; \u2018Europe\u2019s relative [military] weakness has produced a powerful interest in building a world where military strength matters less than economic and soft power [\u2026] Europeans have a deep interest in devaluing and eradicating the brutal laws of an anarchic Hobbesian world\u2019 (2003:37).<\/p>\n

An alternative case for the primacy of soft power is provided by scholars such as Karen Smith, who suggests that the militarisation of Europe would diminish its \u2018actorness\u2019 in world politics as \u2018most foreign policy does not involve the use of force\u2019 therefore adding military capability would not \u2018buy\u2019 greater influence (2000:20). Webber agrees, arguing that \u2018the outcomes of defence and security conflicts do not depend on military strike power\u2019 (2016:42). In addition, McCormick had suggested that the absence of a threat of violence from Europe, combined with its considerable market opportunities, could encourage Russia to be more receptive to the EU\u2019s ideas, than to those offered by the US under its brooding shadow of military might (2012:41). NPE theorists reject the hard power accoutrements of power maximisation and treat the development of military power as detrimental to dialogue, and deterministic in causing war, summoning the adage \u2018when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail\u2019. But according to this logic, great military powers would be constantly at war. The literature on power in IR, specifically on the EU power image, concentrates on the evolution and mapping of Europe\u2019s power image and on attempts to categorise the EU\u2019s objective status into a binary-choice debate over positivistic realism-liberalism dialectics. The structural-realist scholarship on Europe asserts Waltz\u2019s maxim that \u2018the state of nature is a state of war\u2019 (1979:102) and subsequently inclines to discuss power in overly-mechanical terms of building the necessary capacity for brute-force retaliation as a deterrent. This corresponds to the current urgency among political elites in Brussels to accelerate Europe\u2019s capability for force generation in the teeth of Russian aggression. However, structural-realism also views European militarisation as unrealistic and therefore places limits on Europe\u2019s \u2018actorness\u2019 in the international system. Interpretations which dismiss the EU as a serious actor based on the Atlantic treaty risk discarding the importance of how the relationship is experienced in an anarchic world, specifically how the EU created a serious ideological power competition with Russia or how Russia may view EU membership as a \u2018stalking horse\u2019 for NATO. Similarly, the liberal critique that militarisation would only recast the EU as a conventional threat on the world stage and diminish its diplomatic capabilities does not account for the very real anxiety experienced in Moscow about the path and pace of Europe\u2019s political enlargement.<\/p>\n

To summarise, we have seen that Europe\u2019s security arrangements were outsourced to Washington, allowing the EU to shape a new \u2018storyline\u2019 and a new, if vague conceptual identity as a peaceful proto-superpower. There is real concern that a Europe which concedes that preparation for war is \u2018normal\u2019 and desirable behaviour risks disfiguring the EU\u2019s unique identity-shaping storyline, the imagined well-spring of its power and security, and even risks a tragic rehearsal of Europe\u2019s traumatic history. Thus, NPE theory rejects the Weberian ethic of ultimate ends in favour of an ethic of responsibility towards humanity. This distinction seems clear enough, yet it quickly becomes problematic as the EU also seems to disregard responsibility for its security vulnerabilities and selectiveness over its trade arrangements. Advocates of NPE tend to avoid discussing how being normative inevitably means challenging and replacing \u2018counter norms\u2019 in the international system (rather, NPE merely \u2018transfers ideas\u2019) and fail to account for how the slavish linking of an exceptional European meta-narrative and constitutionalised norms to EU foreign policy impacts empirically on a non-normative world, which involves the othering of \u2018radical\u2019 and \u2018irrational\u2019 international actors in a confrontational dynamic. Whether normative or militarised, we can see that the EU is inevitably a \u2018power maximiser\u2019 despite its benign pretensions and must seek to shape a reflective world order by expanding its SOI in a contest for influence. Beyond the debate on EU militarisation as a hard-power deterrent, it is necessary to investigate the extent to which the EU\u2019s pursuit of ontological security may have atrophied the psychological reflexes of European diplomats to make sense of their surroundings, whether narratives are being developed and transmitted emotionally rather than rationally, and to consider whether militarisation could facilitate more cognitive flexibility in policymaking by fundamentally re-shaping the EU\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

The Effects of \u2018Normative Power Europe\u2019 on Foreign Policy Projection Regarding the Crisis in Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Based on an evaluation of the language and meanings used in official documents and discourses and supported with theoretical inputs, this research examined the use of ontological reference points rooted in the NPE self-image, reinforcing Europe\u2019s contrast to the Russian \u2018other\u2019. Specifically, by casting the EU as a \u201clegitimate authority\u201d in setting world standards, compared to Russia\u2019s non-legitimacy; by having an ideational impact through \u201cbenevolent influence\u201d versus manipulative state-sponsored interference; and by showing \u2018actorness\u2019 through positioning itself as the regional \u201csecurity provider\u201d, against the alternative of Russian repression.<\/p>\n

The Duch\u00eanian civilian\/normative power image casts the EU as a technocratic and \u2018de-dramatised\u2019 organisation bounded by a legislative acquis and steeped in rationality, a project which is sensitive to the passions that have led European states towards nationalistic violence in the past and, therefore, unencumbered by emotions today (Smith, 2021:288). This image does not align with the emotive discourse that the EU has continued to project post-Crimea to steer Kyiv away from Moscow in the shadow of an unchecked conflict in the Donbas region. According to Cross and Karolewski, the Ukraine challenge served as a \u2018critical juncture and catalyst for shaping the EU\u2019s power\u2019 presenting an existential test of EU foreign policy in demonstrating how NPE effectively exercises power in times of crisis and against a militarised adversary (2017:3-10). It also presented an opportunity to vanquish the image of the EU\u2019s past failures in the Balkans. Howorth portrays the struggle between Brussels and Moscow as \u2018an attempt to \u2018define\u2019 Ukraine as either a liberal democracy or as part of Russian orthodox culture\u2019 \u2013 a mortal contest of storylines (2017:131).<\/p>\n

The narrative on the EU\u2019s role as a \u201clegitimate authority\u201d in Ukraine may be traced to the EU-Ukraine Paris Summit in 2008, which \u2018recognised that Ukraine [is] a European country [which] shares a common history and common values with the countries of the EU\u2019 (in Wallace et al., 2020:449). Subsequently, the Eastern Partnership policy [EaP] in 2009 aimed to bring Ukraine within a European SOI through an Association Agreement [AA] and a concomitant Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement [DCFTA]. More than a trade deal or terms of rapprochement, the AA was an umbrella for political re-orientation to European ideals whilst building Ukraine\u2019s \u2018resilience\u2019 to Russian counter-norms (Rabinovych, 2022). The objectives of the AA include \u2018increasing Ukraine\u2019s association with EU policies, programmes, and agencies\u2019 and bringing about enhanced cooperation in legislation and security (EU, 2014:161\/5). The AA also confirms \u2018the importance Ukraine attaches to its European identity\u2019 whilst \u2018taking into account the strong public support for the country\u2019s European choice\u2019 (EU, 2014:161\/4).<\/p>\n

Chaban and Elgstr\u00f6m analysed conceptual metaphors\u2019 use in interviews with EU foreign policy practitioners, revealing a consistent self-image as the \u201clegitimate authority\u201d in shaping Ukraine\u2019s future. They found that practitioners consistently invoked the social solidarity theme of deep cultural ties, insisting that the EU is by far the most important partner for Ukraine. This historical homogenisation narrative represents an attempt to legitimise Europe\u2019s claim on guiding Ukraine\u2019s future but is juxtaposed with how Russia believes that its own civil and religious society was forged in the medieval Kyivan-Rus, the first major East Slavic polity, and with Ukraine being the setting for some of Russia\u2019s most critical military triumphs in casting off the foreign yoke. Accordingly, Moscow fails to acknowledge a distinctive Ukrainian biography. For the Kremlin, Russia and Ukraine share in \u2018the same historical and spiritual space\u2019 with \u2018blood ties that unite millions of families\u2019 \u2013 the theme of\u00a0 Putin\u2019s polemic \u2018On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians\u2019 (2021). Even if this founding myth of a one-nation Greater Russia is a historically inaccurate ideological construct to legitimise Russian irredentism, as argued by Ana\u00efs Marin (2021:70), and conveniently ignores events such as the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of four-million Ukrainians in 1933 as a result of Soviet policies (See Applebaum, 2017), European policymakers would be unwise to reject the symbolic importance of Ukraine in Russia\u2019s reassertion of its own storyline, a unified Russian world comprising ancient Rus lands, and myopic not to view the re-scripting of Ukrainian history as distinctly \u2018Eurocentric\u2019 as equally problematic. Similarly, the claim of Ukraine\u2019s \u2018European choice\u2019 disregarded clear ethnic and political cleavages and lacked objectivity in interpreting the public mood, where support for the EU association or Russian orientation was divided. At the time the AA was drafted, the International Republican Institute\u2019s Centre for Insights [IRI] survey indicated that a slight majority of 51 per cent of respondents believed the AA would be \u2018useful\u2019, but 21 percent preferred alignment to a Russian customs union and 15 percent were unsure (IRI, May 2013). The narratives surrounding the EaP can be seen as an attempt to construct a \u2018shared meaning of the past, present and future [\u2026] to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors\u2019 (Miskimmon 2018:1). Olga Shumylo-Tapiola argues that the rendering of a European-Ukraine storyline is a reaction to Europe\u2019s declining status and ignores the reality that \u2018Ukraine was largely invisible to the EU in the first decade of its independence [\u2026] none of the then fifteen EU members at the time saw Ukraine as a priority. It was too far away from the EU, too difficult to understand, and too close to Russia\u2019 (2013), suggesting that as Europe\u2019s ontological security reduced, its interest in Ukraine increased.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Russia enlarged the Russian Customs Union to create the Eurasian Economic Union [EEU], intending to integrate Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS] in infrastructure, currency, trade, and tariffs, within which the Kremlin envisaged Ukraine as a major economic and symbolic cornerstone. Ostensibly, a strategic counterweight to the EU, but conceivably also offering the potential for cooperation and bargaining with both the EU and China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative in developing a vast free-trade area. EU-EEU dialogue could have led to a Pan-European Free Trade Area creating political stability across the European and Eurasian regions (Emerson, 2014:12). Instead, both the EU and Russia perceived each other\u2019s integration projects as competing bids for regional hegemony and as enriching rival storylines \u2013 Russian revisionism or European exceptionalism. The terms of the AA\/DCFTA imposed an \u2018either\/or\u2019 dilemma on Ukraine, backed up by financial incentives linked to legislative and civil society reforms, a \u2018more-for-more\u2019 approach with rewards for political re-orientation and the dangled prospect of future accession. The EU\u2019s insistence on moralistic tropes, which cast Russia as a volatile \u2018other\u2019 and the EU as a safe harbour, also drew Ukraine into a difficult process of acting as an \u2018authorised agent and valued collaborator in EU stability production\u2019 and reinforced the zero-sum contest over Ukraine\u2019s political and economic future (Johansson-Nogu\u00e9s, 2018:538).<\/p>\n

The narrative of the EU\u2019s \u201cbenevolent influence\u201d versus the destabilising interference from Russia pervades the 2016 EU Global Strategy [EUGS]. The document frequently uses notions such as bolstering, deepening, nurturing, fostering, enabling and facilitating. Normative \u2018contagion\u2019 metaphors, for instance, \u2018fostering growth\u2019 through \u2018a different path to resilience\u2019 leading to \u2018Ukraine\u2019s gradual integration\u2019 \u2013 are mixed with concrete targets for political alignment (EUGS, 2016:2\/9\/33). The Joint Declaration of the Eastern Partnership Summit in 2017 reinforced the idea that rather than simply aligning economic arrangements, it would be the \u2018bonds forged through the Eastern Partnership [that would] make the EU and its partner countries stronger together [and] better able to deal with common challenges\u2019 (EU, 2017:2, emphasis added). The Joint Communication on the Eastern Partnership Policy beyond 2020 specified that the EU and its partner countries should join a \u2018common European narrative, based on shared values\u2019 and that the Eastern Partnership will \u2018build a stronger Europe in the world\u2019 (EU, 2020:16-17). For the Kremlin, this amounted to the \u2018supervision of the Ukrainian authorities\u2019 and the domination of Ukrainian politics by an anti-Russian idea (Putin, 2021).<\/p>\n

The scope of the EU\u2019s self-image as a \u201csecurity provider\u201d covers various policy frameworks in which Europe aims to securitise economic, social, and environmental developments in its Eastern neighbourhood. The securitisation of specific \u2018milieu goals\u2019 validates a distinctive and normative security profile, that is, protecting human security and fundamental freedoms through rights diffusion and legislative reform, and in this endeavour, the EU can leverage its substantial administrative power in areas such as human rights legislation and climate action. Perhaps the original intention of the ENP was to instrumentalise the NPE image by de-emphasising military power as a securitising facility and to expand European norms and values through peaceful legislative reforms. However, the ENP also called for \u2018reinforcing stability and security [with] a ring of countries, sharing in the EU\u2019s fundamental values and objectives, drawn into an increasingly close relationship, going beyond cooperation to involve a significant measure of political integration [bringing] enormous gains to all involved in terms of increased stability [and] security\u2019 (EU, 2004:4). Since 2014 and the deterioration of Europe\u2019s strategic environment, a deep ambiguity emerged in the EU\u2019s self-assigned role as \u201csecurity provider\u201d, prompting a step-change in the EU\u2019s behaviour from promoting the securitising effect of normative values to the establishment of a Grand Strategy. The 2015 European Security Agenda warned that Europe\u2019s security was \u2018no longer confined to the borders of the EU [\u2026] the EU response must therefore be comprehensive and based on a coherent set of actions combining internal and external dimensions\u2019 (EU, 2015a:4). The EUGS strived to \u2018deepen the transatlantic bond and partnership with NATO\u2019 and conveyed that \u2018our partners expect the European Union to play a major role [\u2026] as a global security provider\u2019. It also states that \u2018we live in times of existential crisis, within and beyond the European Union. Our Union is under threat\u2019 (EUGS, 2016:13), and sets out to \u2018strengthen the EU, enhance the resilience of our eastern neighbours, and uphold their right to determine freely their approach towards the EU\u2019 (Ibid:33, italics added). The EUGS also sought to \u2018pave the way for [Ukraine\u2019s] further involvement in CFSP\u2019 and explicitly set out that \u2018Russia\u2019s violation of international law and the destabilisation of Ukraine [\u2026] has challenged the European security order\u2019 \u2014 not just Ukrainian sovereignty, implying that Ukraine was already part of Europe\u2019s security architecture (Ibid:25). Such dialogues blur the boundaries between the EU\u2019s mastery of the \u2018low politics\u2019 of guiding economic prosperity and human rights improvements and the \u2018high politics\u2019 implications of a conventional grand strategy.<\/p>\n

This ambiguity exacerbated Moscow\u2019s suspicion over the EU\u2019s storyline production in other domains, its claims to being Ukraine\u2019s \u201cbenevolent influencer\u201d and \u201clegitimate authority\u201d (Sakwa, 2015:553, Crombois, 2017:119). Paradoxically, the EU does not yet see itself as able to adequately provide for its own security, but nonetheless, this role conception increasingly permeated its narrative on Ukraine. The AA contains a security proposal, promoting \u2018ever-closer convergence on positions of bilateral, regional, and international issues of mutual interest [\u2026] taking into account the Common Foreign and Security Policy\u2019 (EU, 2014:161\/5) and articulates an ambition to \u2018deepen security policy convergence and effectiveness\u2019 (EU, 2014:161\/7). Article 7 of the AA describes how the EU and Ukraine shall \u2018intensify their dialogue [\u2026] in areas of foreign and security policy\u2019 addressing, in particular, regional stability and joint planning (EU, 2014:161\/9). The Joint Communication on the Review of European Neighbourhood Policy in 2015 announced support for \u2018the reform of civilian and military security\u2019 with Europe\u2019s Eastern partners, including \u2018strategic and policy advice [and] institution and capacity building activities\u2019 and offered concrete support for \u2018the settlement of protracted conflicts in the neighbourhood\u2019, including Donbas, setting out that \u2018in the next three to five years, the most urgent challenge [\u2026] is stabilisation\u2019 alongside preparing partner countries \u2018to withstand, adapt and quickly recover from stresses and shocks\u2019 \u2013 reinforcing the image of the EU as secure (EU, 2015:13-14). The ENP review outlined further measures to \u2018strengthen the resilience of the EU\u2019s partners in the face of external pressures\u2019 and to \u2018secure against cross-border threats\u2019 (EU, 2015:4-12). For Moscow, these preparations implied a move towards involving Europe\u2019s partners in the EU mutual assistance clause \u2014 article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union states that \u2018If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power\u2019.<\/p>\n

The 2017 European Defence Fund ringfenced \u20ac8 billion for research in innovative defence products, whilst the European Peace Facility, launched in 2021, created a \u20ac5-billion funding mechanism to enable the export of EU battlefield technologies to EU partner countries. By 2021, the normative basis of the EU\u2019s foreign policy towards Russia\u2019s near-abroad was arguably both unclear and offensive. The view from the Kremlin was that the EU was rapidly deploying the infrastructure and means to conceivably press not just ideas but missiles with a minimal flight time up against Russia\u2019s borders. During 2021, these developments were matched by sharpened rhetoric from Europe\u2019s leaders. France\u2019s President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe is \u2018under pressure from powers [\u2026] we need to react, to show that we have the power and capacity\u2019 (in Irish, 2021), and in her State of the Union address, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen impelled the EU to \u2018step up to the next level\u2019 specifically referring to sending soldiers into peripheral conflict zones to \u2018defend European values and interests\u2019 (2021), echoing the main thrust of the EUGS, that \u2018forging unity as Europeans \u2013 across institutions, states, and peoples [\u2026] has never been so vital or so urgent. Never has our unity been so challenged\u2019 (EUGS, 2016:16). Importantly, however, these narratives and pronouncements were made in the certain knowledge that no EU army actually exists to defend Europe\u2019s unity or expansion against Russian reactions.<\/p>\n

The Effect of NPE on Foreign Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to research from Viktor Velivchenko, \u2018the construction of desired images can have a greater impact on international relations than a significant increment in military or economic power\u2019 (2018:108). They also provide more than just external legitimacy for action; these conceptual images determine an internal \u2018reason to be\u2019, enabling the EU to make sense of itself. They may help convince political actors how easily they can reach their objectives by providing confidence and minimising intra-EU vulnerabilities. The narrative analysis supports this view and suggests that the NPE identity has calcified into EU intragroup rhetoric, logic, and beliefs, forming a potent \u2018collective experience\u2019 which guides behaviours among Europe\u2019s political elites. Robert Kagan suggests that \u2018it is normal to put out of one\u2019s mind that which one can do nothing about\u2019. Europeans focus on challenges that require economic, humanitarian, and institutional solutions, which are EU strengths, and avoid contemplating issues that expose military incapacity, the European weakness, such as the possibility of a full-spectrum hard power Russian retaliation. As Kagan puts it, \u2018when you don\u2019t have a hammer, you don\u2019t want anything to look like a nail\u2019 (2004:28).<\/p>\n

In 2006, Manners argued that \u2018we have built the EU precisely to escape great power mentality\u2019 (183). This includes enshrining the principle of self-determination in its absolute form, which made it impossible for Brussels to accept Moscow\u2019s \u2018interference\u2019 in EU-Ukraine negotiations, simultaneously ignoring the validity of Russia\u2019s counter-claims about Europe\u2019s intrusion into Russo-Ukrainian politics. The NPE mentality is suffused with deeply-rooted notions of \u2018moral duty\u2019 and \u2018force for good\u2019 and another troubling assumption: that \u2018European values, ideas, and ways are intrinsically superior\u2019 (Aggestam, 2008:6) and that, \u2018fundamentally it is values that make up the borders of Europe\u2019 (Rehn, 2005). But this privileging of an emotive self-image without consideration of Russian interests produced a significant delta between storyline production and geopolitical consequences. The narrative of European enlargement, which casts Russia as an \u2018imagined other,\u2019 reveals an \u2018ontological blindness\u2019 to those consequences (Campbell, 1998:6). Whereas a state rolling its SOI across borders backed with coercive hard power would elicit a robust international reaction, the psychology of NPE doesn\u2019t recognise such restrictions on enlargement\/expansion, nor does it consider hostile Russian counter-currents as rational, legitimate, or genuine due to the self-belief that the enlargement is only ideational.<\/p>\n

This research suggests that NPE values exist independently from empirical concerns creating a form of \u2018normative rationalism\u2019 within the EU\u2019s policymaking community. According to a study from Smith, Seger and Mackie, this normative rationalism is formed at the group level, who argue that group-level emotions can motivate intragroup attitudes and behaviour (2007:432, see also Schimmelfenig, 2001:47-80). Hutchinson and Bleiker suggest that \u2018emotional power works discursively, diffused through norms [\u2026] and other values which stipulate, often inaudibly, how individuals and communities ought to feel and what kind of political behaviour is legitimate\u2019 (2014:508). The group-level emotions, which fundamentally perceive the EU as a peace project, conveniently align with the EU\u2019s main vulnerability, its lack of military power. As Robert Kagan argues, \u2018the incapacity to respond to [military] threats [\u2026] can lead to denial [which is why] Americans are quicker to acknowledge the existence of such threats\u00a0 [\u2026] because they can conceive of doing something to meet those threats\u2019 (2004:33). So, whilst the intergovernmental preferences may inform policies of member states, Europe\u2019s CFSP discourse is ultimately activated in a constitutional crucible of deeply-embedded community values.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to bring Ukraine into the European SOI, coming amongst a deterioration in the liberal order, served only to crystallise normative discourse in European diplomacy and deepened the need for storyline production, a \u2018test\u2019 of the narrative power of modern ideas on \u2018community security\u2019 prevailing over old-fashioned nationalistic sabre-rattling. This behaviour appears irrational to Mearsheimer, who assumes that great powers are \u2018aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it [\u2026] they consider how their own behaviour is likely to affect the behaviour of other states\u2019 (2003:31). For Robert Jervis, this misreading is not a result of inadequate intelligence but rather \u2018a common cognitive bias which attempts to fit events into a pattern [\u2026] the result is usually to increase conflict\u2019. Jervis explains how \u2018motivated biases\u2019 commit policy-makers to move towards a goal and create \u2018great psychological pressure to believe that it can succeed despite empirical evidence pulling in another direction\u2019 (1994:775).<\/p>\n

It appears that the EU\u2019s multi-layered, consensus-based political routines contributed to foreign policy dialogues unfolding very slowly and deliberately, as can be seen with the path, speed and consistency of the ENP and its sub-strategies. By avoiding high-stakes, real-time, militarised reactions to external crises, over 2013-2021 EU foreign policy could remain insulated within the \u2018otherworldly\u2019 broad arc of its romantic normative structure; \u2018EU member states have worked together for decades, and socialisation produces co-ordination reflexes, the perception of common interests, and the growth of collective identification\u2019 (Smith, 2021:298). The combination of slow, technocratic policy formulation and a determinative emotional framework means that EU foreign and security policy can operate on \u2018separate rails\u2019 to nation-state foreign policymaking, imbibing policy practitioners with a sense of temporal-spatial separation from domestic constraints or from the inclination to look past tropes and doctrines of who ought to hold power in a situation, to who actually holds power. In a sense, EU foreign policy is \u2018de-dramatised\u2019, but this paper rejects the view that it is emotionless. These findings suggest that EU foreign policy practitioners are prisoners to the psychological structures of NPE, leading to the na\u00efve mistakes which contributed to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. But what if the EU did not need to reinforce a normative storyline? If it was also a military power, would its language and policy instruments be as provocative?<\/p>\n

What if the EU was Militarised?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This research included an interview with the former Head of the British Army, General Sir Michael Jackson. General Jackson\u2019s views are advantageous as he commanded NATO\u2019s multi-national Rapid Reaction Force during the Kosovo War. During the conflict, General Jackson\u2019s American superior sensed an opportunity to make a \u2018political statement\u2019 by instructing troops to isolate and attack a Russian detachment at Pristina. General Jackson refused the order and instead established a working relationship with the Russian general; for that reason, General Jackson is often credited with having averted World War III (Grice, 2007). According to General Jackson:<\/p>\n

Russia has extensive borders and is neurotic about its security, particularly its Western flanks, which keep getting invaded. Western politicians don\u2019t appreciate this \u2018raw nerve\u2019, and by challenging those borders again through the enlargement of the EU, they are rubbing salt into the wounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

General Jackson\u2019s comments reflect Russia\u2019s self-image as a vulnerable \u2018warrior nation\u2019 and its view that the West is strengthening its security at the expense of Russia by constructing military-strategic realities in Ukraine, requiring Russia to create counter-vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

General Jackson continues:<\/p>\n

Russia hasn\u2019t moved out of the Hobbesian zero-sum mindset. If Ukraine wants to join the EU it is seen as a total rejection of Moscow. To the Kremlin, the \u2018near abroad\u2019 is a strategic space that belongs to Russia, and which it is entitled to by virtue of its size, importance, and history, and particularly its sacrifices during World War Two [\u2026] an element of triumphalism entered world politics [after the Cold War] a sense of \u2018we won, you lost!\u2019 which has clouded political judgement on Russia\u2019s place in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Russia has been largely excluded from the construction of a rules-based order and left to dwell on its position as an outsider, Jackson is alarmed that EU policymakers have not provided for this in their calculations: \u201cWe talk of a rules-based order, which is a completely different worldview to Russia. The evangelism of Europe transcends rationality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although General Jackson contends that the sum of an EU army and a rump NATO would be less than the security we have in place now, Jackson agreed that having a military and having actually to send young men and women into conflict heightens the threat perception and, as was the case during the General\u2019s intervention at Pristina, this significant burden can put a premium on the cognitive flexibility needed to avert dangerous developments.<\/p>\n

Confronting the full spectrum of physical threats directly and making calculations based on necessity and proportionality suggests a Realpolitik orientation. NPE foreign policymaking processes have deliberately excluded the Realpolitik tradition, partly due to the term\u2019s interchangeability with Machtpolitik<\/em>, Machiavellianism, and power politics, but also due to the partisan way that the term has been applied in intellectual history to denote a \u2018more sophisticated\u2019 approach to the \u2018deluded naivety\u2019 of idealism in conducting international affairs (Bew, 2016:6). Machiavelli\u2019s militarism is often over-stated, but when viewed from a different angle, there is an empirically important maxim available, the idea that militarisation may be a grim element, but that the discipline it inculcates in political reasoning has a considerable effect:<\/p>\n

We shall find that there is a very close, intimate relation between these two [political and military] conditions, and that they are not only compatible and consistent with each other, but necessarily connected and interrelated.<\/p>\n

Trans. 1965:3<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The conflation of Realpolitik with doctrine or ideology also misses the true meaning of Realpolitik, as intended by the idea\u2019s creator August Ludwig von Rochau, in 1853. According to Bew, \u2018Rochau was not concerned with the construction of worldviews, but the business of politics [\u2026] moral philosophy existed in another sphere to Realpolitik\u2019 (2016:8-9). Understood this way, Realpolitik is a rejection of liberal utopianism in policy development only, but not of liberal ideals themselves, which Rochau believed provided vital political coherence (Ibid:303). Realpolitik is best viewed as a formula for approaching foreign policy dilemmas by prioritising context and visibility.<\/p>\n

Confronted with the return of geopolitics, the EUGS attempted to mark a return to Realpolitik in the form of \u2018principled pragmatism\u2019. This attempt to modify the EU power image instead continued to mischaracterise Realpolitik, conflating it with a liberal ideology and a security manifesto which articulated more muscular \u2018vital interest\u2019 principles; security, neighbourhood stability, crisis management, and a credible enlargement policy. Rather than setting Europe on a more prudent path, one where it could acknowledge Russia\u2019s \u2018raw nerves\u2019, EUGS only served to rearrange Russia\u2019s anxieties with a strategy that now appeared interest-heavy and which continued to ignore the \u2018binary nature\u2019 of Russia\u2019s political culture with \u2018its tendency to seek extreme solutions to problems\u2019 (Hosking, 2001:22). Sven Biscop (2016) calls principled pragmatism \u2018Realpolitik with European characteristics\u2019 as it \u2018emphasises our own security [and] lowers the level of ambition in terms of democratisation [in] the acceptance of reality\u2019, but this is not Realpolitik at all. For Rochau, ideas, particularly liberal ideas, mattered in politics, but equally important was the skilful navigation of competing interests (Bew, 2016:32).<\/p>\n

In any case, the empirical findings suggest that EUGS principled pragmatism failed to moderate the idealist impulses of policymakers, arguably because Europe\u2019s Realpolitik turn was rooted in rhetoric rather than actual jeopardy, and so there was no material change to the NPE image with its embedded emotional decision-making structures. For Europe to practice Realpolitik, it must acquire the instruments to deal with contemporary power politics. Europe\u2019s decision-making structures will need to be reconstructed with a change of power image resulting from a significant military dimension in order to enable a new psychological paradigm to take hold. As Hutchison and Bleiker assert, \u2018it is the type of power that is imbued within processes that constitute how actors are differently enabled and constrained to determine their fates\u2019 (2017:23).<\/p>\n

Militarisation per se<\/em> does not lead to greater cognitive flexibility in internal decision-making, but broadening the conceptualisation of a normative and<\/em> military power European identity would potentially absent the prioritisation afforded discursive storyline production, and the effects of the \u2018moral mission\u2019 rhetoric which propels Europe\u2019s enlargement. This could have avoided the invocation of an imagined EU-Ukraine historical-cultural tradition and would have made Europe less likely to \u2018other\u2019 international parties that lack its \u2018moral fervour\u2019. Equating the EU with conventional military powers could help reduce the limiting belief that Europe has a unique, predestined role in the world. This might have decreased the internal perception that Europe must react to an \u2018existential crisis\u2019, the theme threaded throughout the EUGS and may have caused a reorientation towards a more pluralistic and pragmatic foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Throughout the EU\u2019s history, CFSP has been an idea rather than a credible attribute, but policymakers would need to be more cautious if the approximation processes insisted on in the AA could be viewed as an instrument of foreign expansion by a militarised continental superpower \u2014 probably forcing a decoupling of \u2018deeper political association and security policy convergence\u2019 from humanitarian goals (EU, 2014:161\/7). EU policymakers would have to re-learn their place in international politics. For Waldman, states become more secure as they learn strategic empathy: \u2018imagining or simulating another\u2019s experience and perspective, in order to better understand them [\u2026] a conscious effort to see the world through another\u2019s eyes\u2019 [\u2026] empathy, in this sense, is rational and cognitive\u2019 (2014:2). But Joseph Nye suggests that \u2018learning is frequently blocked by the power aspects of prior beliefs [therefore] only changes in the structure of power can produce learning\u2019 (1987:398). Following Nye, a departure from the EU self-image as a proto-superpower would initiate a learning journey in Brussels towards the rediscovery that a complex interdependence with \u2018outside\u2019 militarised states is preferable to an adversarial policy of \u2018othering\u2019. Examining the role of learning in the development of foreign policy, Breslauer and Tetlock argue that it is only \u2018as the fates of actors become intertwined [that they are] forced to consider the other\u2019s interests as if they were their own\u2019 (1991:97). With the heightened potential for violent confrontations, EU policymakers would need to calculate the probability risk of fatalities for European military personnel before directly charging Moscow with violating European security and threatening to tackle the Kremlin with an offensive military alliance (EUGS, 2016:13\/25). Moscow would be forced into similar considerations. There is also the extent to which the EU\u2019s overambitious rhetoric of being a regional SECURITY PROVIDER has run ahead of the reality of what the EU can deliver. Burdened with the difficulties of financing, implementing and sustaining a continental militarisation programme, it is unlikely that EU policymakers would have the cognitive bandwidth to tailor security dialogues which include capacity-building with partner countries (EU, 2020:4), or that EUGS would have invited the ambitious expectation that the EU would \u2018play a major role as a global security provider\u2019 (EUGS, 2016:3). Policymakers would have adjusted their discourse to the art of the possible, leading to a less emotionally-charged, less antagonistic diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n

The research found that the concept of \u2018power\u2019 is a necessary explanatory device when discussing the EU, and a solid appreciation of Europe\u2019s internal power maximisation logic is essential to understanding the motivations driving its expansionism. Contrary to its conceptual basis, separating the EU\u2019s normative political form from its political actions is profoundly unhelpful. Although Europe is a non-militarised superstate, efforts to distance the EU\u2019s power image from a Great Power identity overlook that power maximisation through enlargement remains an essential driver for the EU to thrive and is a stated objective. It underpins Europe\u2019s \u2018reason to be\u2019 \u2013 expanding a liberal order which achieves security through integration. Although realist orthodoxy limits the EU\u2019s post-national \u2018actorness\u2019, Europe should be discussed within an \u2018ethical-realism\u2019 framework and analysed as an assertive, maximalist actor in a Hobbesian environment.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the research revealed that the EU has not behaved as a rational actor in its relations with Russia. The EU can be understood as encumbered by the normative power self-image, which shapes and perpetuates emotions in EU foreign policymaking and discourses. Europe\u2019s policymakers are bound at group-level by a common cognitive bias, a form of \u2018normative rationalism\u2019 which fits events in Ukraine within a discursive \u2018European storyline\u2019. Europe\u2019s emphatic framing of various conceptual roles, emotive discourse, and political and security association instruments deliberately did not consider Russian reactions or create sufficient space for dialogue.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, the research concludes that broadening the NPE image profile with a full-spectrum military dimension would drastically de-emphasise Europe\u2019s distinctive \u2018moral mission\u2019 self-image, removing the need to reproduce an \u2018alternative power\u2019 storyline. Europe\u2019s attempt to resolve its strategic mistakes with a form of Realpolitik contained within the EUGS concept of \u2018principled pragmatism\u2019 did not go far enough. Principled pragmatism is ineffective and counter-productive, underlining only EU vital interests without introducing cognitive flexibility and strategic empathy as the \u2018exceptional\u2019 normative impulses remain embedded in dialogues sustaining Europeanist globalism\u2019s advancement. Militarisation would dismantle the present cognitive bias, restraining moral exceptionalism, and force a new consideration of geostrategic practicalities with space for more flexibility in political reasoning.<\/p>\n

There are clear limitations when making \u2018what if\u2019 statements, but they reveal important implications for future EU policy and strategy by recognising the interconnectedness of causes and outcomes. It is not possible to accurately determine whether a proper Realpolitik orientation would have led to peaceful cooperation with Russia over Ukraine\u2019s position in the world, such as non-alignment, or whether that outcome would have been acceptable to Ukraine, or whether it would have simply emboldened Russia, or if militarisation would have accelerated confrontation. The research has only considered how the normative power model has undermined European security but has not evaluated how it may have strengthened it, for example, in building a powerful political value-system among twenty-seven countries and with partners worldwide. The research has not examined the efficacy of the other power assets available to Europe, notably financial firepower, economic sanctions, and a coalition of the willing<\/em>, which may have changed the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, forced a rethink of Russian incursion in the Baltics, and deterred future aggression from other predatory states. Suggesting that Europe was inadequate in its inability to predict Russian aggression is not the same as arguing that it is responsible for it, and this paper should not be read as an apology for Putin\u2019s brutal assault on Ukraine. It must be remembered that the EU attempts to engage states in a system comprising accountable institutions and fair and inclusive societies. The EU may indeed be characterised as a \u2018peace project\u2019 when considering that aggressive foreign policies abroad usually correspond with illiberalism at home.<\/p>\n

As Russia invaded Ukraine, Caroline De Gruyter lamented that \u2018Europeans are starting to understand why more than two decades of talking has come to nothing, because their diplomacy lacked the foundation of hard power\u2019 (2022). Most commentaries arrive at this same prosaic observation that the main point of a military should be to repel attacks. This paper has taken a different but complementary approach to the debate over militarisation, arguing that, for Europe, it would serve a deeper purpose in having a transformational impact on Europe\u2019s foreign policy character by reducing the prominence of the provocative NPE storyline and making Europe more resilient on two-levels; militarily protected but diplomatically more prudent. These findings support the argument that the most effective approach to generating a positive cognitive transformation in EU foreign policymaking and discourse depends on creating an EU army.<\/p>\n

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Webber, D. (2016) \u2018Declining Power Europe\u2019, European Review of International Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2016), p. 42<\/p>\n

Whitman, R. G. (2013) \u2018The neo-normative turn in theorising the EU\u2019s international presence\u2019, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 171-193<\/p>\n

Williams, B. (2008) In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, pp. 3-8<\/p>\n

Zimmerman, H. (2007) \u2018Realist Power Europe? The EU in the negotiations about China\u2019s and Russia\u2019s WTO accession\u2019, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 813-832<\/p>\n

Primary Research<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interview with General Sir Michael Jackson, GCB, CBE, DSO, DL, Hungerford, England, March 11th 2022.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

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