Europe’s global role
By SHADA ISLAM

FINALLY, the ‘suspense’ is over, Angela Merkel has been re-elected German chancellor for the third time, eurozone economies are beginning to show tentative signs of fragile recovery and bigwigs assembled at the United Nations General Assembly in New York are trying their best to make the world a better, more peaceful place.

What better time to engage in another debate on Europe’s ‘global role’, standing and influence in today’s extremely complex, rapidly changing, globalised world?

The subject is top of the agenda for European Union (EU) policymakers, business leaders, academics and reporters who love nothing more than indulging in long bouts of hand-wringing over Europe’s “loss of influence” and declining presence on the global stage.

I stand guilty too, having written extensively about the need for stronger EU engagement with Asia, that Europeans must be more ambitious in their outreach to the rest of the world and the role Europe can play in ensuring better global governance.

I haven’t changed my mind: Europe has much to offer. Europe’s single market attracts goods, investments and people from everywhere. European technology helps the world tackle climate change, urbanisation and other 21st-century challenges, European design excites fashionistas the world over and tourists flock to European cities to enjoy good food, drink and visit exquisite monuments.

Europe’s ‘soft power’ resonates when it comes to peace-making and reconciliation, trade, aid and the promotion of democracy and the rule of law. And yet. With no army, navy or air force at its command, the EU continues to feel ‘inferior’ on the international stage. Europe’s military powers — Britain and France — may still have an appetite for armed interventions but most of the other 26 certainly don’t.

Significantly, Germany, Europe’s most powerful economy and an industrial machine that’s the envy of the planet, has made clear that it is not interested in taking on global responsibilities by responding to international crisis.

Newspapers talk about Germany as a reluctant giant, pointing out that foreign policy was not a major issue in the recent elections and that — as one reporter put it — the country seems content to lurk in the shadows. Merkel is fond of saying that Europe must become more competitive as China and other powers rise. “The world doesn’t sleep,” she said recently. However, she hasn’t coupled that with any grand visions for a continental revival.

As Gideon Rachman wrote in the Financial Times, “the moral issue that has divided Germans this election is not chemical weapons, but vegetarianism,” a reference to the proposal by the Green Party that public canteens should stop serving meat on one day a week. Germany’s cautious approach worries its EU partners and Nato allies and causes frustration in Washington.

Given its history, Germany is clearly anxious not to be seen to be interested in military adventures. Also, there is no appetite in Berlin to alienate Russia and China, countries which oppose international interventions and with which Germany has strong trade links.

In the rest of Europe, the situation is more complex. Some governments may want a more forceful global profile for the EU — but that’s not necessarily shared by the people.

The doomsayers — of which there are many — insist that the Eurozone crisis and the impact of economic stagnation on European societies have accelerated the loss of EU influence in the international arena.

China, India, Russia, Brazil and others are seen as fierce rivals who want a ‘full-scale reversal’ of their relationship with the West by demanding better representation in multilateral fora. Others argue that Europe should be more assertive and more self-confident when dealing with the cheeky new kids on the bloc.

It was partly to respond to such concerns that the European External Action Service (EEAS) was set up three years ago to act as an EU foreign ministry — and certainly the EU’s international profile has gone up a notch. But in today’s competitive world of rising powers, new alliances and increased geo-strategic competition, the EEAS is still seen as underperforming.

Much of the criticism is levelled at Catherine Ashton, the head of the EEAS and the EU’s de facto foreign minister. It has to be said, however, that Ashton’s role is constrained by the limited space she is allowed by some of the EU’s bigger member states, including Britain and France.

Still, some EU countries want to go further. The foreign ministers of Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden argued recently that Europe needs a strategic framework to help it navigate a more complex world. The famous question posed by Henry Kissinger, the former US national security adviser and secretary of state, about the dialling code for Europe has, by now, by and large been answered, the ministers said.

“The critical question is no longer how to reach us, but instead what Europe should say when the phone rings,” they complained, adding: “we now have the hardware of institutions in place, we need to focus on the software of policies that makes the entire thing operate in a clear and credible way.”

But as Javier Solana, the EU’s former ‘high representative’ for foreign and security policy said recently, in today’s world of flux, the nature of power is changing. Power was once measured in the size of armies and population, not in terms of GDP per capita, reputation and whether you get to host the Olympic Games.

And it is worth remembering that while military force and interventions can provoke regime change, in the end, all parties — the victorious and the defeated — have to come to the negotiating table and find political solutions. And this is something the EU and Europeans are very good at.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.