The Regionalization of European
| Published date | 01 March 1999 |
| Author | S. Neil Macfarlane |
| Date | 01 March 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209905400103 |
| Subject Matter | Essay |
S.
NEIL
MAcFARLANE
The
regionalization
of
European
foreign
and
security
policies
INTRODUCTION
THE
ARGUMENT
IS
FREQUENTLY
MADE IN
THE
UNITED
KINGDOM
that
Europe
is
drawing
inward.
At
a
conference
in
April
1998,
I
heard Glen-
nys
Kinnock,
a
Labour
member
of
the
European
parliament,
bemoan
the
'worrying tendency
towards
isolationism
and
disengagement'
in
both
London
and
Brussels.
On
the
face
of it,
this
seems
an
oddly
alarmist
perspective.
To
judge
from
the
declaratory rhetoric
floating
around
Brussels
and
other
European
capitals
and
the
array
of
multilateral
decisions
in 1997
and
1998,
perhaps
we
should
be
talking
about
'Engagement,
enlarge-
ment,
and
Europe's
role in
world
affairs.'
When
the
USSR
collapsed,
the
Conference
on
Security
and
Co-operation
in
Europe
(CSCE)
immedi-
ately
embraced
the
Soviet
successor
states
as
members.
Since
the
begin-
ning
of
the
1990s,
the
European
Union
(EU)
has
provided
substantial
assistance
to
almost
all
post-communist
states
through
the
TACIS
(Tech-
nical
Assistance
to
the
Former
Soviet
Union
and
Mongolia)
and
PHARE
programmes,
and
continues
to
do
so.
The
European Commission
played
a
significant
role
through
the
European
Community
Humani-
tarian Office
(ECHO)
in
addressing
humanitarian
needs
stemming
from
a
wide array
of
civil
and
interstate
conflicts
throughout
the
1990s.
Lester
B.
Pearson
Professor
of
International
Relations
and
Director
of
the Centre
for
International
Studies,
Oxford
University.
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL Winter
1998-9
European
foreign
and
security
policies
The
EU
is
now
seriously
embarked
on discussions
about
the
acces-
sion
of
Poland,
Hungary,
the
Czech
Republic,
Slovenia,
and Estonia
in
the
first
instance
and
Bulgaria,
Latvia,
Lithuania, Romania,
and
Slova-
kia
in
a
later
phase. It
is
also
discussing
the admission
of
Cyprus,
although
this
issue
is
complicated
by
the
unresolved
civil
war
there
and
the
issue
of
Turkish
relations
with
the
Union.
In
the
meantime,
the
North
Atlantic
Treaty
Organization
(NATO)
has
followed
its
initiative
to
establish
the
North
Atlantic
Co-operation
Council, and then
its
Partnership
for
Peace
with
the decision
to take
in
three new
members
(Poland,
Hungary,
and
the
Czech
Republic).
It
has
complemented
the enlargement
decision
with
the
establishment
of
a
Euro-Atlantic
Council, and
the
conclusion
of
NATO-Russian
and
NATO
-Ukrainian
charters
that
set
out
an agenda for
the
deepening
of
rela-
tions
with
these
two
newly
independent
states. In
the
meantime,
it
mounted
with
considerable
success
the
largest
coalition
military
oper-
ation
in
its
history
with
its
Implementation
Force
(IFOR)
in
Bosnia-
Herzegovina
in
1995.
It remains engaged
at
a
lower
level
in
a
substan-
tial
peacebuilding operation
there.
More
recently,
NATO
has
deployed
a
substantial
force
to
areas
neighbouring
Kosovo
to
support
the
large
group
of
observers
from the
Organization
for
Security
and
Co-opera-
tion
in
Europe
(OSCE)
deployed to
monitor
the
ceasefire
in
Kosovo.
As
one
commentator
put
it in
response
to
the
question
of
how
to
halt
the
purported
erosion
of
NATO:
'The
first
question
-
how
to
save
NATO
-
is
the
simplest
one.
NATO
is
not
in
trouble."
Not
content
with
the
eastward
vector
of
engagement, the
EU
has
also
established
a
substantial
and
deepening Mediterranean
dialogue.
Recent
initiatives on
Algeria
suggest
that
the
EU
has
come
to
see
the
affairs
of
the
southern
littoral
of
the
Mediterranean
Sea
as
crucial to
the
interests
of
the European
community
of
states.
A
similar
conclusion
might
be
drawn
from
the
re-activation
of Commission diplomacy
in
the
Middle
East
in
1998
under
the
United
Kingdom
presidency.
In
May
1998,
President
Jacques
Chirac
of
France
joined
Yasser
Arafat,
the
president
of
the
Palestinian
Council,
in
a
call
for
an
international con-
ference
on
the
Middle
East
conflict.
In
the transatlantic context,
Europe
is
complementing
its
tradition-
al
ties
in
security
(namely,
NATO)
with
the
institutionalization
of
per-
manent
dialogues
on
issues
of
bilateral
interest
with
the
United
States
1
Philip Zelikow,
'The
Masque
of Institutions,'
Survival 38(spring
1996),
13.
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL Winter
1998-9
29
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