The State of State-Building

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know" - St Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, circa 397.

Hatfield College, April/May 2014 - getting to grips with the dilemmas of State-Building.

 by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Use examples to outline challenges and dilemmas of international statebuilding. How can these challenges be dealt with?

Introduction:

Statebuilding is defined as “actions undertaken by international or national actors to establish, reform, or strengthen the institutions of the state and their relation to society” (Call, 2008: 5). The logic that underpins international statebuilding is a very sound one: for peace to be consolidated after conflict there needs to be an effective central state in the given territory. The devil is in the detail however, since usually; the causes of the conflict were a competition as to who should control the state in the first place. The first generic challenge, then, is that the intervener will be trying to reconcile disparate armed groups who are violently opposed to each other – a balancing act. The other challenges and dilemmas relate to the fact that once involved, the intervener becomes implicated, by act or omission, in whatever ill or good effects that will ensure from this process. 

The challenges are all the difficulties involved such as; reconciling combatants, lack of resources and expertise, legitimacy, coordination and coherence, dependency, and the destabilizing effects of economic and political reform (Paris and Sisk, 2007). The dilemmas are all those Catch-22 situations that arise once outsiders intervene such as; the footprint, duration, participation, and dependency dilemmas (Paris and Sisk, 2007). This paper will use the United States in Afghanistan as an example to outline the challenges and dilemmas that arise where an intervening statebuilder has vital interests that conflict with the core tenets of statebuilding. Also, as even those actors who can be argued to be without vital interests in the target state are not immune to these dilemmas, some United Nations’ sanctioned statebuilding interventions will also be mentioned to highlight this.

In terms of how these challenges can be dealt with, it will always be a continuous learning process. This is why authors such as David Lake and Roland Paris see succeeding generations of statebuilding, each capable of learning from the mistakes of the past.

International Statebuilding:

There is a consensus that functioning and legitimate states are the only way to consolidate peace, while ungoverned spaces create security threats in the given territory as well as for the international community (Paris and Sisk, 2007: 1; Fearon and Laitin, 2004: 6; Lake and Fariss, 2014: 2). The primary reason for international intervention to do statebuilding then, relates to state fragility and failure, insofar as failed states are seen to threaten international peace and security. This is the theme that informed the United States intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. This kind of intervention creates its own challenges and dilemmas. Secondarily, some actors intervene driven largely by humanitarian impulses. In this bracket falls Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), the United Nations (UN) and states such as the Nordic countries. This second kind of intervention faces challenges and dilemmas as well, but may be the better kind of intervention as the resentment towards it is not as instant as that which faces those who intervene with force. Indeed, the United States’ intervention in Iraq was even the cause of state failure in the first place.

Interventions to rebuild the state then tend to get accused of being neo-colonial/imperial projects, as there is a direct lineage between statebuilding today and colonial projects in the past, though with some marked differences. The key similarity is that it is outsiders intervening in a state’s territory to build institutional capacity for governing that territory, and as well, an aggregation of those intervening states’ interests and their proposed models, to an extent, supports the view that this is neo-colonialism/imperialism. To this effect Lake and Fariss (2014: 3) sees all statebuilding involving an element of trusteeship whereby, when states fail, the international community has had to step in to govern. Although unlike classic colonialism in the type of actors involved, goals, and envisaged endpoints, there still is a “remarkable degree of control of domestic authority and basic economic functions by foreign countries” (Fearon and Laitin: 7). This fact tends to be a source of resentment for some local actors and does raise the question of legitimacy – with implications for the statebuilding effort’s success or failure – which will be discussed below in this paper as a challenge.

Despite this possible accusation of neo-colonialism, outside intervention to rebuild a failed or failing state is absolutely necessary as there will be a lack of resources, expertise, and trust among the local groups in the target state. The outsiders are then best placed to bring in the required building blocks which Rubin (2008: 28) lists as coercion, capital, and legitimacy. Coercion refers to the security aspect of the intervention whereby foreign military forces provide physical security and assist in the Demobilization, Disarmament, and Reintegration (DDR) as well as Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the failed state (Rubin, 2008: 28). Capital is the international financial assistance for recovery and development, while legitimacy means the intervener’s legitimacy and the internal/external legitimacy of the state they will help build (Rubin, 2008: 28).

These building blocks are then deployed in what Barnett and Zurcher (2010: 23) have termed complex peacebuilding operations, aimed at ending violence as well as removing the root causes of conflict. From the same authors we then get a taste of the difficulty of the task of statebuilding when they write that: “peacebuilders are expecting to achieve the impossible dream, attempting to engineer in years what took centuries for Western European states and doing so under very unfavourable conditions” (Barnett and Zurcher, 2010: 23).

Seized with the matter of State-Building at home, Gilesgate Moor, Durham May 2014.

The Liberal Template:

Germany and Japan have been touted by Krasner (2011: 69) as two examples that inform the possibility that post-conflict statebuilding can be a success. This paper will not have the space to interrogate all the combination of factors that helped in those two cases except to note the one common feature that the United States military and post-war recovery aid were involved in both countries. This was predicated on the fact that these countries would embrace the tenets of liberalism. From this template it is inevitable that the donor state will try to build the target state in its image, or at least in a manner that will benefit the donor. All current statebuilding projects are aimed at achieving the liberal state which subscribes to the tenets of free and globalised markets, democracy, rule of law, constitutional limitations on government power and respect for civil liberties (Richmond and Franks, 2009: 4; Paris, 2004: 5). There are no serious rivals to the liberal template as a large number of the United Nations’ members are or claim to be liberal states.

The expectation is that democracy will make competition between groups peaceful in the form of elections, while marketization will foster sustainable economic development (Paris, 2004: 5). The overarching theme employed here is the democratic/liberal peace thesis which avers that “liberally constituted states tend to be more peaceful both domestically and in their dealings with other countries” (Paris, 2004: 6). Questions have been raised as to the validity of this thesis with regards interstate war but still, according to Paris (2004: 6); there is substantial evidence that supports the postulate that well established market democracies are internally pacific. It is at this stage that we encounter the question posed by Krasner (2011: 66) that how did Denmark get to be Denmark? A question that is meant to highlight the major differences in how the established democracies achieved their statehood in contrast to the current attempts to, as it were, engineer liberal states through statebuilding.

The Liberal State:

Drawing on the widely accepted Weberian conception, the state is the “collection of institutions that successfully claims the monopoly on legitimate authority and use of force over a given territory” (Call, 2008: 7). Authoritarian states, while able to claim a monopoly on the use of force, sow the seeds of future conflict because there is neither accountability nor redress for grievances. The liberal state, in contrast, is founded on the social contract between rulers and the population whereby the state fulfils the core functions of providing security, welfare and representation (Krause and Jutersonke, 2005: 450). For these same authors, this too is the sequence of how the state developed; first there was a violent struggle to establish a monopoly on the use of force, which once attained then allowed the political, economic, and social aspects to evolve normally (Krause and Jutersonke, 2005: 450). The statebuilding projects in existence are trying to achieve this endstate of a liberal state while disregarding the time it took the established liberal democracies to achieve this. A social engineering venture fraught with difficulties as it “assumes that the international community can unpack the historical process by which contemporary states were built, determine how a stable and secure domestic order was created, and apply the ‘recipe’ – with appropriate adaptation to local circumstance – to post-conflict environments” (Krause and Jutersonke, 2005: 451). 

Krasner (2011: 66) sees any such attempts that assume a final full Weberian endstate, to be unrealizable because of a variety of intervening variables such as local leaders’ incentives to impede better governance. This possibility is also accepted by Barnett and Zurcher (2010: 23) when they argue that what is most likely to be achieved is a compromised peacebuilding outcome where the peacebuilders get some stability and the local elites protect their power base from any reforms. Hardly the liberal state all the effort will have been expended towards in the first place. Krasner (2011: 66) however, goes further and says that the whole statebuilding consensus that the important task is creation of effective institutions and external actors’ role is to enhance institutional capacity is flawed. He even thinks “contemporary statebuilding is an exercise in organised hypocrisy” (Krasner, 2011: 71). His criticisms of the statebuilding consensus are valid but his prescriptions are untenable as he advocates a formalisation of external control of these target states. If classic colonialism met with armed resistance, there is no reason to think Krasner’s rebranding of it as “shared sovereignty” will make it palatable for local groups. Creating effective and legitimate local institutions in the target state is still the best possible course of action despite envisaged difficulties.

The Challenges and Dilemmas of Statebuilding:

Having established that international statebuilding is necessary, what it aims at, and also having briefly touched on how it is done, we can now turn to the challenges and dilemmas before proposing how they can be mitigated. All through our discussion, it is important to remember that all these attempts at statebuilding will be happening in an atmosphere of recently ended, threatened or continuing violence. The first challenge that arises is that of the legitimacy of the intervener which also impacts on whether the state they build will enjoy legitimacy with the local population.

Legitimacy:

The starting point then is to interrogate the nature of the intervention and the intervening state’s interests and how this may create challenges and dilemmas in its own right. David Lake (2013) argues that the reason why the United States has made limited achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq despite spending billions is due to the statebuilder’s dilemma whereby loyal leaders are preferred over legitimate ones in the target state. He says this is due to the fact that any state that is willing to commit substantial resources to statebuilding will have interests in that state so will seek to install a pliant leader (Lake, 2013). This then works at cross purposes with the attempt to create a legitimate liberal state. A loyal leader so instituted will then “divert resources from building state capacity to building his political coalition and the statebuilder will acquiesce in this diversion, even while recognizing that it undermines legitimacy…. net effect is statebuilding fails to create capable or durable states” (Lake, 2013).

This is certainly the case with Afghanistan where Hamid Karzai was installed as leader in a statebuilding enterprise whose foundation was a foreign military intervention (Suhrke, 2010: 229). The result was that the Afghan leader was thus tarnished and, further, it did not help that NATO war-fighting strategy sometimes empowered local “warlords” to the detriment of the central state any statebuilding project seeks to strengthen (Suhrke, 2010: 230). What, in this instance, will be happening is that the intervener’s actions will be undermining any chances of them reaching their goals. Suhrke (2010: 227) argues that the intervention and all the efforts expended in Afghanistan have only managed to create a rentier “state that has weak legitimacy and limited capacity to utilize aid.” 

The bottom line for Lake and Fariss (2014: 6) is that if the statebuilder is viewed as illegitimate this also taints the project and the society will reject it. United Nations mandated statebuilding projects would then be more acceptable interventions. Still, these will also suffer from difficulties of establishing legitimacy for the state owing to the incentives for local actors to resist better governance or, their competition to be in control of the state (Barnett and Zurcher, 2010: 23; Krasner, 2011: 66; Lake and Fariss, 2014: 7). This was the case in East Timor where a UN sanctioned legitimacy building project was hijacked by Mari Alkatiri’s Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (Fretilin) thus sowing the seeds for continual power struggles (Richmond and Franks, 2011: 96). This feeds into the next challenges of statebuilding.

Liberal Intervention Shocks on Target State:

Even the most well-intentioned, well-structured and benevolent intervention may not necessarily result in a positive outcome. According to Barnett and Zurcher (2010: 23), “shock therapy, peacebuilding style, undermines the construction of the very institutions that are instrumental for a stable peace.” The shocks Barnett and Zurcher have in mind here are the destabilizing effects of liberal economic policies as witnessed in Rwanda and other places that have experienced IMF or World Bank administered Structural Administered Programmes. In Afghanistan, attempts to introduce economic reform have faced a different but related problem. The availability of financial resources introduced by the United States, belatedly, for stimulating economic and developing capacity has spurred corruption among the elites whose interests lie in preserving their power and not state capacity (Lake and Fariss, 2014: 11; Dodge, 2013: 1208). This then leads to the challenge of dependency, whereby because the state has no capacity to collect taxes or generate any revenue otherwise, they depend on foreign aid (Suhrke, 2010: 230), with implications for legitimacy of the Afghan state. The fact that Afghanistan lacks resources and expertise is a given, but to fully draw out what this implies, a comparison with Iraq suffices. The de-Baathification of Iraq is said by Dodge (2013: 1206) to have deprived the Iraq state of around 120 000 capable civil servants which then forced the United States to expend $200.4 billion in attempting to re-establish that expertise.

There is also a consensus in the literature that, with the end of the Cold War, there was a multiplicity of actors who became involved in statebuilding; coordination and coherence therefore becomes a concern for the integrity of the project. Also, as the number of activities multiplied, timing and sequencing would also be factors to consider. These factors apply to multilateral as well as unilateral interventions as even statebuilding institutions of the same country can find themselves at cross purposes. Generally, IMF recommendations such as streamlining the civil service and fiscal restraint clashes with the UN or NGOs’ desire to get ex-combatants into government employment as part of the conflict resolution tools (Paris, 2010: 55). In Afghanistan the United States strategic imperatives which necessitated co-optation of warlords is said by Durch (2012: 89) to have undermined the multilateral efforts at statebuilding contained in the Bonn Agreement. The challenge of timing and sequencing is better viewed in Angola where the United Nations hastily introduced elections before other state capacities had been consolidated which led to renewed fighting (Call, 2008: 1). In Afghanistan it was a case of installing elections rapidly but without the accompanying accountability and legitimacy (Collier, 2008: 113).

The Dilemmas Proper:

The Afghanistan case throws up the dilemmas which are equally true in other settings. The first dilemma is the duration dilemma whereby the statebuilder needs time to complete their work but the longer they stay the more they are seen as an occupier and possible target of a violent response (Paris and Sisk, 2007: 6). The second is the footprint dilemma where a larger footprint will be viewed as intolerable intrusion by local actors while a light footprint would not be able to provide security or any other services to the whole country (Edelstein, 2010: 82). The third dilemma is that of dependency whereby because there is no expertise, the more the intervener does the more the local population become dependent on her and unable to develop their own capacity (Paris and Sisk, 2007: 6). Lastly, the participation dilemma refers to the fact the intervener will be forced to include the agents of insecurity as partners otherwise they will become spoilers (Paris and Sisk, 2007: 6).

Conclusion: A Conflict Sensitive Intervention 

The thread running through this essay is that there are really no easy ways to deal with the challenges and dilemmas of statebuilding as they are inherent to the process. The only safeguards are to follow the guidelines espoused in OECD Conflict Sensitive intervention protocols such as Do No Harm. The intervener has to understand local conflict dynamics and understand that their involvement is a possible incentive for continued conflict (OECD, 2010: 10) and thus act in a manner that mitigates their effects. The do no harm principle also extends to the “before picture,” whereby the statebuilder should not be the reason the state failed in the first place. The Afghanistan military intervention while defensible; the Iraq intervention was, by Petraeus’s admission, questionable (RUSI, 2013: 82). Regardless of all the problems highlighted above, this essay has argued that the liberal statebuilding template is both necessary and the only viable option. It will remain a continuous learning process with succeeding generations attempting to correct the manifest defects of current efforts.

The "Notebook"

Bibliography:

Barnett, Michael and Christoph  Zurcher (2010), ‘The Peacebuilder’s Contract: How External Statebuilding Reinforces Weak Statehood,’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.). The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting The Contradictions of Post War Peace Operations. Abingdon: Routledge. 23 – 52.Call, Charles (2008). ‘Ending Wars: Building States,’ in Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (eds.). Building States To Build Peace. London: Lyne Rienner Publishers. 1 – 22.

Collier, Paul (2008). ‘Post Conflict Economic Policy,’ in Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (eds.). Building States To Build Peace. London: Lyne Rienner Publishers. pp 103 – 117.

Dodge, Toby (2013), ‘Intervention and Dreams of Exogenous Statebuilding: The Application of Liberal Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ Review of International Studies, Vol. 39, No. 5: 1189 – 1212.

Durch, William (2012), ‘Exit and Peace Support Operations,’ in Richard Kaplan (ed.) Exit Strategies and Statebuilding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 79 – 99.

Edelstein,  David (2010), ‘Foreign Militaries, Sustainable Institutions, and Post-War Statebuilding,’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.). The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting The Contradictions of Post War Peace Operations. Abingdon: Routledge. Pp 81 – 103.

Fearon, James and David Laitin (2004), ‘Neo-Trusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,’ International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4: 5 – 43.

Krasner, Stephen (2011), ‘International Support for State-building: Flawed Consensus,’ Prism Vol. 2 No. 3: 65 – 74.

Krause, Keith and Oliver Jütersonke (2005), ‘Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Environments,’ Security Dialogue Vol. 36, No. 4: 447 – 461.

Lake, David (December 2013), Why State Building Fails, University of California TV, San Diego: University of California. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O4pusNMQ-Y Accessed 01 May 2014.

Lake, David and Christopher Fariss (2014). Why International Trusteeship Fails: The Politics of External Authority in Areas of Limited Statehood. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. ••, No. ••: 1 – 19.

OECD, (2010), ‘Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations: From Fragility to Resilience,’ Journal on Development, Vol. 9, No. 3: 1 – 79.

Paris, Roland (2004), At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paris, Roland and Timothy Sisk (2007). Managing Contradictions: The Inherent Dilemmas of Postwar Statebuilding. New York: International Peace Academy.

Petraeus, David H. (2013), ‘Reflections On The Counter-Insurgency Era,’ RUSI Journal, Vol. 158, No. 4: 82 – 87.

Richmond, Oliver and Jason Franks (2009), Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rubin, Barnett (2008). ‘The Politics of Security in Post-Conflict Statebuilding,’ in Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (eds.). Building States To Build Peace. London: Lyne Rienner Publishers. 25 – 47.

Suhrke, Astri (2010), ‘The Dangers of a Tight Embrace: Externally Assisted Statebuilding in Afghanistan,’ in Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.). The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting The Contradictions of Post War Peace Operations. Abingdon: Routledge. 227 – 251.

On European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

The EU is tangential to what I really want to know; SADC regional security policy. But I believe Ovid was on to something when he said: "You can learn from anyone even your enemy." Ovid's quote is quite apt if we admit David Mitrany's hypothesis that regional integration is national rivalries writ large. By which he meant, wars will no longer be fought between nation states but between continental unions, due to regional integration schemes.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Greater than the sum of its parts?

To what extent have member states been required to sacrifice autonomy in national foreign policy through the creation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy?

Introduction:

The question to what extent have states given up their autonomy as a result of the codification of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) under Title V of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), lends itself well to one of the key integration debates. This debate can be characterised as this question: is the EU inexorably taking steps towards a federal union or do the national governments always retain control over the pace of integration? Theoretical approaches falling in either the supranationalism or the intergovernmentalism camp markedly evince this debate. As an example, Federalism and its precepts falls in the supranationalism side of the debate, and a theory such as Neorealism – which is state-centric – would support the primacy of national governments: intergovernmentalism.

CFSP is the attempt by the European Union (EU) to speak with a single voice in its foreign relations with third countries. My paper seeks to answer the question whether the EU has evolved to the extent where ‘high politics’ now admit themselves to meaningful pooling of sovereignty. The history of European integration has no shortage of examples of states refusing to allow any encroachment on their sovereignty in issues pertaining to foreign and security policy. I will, to an extent, be relying on the competing theoretical approaches to integration to try and highlight where change has occurred and where it has not. The fact that the intergovernmental approach was largely retained for CFSP, and the introduction of the veto power under the Amsterdam Treaty suggests that states are determined to maintain their autonomy.[1] But, other factors such as Europeanisation, institutionalisation and, the demands of the current international strategic environment, augurs well for the argument that autonomy has been severely curtailed under CFSP. Before we go on to speak of the merits of either argument, it is also useful to hear the voices who propose that only states can have a foreign policy.

Can the European Union Have a Foreign Policy?

Three different arguments from different groups of scholars are presented on this score by Brian White. He notes the first argument that; EU foreign policy already exists as an integral part of European integration, and this can be seen in its codification in the TEU.[2] This first argument is suggestive of neofunctionalism’s spillovers postulate, which predicts that integration in ‘low politics’ will create pressures to integrate in ‘high politics.’[3] The second argument he presents is that European foreign policy does not yet exist, but there is a need for it owing to the failures of the EU to deal with crises, especially in the Balkans.[4] This argument is cognisant of the external pressures exerted on Europe to act in concert so as to effectively tackle problems that cannot be solved unilaterally. The third argument is from a group whose view it is that a ‘European foreign policy does not exist, it never will and, moreover, it never should!’[5] The third argument is, perhaps, an extreme way of saying only nation states can be thought of as having a foreign policy. This third view finds support in David Allen’s position that “the determination to preserve national foreign policies is ultimately at odds with the ambition to create a European foreign policy.”[6]

What these three points of view exhibit is that different theoretical approaches on the same subject can come to diametrically opposed conclusions. However, in this case, the third viewpoint that EU foreign policy cannot exist, is confounded by the reality. The first two arguments have a basis in current reality. The current reality is that there is a variety of actors in the international system which can be thought of as having a foreign policy. The EU as it exists is one such actor. Hazel Smith’s definition of EU foreign policy captures this possibility for the EU. She has defined it as; “the capacity to make and implement policies abroad that promote the domestic values, interests and policies of the European Union.”[7] From this definition, the logical question to ask is if the EU possesses ‘actorness’ and therefore common values, interests, and policies to promote abroad? Once we have established this we will then be able to look at what impact, if any, the advent of CFSP has had on member states’ autonomy in foreign policy.

EU ‘Actorness’

The four attributes that award a body ‘actorness’ (or agency) in international relations are listed as recognition, authority, autonomy and cohesion.[8] The first attribute seems unproblematic for the EU. Recognition refers to the extent to which an entity is accepted and interacts with others.[9] European External Action Services (EEAS) missions around the globe can be seen a sign of this recognition. The second attribute – authority – can be thought of as the legal competence to act,[10] and here, the question becomes does the EU have a legal personality? This question has been answered by Bretherton and Vogler, who see ‘no necessary correspondence between achievement of legal personality and actorness in behavioural terms.’[11] They thus argue that it is not necessary to have a legal personality to be a competent authority in world affairs, weak states have legal personality but do not exert as much influence as the EU.[12] The EU therefore has this competence insofar as other actors request its services, as in the invitation by the parties to the Aceh/Indonesia Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which resulted in the EU’s Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) of 2005 - 2006.

Autonomy and cohesion are attributes that have a direct bearing for the question at hand of whether member states have sacrificed their autonomy as a result of the advent of CFSP. Autonomy refers to ‘institutional distinctiveness and independence from other actors’[13] whereby “an international organization, to be an actor, should have a distinctive institutional apparatus, even if it is grounded in, or intermingles with, domestic political institutions.”[14] Again the EEAS would be an apt example of the institutional apparatus charged with giving the EU a coherent external projection, despite the intergovernmental nature of foreign policy articulation. The fourth attribute, cohesion, is the extent ‘to which an entity can formulate and articulate internally consistent policy preferences.’[15] This fourth attribute is said to have four dimensions, namely; value, tactical, procedural and output cohesion.[16] Value cohesion refers to compatibility of goals; while the ability to make incompatible goals fit each other is tactical cohesion; procedural cohesion is consensus on rules and procedures; and lastly, output cohesion is the member states’ ability to successfully formulate policies.[17] This last attribute and its dimensions is cogent for the EU as it can explain how CFSP can be possible regardless of differences. To my mind then, the EU possesses all four attributes of ‘actorness.’ Still, the question remains to be answered why member states have not yet allowed the foreign policy domain to become supranational to the same extent as, for example, the European Central Bank (ECB). Further still, why did the Amsterdam Treaty actually allow member states the power to veto a vote where a special national interest is threatened?[18]

Actor Sui Generis?

The existence of these residual sensitivities for national governments with regards foreign and security policy would give credence to the neorealist argument that national governments retain autonomy even under CFSP. But, the edges can be taken off the neorealist argument somewhat if we follow the direction of Michael Smith with regards how to properly conceive European foreign policy. He argues that to think of the EU as either a supranational entity or an intergovernmental one is to misunderstand the nature of the beast completely.[19] The argument here is that the EU should be treated as ‘sui generis – a new kind of international actor.’[20] This logic leads us to accept Keukelerie and MacNaughtan’s position that ‘EU foreign policy is a complex multilevel policy network… . where EU member state interaction is not a simple two level-game, with the national and EU levels remaining neatly separated. Rather EU and national foreign policies are interconnected and mutually influencing.’[21] According to this frame of reference then, the EU’s foreign policy defies both supranationalist or neorealist instrument-of-state-power conceptions. Thus, the EU, conceived as actor sui generis, must then yield to us the provisional conclusion that: while member states’ foreign policies still exist and are important, CFSP meaningfully impacts national foreign policies.[22] This impact is then the extent to which national autonomy in foreign policy has been required to be given up by member states due to CFSP.

The reason why my paper has tried at length to establish whether the EU can have a foreign policy; to establish its ‘actorness,’ and furthermore, how theoretical approaches perceive the CFSP debate, is that this will lend a degree of exactness to my analysis. To have thought of the EU as an entity at the cusp of becoming a supranational state or as a purely intergovernmental entity would have completely missed all the complexity. But, viewed as a multi-level policy network, the EU allows us to concentrate on the interaction between the different levels so as to see if the policy output is a reflection of this interaction.

The other salient issue for any polity whether we call it sui generis or a village community, is, do their interests converge or are they in conflict? Where interests conflict, are there agreed procedures and rules for their harmonisation? Are the rules respected or is defection the norm? For this paper then, the question is does the same EU – I have attributed actorness to – have common interests to project to the world, and how does it deal with divergence of interests?

Common Interests:

It is a truism of international relations that ‘two countries, even allies, seldom have identical national interests.’[23] This then is seen as one of the obstacles to a CFSP. Indeed, the fact that foreign policy did not become integrated at the same pace as did trade and economic policy does reflect national governments’ sensitivity to national interests conceived as vital interests. This truism however does not take into consideration generational changes specific to the EU, and, the argument presented above of the EU as actor sui generis capable of deploying the cohesion ‘actorness’ attribute, when goals conflict. By generational changes, I mean that the existential threats faced by European leaders between 1945 and 1991 are not exactly the same as those faced by EU leaders today. Therefore, the divisive force the national interest was shortly after the Second World War in Europe, cannot have remained unchanged after so much time has elapsed. As well, changes in the international strategic environment have also foisted challenges on Europe that demand collective action. Thus, the very act of articulating a CFSP is a response to the new environment’s imperatives which demand collective action by the EU if success is to be achieved. I have already mentioned that the failures in the Balkans after the disintegration of Yugoslavia made the EU member states realise that working in concert could produce results that unilateral action could not.

A further point related to commonality of interests we can admit here is the democratic peace thesis, which allows us to argue that the divergences of EU member states’ interests are those of degree rather than kind. The national interests of North Korea can hardly be reconciled with those of Sweden, but Sweden’s differences with France can be bridged. The fourth attribute of ‘actorness’ mentioned above – cohesion – ensures then that the EU under CFSP can mostly iron out their differences and present a united front. One of the latest example of this united front being Baroness Catherine Ashton’s declaration on North Korea on behalf of all 27 member states as well as for the candidate and acceding states.[24] This can be contrasted with the lack of cohesion in the African Union (AU) which saw 20 countries recognise Libya’s National Transitional Council in 2011 despite the fact that the AU position was that there would be no such recognition while fighting was going on.[25] What this point illustrates is that the four attributes of ‘actorness’ I discussed above and said were all embodied by the EEAS, make the EU more than the sum of its parts. To an extent, the member states have been institutionalized to negotiate a position to project to the outside world within the EU despite their national interest differences, unlike my AU example above. What then is the logic behind this phenomenon? Why do member states allow themselves to be made to toe the line under CFSP?

Impact of CFSP: Europeanisation:

The argument has also been made that there is a paradox to integration. The paradox is that ‘CFSP actually represents a rescue for national foreign policies.’[26] The argument here is that CFSP has allowed member states who were on the wane to become powers to reckon with again, capable of advancing what has always been their foreign policy preferences. Again, this can be contrasted with the equally valid assertion that ‘participation in the CFSP of the EU and the external relations of the EC alters the foreign policies of member states.’[27] Europeanisation admits to these two contradictory charges. On the one hand Europeanisation refers to ‘the penetration of the EU into the politics, institutions, and policy making of member states’[28] This is a situation whereby member states’ policies can be seen to have changed owing to being part of the EU. The evidence of this is easier to discern among acceding members who are required to align their policies with those of the EU. Sweden would be a good example with regards how much of their long-standing neutrality policy they have had to cede to become a member.

The other salient form of Europeanisation refers to the ‘bottom up’ form whereby states upload their preferences to the EU level.[29] This is a situation whereby some states’ constitutional designs allow them to be pace-setters for the EU agenda.[30] By so doing these countries can then pursue their foreign policy with the legitimation and capacities of the EU. France which has traditionally preferred a strong Europe to counter-balance the United States is often cited as one country that has benefited from Europeanisation as a ‘bottom up’ activity. Blunden records that the end of the Cold War weakened France’s position, and only the advent of CFSP has been a power multiplier for France.[31] But even so, it still is ‘a negotiated convergence between the national and supranational’[32] which is the position I have defended throughout my paper. Even if national capacities favour one nation uploading its preferences, the unanimity rule in reaching decisions on CFSP and the extant contiguity of values in the EU ensures that nothing alien to core values can be introduced to the EU.

CFSP is also an improvement from the previous European Political Cooperation (EPC) and hence has more institutionalized constraints on member states’ autonomy. While foreign policy in the EU has been placed in the intergovernmental second pillar under the Maastricht Treaty, the fact that national governments and elites have been socialised by CFSP’s demand for consistency to consider the EU level when making policy, also bodes well for the impact of CFSP.

Conclusion:

My paper has attempted to ascertain the extent to which member states have been required to give up national autonomy under CFSP. I began by trying to avoid the pitfalls of analysis inherent where the EU has been attributed the wrong ‘actorness.’ To this end I argued that the EU should be viewed as actor sui generis, therefore, any analysis should be based on the understanding that CFSP is a multi-level policy network where the national and supranational influence each other.[33] I have also made the point that the EU is capable of having a foreign policy of its own, owing to its possession of the four attributes of ‘actorness’ I expanded on above; recognition, authority, autonomy and cohesion. The most salient point of these attributes is cohesion as it means the EU is capable of making incompatible goals and divergences fit through a negotiated ‘convergence of the national and supranational.’[34] I then discussed the EU’s common interests so as to ascertain if divergences are potent enough to ensure states will not cede their autonomy in national foreign policy. The observation here was that there is a remarkable contiguity of interests among EU member states and the differences so far can be bridged. This factor, of contiguity of interests, makes it difficult to discern whether CFSP has forced member states to give up their autonomy or they have just continued on the path they would have followed anyway without the EU. We may have to wait until the EU asks Britain and France to cede their Security Council seat to the EU before we are able to discuss an unbridgeable divergence of interests. Europeanisation was also admitted as the paradox that has rescued national autonomy as well as curtailed it. From all the foregoing, the cogent conclusion must be the generally accepted logic that institutions are a middle-level concept; constructed by agents for their benefit but then place constraints on them. EU CFSP is such an institution.

 Bibliography

Aybet, Gulnur. The Dynamics of European Security Cooperation: 1945 – 1991. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1997.

Blunden Margaret. “France.” In The Foreign Policies of European Union Member States, edited by Ian Manners and Richard Whitman. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Bretherton, Bretherton and John Vogler. The EU As A Global Actor. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Cmakalová, Katerina. and Jan Martin Rolenc, “Actorness and legitimacy of the European Union.” Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2012): 260 – 270.

European Council. “Declaration by the High Representative on Behalf of the European Union.”08/03/2013 http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/cfsp/135886.pdf (accessed 17/03/2013).

Greiçevci, Labinot. “EU Actorness in International Affairs: The Case of EULEX Mission in Kosovo.” Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2011): 283-303.

Hill, Christopher and Michael Smith. International Relations and the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Keukelerie, Stephan and Jennifer MacNaughtan. The Foreign Policy of the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Mail & Guardian. News Africa. “No, We Still Won't Recognise Libya's Rebels, Says Zuma.” 26/08/2011 http://mg.co.za/article/2011-08-26-zuma-cuts-a-lonely-figure-at-aus-libya-powwow (accessed 17/03/2013).

Manners, Ian and Richard Whitman. The Foreign Policies of European Union Member States. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Roskin, Michael G. “National Interest: From Abstraction to Strategy.” In US Army War College: Guide to Strategy 2001, edited by Joseph R. Cerami, and James F. Holcombe. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub362.pdf (accessed 17/03/2013).

Smith, Hazel. European Union Foreign Policy: What It Is and What It Does. London: Pluto Press, 2002.

Smith, Michael E. “Researching European Foreign Policy: Some Fundamentals.” Politics, Vol. 28, No. 3, (2008): 177 – 187.

Soetendorp, Ben. Foreign Policy in the European Union. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1999.

White, Brian. “Foreign Policy Analysis and European Foreign Policy.” In Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy, edited by Ben Tonra and Thomas Christiansen, 45 – 61. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.