EU Security Policy Disintegrates Over Libya

Okay, I’m ready to reconsider my previous criticism of Catherine Ashton and her seeming fecklessness on hammering out a common EU foreign policy. Though it’s been clear since the Libyan crisis began that EU coordination has been disorganized at best, this summary from Deutsche Presse-Agenteur demonstrates that any hope for a coherent security policy, in Libya and beyond, was extinguished this past week. With France butting heads with NATO over control of the no-fly zone, the U.K. suggesting Gaddafi should be assassinated and Germany opposing intervention altogether, Ashton was forced to admit that coordinating EU policy has been like ‘flying an airplane while we are still building the wings and somebody is trying to take the tailfin off at the same time.’

The main thing to consider is that there actually is a EU foreign policy document. Known as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), it was written up as part of the Maastricht Treaty and formalized at Lisbon. It is intended to incorporate “all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union’s security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy that might lead to a common defense.”

But as Ashton points out in this interview, on matters of direct military intervention, it is up to sovereign states to decide how — or if — they want to use their forces. According to the EU’s website, “Foreign and security policy is one area where essential authority remains with EU governments.”

So perhaps we were all wrong to assume that the EU would be responsible for dictating the terms of intervention for its member states — that was never its role.

What this does mean, though, is that the rest of the world should abandon the idea of the continent speaking with one voice when it comes to military intervention. We of course have seen this play out over the past few years in Afghanistan. The DPA quotes one diplomat confirming the disintegration of the EU’s security framework: ‘The CFSP died in Libya – we just have to pick a sand dune under which we can bury it.’

The article ends by quoting another diplomat blaming Britain for “poisoning the chalice” of Brussels’ foreign policy mechanism by insisting Ashton be named to High Commissioner. Hard to make that case, though, if the chalice itself was designed to fall apart at moments like these.