Book Reviews Regelsberger, Elfriede, Philippe de Schoutheete de Tervarent and Wolfgang Wessels (eds). Foreign Policy of the European Union. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997. This very informative book, edited and authored by distinguished academics, high-ranking European Union officials and senior diplomats is a mine of historical information and analysis of the still embryonic EU foreign policy. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as it has been known since the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on European Union (TEU), is just as controversial today as was its skeletal predecessor, European Political Cooperation (EPC), which was what passed as a European Community foreign policy from its origins in 1970 to 1993 when the TEU came into effect. EPC was plagued by inherent contradictions throughout its existence. First, it lacked a legal foundation, which was only partly remedied by the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986. Second, it was riddled with ambiguities. There is a very concrete reason for this as the editors underscore at the outset: Foreign policy has been one of the most difficult areas in which to cooperate. It raises immediately, and most visibly, issues of national sovereignty. It has to accommodate differing historical traditions, to consider specific sensitivities and prejudices in public opinion. In the peoples’ collective consciousness, foreign policy, defense and currency are basic ingredients of the nation-state in a way that coal, steel, and the economy, however important, are not (at 2). The world went through fundamental change during the years the SEA was in effect (1987-1993). This process provided both new opportunities for foreign and security policy and foreign policy challenges prompted by instability at the EU’s frontiers. As a result, as one of the best chapters in the book points out (at 148), it is uncertain how apt the TEU is to confront these historic challenges: ‘the text of the Treaty has, to a certain extent, been overtaken by the rapid course of events’. The rules of CFSP – like those of the EPC before them – are not part of Community law. As one of the contributors indicates in another context, under the heading: ‘The CFSP: still at the bottom of a learning curve’. It is clear that the Twelve and now the Fifteen have not taken a significant qualitative step towards a common, integrated European policy on foreign and security matters. The CFSP mainly formulates intentions to consult, coordinate and cooperate, without providing a decision-making framework in which member states are obliged to decide on and implement policies ... member states have never intended to delegate foreign and security policy to the EU, and a Common Foreign and Security Policy has quite dissimilar aspirations than, for example, the Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.(1) The Maastricht Treaty was the outcome of fierce debates and battles both within and among the Member States. ‘Pillar II’ reflects this lack of consensus on Europe’s future role. The differing foreign policy objectives and national interests of Western European states makes it highly questionable whether the EU will develop into a unitary actor capable of acting quickly and effectively in crisis situations, both on its borders and elsewhere in the world. Former Yugoslavia, the Gulf, Rwanda and Haiti provide ample testimony to this. The editors of Foreign Policy of the European Union thus had a tough task in providing a structure for a collection of essays on the sum of parts that did not, and continue not to, make a whole. The one they adopted is only partially satisfactory in what is, admittedly, an extremely frustrating topic for the analyst, if not the historian. Part One is a history of EPC; Part Two takes a look at the institutions (‘the stage and the players’); Part Three, under the title ‘To Act or Not to Act,’ is in fact a series of seven case studies of EU activity in various parts of the world (Yugoslavia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and former Soviet Republics, CSCE/OSCE, assorted regional groupings, the United Nations and Somalia, and the United States). Of the three parts in the volume, the second is by far the most interesting since it attempts to analyse the very complex and ambiguous institutional and legal structures of EPC/CFSP. Regelsberger’s chapter on the institutional set-up and Krenzler and Schneider’s essay on the question of consistency are particularly thoughtful and well written and provide a nice combination of an academic (Regelsberger) examining institutional problems and two practitioners looking at theoretical issues. Least satisfying of all, predictably, is Part Four on the ‘The Future: Challenges and Limitations’, which is a combination of jeremiad and heavy-duty wishful thinking. How does one reconcile a cumbersome and inefficient structure, the slow development of operational capabilities, an almost total lack of strategic planning, a repeated disregard for EU procedures, the declining impact of the EU on events, and mounting external challenges (at 321-322) with the need for ‘an inspiring concept’, a European capacity for foreign policy analysis, replacing unanimity with some qualified majority rule, and ‘speaking with a single voice’? No wonder Burghardt is forced to conclude that ‘the EU’s record of political achievements remains very meager, and totally inadequate in comparison with the very substantial economic efforts that the EC deploys worldwide’ (at 332). Reighardt Rummel, an analyst of EC/EU ‘foreign and security’ policy of long standing, concludes the volume with some suggestions for improvements and reform of CFSP in the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference, whose results are now only too well known. A few advances on the CFSP front, but nothing earth-shaking. We shall have to wait for the next intergovernmental conference, monetary union, and EU enlargement for major change. Glenda G. Rosenthal Columbia University
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