Ben Tonra
Abstract
There has been considerable debate surrounding the nature of the European Union's international capacity. Early conceptions of the Union as a civilian or non-military actordominated early thinking, characterising the Union as a new kind of international actor. 1. Others 2 , meanwhile argued that this simply sought to make a virtue of weakness and that if the Union were ever to be taken seriously, then it would have to develop a full-spectrum military capacity. That debate, in a somewhat different form, continues today. The 'civilian power' thesis 3 has evolved to one in which the Union continues to be posited as a new kind of international actor, but now as one which is somehow uniquely capable or uniquely configured as effective exporter of norms and values in the international system 4. Others insist that only as the Union develops its nascent military capacity can it begin to shoulder real international responsibilities. 5 Within this second debate exist more polemical positions on the adverse, or other, consequences of the 'militarization' of the Union's international profile and transatlantic arguments surrounding a division of labour between the US and EU in delivering 'hard' and 'soft' security capacity. This paper will outline and critically engage these debates. It will conclude that while the Union remains a distinctive international actor, the trajectory of its development may suggest the pursuit of an 'enlightened power' model. 2 Community made no mention of foreign or security policy. Nonetheless, the Communities were international actors by virtue of their very existence: their international treaty base and their interaction with other global actors and institutions. Furthermore, there was an underlying political assumption that the process of European integration was one that was inherently political and which aspired to the creation of a truly political European community of states. Thus, it was to be expected that shared interests would gradually and increasingly be assigned to a supranational authority which, over time, would further extend its policy reach. 6 Moreover, within this neo-functionalist perspective, it was presumed that such a process would not be limited to domestic welfare issues of trade and production, but that it would also spillover from this area of "low politics" into the "high politics" of international relations and foreign policy. For these theorists, the move from a Common Commercial Policy to a Common Defence Policy was both desirable and inevitable. Throughout the early period of the EC"s development, there was an implicit acceptance that the Community was already engaged in international politics. Certainly, trade could not be divorced from politics. This was illustrated by the association of former French overseas territories to the emerging European market, to the negotiation of bilateral trade agreements and to the EC"s participation in multilateral trade talks. Gradually, the EC Member States were drawnas a groupfurther into explicitly political issues with attention being given to EC relations with South Africa 7 and the Middle East 8 , with the EC"s reaction to the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas crisis 9 and to the EC"s contribution to the Helsinki process. 10 In each case the use of trade and other economic tools were linkedand sometimes explicitlywith political goals such as the end of Apartheid, a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict, or support for Détente.
