The Arab Spring has been referred to as the ‘baptism by fire’ for Catherine Ashton’s External Action Service. The EEAS has thus been criticized for its inability to attain its main objectives and the EU has been portrayed as a mere spectator rather than a key player. Even a year later, we still see Assad’s regime massacring its people, the EU has not taken military action, but is it supposed to do so?
As Erik Brattberg wrote in 2011, the Arab Spring can be seen as the ‘baptism by fire’ or ‘the perfect storm’ for the European External Action Service. Indeed, the EEAS had just started to walk on the outbreak of the crisis, and Catherine Ashton was still appointing heads of Delegation and Permanent Representatives like Bernardino León for the Middle East and North Africa region. As the bloodshed keeps increasing in Syria, and the Eid truce has been breached, the European Union (EU) can be seen as not taking action.
In the event that the EU decided to act as a hard power, it would still be constrained by the international legal order and in particular by the limitations imposed on the new (and contested) concept of responsibility to protect (R2P). The international community can exercise R2P when a given State fails to fulfil its obligations vis à vis its nationals. However, it must be done by the organized international community or, in other words, the Security Council. It would appear that the grounds for R2P to emerge would have been set, but as long as there is no agreement in the Security Council, no action can be taken.
Perhaps the biggest role the EU can play in Syria is a strong leadership within the Security Council. But does it want to do so? The lessons learned in Libya seemed to have marked the West, and with good reason. As Michael Emerson pointed out, Syria seemed at the outbreak of the crisis as a more difficult scenario for its strong army and the complex security mechanisms of the region. Even at this stage of the conflict, military action is not the only possible solution and it appears, in fact, as the least desirable, especially after Teheran’s threats to trigger the mutual defence clause of its bilateral agreement with Syria if Turkey intervenes.
At a time when the EU is facing a tremendous economic downfall, it risks to lose its status as an economic giant, but to preserve that of a ‘political dwarf and military worm’. Nevertheless, the fact that the EU has opted for a political and economic approach to the crisis does not automatically turn its response into a military failure. In turn, it does seem that the EU is developing some sort of self-awareness exercise. The use of force has never been the EU’s biggest asset, given its limited defence capabilities and its need to rely on NATO. On the contrary, and despite the economic power, the EU still boasts a key position as a dominant world market. The EU’s way of cranking up the pressure on Assad’s regime comes as no surprise. As Steven Blockmans points out, a full package of sanctions has been adopted. From the arms embargo, to the bans on exports of dual use goods, they share a clear trade-policy nature. In other words: a good way to dig in the decreasing resources of the regime.
Perhaps the question is no longer between hard and soft-power Europe, but between self-aware versus unrealistic…
Soledad Rodríguez Sánchez-Tabernero is a student at the Department of European Legal Studies of the College of Europe (Bruges). She is a graduate in Law and in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where she also completed an MA in European Studies.
Find out more:
- Steven Blockmans: ‘Preparing for a post-Assad Syria: What role for the European Union?’, CEPS Commentary, 2 August 2012 (available at http://www.ceps.be)
- Michael Emerson: ‘The Responsibility to Protect and Regime Change’, CEPS Commentary, 1 December 2011 2012 (available at http://www.ceps.be)
- Erik Brattberg: ‘Opportunities lost, opportunities seized: the Libya crisis as Europe’s perfect storm’, Policy Brief, European Policy Centre, June 2011 (available at http://www.epc.eu)
- Rosa Balfour: ‘The Arab Spring, the changing Mediterranean, and the EU: tools as a substitute for strategy?’, Policy Brief, European Policy Centre, June 2011 (available at http://www.epc.eu)
- Nick Whitney and Antony Dworkin: ‘A Power Audit of EU-North Africa Relations’ , European Council of Foreign Relations, September 2012 (available at http://ecfr.eu)