Editorial October 2010

A Giant Switzerland:
The Best Foreign Policy Option for a Weakened European Union?

By Pascal Vennesson

The following text is partially borrowed from: Pascal Vennesson, "Competing Visions for the European Union Grand Strategy," European Foreign Affairs Review, 15 (2010), pp. 57-75.

It has now become commonplace to refer to Switzerland to criticize the European Union’s (EU) alleged lack of international clout. The EU, critics note, is rapidly sinking into irrelevance and should not continue to be a “giant Switzerland”. Beyond these superficial criticisms, it may be time to discuss seriously the Euro-neutralist option, a grand strategy that could be the least damaging option for a badly divided and weakened EU.

The analogy between Switzerland and the European Union is more relevant and topical than the critics might suspect. This was well recognized by H.G. Wells who noted in Anticipations that the most probable model of European unification would be found in “Swiss conceptions, a civilized republicanism”. Raymond Aron, doubtful that patriotisms that had been enemies for so long could be mobilized for a single cause, asked in the 1950s whether a federal Europe of six countries should choose neutrality as its foreign policy. In fact, the Swiss political experience, especially regarding the domestic-international nexus, provides a rich source of ideas and practices to understand the mechanism and characteristics of the EU’s external action.

For both Switzerland (at least historically) and the EU, the main political challenge is to overcome divisions, fragility and internal conflict. First, there are diverse long-standing foreign policy traditions among EU member states. This includes differences about the very notion that a polity has, and should have, a clearly defined and identified foreign policy. Second, cultural and linguistic divisions maintain a number of underlying differences and tensions within the EU. Third, the institutional decision-making procedures in Switzerland as in the EU appear ill-adapted to strategic action and foreign affairs. However, these legal and institutional impediments can be seen in a positive light: they are very welcomed checks on initiative that, because they would be divisive and sometimes ill-conceived, would be detrimental to the EU. Finally, the current mood vis-à-vis the EU in Europe is passive at best, and increasingly Euroskeptic which make it difficult to legitimize any bold grand strategy.

Choosing a Euro-neutralist grand strategy means preserving peace within Europe, a hard-won unity among divided peoples in Europe as well as a complex and fragile set of EU’s internal institutions which help scientific, technical and economic modernization. The Euro-neutralist grand strategy has, therefore, an internal function: preserving the coexistence of the EU’s various component parts. This implies an interesting and disturbing reversal of the often repeated argument that the EU necessarily benefits from member states’ unity in foreign affairs: in this case, more unity within does not imply more clout outside but less. Unity internally comes at the price of external political abstention, and/or bland, balanced and often relatively toothless resolutions and actions. The EU position on the conflict between Georgia and Russia is a good illustration of such a balancing act.

In this perspective, the international engagements of the EU should be as limited as possible and would entail as little international uses of force as possible. Euro-neutralists emphasize the greatest possible isolation from world affairs – particularly in the political and security domain - and a deep reluctance to use force outside of the strict realm of the territorial defense of the Euro-polity. The main objective of Euro-neutralists is to achieve security for the EU and, perhaps more importantly, its member states and its citizens by avoiding, or limiting, entanglement in international affairs, especially security and political entanglement, and focusing on, and preserving, prosperity and the domestic characteristics of European societies.

Euro-Neutralism maximizes internal unity: since many foreign enterprises and projects are likely to be divisive for the EU – particularly in the political/security sphere – it is best to avoid them. Because they reject foreign entanglements, neo-neutralists also reject the prospect of any further EU enlargement. The EU has not yet digested past waves of enlargement and, in their view, there is no point in adding further costly and paralyzing challenges of that kind.

For the Euro-neutralist grand strategy, the world order is made of distant balances of power: in that context, great powers compete, rise and fall. At the present time, these great powers are not tightly connected to one another, and their potential rivalries should not be a major concern for the EU. However, the EU being in the geographical vicinity of Russia it should focus on potential territorial threats originating from that country. Since a direct territorial aggression is a less tangible threat, the priority should be terrorism, organized crime, uncontrolled immigration (including radical Islam) as well as economic fears about the costs of globalization and European integration

Regarding the United Nations, the Euro-neutralist grand strategy would scale back the EU’s involvement with the UN and keep only a limited engagement. Since Euro-neutralists are suspicious of the United States and, specifically, of NATO, they would prefer that the EU member states should withdraw from NATO, or at least minimize their commitment. Euro-neutralists prefer that the EU avoid any implication in regional and ethnic conflict and keep a neutral attitude vis-à-vis the parties in conflict. The EU would generally not participate in sanctions of any kind and would not get involved in arms proliferation, arms control or international non-proliferation regimes. Most of the time, humanitarian interventions should be avoided or remain as limited as possible, as civilian as possible and fundamentally based on neutrality and the impartiality principle. The reason is straightforward: in that perspective, most of the Third World is irrelevant to European security and intervening would waste resources and lives in a futile effort to influence domestic developments in other polities. Nuclear proliferation is not perceived as a major concern and the EU, or the EU3, should not get involved in any non-proliferation initiative, like with Iran for example.

From a diplomatic standpoint, however, Euro-neutralism does not imply a complete absence of international activity. The EU can provide good offices missions, especially when countries break off diplomatic relations, mostly quiet, bilateral and technical in nature and without involving actual mediation. Good offices with a humanitarian dimension, like the protection of military and civilian victims in wartime, like the International Committee of the Red Cross, would also be an aspect of this grand strategy. Brussels, like Geneva, can become a site for diplomatic conferences. Finally, in the Euro-neutralist grand strategy the use of force is conceivable but mainly in self-defense (this would be a territory-based armed neutralism).

Overall, the Euro-neutralist grand strategy does not belong to the elite mainstream of the EU, it is not part of the “Brussels beltway” thinking and it is largely alien to the outlook of the foreign policy orientation of the so-called big member states, be they the UK, France, Germany or Italy. In part because of this reason, this grand strategic conception is rarely explicitly presented and examined as such which is paradoxical because a mild version of Euro-neutralism (but not its most radical version) might be the closest description of what the EU actually does (but does not say) in world affairs. The EU is often walking the walk of a sort of Euro-neutralism without talking the talk.

By choosing such an option, the EU would bridge the famous capability-expectation gap by diminishing drastically any type of international expectation. It would drastically reduce any expectation that it aspires to play any type of significant international role and would limit itself to narrowly technical, limited, and relatively risk-free, niches. The common accusations that the EU is hypocritical in international affairs and not able to live by its own standard would vanish instantly.

As a critical appraisal of the Euro-neutralist grand strategy, one can highlight four main limits. First, there is too much of a gap between the sheer size of the EU (territory, population, wealth) and the Euro-neutralist grand strategy which is usually designed for much smaller polities. It would be a considerable endeavour, and potentially a costly one, to reduce the EU’s exposure to international affairs. The proponents of this grand strategy would probably agree since they usually are skeptical of large political units, and critical of the European integration project as such. Still, they have to face the fact that if the EU is taken seriously as the political unit of analysis then a grand strategy originally conceived for much smaller political unit might not fit.

Second, the neo-neutralist grand strategy seems out of tune with the international environment characterized by a growing interconnectedness of the international system (globalization), unipolarity and trends towards transnationalism, multilateralism and integration. Moreover, the boundaries between “low politics” and “high politics” are increasingly blurred which makes it increasingly difficult to be, for example, global in the area of trade and intellectual exchanges and purely local in matters of politics and security.

Third, while the neo-neutralists are right that the EU is currently quite secure from a territorial integrity standpoint, it is unclear that a disengagement and a more isolationist grand strategy would make the EU more secure. In fact, it could make matters worse. Finally, the cost in terms of loss of international influence, potential unintended consequences and perhaps U.S. abandonment in the face of blatant free riding would have to be carefully assessed.

In the end, discussing such a “Euro-neutralist” option could have a side-benefit: it might help Europeans to realize that this is really not what they truly want for the EU and, if not, that the time has come to get their international act together.