In this month’s edition of E!Sharp, in a rather amusing piece, Richard Gowan argues that the European Union needs to be a bit more aggressive in its dealings with foreign powers. As he mocks:

[Sometimes] I wish that European foreign policy officials would be a bit blunter about what the EU can do to leaders and countries it does not like.

There is a general impression that the EU would not hurt a fly. Instead, it might launch a strategic partnership with the fly, hold annual meetings with the little creature, and possibly fund a Brussels-based think-tank to produce a report entitled “Achieving a Sustainable EU-Fly Relationship by 2025”.

Too right! The European Union – and, shamefully, those writing about it – often create an impenetrable mishmash of jargon to try and hide Europeans’ military weaknesses and strategic inadequacies. We are often told that the European Union wields ‘soft power’, ‘normative power’, ‘civilian power’, or any plethora of similar types of (probably non-existant) ‘nice’ power. We are told that Brussels does not need military power because the world is now ‘post-modern’; or we are informed – often high-handedly – that the world is now more ‘complex’, meaning that we need different policies in order to deal with it. This is of course a quaint fantasy, which belongs to the immediate post-Cold War era when everyone thought the world was about to become more multilateral and harmonious. It does not belong to the big power multipolar age of the twenty-first century.

Anyway, Gowan locks on to a phrase used by one of the High Representative’s spokespersons, who declared last year that it was European policy to undertake the ‘economic asphyxia’ of the then pitiful regime of Laurent Gbagbo in Ivory Coast. Pointing out that the policy of ‘asphyxia’ was successful, Gowan says:

[A]nyone out there who is planning to mess with the EU should remember that they may suffer genuinely heavy penalties as a result. And European spokespersons should try using phrases like “economic asphyxia” a little more often.

I could not agree more – at least in principle. The trouble is that outside a few small regimes in Africa, few governments or actors would take any notice, for the simple reason that they do not respect – let alone fear – the European Union. Brussels is simply not credible as it lacks the ability to do serious damage to opponents. It can sometimes hurt them temporarily, with economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure, for example, but it cannot wreak serious and lasting devastation on them.

Because ultimately, all societies – let alone a partially-anarchic international system, in which the European Union is unfortunately located – are governed by brute force. Behind every constitution (written or unwritten), there are police constables with their batons. And behind every police service there are soldiers with their guns. Society may depend to an equal degree on the ability to generate consent – indeed, a society needs to motivate people with a powerful idea to survive and flourish – but it also depends on the ability of the leadership to deter would-be usurpers and aggressors with force. This is the logic of deterrence.

Indeed, the naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, once said: ‘Force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.’ In other words, military intervention is the policy of the weak; it is an admission of failure. Deterrence is the policy of the strong; it is the result of success, even if it cannot be readily seen. Take the 1982 Falklands War, for example: a few months before the Argentine invasion, London withdrew important maritime assets from the South Atlantic, which was interpreted by Buenos Aires as Britain being no longer serious about holding onto the islands. Had London sent a couple of the Royal Navy’s gunboats south in March 1982 on hearing the rumours of the coming Argentine aggression – as it had done during a previous scare in 1977 – hundreds of people may still have been alive today, and a bloody conflict might have been averted (contrarily, the brutal junta in Argentina may have lasted far longer than it otherwise did).

So to extrapolate: Brussels does not just need the ability to harangue flies; it must also be willing to swat them. And this means – even more importantly – that it must demonstrate its ability to swat them. That it to say, the European Union needs to show that it is able to deploy armed force, and in sufficient quantities, to deter foreign actors from doing things it does not want want them to do. To sum up: Brussels needs a big fly swat; it needs the ability to use the fly swat; and it needs to show (this is the key part) that it is prepared to use the fly swat. It can then negotiate with – or rather, dictate to – obstinate foreign regimes from a position of strength, which will mean they are more likely to listen to it, thereby reducing their ability to resist European pressure.

Image credit: Ceinturion.