Is the European Union – or even its Member States – still a key ally for the United States? Is the Atlantic Alliance in decline? To be sure the alleged crisis over the planned European Union-United States Summit in Madrid in the Spring of 2010, in which President Obama declined to participate, was largely exaggerated. Yet there undoubtedly is a growing feeling of marginalisation in Europe – marginalisation in international affairs, as experienced in Copenhagen, and of marginalisation in transatlantic relations, as illustrated by the fall-out over the Madrid Summit. Whether this perception is founded is not really the point: Europeans sense a growing gap with their American ally, and Washington should be aware of it.

The recent publication by the White House, in May 2010, of the National Security Strategy (NSS) is likely to emphasise that perception. Indeed, the document only mentions the European Union twice. In comparison, the European Union was mentioned eleven times in the 1998 NSS of Bill Clinton, three times in the 2002 NSS and five times in the 2006 NSS of George W. Bush. And do not even look for the word ‘transatlantic’, for you will not find it.

The context in which the European Union is mentioned is evolving as well. In 1998, the European Union was referred to essentially as a major economic pole and as a security-political actor with limited potential in its neighborhood. George W. Bush depicted the European Union as a full global security and political actor active in counterterrorism, nuclear counter proliferation, and post-conflict reconstruction. It is true that in the meantime, the European Union had further integrated and had created the European Security and Defence Policy, triggering large (and perhaps exaggerated) expectations of European Union global power.

In contrast, President Obama shows more moderation in his assessment of the European Union. The 2010 NSS does say that ‘Building on European aspirations for greater integration, we are committed to partnering with a stronger European Union to advance our shared goals, especially in […] responding to pressing issues of mutual concern.’ But the European Union is mentioned as just one actor among many now exerting power and influence.

The declining centrality of the European Union (and Europe) in American strategic thought can be explained by the rise of emerging powers on the global stage, notably Russia, India and China, which increasingly attract Washington’s attention, and by a more realist reassessment of the European Union’s limited power potential, in spite of the expectations generated by the Treaty of Lisbon. To some extent, it is a luxury problem: if Europe is not high on Washington’s list of priorities, it is because the Old Continent no longer presents any major problems for American security. The real problem is that the European Union is not really seen as a significant partner in addressing the problems that do exist in other parts of the world.

In a changing global environment, with a new global order in the making and new global challenges, the strategic attention of Washington is increasingly diverted away from the Atlantic Alliance. Yet precisely in these challenging times collective action is required to deal with global threats, under the impulse of global leaders. And who else can be up to the task than the United States and the European Union? Surely, nobody expects Russia, India or China to share the Western project to the same extent. In such an environment, therefore, the transatlantic relationship should be renewed, not marginalised.

In order to shape a new global order based on universally shared norms, rules and values, we need a renewed transatlantic leadership for a new grand bargain in which the emergence of new powers demanding power and recognition, and the emergence of new challenges requiring global responses, can be reconciled through an effective multilateral approach. As the European Union’s own Security Strategy says: ‘Acting together, the European Union and the United States can be a formidable force for good in the world.’ A joint effort will be required if they are to retain global influence in this new world order.

The United States should therefore not forget about its ‘old’ allies. European are not simply on call for when the United States needs them, but ought to be treated as an equal partner that can bring creative strategies and a comprehensive toolbox to address global problems. Obviously, Europeans should do what it takes to be an equal partner: make full use of its new institutions under the Treaty of Lisbon, set clear strategic priorities, and proactively pursue them. Then next time Barrack Obama meets Herman Van Rompuy they should have a true strategic conversation.

• A slightly amended version of this article was first published by the New Atlanticist.

The European Union was supposed to abolish internal geopolitics through the establishment of pan-European institutions predicated on ‘civilian power’. However, this has delivered Europeans into a nasty trap: we still rely on the United States to provide the ultimate guarantee for our security, through its nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and air squadrons. Yet as America’s geostrategic focus shifts further away from Europe in response to events since 2001, what will Europeans do? In short, the continent’s main powers have been positioning themselves to fill the vacuum left by the United States. Unless the United Kingdom – of all powers – steps in to moderate this process in the interests of security, the European Union will be undermined, leading to general geopolitical disorder across our continent.

In some ways, this is a radical argument. For both America’s global decline and its complete departure from the European continent are not yet inevitable. But the fulcrum of world power does seem to be shifting from the Atlantic basin to the Indo-Pacific rim at an accelerating pace, and Washington’s geostrategic focus has continued to move in response. Europeans have not yet realised just how much this is going to affect the security of their own continental homeland and their worldview – least of all the British.

Four inter-related developments are starting to undermine the existing European security order:

1.) Russia is moving back into Europe. As American power is moved away from Europe and towards the Middle East and Central Asia today, and the Indo-Pacific rim tomorrow, a vacuum in Eastern and Central Europe has emerged. Moscow has been quick to re-establish its position in an area of historical geopolitical significance to its own well-being. It has used its position as an energy supplier and its military power to undo the Western backed post-Cold War reforms in countries like Georgia and Ukraine since the early 2000s. Russia is also attempting to ‘divide and rule’ Europeans through the pursuit of new partnerships with countries like Germany, France and Italy.

2.) Germany has sought to create for itself through diplomacy what it has failed to do again and again militarily: a pan-European penumbra where it forms the political, economic and cultural heart. With the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, Germany is finally surrounded by friendly, wealthy and increasingly dependent states, to which it can export its manufactured goods. Key to Berlin’s design is the co-opting of its vast eastern neighbour – Russia – into the German continental enterprise. Germany has sought to appease Russia by agreeing to block, albeit tacitly, the expansion of the European Union, and particularly the Atlantic Alliance, into regions where Russia once ruled, while simultaneously building up closer and closer economic and commercial relations.

3.) France – eager to keep up with Germany and freer of the constraints imposed in the past by American power – has sought to deepen its own relations with Russia. Paris has proclaimed 2010 the ‘Year of Russia’ in France and has sought deeper economic relationships with Russian energy corporations in a bid to keep up with its German counterparts. Equally, and critically, France has agreed to sell Russia advanced helicopter carriers (the Mistral class), which will greatly enhance Russian power in the maritime regions of the European Neighbourhood. This will inevitably undermine European influence in this zone, as well as those domestic forces fighting for democracy.

4.) The United Kingdom, once Europe’s leading power, has grown geostrategically lazy and complacent. This is born out of two misunderstandings: firstly, that a permanent European geopolitical settlement has been established; and secondly, that Britain’s most important relationship will always be with the United States. British leaders have placed all their eggs in a single basket, but this basket is close to breaking point. Indeed, their attachment to the Atlantic Alliance has led to the very things they have sought for so long to prevent: a nearly-helpless and de-militarised Europe that can add little of value to overseas NATO operations in places like Afghanistan.

In response to these developments, only one power has the means to keep the European train on the rails: the United Kingdom. Britain’s island geography means that it is Europe’s natural offshore balancer, the final arbiter of European affairs. In the aftermath of World War II, London had two objectives in order to maintain this role: keep Germany down and keep Russia out. This required an unbreakable alliance with the United States and France so that a formidable amalgamation of American, British and French power could be fused together to empower other democratically-minded states to uphold a favourable balance of power in the heart of Europe.

However, with the decline of American power, Britain will have to overcome its Atlanticist ‘default setting’. London must become more aggressive again: it must find a new means to maintain a balance of power within Europe that is favourable to Britain’s geopolitical position and national interests. There is only one way to do this: refashion the European Union under a common military policy and a reformed political architecture. The new British government must re-establish Britain’s power in mainland Europe: London needs to provide the vision and political will necessary to keep Europe orderly and united.

A reformed, British-led, European Union, with its own foreign and military policies, would bring Germany firmly back into the Atlantic system and coax France away from Russia. And in the face of new, large and unpredictable powers, it would empower the European Union to help maintain the wider liberal maritime trade system on which Europeans and Americans both depend for their prosperity and well-being.

• This commentary is a shortened version of our article, entitled ‘The return of European geopolitics: All roads lead through London’, which was published in the July edition of RUSI Journal. The above shortened version was published yesterday by Global Europe.

• Credit to Paul K for use of the comical map of European geopolitics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 2009, (South) Korea and the European Union signed an Free Trade Agreement (the European Union is Korea’s second biggest export market). Brussels and Seoul have great interest in future co-operation, although deeper engagement is unlikely. Most importantly, neither side is relevant to the basic security issues of the other. Specifically, the European Union cannot assist Korea in its acute security dilemma, and the ‘sovereigntist’ Koreans do not share European preferences for ‘soft power’, regionalisation, and multilateral collective security. However, Korea is likely to pursue the relationship for cost-free prestige-taking. And the European Union will understand this ‘Asian bridge’ as a success for the promotion of liberal-democratic values in a non-European context. Europhile, pro-regionalist elites may pursue ‘inter-regional’ ties to bolster the European Union within Europe, but deep Korean attachment to the Westphalian state model will stymie pan-regionalism.

Neither the European Union nor Korea can meaningfully contribute to the other’s primary security challenges – a central pillar for deeper bilateral relations among states. As James Rogers and Luis Simón have noted frequently, the European Union lacks serious power projection far from the European continent. Its ‘loss of strength gradient’ toward East Asia has been severe, particularly since the British retrenchment from east of Suez. The European Union does not have the means to deter North Korea or China. European land forces do not bolster American forces on the Korean peninsula. Although a participant in the Proliferation Security Initiative and the (now defunct) Agreed Framework, the European Union plays no role in the new Six Party framework. Similarly, Korea is irrelevant to the European Union’s big security issues, such as the course of Russia, terrorism and the Middle East, or Eastern Europe’s stabilisation. Their shared liberal democratic values place them broadly in the liberal security community of the democratic peace, but a more positive military contribution to either’s security is unlikely.

Both sides derive prestige from the relationship. Korea, until recently small and peripheral to the global economy, captures most of these benefits. A bilateral relationship with Europeans flatters the Korean imagination of its stature in world politics. Instead of a half-country whose international image is clouded by a clownish rogue despot in the North, Korea lusts for the European Union’s status and rank. Its famous antiquities, high-profile tourism locations, rich history of art and culture – all nested in a wealthy, healthy, international society broadly at peace with itself – strongly attracts the Korean imagination.

A well-known, highly recognised ‘global actor’, the European Union captures little direct prestige from Korea. However, the Korean partnership does benefit pro-European elites within the European Union, most notably in Brussels. The ‘Euro-bureaucracy’, trapped in a decades-long turf-battle with the bureaucracies in the Member States, is likely to seize on the prestige of a direct European Union-level relationship with a G20 economy. This is ammunition against critics that the European Union is simply a trade deal or that other states do not take it seriously. If the 2010 host of the G20 summit takes the European Union seriously enough to label it a ‘strategic partner’, then Brussels gains in the intra-European conflict to establish the European Union more soundly and eventually build a real Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Finally, the European Union does reap psychological gains of domestic values validation. Korea is a great successes in the transplantation of liberal, democratic, Enlightenment values outside of the West; Korea is routinely touted a central case that these values are not ‘Western’, but in fact universal. This excises the cultural-racial bite of the ‘Asian values’ and ‘human-rights imperialism’ arguments of Asian actors such as the Chinese Communist Party or Matathir Mohamad. Conversely, Korea will find little back-traffic, despite heroic efforts to export the ‘Korean Wave’.

The European Union and Korea have an unremarkable relationship. Given the mutual irrelevance of one’s security to the other, it is easy to predict that no alliance is likely. The Free Trade Agreement is step forward, but ultimately one based solely on material utility. The European Union also trades with Iran, and Korea has a ‘strategic partnership’ with Kazakhstan. This provides perspective on the mutual, post-Free Trade Agreement rhetoric of ‘strategic partners’. A ‘friendly partner’ is a more credible assessment. The European-Korea relationship will not mature into a meaningful bond to rival the more critical relations of either with the United States, China, Japan, or Russia.

The European Union’s preference for Asian regionalism will generate friction, although Korea will tolerate it in order to retain the huge prestige boost the relationship with the European Union will bring. Hence the greatest frustration will fall on the European side. Korea’s prestige gains are already achieved by the completion of the Free Trade Agreement and the ‘strategic partnership’, and the European Union cannot leverage a security contribution to the peninsula to push Korea into the East Asian Community or Asia-Europe Meeting. So long as Korea, and East Asia generally, remains committed to the ‘ASEAN Way’ of talk-shop intergovernmentalism, European elites – pro-European Union, pro-East Asian Community, and pro-Asia-Europe Meeting – are likely to find nationalist Korea, and Asia, a frustrating ‘inter-regional’ partner.

This article is a summary of Dr. Kelly’s recent project on the future of the European Union’s relations with Korea for the Pusan National University’s European Union Centre.

Additional resources

• Pusan National University Political Science Department
• Asian Security Blog

Last year I co-authored a Briefing Paper for the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Security and Defence on the existence and location of the European Union’s Member States’ overseas military installations. I have just put this into graphical format – please see the short video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As the video shows very clearly, these military stations cover the world. They could surely form the cornerstone of any future European Union ‘forward presence’ or ‘global posture’ as part of a yet-to-be maritime geostrategy. And so long as Britain and France hold onto them, these overseas military facilities could become even more of an asset than they already are for Europeans, especially if the world becomes increasingly multipolar and more competitive – not least because they straddle the European Union’s primary sea lines of communication.

• GEOSTRATEGY LEADS TO IMPERIALISM

It doesn’t have to. It is true that geostrategy is about the exercise of power over particularly critical spaces on the Earth’s surface; about crafting a political presence over the international system. It is aimed at enhancing one’s security and prosperity; about making the international system more prosperous; about shaping rather than being shaped. A geostrategy is about securing access to certain trade routes, strategic bottlenecks, rivers, islands and seas. It requires an extensive military presence, normally coterminous with the opening of overseas military stations and the building of warships capable of deep oceanic power projection. It also requires a network of alliances with other great powers who share one’s aims or with smaller ‘lynchpin states’ that are located in the regions one deems important.

It is correct that many geostrategies have in the past been built on imperial conquest: countries have annexed land to provide themselves with the means to protect or extend what they have already got. Britain, France and Spain conquered countries near their trade routes to protect and extend them; and Germany and the United States annexed land to acquire more living space. But these all turned out to be costly enterprises which were often ruinous. Imperialism is a particular kind of geostrategy, but not all geostrategies are imperialist. In fact, a good geostrategy should counsel against imperialism, which is extremely costly in terms of both moral courage and matériel.

• THE EUROPEAN UNION IS A ‘PEACE PROJECT’; IT DOES NOT NEED A GEOSTRATEGY

Mumbo jumbo. The European Union was a ‘peace project’. But peace is not a neutral, politically free, concept. A balance of power always lies behind peace. For most of the nineteenth century, world peace was underpinned by British hegemony – it was the age of the Pax Britannica. From the second half of the twentieth century Western Europe was part of a broader geographical area, encompassing the Western hemisphere and much of the Eurasian rimland, which was governed by the Pax Americana. Even if the European Union did not have a traditional geostrategy, its very existence was underpinned by one – that of the United States.

But since the end of the Cold War the European Union has come to play an increasingly active geopolitical role, particularly in the European continent. Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe became a most effective form of geostrategy, facilitating the expansion of the European Union to cover most of our continent, increasing our security, prosperity and entrenching our values. Enlargement consolidated order where there could have been chaos; it brought prosperity where there could have been poverty and stagnation. It worked; it was a success.

Today, however, the European Union’s geostrategy needs to go beyond the European continent. It needs to develop a worldwide focus. A global geostrategy implies that Brussels must develop an understanding of which parts of the world are central to the European interest and which are less so; of where Europeans must focus their resources to uphold their interests and where they should not.

• EUROPEAN GEOSTRATEGY HAS BEEN MADE REDUNDANT BY GLOBALISATION

No. Globalisation has not made geostrategy redundant; in fact, globalisation has amplified the need for a European geostrategy. Why? The reason is simple: the European economy has become more globalised than at any other period in history; goods and services come to us via numerous maritime routes, air routes, energy pipelines and fibre optic cables. If any of these get severed, our economy will suffer, meaning that we as Europeans will suffer.

Globalisation also brings the domestic problems of foreign countries to our shores, which causes trouble for us in the form of extremism and terrorism; globalisation also elevates the importance of the planetary ecosystem, on whose stability we all depend. Globalisation has thrown back at us as many issues as it solves.

• GEOSTRATEGY IS ABOUT THE EXERCISE OF (HARD) POWER

So what? As Robert Gates, the United States’ Secretary of State for Defence, recently asserted, many Europeans have grown very timid about the exercise of power; some treat it almost like an aberration, something so repulsive that it should not even be mentioned in polite conversation. But European power provides the means to amplify European security, prosperity and, ultimately, provide us with the ability to undergird European values like freedom, democracy and social justice – both at home and abroad. These are the aims of geostrategy.

Insofar as they ever existed, gone are the days where Europeans could simply sit back and lead by example; when we were so overwhelmingly powerful normatively that others would accept our vision and fall into line. The European vision of society and international relations is no longer universal and is challenged more and more by the visions of our competitors. This is the main lesson Europeans must learn from the Copenhagen Summit in 2009.

• EUROPEANS HAVE ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO INFLUENCE GLOBAL POLITICS

Do they? Seriously? Many still seem to believe that there remain alternatives to the European Union’s emergence as a global power. Some hope that the United States will remain forever committed to our security and defend our interests and values globally. Others pray that the world is destined to become a better place, where nation will come to speak peace unto nation, through strengthened international structures. Others continue to think nationally when even the biggest of the European Union’s Member States have become too small for today’s world – let alone tomorrow’s.

But hope, prayers and clinging to the past do not a good strategy make. Less so at a time when the United States’ commitment to European stability will be put to the test by the challenges it faces elsewhere. The truth of the matter is that we Europeans have nowhere else to run: in a world that will be dominated by great economic and military superpowers, the European Union is the only way forward. Only by pulling our weight together through a European framework can we effectively gain the thrust and velocity needed to exert our power in the twenty-first century – and guarantee our geographic security, prosperity and values at that.

One Vienna-based Spanish diplomat likes to describe European Union’s security and defence policy in action as a ‘jazz band, not a classical orchestra: musicians with different abilities and instruments participating in a permanent jam session, with a basic tune and a general idea of the kind of music they want to produce [. . .] a band which finds it hard to agree on a specific arrangement, but which can eventually sound harmonious – though not necessarily completely homogeneous.’ The band is well known among music connoisseurs, while the general public either ignores it or is bemused by the strange sound. Other – more successful – bands, on the other hand, praise some of their individual qualities, as well as the fact that they do play (some kind of) music, despite all the problems, whilst grinning at its lack of success. That is a fairly good description of the European Union’s overall performance as an actor on the global stage during the rather unstable decade we are about to leave behind: some tactical achievements, the valuable experience of learning on the job as a European Union twenty-seven, but with a pervading sense of a lack of direction.

The Treaty of Lisbon should put an end to the European cacophony or to put it another way: make the very richness of European pluralism in foreign policy an effective added-value element for the European Union as an actor – and not a permanent hindrance. The new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, should conduct the idiosyncratic music group. A chorus of the best diplomats throughout Europe should support her in the demanding task to produce some music: the European External Action Service. But the post-Lisbon reality is different: the Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council as well as the Member States haggle over personnel and finances, trying to get hold of that future backbone of European foreign policy. The only ray of hope is the role of the European Parliament. It has used the current power vacuum in Brussels and seized its way into the realm of foreign and security policy, not formally and through legal novelties, but by adeptly using its budget powers as well as the expertise of the parliamentarians. In fact, this revamped Parliament carries with it the potential to energise the strategic culture among Europeans, and, not less, building a strong democratic legitimacy to the European Union’s developing security policy.

Accordingly, the European Union is (again) dealing with inner-European issues – the self-centred approach, we all complained about over the last years. The problem is only, that the world moves on, even if the European Union is not yet ready to face that. Transatlantic relations serve as a vivid example: Barack Obama skipped the European-American summit to be held by the Spanish presidency in Madrid in May 2010. It became known that the president regarded this meeting with twenty-seven heads of states and governments (plus the representatives of the European Union) as boring and non-productive. From a certain point of view, this could be taken as a snub. However, it may be just seen as a wake-up call. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reaffirmed the message just a few days ago , and emphasising the great expectations the United States pins on the new so-called Common Security and Defence Policy. She offered the European Union direct partnership with the United States in security-related issues – something that until now has been the exclusive realm of the Atlantic Alliance. Probably even this call will trail off unheard and unanswered, because the European Union still does not know exactly, who could be speaking for the Union: the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso? The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy? Or the High Representative? Apart from that, there is also no guidance at the European level, in terms of overall priorities and means to achieve them, apart from the brilliantly formulated but rather fuzzy European Security Strategy from 2003 (plus the Implementation Report of 2008).

This is not enough for a European Union, which is widely regarded as a global actor. Nor it is up to the responsibilities Europe as a whole has towards the international system; as the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, put it in Munich, both the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance are seen by the international community as providers of security. How can the European Union contribute through its civilian and military capabilities to maintain peace and security in an increasingly unstable environment – and thus make Europeans safer?

Yet there still is a huge strategic vacuum in the Common Security and Defence Policy: there is no ‘Grand Strategy’ and there is not even any operationalisation of the Security Strategy. Nonetheless the European Union has already conducted more than twenty missions worldwide. We therefore lack an ambitious but realistic policy orientation for the European Union as a global actor; we have not yet undertaken a Strategic Defence Review or – to use the continental term – a White Paper on Security and Defence. Such a White Paper should lay down our ambitions as a relevant power in security policy as well as a road map on how to achieve these ambitions:

1. A European White Paper should first contain clearer messages on why and how to intervene abroad – a sort of common European lines on interventions, combining tactics with strategy – as well as on the possible and necessary balance of civil and military means.
2. The White Paper should clarify the Post-Lisbon institutions and their interactions, to enhance coherence of the different policies of external action (from enlargement, to the neighbourhood policy, to security and defence policy); it should also pave the way for global visibility of the new High Representative, as the face and telephone number of global Europe.
3. There should be strategic guidelines for European partnerships with main global powers, like the United States, Russia, China, India, as well as NATO, and so on. These partnerships need to serve European norms and interests.
4. The White Paper should clearly spell out the necessary means a global Europe will need. Until now, there are many different frameworks and headline goals, without explaining the purpose of the capability building process.
5. The European defence and technology industrial base is a precondition for an efficient use of means especially in the military field. Therefore the White Paper needs to lay down the consequences of a Common Security and Defence Policy for the national defence industries.

Catherine Ashton, the new ‘conductor’ of European foreign and security policy, has quite a hard task. The European Union’s difficult worldwide challenges, the constant disunity of the Member States, as well as the huge footsteps of Javier Solana she is following, are demanding beyond description. By initiating a European process towards a Security and Defence White Paper, she could provide a consistent policy orientation and thus build on the rather successful achievements on the nearly eleven years of European Security and Defence Policy. This policy orientation could be used as a ‘sheet of music’ for her Jazz band. She will probably never transform it into a chamber orchestra, but maybe they would produce eventually one or two smash hits per year. And this will be in the interest of Europe as a whole, although some governments are slow to grasp the realities of the modern world, and try to get with their own music into the chart list.

Other than as a naval station during the first half of the twentieth century, the Falkland Islands were largely unknown before the War of 1982. Wet and windswept, and without any native population, the Islands were discovered by Europeans in the sixteenth century. They were then claimed and ruled by France, Spain, Argentina and the United Kingdom. But that is all history; what matters now is that they have been British since 1833, bar for a few sad weeks in 1982 when the Argentine junta decided to invade them.

London sent a naval squadron to eject the occupying force, which resulted in a swift and decisive British victory. Since then, the Islands’ prosperity has increased substantially – standards of living are now akin to those in Southern England. Whereas before their mainstay was sheep farming, the Falklands have today become a large centre for pastoral farming, fishing and tourism. Port Stanley, the Islands’ capital, has doubled in size since 1982 to include almost every modern urban facility bar a university, and receives tens of thousands of tourists each year from passing cruise liners. London has also bolstered the Islands’ defences considerably: they now sustain a vast military station, including an aerodrome (RAF Mount Pleasant) and a naval facility (Mare Harbour). Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons and Royal Navy gunboats are on constant patrol to protect the Islands’ sovereignty.

Buenos Aires has made sporadic claims on the Islands, normally coterminous with periods of economic or political difficulty in Argentina. London has normally just rebuffed or ignored the Argentine behaviour. Recently, however, a British oil company was granted permission to begin surveying a basin to the north of the Islands, to much Argentine bluster. Twelve years ago, in 1998, Shell also conducted a number of geological surveys in the area to see whether there was oil under the seabed. The findings were inconclusive, however, but oil was thought to exist. With the price of oil at an all-time-low in 1998, it was not deemed commercially viable to begin further attempts at extraction.

Yet British eyes are looking south again, especially now that oil costs over €50 per barrel; that reserves in the North Sea are declining; and that advances in undersea mining have occurred. It has been estimated, albeit roughly, that there could be as much as sixty billion barrels of oil under and around the Falkland Islands, meaning they could become the second largest known oil field on the planet. Substantial gas fields could exist too. Argentina, currently under the unpopular President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is obviously anxious to claim the prize, and has been stepping up pressure on the British to surrender their sovereignty over the Falklands once and for all.

The Argentines have rallied the South American nations to their side, including Chile and Brazil. Even Venezuela’s crazy Hugo Chavez tried to get in on the act. Never missing an opportunity to spout some anti-imperialist claptrap, he denounced the British in one of his amusing and long-winded television broadcasts. But such capers aside, the Argentines have sought to undermine Washington’s support for Britain by threatening to work with other South American countries to form a new regional organisation that deliberately excludes the United States and Canada. This would not suit American interests and Washington has tried to keep its distance, describing the issue as a bilateral problem between Buenos Aires and London exclusively. Perhaps in an attempt to douse Argentine anger, Hillary Clinton, the American foreign secretary, even implied that British sovereignty was not necessarily absolute – a move the British did not appreciate.

A MAP SHOWING THE GEOSTRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Here comes the crunch: how and why does this all matter to the European Union? Well, apart from the fact that the Falkland Islands are populated by British – and therefore European – citizens, whose right to self-determination must be resolutely upheld, British sovereignty is important for three reasons:

1. Any energy reserves or other natural resources found in the South Atlantic could almost certainly be shipped back to the European Union, reducing our collective dependence on unruly or unstable foreign suppliers (e.g. Russia and the Middle East). Given that North Sea reserves, which were around fifty billion barrels, have powered-up much of the European economy for nearly four decades, the possible sixty billion barrels under the Falklands could keep Europeans going for just as long – and this fact becomes even more important should conflicts break out over key minerals in the future.
2. The Falklands are geostrategically significant due to their particular location. Just five hundred kilometres from the Strait of Magellan and Drake’s Passage, they give their owner total command over the lower part of the South Atlantic (see map, above). Other than the Panama Canal, these two ‘strategic chokepoints’ are the only direct links between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
3. And crucially, given that parts of the Antarctic continent could eventually be uncovered or made more habitable with the onset and acceleration of climate change – revealing potentially enormous mineral wealth – British possession of the Falkland Islands makes any future European territorial claim over parts of the southern hemisphere more likely and legitimate. Equally, the Islands are actually quite large (roughly half the size of Belgium), so could support the infrastructure necessary to support a connexion with any potential European resource extraction facilities in the Antarctic.

So those who dismiss the Falkland Islands as an anachronism are mistaken. The Islands’ geopolitical significance to our economy – the European Union’s economy – could only just be about to begin. No European Union Member State should do anything to harm the British claim; and Argentina should be told politely but firmly by Europeans to mind its own business.

In the British media and political discourse, the recently appointed President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is often poked as a figure of fun. He frequently gets called ‘Rompuy-pumpy’; the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a humorous video about him; and Nigel Farage, the anti-European UKIP MEP created a storm when he called him a ‘damp rag’ and a ‘low-grade bank clerk’ in the European Parliament. While many of these attitudes smack of British arrogance, it is fair to say that President Van Rompuy lacks the aura of power or charisma of someone like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Tony Blair.

However, these slights aside, Mr. Van Rompuy has battled on. Yesterday, he gave his first major speech – called ‘The Challenges for Europe in a Changing World’ – on foreign and security policy since he assumed his presidency, choosing the College of Europe as his venue. And actually, it was quite impressive. The President began his speech by looking into the changing global balance of power, which has begun to have a profound impact on the place of Europeans in the world: on their own, the Member States are no longer strong enough to have much influence on the key issues. This, he says, should not turn Europeans into ‘declinists’; rather, he points out, the only way forward is for the Member States to work together to project their power – yes, power – across the globe through the European Union.

As such, he outlined two key objectives for his presidency:

1. Reforming the European economy, because this will provide the means to remain relevant and provide an incentive for Europeans to remain heavily involved in world politics;
2. Transforming the European Union into a global power, because it is only through having influence and the means to enforce it, that Europeans will get their way and protect their social and economic well-being in the twenty-first century.

As he put it:

As you have learned here at the Collège, Europe started as a market, with a unique working method. We can be proud of what it achieved. However, building a market is different from being a power. “L’Europe-puissance”, as the French like to call it. [. . .] At the Copenhagen Summit we experienced that Europe can no longer shine by the “force of its example” only. You need more than the conviction that your proposal is the best, to win them over. To get in the deal-making game, the Union needs to assert itself politically.

President Van Rompuy’s approach seems to be informed by the approach taken in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which was a seminal book by Paul Kennedy published in the late 1980s. Professor Kennedy argued that a country’s geopolitical power can be correlated to its financial dynamism, economic productivity and industrial might; successful powers are those most able to project themselves economically and geopolitically, without over-extending themselves. In this respect, Mr. Van Rompuy’s approach suggests a good dose of critical strategic thinking on his part, which is a breath of fresh air for those of us who often deplore the wishy-washy mumbo jumbo so frequently pumped-out by Europeans on foreign affairs.

So is Herman Van Rompuy a ‘Rompuy-pumpy’, or is he a closet Machiavelli? Is he a ‘damp rag’, or is he a quiet but clever strategist, working tirelessly behind the scenes to flesh out and project the European interest? Only time will tell. But his first speech on foreign and security policy certainly shows promise, and demands that Europeans should have more respect for their new president, and pay him more attention.

• Credit to Luc Van Braekel on Wikipedia for image.

Throughout much of January and February, the BBC has been running a documentary series about the Royal Navy called Empire of the Seas (for a snippet of the first episode, see below). The programmes show how the navy led to the development of the British fiscal-military system, leading to the formation of the Bank of England and the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The documentary also charts how these national institutions were then harnessed by the British government to project power across the world, allowing London to acquire the lion’s share of global trade and amass the largest empire in world history.

It’s fair to say that Britain’s emergence as a maritime power radically transformed the country’s geostrategic orientation and had profound implications for both its neighbours and distant lands alike. This chimes well with a remark by the Dutch-American geostrategist, Nicholas Spykman, during the 1930s. He said:

Their differing conceptions [. . .] of the conquest of space indicate one of the outstanding differences between land and sea powers. A sea power conquers a large space by leaping lightly from point to point, adjusting itself to existing political relationships wherever possible, and often not establishing its legal control until its factual domination has long been tacitly recognised. An expanding land power moves slowly and methodically forward, forced by the nature of its terrain to establish its control step by step and so preserve the mobility of its forces. Thus a land power thinks in terms of continuous surfaces surrounding a central point of control, whereas a sea power thinks in terms of points and connecting lines dominating an immense territory.

In short, maritime powers tend towards commerce and industry, and adopt a very light and versatile – but aggressive and expansionist – military footprint. They can draw off their financial resources during times of conflict and harness them for their geopolitical purposes, enabling them to overwhelm any opponent (who is often stronger) and bring his designs to nought. And this maritime predilection also tends towards constitutional government and democracy, in turn fostering a high degree of technological innovation and dynamism. Land powers, on the other hand, tend towards centralised government and authoritarian control. To defend their territorial holdings, they must maintain a large army rather than a navy, and use it defensively to hold on to what they have got. The sheer cost of this endeavour means that it has been – historically – an enormous burden on the economy and on the State. It also tends to hold back innovation and economic productivity.

In this respect, the elephant in the room is of course geography. Geography, to a large degree, determines whether or not a country can adopt a maritime or a continental footprint. The Netherlands was connected to the coast by an extensive network of rivers, which doubled up as a defensive system against the continental rear. Britain became a maritime power because it was a large and fertile island surrounded by the sea, and was threatened by continental incursions, which needed to be repulsed. And today’s United States has a similar posture: it is flanked either side by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and with weaker neighbours to its north and south, it forms a natural citadel and an innate projector of power.

Russia and Germany, on the other hand, have traditionally been land powers. With relatively shorter coastlines than land borders, they have been forced to hold their own against consecutive alliances of sea and land powers bent on annexing their land. Russia, in particular, has only been able to maintain internal order by centralised authoritarian control and has long been in a geopolitical tug-of-war with both its continental and maritime neighbours. These struggles have often exerted massive pressure on the State and have caused immeasurable hardships for the Russian people, not only as the State became more autocratic to contain external and internal opposition, but also to mount a credible defence against hostile neighbours or distant sea powers with designs on Russian land. To cut a long story short: it’s not good being a land power.

A SNIPPET OF EMPIRE OF THE SEAS

Click here to view the embedded video.

This brings us to the European Union, which, with the Treaty of Lisbon, is becoming an increasingly important world power. What approach should it adopt? Well, for many years it has concentrated on strategies of land power, expanding further and further to integrate more and more surrounding countries. This has reached such an extent that most of the European continent is now part of the same geopolitical order. But enlargement has probably run its course and there are few places left for Europeans to go.

Europeans must now invoke their maritime geography once again and look beyond Europe to concentrate on the wider world. The European Union needs to form an immensely powerful navy, which can be used to circulate maritime power around the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, Africa’s Atlantic seaboard, and particularly the Indian Ocean. It is in these regions where future European Union military operations will take place, and it is these regions from where the greatest threats to European security are already beginning to come. This naval force would need a chain of naval stations to link together a durable maritime order, enabling European power to be projected rapidly into potential trouble spots, and to exert a calming influence over potential belligerents. This maritime posture should accelerate European commercial activity, enabling the continent to retain democratic government, while stimulating an outward-looking approach to world affairs, an outlook Europeans must sustain if they are to remain a major economic power.

Sea power has always been the foundation of European strength; it is the European Union’s manifest destiny to maintain this tradition.

• This article was first published by Global Europe on 17th February 2010.