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Chapter by Chapter ResourcesChapter 11: Making the world a better place? Europe's international politics
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For all the new challenges presented by the post-cold war world, and not withstanding the growth of the EU, European countries continue to face some perennial security and defence dilemmas.
Obvious examples include the need to ensure a potentially more assertive Germany remains locked into a European 'security community', and to minimise potential risks coming from the former Soviet Union - largely by granting Russia leeway in its own backyard and by further boosting trade.
Another obvious - and internally most contentious - instance is Europe's reliance on the USA. But whether this continues or not, Europe will have to spend and, as it has already begun to do, cooperate more on defence. Such cooperation is unlikely to lead to full integration of Europe's armed forces.
A new challenge - dealt with mostly through aid but increasingly through conditional offers of trade, too - is Europe's 'Mediterranean neighbourhood' in North African and the Middle East.
Foreign policy cooperation is institutionalised, but individual European states - particularly large ones - guard their right to promote and protect their national interests. Domestic influences on foreign policy are still important.
European governments, bilaterally and via the EU, are big aid donors especially to their former colonies, though their spending is often tied to trade and their markets still protected. The coordination and efficiency of aid has improved recently.
Cooperation between countries via the EU is most obvious in the environmental field and in setting the terms of world trade through the WTO. High-profile disputes with the US and the EU's protectionist reputation disguise the enormous contribution to world trade made by European countries.
All these global roles should not be allowed to mask Europe's main achievement: ensuring fifty years of peace and prosperity within the continent itself by building and expanding the EU. Perhaps, though, that expansion has reached its limits.
(For general web materials on European Politics see Tim Bale's Internet Guide)
Links to think tanks, centres and foreign ministries are provided by the Foreign Policy Forum
On Defence issues, see SIPRI,
UCDP, European Defence,
British American Security Information Council, and the EU
Institute for Security Studies. See also NATO
and Eurocorps.
On foreign policy, see Carleton University's CIFP
and diploweb.com
On EU foreign and security policy, see the official website of the EU
On transatlantic cooperation and understanding, see the Marshall Fund
Many foreign ministries have websites in English: Germany,
France,
UK, Italy,
Poland, Netherlands,
Czech Republic, and
Sweden
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Council of Europe
On European cooperation with Asia, see APEC
and CAEC
On policing in Europe, see Interpol
1. Do you think that Europe is a safer place to live in now compared to at the height of the cold war?
2. During the Iraq crisis, some US politicians claimed there was a difference between 'old' and 'new' Europe. What did they mean and were they right?
3. Can and should European countries act together to integrate and build up a European security and defence capability?
4. What is Europe's policy on relations with Russia? Do you think it has been successful?
5. How and why is Europe becoming more serious about it relations with the countries of the southern Mediterranean?
6. What are the arguments - and what is the evidence - for and against a Europeanization of foreign policy?
7. The EU makes a good deal of its role both in helping developing countries and on environmental issues. In your view, is it right to?
8. Is Europe's foreign policy really driven by its trading interests? If so, is that wrong?
9. What do you think of the argument that Europe's biggest success is that relations between the continent's countries are now no longer thought of mainly in terms of defence and foreign policy?
Turkey: Well on the way to Europe?
Rapprochement and Realism: Europe and the USA
Germany's Grand Coalition, 2005-?
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