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Lecturing Engagements

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND DIPLOMACY

COURSE ORANGANIZED BY THE CONSULAR CORPS OF JAMAICA

JAMAICA - JUNE 2003

"This is the first time in the history of the Consular Corps of Jamaica and, indeed, of Jamaica that such collaboration is being undertaken, and this has been endorsed by the International Federations of Consular Corps and Associations (FICAC), which as you know is the World Body of the Consular Movement." said Mr. Arnold Foote, Dean of the Consular Corps of Jamaica at the launch of the course. And he went on to explain that "more and more responsibility is being placed on Consuls by Sending States, because of economic considerations. Also, that improvements in communications, demands on Government resources and the rapid evolution of international relations, present new challenges and new opportunities for the performance of Consuls. As a result of this, the role of Consuls is changing to keep apace with the changing world order."

The European Union needs a Security Strategy

Extracts from the lecture by John Danvers

Western Europeans are worried that the accession of fast-growing, low-cost economies could create enormous pressure in their countries. In particular, they fear that cheap Polish and Czech exports could price local products out of the market; that financial flows to the new member-states could divert much-needed investment capital from West European businesses; and that a massive influx of low-wage workers from the East could push unemployment in the EU even higher. These are largely groundless.

In terms of economics, eastward development is largely yesterday's news. All Eastern European countries liberalized foreign trade during early economic reforms. As a result, trade with the EU took off even before the European Agreement opened the way for the gradual removal of trade barriers over the course of the 1990s. Since then, trade between the candidates and the EU has been growing at double-digit rates every year. By the end of the decade, the candidate countries were trading with the EU just as much as the EU members were trading with each other. On average, the would-be members are now sending two-thirds of their exports to the EU. These shares are unlikely to rise much further. Although there is scope for further integration with some EU countries, including France and the UK, future trade growth will largely depend on overall economic prospects in the enlarged EU.

This rapid trade expansion has helped to boost catch-up growth in most Central and Eastern European countries. But has it come at a cost for the EU? No. First, taken together, imports from the candidate countries amount to no more than 1 per cent of EU GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Second, to the extent that these imports have intensified competition for EU producers, they have pushed down prices and benefited European consumers.

And third, while the EU has increasingly thrown open its market to EAst European goods, it has also explored growing export opportunities in the accession countries. In fact, the EU sells much more to the accession countries than it buys in return. The result has been a large and rising trade surplus. According to estimates from the Osseuropainstitut, a German Research Institute, this trade surplus has created 114,000 jobs in the EU during the 1990s.

... On the whole, the impact of enlargement on the current EU will be negligible, simply because the economies of the acceding countries are so small; taken together, they amount to no more than 5 per cent of the current EU (if measured at current exchange rates). The share is close to 10 per cent if income data is adjusted for exchange rate misalignments In economic terms, therefore, eastward enlargement is the equivalent of adding an economy the size of the Netherlands to an economic area with 380 million people and a GDP of L9 million. Small it may be, but most economies agree that the impact will be marginally positive for the EU.

Security Strategy

The EU urgently needs a security strategy. What Europe lacks, even more than military capabilities, is a shared vision of today's security threats and adequate policy responses. One of the main reasons behind the EU's divisions over Iraq was the lack of a shared threat assessment. Each country first formed its own national viewpoint, and then tried half-heartedly to find a common stance with its European neighbours.

If Europeans cannot agree on threats and how to deal with them, EU foreign policy will never succeed. That is why the EU foreign ministers' recent decision to task Javier Solana, the EU's foreing policy chief, with drawing up a security strategy deserves full support. Europeans need a shared view of what are today's most serious problems more than they need the Convention's institutional fine-tuning. A security strategy would also do much more for EU Foreign Policy than pursuing the chimaera of a Belgian-led defence core.

There are four main reasons for the EU to formulate a security strategy. First, the Europeans need to come to terms with how much the international landscape has changed after September 11. Concretely, this means agreeing how to respond to major threats and to a US administration that combines pre-eminence with pre-emption. If Europeans could develop a coherent assessment of this new world, it would help them to decide what relationship they want with this new America. They need to do so as Europeans, not just as Germans, British or French.

Second, the EU is still devided into camps on its foreign policy ambitions. The group that wants to pursue an activist and global foreign policy needs to out-argue the camp that wants to keep the status quo or which just has a regional outlook. This divide is perhaps more damaging in the long term than the split between the Euro-Gaullists and Euro-Atlanticists. True, France and Britain are deeply divided on how to deal with a more asserive and less accommodating US. What is needed is a blending of UK and French strategies. Blairism with bite.

Third, the EU prides itself in being good at deploying 'soft power', the ability to influence other countries through attraction rather than coercion. In practice, hhowever, the EU needs to use its trade, aid and other policies to support a clear political strategy. The EU has been rather good at putting out grand declarations and long lists of 'key priorities'. But it has been poor at devising concrete policies aimed at tackling concrete problems. A EU security should help to address the weakest link in EU external relations: the connection between objectives and instruments.

Fourth, the EU needs to overcome its tendency to react to crises with glorified ad-hocery. Too often the EU can only agree for ministers 'to monitor the situationn'., not what actions to take. Instead, the EU needs to set out how it might respond to certain types of behaviour and give Javier Solana a mandate to implement pre-identifies responses. A security strategy should identify what kinds of developments would trigger what sort of reaction.

... The EU's policy mix will be different from Washington's in the balance between strengthening international treaties, beefing up inspection and verification mechanisms, implementing sanctions, and using military force.

America should welcome an EU security strategy, even if it will crystalise some differences with the US on how to respond to specific problems. A weak Europe, oscillating between internal divisions and inaction, cannot be the strategic partner that Washington says it wants.

Explanation of photographs

IRAN: CAN DIPLOMACY SUCCEED?

ROUND TABLE

ORGANIZED BY THE DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR ACADEMY

FLORIDA FEBRUARY 2005

Sir John Danvers, a European Union and Foreign Policy expert, presents the European Union's position on Iran

EUROPEAN UNITY

Europe is gradually moving towards unity. An important illustration of this is the European Constitution. On 29 October last year the twenty-five Member States and the three candidate countries signed the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in Rome. That Treaty must now be ratified by all twenty-five Member States in order to enter into force. Critically, this will be subject to a referendum in at least eleven of the 25 countries.

Even before this, however, the European Union has spoken with a common voice on foreign policy matters on numerous occasions. This is true in the case of Iran, among others.

In the report on a Summit meeting between the United States and the European Union in May 1998 already devoted to the question of nuclear proliferation, the following statement concerning Iran appears.

"In this context the U.S. and the EU have recently noted their continuing serious concern about efforts by some countries in the Middle East and South Asia to acquire missile technology and their capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. The EU noted that such concerns should figure in its political contacts with these countries, notably Iran."

This has certainly been the case and continues to be the case today.

In all the European Union has issued a total of 67 declarations of various kinds on the subject of Iran at least since 1985. One recent example was a statement made during the Greek presidency of the Union in Vienna in 2003 and once again it focused in particular on the question of nuclear proliferation.

In that statement the EU regretted that the scope and extent of Iran's nuclear program was not made known earlier to the International Atomic Energy Agency and to the international community and considered with growing concern its proliferation implications.

It reaffirmed the inalienable right of parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop the research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, without discrimination, in compliance with Article IV of the Treaty. However, it was absolutely clear that any misuse of civilian nuclear programmers was excluded and would constitute a violation of the obligations under the Treaty.

Iran, it said, had failed to meet the reporting obligations under the IAEA's comprehensive Safeguards Agreement in force. In addition Iran had failed to declare facilities where the material was stored and processed. The EU considered that this failure to apply the provisions of various Articles of the Safeguards Agreement and of its obligations was of grave concern.

The EU noted that Iran had finally adhered to the new requirements for early design information adopted in 1992 and provided in advance design information related to the construction of new nuclear facilities. The EU recalled Iran's statement that it would permit all necessary inspections and urged it to allow the necessary inspections and to permit the collection of environmental samples regarding its enrichment activities. The EU believed that this would correspond to Iran's declared willingness to show full transparency.

The EU attributed capital importance to compliance with international non-proliferation and disarmament regimes. Indeed the question of weapons of mass destruction constituted one of the issues of concern in the political dialogue between Iran and EU, the progress of which would have implications for the development of economic relations between the two parties. The EU wished to convey a clear message to Iran that it was in its interest to follow the internationally applied norms on peace and security both at the international and regional levels.

The EU fully supported the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency in his efforts to rapidly resolve outstanding issues with Iran. The EU urged Iran to address in full cooperation with IAEA, in a detailed and substantiated manner the questions, which had been raised on its nuclear program and to take all the necessary steps to ensure full transparency of this nuclear program and restore the confidence of the international community. The EU called on Iran to conclude and implement urgently and unconditionally an Additional Protocol. This would be a significant step in demonstrating Iran's stated peaceful intentions with regard to its nuclear program.

So in this sense the European Union speaks with a common voice on foreign policy issues. We notice in this statement, however, the frequent repetition of the word "concern", which in many respects seems to bear the hallmark of appeasement. And at the same time we notice the veiled threat of economic sanctions which seems to be contained in the words "which would have implications for the development of economic relations between the two parties."

THE FORMALIZATION OF FOREIGN POLICY THROUGH THE CFSP

In terms of a common European foreign policy some formalization was achieved in the early 1990s. The Maastricht Treaty on European Union (TEU) had already established what is known as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union in 1993. (Cf. Appendix 1) This CFSP replaced the so-called European Political Cooperation (EPC), which had developed as a network for communication and cooperation between governments in the area of foreign policy matters since the 1970s. In the framework of the CFSP, the European Union adopts decisions, issues declarations, makes statements and answers questions in the European Parliament.

The CFSP was established as the second pillar of the European Union in the 1993 Treaty signed in Maastricht. At a later stage, a number of important changes were introduced in the Amsterdam Treaty, which came into force in 1999, and since then there have been numerous further developments in the CFSP.

It has been agreed to embark on a common security and defense policy (CESDP) within the overall framework of the CFSP. Work has continued apace. The European Council meeting at Laeken in 2001 adopted a declaration on the operational capability of the common security and defense policy (CESDP), officially recognizing that the Union was now capable of conducting some crisis management operations. Interim structures established after the Amsterdam Treaty have become permanent. With the Nice Treaty, certain amendments to the CFSP provisions of the treaty were agreed.

The Amsterdam Treaty spells out five fundamental objectives of CFSP:

The treaty also identifies several ways in which these objectives are to be pursued:

Additionally, mechanisms for regular political dialogue with a whole range of third countries, including Iran, have been set up, usually with troika meetings at ministerial, senior-official and working group level, summits and in some cases, meetings with all Member States and the Commission at ministerial or senior-official level.

[For the complete text on the CFSP please refer to Appendix 2.]

EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY AT WORK

On December 13, 2004, after fourteen months of intensive diplomacy focused on Iran's nuclear program, the 25-member European Union and Iran announced that they were opening a new chapter in their relationship.

The two sides agreed to launch long-term negotiations for closer economic, political, technological and nuclear cooperation.

This agreement came following talks between on the one hand the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rowhani, and on the other the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany - Mssrs. Jack Straw, Michel Barnier and Joschka Fischer, respectively - together with Mr. Javier Solana in Brussels.

Brussels and Tehran are to resume negotiations on a trade and co-operation agreement in mid-January.

The resumption of negotiations between the European Union and Iran came after several rounds of so-called comprehensive dialogue between the two sides in the form of twice-yearly troika meetings on political and economic issues, which began in 1997 -- the year the reformist President Mohammad Khatami came to power in Iran - and continued until June of 2003 when they were put on hold in June 2003 amid international concerns about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. During much of 2003 and in 2004, Iran and the European Union were engaged in tough and difficult talks on the country's nuclear program, The United States for its part suspected that that nuclear program was ultimately intended to produce nuclear weapons.

The European big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- who spearheaded the Union's diplomatic engagement with Iran, at times nevertheless threatened to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council with a view to the possible imposition of sanctions.

The Europeans, in particular, demanded a complete stop to Iran's uranium enrichment activities, which -- despite Tehran's insistence that they were meant to produce fuel for the country's future power plants -- could well be diverted for the manufacture of bomb-grade material.

In November, the European troika and the Islamic Republic of Iran signed an agreement in Paris which was designed to reassure the international community of the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. Later, in the week, the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had suspended its enrichment activities, which Tehran maintains that it has "voluntarily" and "temporarily" agreed to only for sake of confidence-building.

The International Atomic Energy Agency also said there was no evidence that Iran was engaged in the production of nuclear weapons, thus saving the Iranian case from going before the U.N. Security Council.

It should be pointed out that uranium enrichment is allowed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and Iran needs enriched uranium as part of its efforts to master a nuclear fuel cycle.

The European Union and Iran have formed three working groups respectively to promote cooperation in the economic, technological and security spheres. The groups, which were formally convened in Brussels, are expected to meet in Tehran early next year to reach a long-term agreement on Iran's controversial nuclear plans. This is an agreement Iran has been seeking for nearly two decades.

There are certainly doubts over the success of the European Union's effort in forging a lasting compromise with Iran. Furthermore, Solana is reported to have described Iran as a key test for the Union's foreign policy in 2005.

In what is seen as a shift in Washington's confrontational approach towards the issue, President Bush gave the European policy of diplomatic engagement strong support during a recent press conference.

"We are relying upon others because we've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran." he said.

Bush went even further in support of contacts with Europe when he said, "diplomacy must be the first choice,"

At the same time, analysts say negotiations between the European Union and Iran will not be smooth and the question remains whether 2005 will be a point of no return in the relations between the two sides.

Needless to say, the issue of trade cannot be overlooked in this context.

The European Union is Iran's biggest trading partner. Oil accounts for over 80 percent of Iran's exports to the Union. Iran also sells agricultural produce, textiles and carpets to the EU.

European diplomacy is therefore treading on something of a knife edge in its handling of the Iranian situation.

[The above text is an adaptation of an article posted on the website "activistchat.com" on December 28, 2004 by Modher Amin of United Press International. "activistchat.com" does not necessarily endorse the views that are posted on its bulletin board. I refer to the article here because it gives a clear picture of the most recent state of relations between the European Union and Iran and also because of the light it throws on the present position of the United States.]

DIPLOMACY OR APPEASEMENT?

From the standpoint of many people, not least Iranian dissidents in Europe and the United States, this European "diplomatic" approach smacks of appeasement of a repressive regime. It is clear that commercial ties between Europe and Iran play a significant role in the attitude adopted by the European Union.

At a recent rally in Berlin, marking the 26th anniversary of the Iranian revolution that swept the Islamic government into power (and which I had the privilege of attending), Iranian exiles from all parts of Europe gathered to protest against Iran's conservative Islamic government and its nuclear policies, which they regarded as a dangerous ploy that could lead to United States military intervention. One of many accounts of this rally was published on 11 February last by Jeffrey Fleishman, a staff writer of the Los Angeles Times.

According to Fleishman, Shokrani Taheri, representing the National Council of Resistance of Iran, stated that Tehran has made deals with the governments of Europe and that there was business and oil and the Europeans didn't want to lose them.

Many marching in the demonstration complained that European negotiations with Iran have done little to improve Iran's human rights record or derail its nuclear program. Protesters said that while they opposed a U.S. military strike on Iran, they were encouraged by tough language directed at the regime by President Bush during his State of the Union address and by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week.

At the same time Rice has said an attack on Iran is "simply not on the agenda" at this time.

"We are against Iran's nuclear bomb project," said Ahad, who moved from Iran to Germany in 1991. "We are against European appeasement. We are against U.S. military intervention. The change must come from within Iran itself. This is what we are here to support."

Berlin's interior ministry said the rally, organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, would have helped support another organization, the People's Mujahedin of Iran. The U.S. State Department and the European Union consider the People's Mujahedin a terrorist organization. The group was involved in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran.

European governments, led by Germany, France and Britain, are attempting to persuade Iran to stop attempts at enriching uranium, and don't want a perceived endorsement of an Iranian exile rally to undermine negotiations. As an illustration of this the French government last week banned an Iranian rally in Paris. The exiles then moved it to Berlin.

So the issue is posed with great precision. In the words of President Bush and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice respectively, European diplomacy must be give a chance and military invasion of Iran is not "on the agenda." European diplomacy at the same time could easily turn out to be a form of appeasement of the Iranian regime in the interests of preserving existing trade relations with Iran. The European governments, in particular the governments of Britain, France and Germany, do not at the same time want to jeopardize on-going negotiations with the Iranian regime by giving an endorsement to the protests of Iranians in exile and by giving support, albeit indirectly, to an organization that is extremely unpopular with the Islamic regime in Tehran and that is suspected by the United States and by the European Union of being a terrorist organization.

For their part, the Iranians in exile want only internally generated change. They do not want European diplomatic interference, which they qualify as mere appeasement. And even less do they want United States' military intervention.

As Javier Solana has said the Iranian situation may prove to be a key test for a European common foreign policy. And this test will perhaps come before the end of 2005.

EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY AND TRADE

ROUND TABLE

ORGANIZED BY THE DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR ACADEMY

FLORIDA MARCH 2005

Sir John Danvers, a European Union and Foreign Policy expert, presents the European Union's position.

The relationship between foreign policy and trade hardly needs to be underscored. Trade is not the only factor in relations with other nations; it nevertheless looms large in all foreign policy matters. Countries are generally not self-sufficient. They import consumer goods and raw materials. And they pay for their imports by exporting the goods they manufacture and the raw materials they possess.

Inevitably, therefore, we must explore this interrelationship and we must inquire to what extent European foreign policy is influenced by its trade relations with the rest of the world.

First of all it should be appreciated that the European Union is now the largest single internal market in the world. Europe has undoubtedly become an economic giant. And what is important is not merely the size of the market, but also the quality of the way of life of European people. Europeans have shorter working hours and longer vacations than anybody else and European societies have much less inequality than elsewhere on the planet.

Most economists accept the non-obvious theory that trade benefits both parties, and reject the notion that all exchange must exploit one party. Trade exists largely because differences exist in the cost of production of some tradable commodity in different locations. As such, exchange at market prices between locations benefits both.

In just over 50 years Europeans have made war between European powers unthinkable European economies have closed the gap with the United States. Europe has brought successive waves of countries out of dictatorship and into democracy. If you look at a map showing the growth of the European Union, you see a zone of peace spreading like an oil slick.

And how has the European Union accomplished this? The answer is that the European Union operates through traditional political structures such as the parliaments, civil services and law courts of the member countries. These institutions in a sense have all become agents of the European Union. They all implement European law. And since this is achieved by voluntary acceptance rather than as the outcome of an act of aggression, Europe in this way could take over the world without becoming a target for hostility.

The same, incidentally, is true of European troops abroad when serving under the United Nations or NATO flags rather than under the European one.

When they deal with other countries, Europeans are not guided by traditional geopolitical concerns alone.. Instead they aim to use the law to change those countries from within. Instead of talking about the war on terror or such concepts as the balance of power, they look at the kind of government the country has; what values underpin the state; what the constitutional and regulatory framework of the country is.

Thus, the strength of the European Union is broad and deep. And once sucked into its sphere of influence countries are changed forever.

But the success of the European Union is contagious. In other parts of the world we see attempts to imitate the model set by Europe. Asean, Mercosur, the African Union and the Arab League are all attempts of this kind or can be seen as such. This has been described as a "regional domino effect". And in the eyes of some it is likely to transform the meaning of power in this century. The world will not be an empire, it will be a free association of nations.

In this brief paper I wish also to deal with the divide between Europe and the United States. There certainly is a divide, however much the two powers may share the same fundamental interest in promoting peace and fighting terror, in prosperity and in freedom.

I want to deal with American power and what can be described as the crisis of legitimacy. The Europeans and Americans have two different visions of the world. What kind of world order do we want? To address today's global threats America will need the legitimacy that Europe provides.

During the Cold War America had legitimacy since the Security Council was paralyzed and America's widely agreed upon role as principal defender against the Soviet threat gave it a very broad mantle of legitimacy. The Cold War's `bipolar international system provided what might be called a structural legitimacy. The balance between the two superpowers meant that America's power, though vast, was held in check. At the end of the Cold War this pillar of American legitimacy fell to the ground along with the Berlin Wall and the statue of Lenin. There is nothing in the post Cold War period to replace communism as an ideological threat to Western liberal democracy. Not even radical militant Islam or terrorism. Today, the phrase - `leader of the free world` - as applied to the United States, sounds slightly absurd even to American ears. Joschka Fischer asked after the Iraq war had begun "What do we do when our most important partner makes decisions that we consider extremely dangerous?"

The thesis I wish to advance here is that Europe is the new superpower - politically as well as economically.

For all the talk about the American Empire, the past two years have been more about the limits of American power. Its economic lead over Europe is disappearing and Europe is the new superpower. In fact America leads the world in two ways. It has the biggest army in the world and the most popular pop culture.

There is another factor that I want to talk about and that is when we stop looking at the world through American eyes, we can see that each element of European weakness is in fact a facet of its extraordinary TRANSFORMATIVE POWER which is easy to miss.

In just 50 years Europeans have made war between European powers unthinkable European economies have closed the gap with the US. Europe has brought successive waves of countries out of dictatorship and into democracy. If you look at a map you can see a zone of peace spreading like a blue oil slick. It operates through traditional political structures such as the Parliaments, the civil servants and the law courts in the 25 EU countries. They have all become agents of the European Union implementing European law. Europe rather than American could take over the world without becoming a target for hostility. This is true of European troops abroad who serve under the UN or NATO. flags rather than the European one. Europeans are not interested in classic geopolitics when they talk to other countries:instead they use the law to change them from within Instead of talking about the war on terror or the balance of power they look as to what kind of overnments they have, what values underpin the state. What are its constitutional and regulatory frameworks. The strength of the EU is broad and deep once sucked into its sphere of influence countries are changed forever. The European Union is the largest single internal market in the world. Europe has become an economic giant that is already the biggest in the world. It is the quality of the European economy that makes it a model. European have shorter working hours amd longer holidays than anybody else on the planet. European societies have much less inequality than elsewhere on the planet.

For more information contact John Danvers by e-mail.

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