Issues in EU and US Foreign Policy by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 678204
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

CONCLUSION

In 2003, Romania and Bulgaria were still outside of the two main institutions they had been trying to join since the fall of Communism: NATO and the European Union. To many local leaders at the time, membership meant joining the civilized world and finally ridding their respective countries of their authoritarian past. From this perspective, the war in Iraq could not have come at a more inappropriate moment.

At the beginning of 2003, Sofia and Bucharest were being asked by the US for political and peacekeeping support in Iraq, a request backed up with a number of attractive incentives like the recovery of debts and rebuilding contracts. Closer to home, a number of important EU countries, France and Germany in particular, were pressuring Romania and Bulgaria to stay out of the conflict. This chapter has argued that the EU did not have any influence over the two Eastern European countries’ decision to join. Paris and Berlin were against the war, London and Madrid for it. Smaller EU countries were either undecided or ambiguous about the situation. In this context, Sofia and Bucharest acted in their self-interest given the presence of clear incentives from the US to join.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, Washington’s ability to convince Central and Eastern European countries to join the coalition of the willing stood in stark contrast with what seemed like an internally divided EU that found it impossible to develop a clear policy toward Iraq. As a result, Brussels was not very successful at using EU membership as a carrot to convince the CEE countries to be less supportive of the Iraq war. In short, the EU’s multi-voice foreign policy that created more noise than clarity allowed Sofia and Bucharest to accept tangible US incentives more easily.

The 2003 episode during which Sofia and Bucharest joined the coalition of the willing despite strong protests from France and Germany carries some lessons for the future of European foreign policy. The lack of a unitary position on matters as important as the Iraq war weakens the EU’s ability to influence the foreign policy of other countries. Disagreement within the organization may promote ambiguity abroad. In that context, clearer messages from other powers like the US, Russia, and China—which manage to act as a unitary actor—could very well yield more successful outcomes.

After sending troops to Iraq, however, the foreign policy decision-making process in Sofia and Bucharest seems to have been much more focused on managing domestic opposition and the impact of casualties than on taking EU and US policies into consideration. No matter how much Brussels and Washington, D.C., may have tried to promote their foreign policies in other countries, domestic factors determined the decisions of Bulgaria and Romania regarding withdrawal. The field of foreign policy analysis has been emphasizing the importance of domestic factors for decades now.

Inevitably, this chapter suffers from a number of flaws. First, there is little consideration of the importance of leaders in foreign policy decision making. Both in Romania and Bulgaria, individuals seem to have played a crucial role in influencing the course of events.

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