By Franck Petiteville
Translation: Davina Durgana
Passage au crible n°41
Faced with the Libyan Crisis in the Spring of 2011, the European Union (EU) has progressively taken part in the Benghazi protests, demanding the depart of Colonel Ghaddafi, by adopting sanctions against his regime on March 11th, 2011 and proposing a European military operation for humanitarian purposes on April 1st.
> Historical background
> Theoretical framework
> Analysis
> References
The calling of the EU to manage international crises is as old as the first experience of collective diplomacy via the European Political Cooperation of the 1960’s. The Maastricht Treaty (1992) has raised the ambitions of the EU in the management of crises, in creating the CFSP (Collective Foreign and Security Policy), remaining overall powerless in the conflicts of the Former Yugoslavia (250,000 deaths). The launching of the European policy of defense in 1999 has progressively endowed the EU with military instruments to handle the crisis, which have been notably used in Africa in the 2000’s (interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, in Chad in 2008, and on most of the Somalian coast in 2008-2009).
For their side, the involvement of the EU in the Mediterranean is equally old. It has known different levels during the last fifteen years: the process in Barcelona (1995), resting on an ensemble of accords of economic cooperation and development aid, the neighborly policy (2004), and then the Union for the Mediterranean launched in 2008.
The EU has been suddenly caught by surprise by the Arab Spring. Emerging initially in a dispersed manner, the heads of State and the Government of the EU have searched to show a common position during the Extraordinary European Council on March 11th, 2011. They have affirmed their support for the Arab revolutions and notably with the announcements of democratic transition in, Egypt and Tunisia. As for Libya, they have inversely condemned the repression, declaring Colonel Ghaddhafi “illegitimate”, and recognizing the “National Council of Transition” established by the Benghazi protesters as a “political representative”. In support of the Security Council resolutions of the United Nations, the EU has equally adopted diverse sanctions against the Ghaddafi regime (arms embargo, visa ban, freezing of assets, etc.) It has notably demonstrated the intention to prevent the regime from gathering the dividends of the exportation of petrol and gas. On April 1st, EU crossed a new stage in creating bases of EUFOR Libya, a military operation relevant to the CFSP, aiming to secure humanitarian aid for displaced persons by the conflict and is susceptible by prompting demand on the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations.
Retain two lines of reasoning:
1. The Libyan Crisis as a Litmus Test for the Cohesion of the 28
In a Realist theoretical perspective of international relations, the notion of European foreign policy seems improper. In fact, only States possess the attributes of foreign policy: sovereignty, national interest, military power. In this perspective, the Member-States of the EU should always be reticent to cede their sovereignty in the matter of high politics, as it has done in the economic domain. Thus, Realists are not surprised that, following large international crises, the Member-States of the EU respond in a dispersed manner and demonstrate initially their national interest, such as the European division in 2003 on the war in Iraq. In turn, the Libyan crisis could give the sentiment of reinforcing this vision because the Europeans have not shown a very strong or very visible common position. The France of Nicholas Sarkozy and the United Kingdom of David Cameron have thus precociously imposed the idea of an exterior armed intervention. As for Germany of Angela Merkel, they have to the contrary, refused all risk of involvement in war, and have abstained during the vote on Resolution 1973 on March 17th, 2011 on the Aerial Exclusion Zone of the Security Council. For their side, the Italy of Berlusconi has not stopped procrastinating, since the reaffirmation of the Italian-Libyan friendship at the beginning of the crisis until the conversion pressured on coalition armed operation at the end of April 2011.
2. A Credibility Test of European Foreign Policy after Lisbon
Many attempts have occurred in recent years simultaneously in the new potentialities of the European policy of collective defense and in the new levers of European foreign policy created by the Lisbon treaty: the President of the European Council, the post of High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, and European Service of Foreign Action. For now, it is not sure that the handling of the Libyan Crisis by the European Union has responded to these attempts. In fact, on the military plan, it’s NATO and not the EU that has taken in charge of the operation of bombardment of the forces of Colonel Ghaddafi. The European defense policy was not mobilized for conflict margins, but to eventually put in place a humanitarian operation. On the diplomatic plan, Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton have ensured that they can relay European positions on the international scene, but their visibility has remained limited by the minimalism of the harmony between the 28. It could then be said that the Libyan Crisis has at once revealed the capabilities and expectations gap maintained by European treaties and the official discourse of the EU. Otherwise said, the pit continues between the attempts incited by the EU before public opinion and its effective realizations in the international order.
The Arab revolutions globally, and the Libyan crisis in particular, have proven the limits of European Foreign Policy. Europeans have taken time to react positively to the democratic claims of Arabic peoples and have shown a clear position in favor of the resignation of dictators, as Obama had rapidly states about Ben Ali and Mubarak. Substantively, this spiral of revolutions is empty of consistence with the policies of cooperation promised from a long time by the EU in favor of the Mediterranean. Never has the democratization of the region appeared as a central stake of this policy (the clauses of democratic conditionality inserted in the Euro-Mediterranean accords have never been activated). In return, the European fear of immigration from Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa has been revealed as a long-term structural stake of European policy. This is more than ever the case in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions and the Libyan crisis.
Faced with the perspective of an armed intervention in Libya to give substance to the famous “responsibility to protect”, Europeans have not thus reached a substantial agreement. While the EU has supported successive resolutions of the Security Council, notably on the sanctions against Ghaddafi, on the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and toward the launching of an aerial exclusion operation. The EU has also participated in talks of the Contact Group on the future of Libya with the Arab League and the African Union. In doing so, the EU always remains in retreat behind the Security Council, and relatively absent behind the initiatives of certain Member States (France and the United Kingdom at the lead). On the military plan, the European offer of a military-humanitarian complementary intervention was not negligible, but – if it sees realization – it will never be anything but a limited and auxiliary operation of the strong military intervention of NATO. The European management of the Libyan Crisis leaves thus the souvenir of a reaction contingent on the smallest common denominator (sanctions, humanitarian operation) between the Member States divided again on legitimacy or the recourse to use of force.
Delcourt Barbara, Martinelli Marta, Klimis Emmanuel (Éds.), L’Union européenne et la gestion de crise, Bruxelles, éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2008, 270 p.
Petiteville Franck, « Les mirages de la politique étrangère européenne après Lisbonne », Critique internationale, avril-juin 2011, pp. 94-112.
