The idea that the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the second Pillar of the EU, is part of a “peace project” is widespread. Recently, Hanns W. Maull, relying partly on the work of Robert Cooper, argued that the European Union, along with the CFSP, is a “civilizing force” in international relations. Maull’s and Cooper’s claims represent an ideological intervention that is attempting to foster a sense of European identity from above, defined against other, non-Western cultures.

Maull’s analysis underestimates the contradictory dynamics – internal and external – shaping the European Union and particularly the CFSP.Because the CFSP came into existence at a time of fundamental transformation of the international system it was caught between competing trends, some of which worked towards maintaining an international framework of cosmopolitan norms and others that undermined such norms. The latter became apparent during the EU’s handling of the Balkan wars and were strengthened after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the Madrid and London terrorist bombings of March 11, 2003, and July 7, 2005. Today, the CFSP is being “securitized” and the processes of “deepening,” “widening” and “hardening” EU external actions are transforming both the internal and external norms underlying the European project.

This is evident in the values represented in the European Security Strategy (ESS). The ESS, far from being a reaffirmation of multilateralism, represents a move towards a new vision of the EU’s external role that is dangerously close to US thinking, as outlined in the latest US National Security Strategy. It uses the same language of threats, perceived as exogenous to our societies, and it includes a radical inversion of discourses about underdevelopment. Other evidence that the CFSP is undermining established international legal norms can be found in the level of support provided by EU officials to changes in the UN Charter so as to allow the full legitimization of the doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect.” This doctrine undermines the parity of states in the international system. Despite many official declarations in favor of strengthening the UN, the EU is supporting the transformation of the UN into a loose association. In the area of crisis management, the EU is acting like the United States: it wants the legitimacy of the UN without putting its forces and military operations under UN command; it reserves the right to launch military operations without UN approval. The CFSP is being “‘securitised,” not only because of the impact of terrorist attacks on Western societies, but also because of Western governments’ responses that, in the context of the demise of right/left wing politics and the high levels of political apathy, have reinforced individual and collective fears. In addition, there is an important and often underestimated factor: the nature of the CFSP/ESDP institutions and their decision-making processes. These are insulated from parliamentary and public scrutiny and are not subject to the same checks and balances and bureaucratic trading off of interests as regular national institutions. Free from these constraints, Brussels-based institutions, at times in coalition with selected EU Member States, have the ability to securitize these policy areas.

In order to safeguard the achievements of cooperation among European nations and their peoples with non-Western nations it will be essential to develop a strategy to make the CFSP accountable to both parliamentarians and citizens and to maintain a culture of questioning of the norms and practices of the CFSP.