What is Europe’s role in a world shaped by the USA and China?

2011’s opening has been one of the most traumatic for foreign diplomacy in generations. The recent disaster in Japan has come in the midst of the Arab Spring and left foreign policy scrambling to help old friends, make new ones, or sever ties that should have long been severed. To add to the mix the natural disasters in places such as Haiti, Australia and New Zealand, not to mention the poverty that still afflicts much of the developing world, have led to a succession of humanitarian crises that only a rolling news channel could love; each costing money at a time when there is scarce liquidity in the markets. To make matters worse, these exterior worries have come at a time of great interior strife. Obamacare and the repercussions of the financial crisis have polarised, and made toxic, opinion in America. The kids are most certainly not all right in Britain. Anti-immigration mixed with anti- Islamification has spread through European states, while inflation looms large over China and Brazil’s rapid development. However, while America and China have thus far managed to keep the blinkers on as a new world order blooms, the European Union has been forced to face up to the most difficult questions.

Whether on the subject of financing the crippled periphery member states, or which face to put on to the outside world in the wake of the Arab uprisings, Europe has repeatedly fluffed its lines, seemingly unsure of its role in the world. The problem has been clarity of voice. In 2009, the former British foreign minister David Miliband noted the choices of the EU. It faced the choice, he told the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), between becoming a major global player or a “paper tiger” preoccupied with beau racy. For all its posturing, first over financial reforms and lately on the Arab uprisings, the EU can be accused of not heeding his warning.

Within the European region, the cost of helping the periphery states along in their hour of need has proved too much for the citizens of countries such as Germany, who cannot see why they should be forced to pay for their financial sensibility. With elections looming, Germany has robbed the EU of Angela Merkel’s strong and astute decisions as she fights to put out the flames at home. For much the same reason, Nicholas Sarkozy has been heavy-handed in his quest for economic reform and together with Merkel now risks creating a two-tier EU, with the reckless periphery increasingly begrudging the moral lessons from their European cousins while countries such as Britain and Sweden look on indifferently. Looking to the factions within America’s political sphere, a two-tier Europe would become a stalemate. For the EU zone to remain competitive in a world dominated by America and China these superpowers need one point of contact and a two- tier state will diffuse that voice.

If the question of finance is causing friction between member states, the schizophrenia of EU foreign policy is an even more difficult one to fathom for those looking to deal with the EU. The problem is baggage from each country’s previous role. Indeed, one recent example can again be found in France’s President Sarkozy. With his foreign ministry slow to react to the uprising in former colony Tunisia, and then later becoming embroiled in scandal, President Sarkozy has brought in the seasoned professional Alain Juppe as foreign minister and led from the front with the coalition’s efforts in Libya to show France he still rules the roost and knows how to end on the right side of history.

However, this bloody-mindedness has led to a difference of opinion with one of France’s strongest EU allies. “I say what I think and he says what he thinks,” snapped Juppe after an open disagreement with German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, who sided with Brazil and Russia in a vote on the 1973 UN resolution and said no to action in Libya. Westerwelle is undermined by his standing in the provincial elections in Germany and the backing of what is a clouded, worrisomely open-ended confrontation at a time when Germans want their politicians looking after Germany instead of the world could indeed be costly. As to what this means for EU foreign policy, Juppe told French newspaper Le Monde, “the common defence policy of Europe? It is dead.”

If European members cannot deal with one another, why should the world deal with it? Is Europe’s role in the new world order to sit quietly in the corner? The EU has two strong points that, in this writer’s opinion, could indeed make it vital in a world dominated by America and China.

For all its internal squabbling, the EU can at least say they’re stable disagreements. European President Herman Van Rompuy rightly pointed out in a recent speech that “Europe has mastered multilateralism unlike any other union of Sovereign states.” Difference of opinion is also necessary for innovation.

The second strong point is location. The EU can become the confluence between East and West and bring into the fold Africa as it develops. The EU’s population is ageing and needs to attract a new workforce to pay for the state. According to the European Policy Centre, the EU will need 384,000-700,000 IT workers by 2015 and between 1-2m healthcare workers by 2020. With European brands mining their way into new territories, quality association is not a problem for the EU. With an already strong infrastructure, if Europe can get the logistics of circular migration right the EU could become the global hub for business, a meeting ground for BRICs and America. With this role in business, its political clout and influence as a mediator between America and China will also grow.The EU has many choices to make in the coming years, but if it negotiates the path and avoids the internal bickering that it often finds itself burdened with, the EU’s role as a meeting point between two super powers can make it a powerful player between the BRICs and the established wealth of the world. It sounds simple…