On the Cusp: Britain, Maastricht and European Security

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EUI W O RKIN G PAPERS

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European University Institute 3 0001 0036 6511 6 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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EUI Working Paper RSC No. 97/59

Deighton: On the Cusp: Britain, Maastricht and European Security WP 3 2 1 . 0 2 0 9 4

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The Robert Schuman Centre was set up by the High Council of the EUI in 1993 to carry out disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the areas of European integration and public policy in Europe. While developing its own research projects, the Centre works in close relation with the four departments of the Institute and supports the specialized working groups organized by the researchers. © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE

R O B E R T S C H U M A N C E N T R E

On the Cusp:

Britain, Maastricht and European Security

ANNE DEIGHTON

E U I W orking P aper

RSC

No. 97/59

BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI)

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No part o f this paper m ay be reproduced in any form w ithout perm ission o f the author.

European U niversity Institute B adia F iesolana I - 50016 San D om enico (FI)

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The jury is still out in consideration of the Maastricht Treaty. Indeed, events since 1992, when the Treaty was signed, continue to cast backward shadows over both the Treaty itself and the intergovernmental conferences(IGCs) that led up to it.1 A definitive history of the Maastricht process has not yet been written, and it is unclear that one over-arching explanatory account or a single theoretical interpretation of such a complex and wide-ranging treaty is possible.2 One of the enigmas of European institution building is that the intended and unintended motives of the main players are often uncertain, if not obscure, and are further clouded by the short-term pressures of compromise and bargaining. There is a delicate interplay between individual, sectoral, state, European, Atlantic, and wider international interests in major international negotiations, and, further, public rhetoric is frequently not closely matched to working aims.

However, it is possible to draw out some general elements of explanation for the 1990-1 period to be able to understand better what was actually happening during the two IGCs that culminated in the Maastricht European Council (9th and 11 th December, 1991). These include the ideological tensions between the free market and more dirigiste and social welfare oriented approaches to the management of European societies; and the organisation of the European Community (EC) as a single monetary unit in the world economy. The serious drive to construct a European, federal third force, provides another element of explanation, particularly in consideration of the role of the Franco-German axis which is conventionally seen as the ’motor’ of postwar European integration, and which has been epitomised by the institutional development of the EC. The relationship between Community members’ domestic politics and decisions made about the EC is yet another arena rich for political scientists interested in the period, (the inside-out approach), as are the bilateral and multilateral diplomatic relationships and alliances between states in the EC, although these vary depending upon which policy is under consideration. Such relationships were further complicated by the often competitive relationship between the European Commission and nation states, as well as between the interests of the Community and other international organisations - notably NATO. Parallel negotiations were taking place during the IGCs in a number of different fora, NATO and the Western European Union (WEU) in particular, which added to the complexity of these years. Furthermore, particularly during the politically charged years since 1989, it is arguable that events in the wider international context profoundly affected the perceptions and actions of key decision-makers (the outside-in approach). Last, it is possible to hypothesise that the role of one key outside player, the United States, had a powerful effect upon outcomes. This discussion paper has a modest aim. It seeks to disaggregate from the vast Maastricht agenda just one country, Britain, and one policy arena, the Common

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Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as it appeared in Pillar Two of the Treaty. Three possible explanations for what happened in this one policy area have been selected, and will be developed below. They are not simply guides to what policy-makers thought they were doing at the time, but are intended to contribute to an understanding of the forces that were propelling decision-making. They are not incompatible one with another, but reflect different starting points in a quest for explanation. I shall hope to show that they open up new perspectives on Britain and the Pillar Two agenda, as well generating debate both about British foreign policy, and about the wider Maastricht process.

1) The first explanation is that British negotiating positions and outcomes over the Common Foreign and Security Policy(CFSP) were affected by the primacy of national domestic politics and constraints. The Conservative Party was in a particularly tumultuous mood about European policy during these negotiations, a mood that was heightened by the effects of the change of leadership on November 1990, when John Major took over from Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. Further, as the negotiations involved a number of Whitehall departments, the effectiveness of departmental coordination was of considerable importance. The extent to which domestic factors influenced decision-makers during the extended period of negotiation thus requires examination.

2) The second is that British decision-makers consistently struggled against a continental European ’logic’ of the third force which always implied that, at some point, integration would bring about a genuinely federal Europe. Third forcism was reflected in the so-called Franco-German axis and in the institutional developments of the Community that represented deeper integration. The IGC was to deal with foreign, defence, and security policy, questions that had barely been addressed as institutional issues in the European Community’s thirty years of existence. The highly effective structural overlay of NATO had meant that the core questions of an European international identity were never fully addressed, particularly given the scarring fiasco of the European Defence Community failure in 1954. But in 1990 the Community appeared to be on the cusp of making a breakthrough into acquiring an autonomous political identity. British decision-makers held a different view about constructing the CFSP, opposing both majority decision-making in this policy arena, and the creation of a European defence identity that might threaten Atlanticism. 3

3) The third concerns the role of the US in European foreign, defence and security policy-making which appeared threatened by the upheavals of 1989.

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The US became increasingly purposeful during the Maastricht negotiations, and British decision-makers sought to encourage, to manage and to exploit this in the CFSP and defence debates.

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By way of introduction, it is necessary to set the negotiations for the Maastricht Treaty into their international environment. The Treaty will then be set into its historical context, and the making o f Pillar Two set into the context of British domestic politics, although the chronology of 1990-1 will not be described in detail. The three elements of explanation and the interpretations they imply will then be examined in turn.

The two years between the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union were amongst the intensive and important of the postwar period. The IGC was only one of many issues that dominated the lives and activities of politicians, diplomats and of publics. For virtually the first time since the late 1940s, there was debate about the fundamental restructuring of both the European system and the world order. The dramatic events of November 1989 had pushed the issue of German unification right to the front of the political agenda, awakening old fears which the cold war European order had left submerged for nearly forty years. This produced a dramatic effect on the middle-range European powers, especially France and Britain, neither of whom were happy, initially, with the prospect of German unification, but both of whom had a role to play in the 4+2, (or 2+4), talks on the future of Germany and Berlin.3 The Germans themselves were also shaken by the speed and intensity of events - Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s ten point plan for a federative structure for Germany, for example, alarmed many.4 As Gorbachev later said, the "document came as a surprise to us, to the French and the British and even to the West German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher."5 The decision was made to go for speed, and for the absorption of East Germany into the Federal Republic. The Americans were drawn into this European process as key players alongside Gorbachev, leaving the French and the British increasingly marginalised.

As accounts of the events of the period show, this process was an intensely complicated one, not only because of German domestic features - for example the German-German monetary union of July 1990, and Kohl’s determination that unification would be a triumph for the CDU as well as a successful episode in German history. There were also ’European’ features to German unification- the merging of the old East Germany into the EC; and international security features

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- the question of the new Germany’s place in NATO (by July 1990, German membership of NATO was accepted by Gorbachev), and of troops on East German soil (DM12bn was granted to help Soviet troops leave, along with guarantees to limit the number of German armed forces to 370,000). In October 1990, the new Germany was created.6 If the collapse of the East European system had had long antecedents, very little attention had nevertheless been paid as to how East Europe might one day fit into a new European order, and, during 1990 attention focused upon the ways in which the Soviet Union could let go of its European empire as Germany unified.

Meanwhile, events in the Gulf region precipitated both Europe and the US into war. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. This was a conflict that was not obviously shaped by superpower conflict, and thus gave rise to debates about new world orders; the role o f the West Europeans in maintaining order; independent national diplomacies; and multilateralism including the good offices of the UN. The war that involved the Western powers broke out in January

1991. But by June 1991, it was events in Yugoslavia that dominated the attention of politicians. The disintegration of Yugoslavia raised new questions concerning the ability of West Europeans to manage their border regions, and raised issues about how the crisis would be managed by the West. It further stirred up debates about nationality and national identity, as well as reviving old, traditional balance of power debates.

This then was the international backcloth to the Maastricht negotiations. It is sometimes argued that the decisions to negotiate, and the negotiations themselves, took place in a kind of cocoon, a room without windows, and that they were driven by a logic of their own. It may have seemed like this to some negotiators whose eyes were firmly fixed upon the negotiating game, but for their political masters this simply could not have been the case, not least because the issues raised by what was happening in the wider sphere had much to reveal about the intentions and capabilities of the European powers. For example, "the desire of Bonn and Paris to dispel impressions that the impending unification of the two Germanies had weakened West Germany’s commitment to closer integration of the Community’"was a constantly re-iterated theme.7

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But the decisions to revise the Treaty of Rome again dated back to a period before the fall of the Wall. The IGC/EMU was the first to be set in place. This process was set in motion in June 1988, with the EC decision to commission a feasibility study by European Commission President Jacques Delors on monetary union, given the implementation of the Single European Act which was intended to lead to a single market by the end of 1992, and the creation of Delors I, the package on budgetary reform. In December 1989, the Madrid European Council took a decision by majority vote to have an IGC as it was evident that monetary union would require treaty revision. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had already made clear her hostility to this in the Bruges speech of September 1988. The Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union (or the IGC/PU as it was inelegantly known), was an addition to this. It was set in motion by Kohl and France’s President François Mitterrand in April 1990, although the Belgians had produced a memorandum in March 1990 which also made suggestions for an IGC/PU. Kohl was becoming anxious, as German support for monetary union appeared to be eroding in the face of the new raft of issues that German unification was presenting, that EMU alone would not be enough to tie the new Germany into Europe, and that political reforms at the European level were now also necessary. Their joint letter of April 1990 specifically referred to the far-reaching changes in Europe, and the consequent need to speed up its political construction.8 In parallel with the IGC on EMU, legitimacy, efficiency, coherence, and a common European foreign policy had to be tackled. Political union was for Kohl, in part, a means to persuade the Germans to accept monetary union, while for the French it was a price to be paid to keep the Germans in play over monetary union and the European project generally. The second IGC was agreed at the Dublin European Council in June 1990. The British government remained reluctant about the IGC process, taking the view that consolidation rather than reform would be the key to stability for the following months. By July, the NATO summit had endorsed the ambitions for a European security identity, although the British viewed the outcome of the summit with considerable misgivings, fearing the Americans’ apparent blessing for a more ’Europeanised’ NATO.

Both IGCs formally opened in December 1990. They ran under the chairmanship of the Luxembourgians from January to July 1991, and then the Dutch, as consecutive Presidents of the Council. But there was no agreed agenda for the IGC/PU, and indeed to have two parallel negotiations was in itself a constitutional novelty that inevitably added complexity for the negotiators.

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The British found themselves in a position of having to adapt to the perceived need for the IGCs, and then to the agenda of others, although the PU agenda was itself extremely unclear. British negotiators take the view that they engaged, had a clear agenda and strong negotiating positions.9 However, Thatcher had opposed both IGCs, and many politicians and Whitehall civil servants would have been content if the IGCs had simply evaporated.10 On CFSP, the overriding objective seemed to be to avoid having to make choices, and the British were one of the last member states to submit formal proposals for the IGC/PU. These were not made until December 1990, after Thatcher had left office.

It was not clear to Britain’s partners how far Britain’s approach would change under Major. He appeared less interested in foreign policy than Thatcher, but was, even as he came to office, trapped by the high publicity profile of a strong UK ’punching above its weight’, particularly in the NATO context, despite promises of cuts in arms expenditure after the end of the cold war. The Defence White Paper Options for Change that finally emerged in July 1991, anticipated an expenditure reduction from 3.9% to 3.5% by 1995. But there were already difficulties, as, for example at the July 1990 NATO summit when the British failed to achieve the changes they wanted which would have allowed NATO to operate out of area. So Britain’s traditionally high defence profile appeared threatened by fears of a decline in British influence over NATO.

The Conservative Party was already deeply split over European integration, yet remained a potent force behind all the negotiations, with so-called ’Euro-sceptics’ both on the back benches and in government. These right-wingers, deeply distrustful of Europe anyway, saw Major as being weaker and thus more susceptible to the influence of officials than Thatcher had been. This was particularly true of the FCO which had had difficulties with Thatcher, and which was widely perceived as being more pro-European than the government, and which was the lead department in the IGC/PU. Meanwhile the Labour Party, more divided than it was prepared to admit publicly, kept very quiet about the big issues.11

The two old stalwarts of British policy towards Europe - the NATO link and intergovemmentalism - remained axioms that went far beyond party policy. As Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said in December 1990, "this Alliance is an asset which we simply cannot allow to evaporate or disappear. European security without the United States does not make sense. If we were ever foolish enough to try it, we would soon realise what nonsense it is."12 Assumptions about the importance of NATO appeared unaltered: the British aim was now first to keep

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the Americans on board, and second to keep an acceptable balance between American and European interests. The pace of developments in 1990-1 only served to heighten the need for an effective balancing act between the continent and the US. It went without saying that Britain’s own leverage and relative bargaining power to this end were predicated upon sustaining American interest in the continent.

Majority voting for any European foreign policy decision was moreover considered out of the question, and policy remained consistently driven by the desire not to give more ground than was absolutely necessary in the face of growing communautaire sentiments on the continent. European Political Cooperation (EPC) had been treated as a qualitatively different policy arena since its beginnings in 1970, even when it was codified under Title III of the Single European Act, and decisions were taken by consensus, not by voting. It had long been recognised that the intrinsic ambiguities o f European integration lay along the axis of a developing common foreign policy, whose supporters would sooner or later have to address the issue of a common defence. But the consequence of a united Europe with its own foreign, defence and security policy was a Europe which could be a rival as well as a partner of the US. The two approaches - increasing majority voting and participation by the Commission in CFSP represented one way forward, a bottom-up approach, while the gradual embracing of a defence component by the Europeans represented another, top-down approach to the Europeanising of foreign policy. To both approaches the British government was opposed.

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British policy on what was to become Pillar Two of the Maastricht Treaty had two principal phases, the first between February and March 1991, and the second between September and November of that year.13 What is particularly significant about Pillar Two policy is that the negotiations were not conducted through the mechanisms of the IGC/PU alone. Because defence became an issue, NATO and the WEU were also important fora for negotiation and were exploited by national actors in the fiirtherance of their own interests. For the British, WEU was to become a means of nuancing any potentially damaging head-on collision between NATO and the Community. The French and Germans sought rather to exploit WEU through fusion with, or subordination to the EC. However, both France and Germany had different approaches to NATO, as in 1966 France had left the NATO integrated military structure, a structure which was and remains one of the most important features of NATO for the Germans.

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At the first high level meeting of the IGC/PU in February 1991, the French and Germans led with a joint paper. A similar paper was then put to an extraordinary meeting of WEU Foreign and Defence Ministers at the end of the month.14 The French and Germans proposed an organic relationship between WEU and the EC. The European Council could classify what counted as a security policy issue, while the European Security and Defence Identity would be achieved through a European Pillar of NATO. The British view was that the proposals could have been worse, as at least inter-govemmentalism through the European Council remained on the agenda, the European Council was not to be given an exclusive competence over WEU, and defence responsibilities for the EC were not suggested. But while the French and Germans were divided about integrated military structures, it was the Dutch, who held both strong Atlanticist sentiments, and a strong ’vocation’ for a federal community, who rejected the proposal about WEU’s future as not federalist enough.15 Jacques Delors, President o f the European Commission, now contributed an intervention with strongly federalist overtones when he put in a bid for a stronger Commission role.16 The US had already joined the debate. The famous Bartholomew telegram, sent to all EC NATO countries as the WEU meeting was taking place, laid down very clearly that the Americans were not prepared to let the Europeans make tendentious initiatives on defence issues. It set down that there should be no European caucus inside NATO, no marginalisation of non-EC members of NATO and no alternative defence organisation for the Europeans. Although considered an American over-reaction, even by the British, it nevertheless made it clear that any subsequent defence debates were going to include the US as a player if NATO’s role was challenged. This first negotiating phase was considered little more than a ’stuttering start’, but it clearly established that the defence component of any revised treaty would meet with strong American resistance, which could be exploited by the British.17

The second important phase took place between the end of September and November, although of course, negotiation at different levels continued through the year. Two issues: the defence dimension and the extent to which a more communautaire approach would be applied to EPC dominated the spring and summer of 1991. On the latter the questions were whether EPC should be integrated into the main body of the treaty, or left as one of three pillars, and the principle and logistics of majority voting on foreign policy. In fact, the three-pillar structure elaborated by the Luxembourgians in April was henceforth accepted after the Dutch tried and failed spectactularly to produce a more federal, integrated one-pillared structure coupled to a commitment to NATO rather than the WEU.18 Debate in both areas began to need a sophisticated command of linguistic acrobatics and obfuscation, as the drafting detail acquired

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increasing significance during these months.19 But the collapse of the Dutch proposal meant that general implementation of the Community method for all foreign policy was off the agenda.

With regard to defence, the British found themselves in a stronger position by the autumn, because of restructuring within NATO, and because developments in Yugoslavia distracted attention away from previous leading issues. Although the June NATO summit had agreed to the objective of the ’creation of a European identity in security and defence,’ the British had also secured the permanent command of the newly formed Alliance Rapid Reaction Force(ARRF). Nevertheless, the Franco-German proposal of February was still on the table, and the British now began to take a more decisive role. In October they issued a joint declaration with the Italians, showing that it was not only the French and the Germans who could lead on bilateral initiatives. In their joint statement, which had in fact been under discussion since April, the British accepted that the phrase ’common defence policy’ was acceptable as long as this was grounded in a continuing adherence to and compatibility with NATO. Italy’s long established attachment to a federalist approach which was sustained under the Berlusconi government, obviously made the joint declaration more significant than if it had been issued, for example, with the Danes. Yet it appears that there was some disagreement between the FCO and the Ministry of Defence on even the concession relating to a common defence policy, although it was argued that the Anglo-Italian letter would enable the British to engage more constructively during the latter stages of the negotiation.20

However, the immediate effect of the Anglo-Italian proposal was more dramatic. The Franco-German response was to propose that the Franco-German brigade, established in 1988, be widened and deepened. It would now be open to new members, as the Eurocorps, and would, through WEU, operate under instructions from the EC. The effect would be to open up the possibility that WEU would become a vehicle to carry defence into the Community under Franco-German leadership, and not a NATO-based back-stop against any Community defence posture. However, this did not have quite the impact that might have been expected, as only the Spaniards responded immediately to a proposal for a special foreign ministers meeting on this subject.21 Indeed, the old problem of the differences between Germany and France on the relationship between European and Atlantic defence further undermined their démarche. While Mitterrand stated that ’we have simply set up new defence provisions which will gradually take on greater significance because we cannot imagine that the United States will always be on the front-line ready to take over from Europeans in their own defence’, Kohl noted both the continuing ’existential importance’ of

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NATO for Europe, and that ’a united Europe without a common defence is, in the long run, not feasible’.22 The inconsistency of the German position over European federalism and Atlanticism was exposed, as it presumed, not a European independence which might, if necessary counter the US, but that some kind of genuinely European identity could exist within NATO. The British were working very hard on the Germans in an attempt to show their concern about the way in which the political union debate might develop. At the same time, Hurd and Dumas met privately to mend fences.23

It was at the Rome NATO summit of 7-8 November that the sparks really flew, and the main protagonists were the Americans. It appeared that the import of the Bartholomew telegram had been missed by the continental Europeans until then. The Americans asserted that Congress would argue that the Eurocorps would cost the Europeans 100,000 American troops in Europe. President Bush then told his allies that, "if you don’t want us in Europe, tell us now, and the United States will leave."24 The summit discussions finally produced, with a considerable British input, the new strategic concept, the formula that the "Alliance is the essential forum for consultation among its members and the venue for agreement on policies on the security and defence commitments of Allies under the Washington Treaty."25 The French, with reservations, were brought on board with a recognition of the primacy of NATO paralleled with a grudging American concession to European multinational structures. The importance of the NATO summit was that the Maastricht negotiators now knew that any further European defence initiatives would be within the Alliance framework: the really big prize for Britain, Atlanticism in defence, had been won.26 The subsequent discussions would still contain the difficult questions of majority voting in foreign policy questions, with which the British grappled up till, and during, the Maastricht Council, and over which they had to make concessions in the area of so-called joint actions; the wording of the defence clause; and the positioning of WEU in the Treaty structure. But not only had the sting had been taken out of the talks after the NATO summit, but also the French, whose own position with regard to NATO was changing, and whose own ambivalence about majority voting in any CFSP context was now evident, were in a much weaker position by November than they had been in February.

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Although the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty as finally agreed are quite well known, they should now nevertheless be rehearsed. Title V of the Treaty incorporated a Common Foreign and Security Policy into the Union, building upon Title 111 of the Single European Act. This was done by creating an

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intergovernmental second pillar for CFSP (though under Title M, this pillar was not meant to not undermine the operation of the Treaty as a whole). There was also a requirement for consistency between the CFSP and those external relations of the Union which were in the Community pillar itself, and which largely concerned the Community’s external economic relations.

CFSP was to operate under guidelines from the European Council, while the Commission acquired a joint right of initiative of policy. The European Political Cooperation (EPC) Ministerial Committee and the Community’s General Affairs Council were to be merged, and serviced by a common secretariat, but still retained separate advice from Coreper from General Affairs, and the Political Directors for EPC. The Presidency was therefore to be the central locus of the foreign policy process, although it was also to consult and to take into consideration the views of the European Parliament. Therefore, the CFSP was formally integrated into the EU structure, although not into the EC pillar. As far as procedural changes were concerned, the voting procedures through which member states adopted common positions were not specified. Joint actions however were decided through a process in which the Council was to define, on the basis of general guidelines from the European Council, which joint actions should be taken by qualified majority. (Under Article 148(2)). Member states could still take necessary action alone, and without Council decisions, as long as they remained within the broad lines of the general objectives.

The defence component represented a genuine constitutional innovation. The treaty’s Article J4 designated WEU as an integral part of the development of the Union:

"RESOLVED to implement a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing o f a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence, thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence....The Union shall request the Western European Union, which is an integral part o f the development o f the European Union, to elaborate and implement decisions and actions o f the Union which have defence implications....[These] shall respect the obligations of certain Member States under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation."27

Further, Declaration No 30 stated that WEU would provide a "common defence compatible with that of the Atlantic Alliance" and would "be developed as the defence component of the EU...to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance." The Union could request the WEU to implement decisions and actions o f the Union, although not under the qualified majority voting procedures of joint actions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Any such

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decisions had, moreover, to be compatible with NATO obligations. There was to be a WEU planning cell, more cooperation with the Alliance on logistics etc; a European armaments agency; a WEU Institute; a stronger operational role for the organisation; the transfer of the WEU Council to Brussels; an invitation to member states of the EU to accede to WEU, or to become observers, with other NATO members able to become associates if they wanted. Until Maastricht, WEU’s only defence link had been with NATO.

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I will now return to the three elements of explanation raised at the beginning of this paper, and assess their usefulness in this particular case study.

1) The first explanation was that national domestic politics and constraints affected outcomes which in 1990 were uncertain. This implies that negotiating policy was driven by pressures from within the national environment that were stronger than ’objective’ policy considerations. Anthony Forster has produced a persuasive analysis of British political and press reactions as the negotiations progressed. His conclusions reveal that, over what was to become Pillar Two, the government actually managed a potentially difficult political position rather well. As the negotiations advanced, it was onto national questions relating to the defence review that most hostile fire was focused, as the debate degenerated into more parochial issues of regimental recruitment. The government "was able to reassure its own backbenchers that what was under negotiation in the IGC/PU and NATO was not a reorientation of Britain’s defence posture, but a pragmatic adjustment to changed circumstances."28 Labour policy appears to have been concerned to avoid debate on these issues, as both defence, and ’Europe’ could expose divisions within the party.

The conclusion has therefore to be drawn that, as far as we can tell, party and sectoral conflicts did not affect outcomes, and further, that any disagreements that existed between the Ministry of Defence and the FCO did not alter the negotiation or what went into the Treaty in a substantive way. This was not least because there existed a very deep cross-party consensus about fundamental priorities that touched both upon loyalty to NATO, as well as suspicion of majority voting in European foreign and security policy. This consensus clearly set the tone of Britain’s negotiating position. In this respect, well-established and continuing attachment to NATO within the decision-making establishment and within the country at large, did affect policy, but not in the sense that there were domestic conflicts that had to be managed by decision-makers. Publicity about both the ARRF, and Britain’s leading role therein, and also the

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inter-govemmental second pillar itself were used to reinforce this consensus as the negotiations proceeded. Debate has therefore turned more on whether the government was not drawn, in part by its continental partners, into a closer relationship with the EU for the WEU than the formula of a European Pillar of NATO would necessarily have implied, as the ratchet of a European defence identity exercised its influence upon the British.29

2) The second explanation, that Britain consistently struggled against the European ’logic’ of the third force which was reflected in the institutional logic of the Franco-German axis and deeper integration, goes to the heart of much of the debate over the long-term vision, (if that is the appropriate phrase), about the nature of European integration. The logic of the European third force implies the creation of an independent international identity for Europe. Through this perspective, it is not enough simply to sweep away barriers, and create common policies for the administration of the unit; while defence and security remain interwoven into the Atlantic Alliance, European integration remains a partial strategy. This is not to say that partnership with the US is incompatible with this European logic, but to argue that Europe must be able to act independently on the world stage as a single, state-like player - even if this means promoting policies different from those proposed by the US - if the idea of an integrated Europe has sense in the post-cold war world.

To develop this line of argument, one must go back to the wartime and early postwar Europeanists. Federalist thinking was not based upon the construction of Euro-America; indeed, until the new power realities of the cold war asserted themselves, the debates that raged were rather over the question whether European federalism was not in fact a stepping stone to a world government. By the late 1940s, some third force ideas came to embrace both the European continent, and the European continent plus its former colonial possessions. Thus the British between 1948-9, and indeed the French in the mid-1950s, explored the notion o f the third world force as a continental/European bloc between, but autonomous from, the superpower structure. General de Gaulle also reached similar conclusions about the need for Europe to be able to stand alone, doubting the efficacy of an Atlanticist model, although his ideas for political cooperation, first through the Fouchet Plan, and then through the cementing of the Franco-German axis, were of a rather different nature than that of the 1990s.30 It was the developing cold war which undermined European third forcism.

What therefore happened over the cold war period is that the West Europeans deliberately built a successful economic ’civil space’, which nevertheless masked

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federalist ambitions, however hazily conceived.31 Even efforts in the 1970s to move into co-ordinated foreign policy through EPC have been useful only in the softest areas of policy. When a CFSP came on the agenda in 1990, this was in the context of doubts about whether the NATO arrangement would survive the fall of the Wall and the fragility of the Soviet Union.

Through such a perspective, it is thus possible to argue that, with the end of the cold war, third force logic tentatively began to reassert itself, although without clear plans for ultimate outcomes.32 This reassertion is found in the April 1990 letter by Kohl and Mitterrand; in the constantly re-iterated demands that Europe had to learn to look after its own defence more effectively; and in the decision to create the Euro-Corps.33 This approach also raises the question, to which there is no easy answer, of whether there would still have been a bargain between the French and the Germans on EMU and PU, even if the cold war had not ended when and how it did. For Britain, a strategy of driving a wedge between France and Germany, or turning to alternative alliances can be explained by the desire to work against the driving force of Franco-German power in a European third force.34

This logic was re-enforced by an institutional logic. Neo-functionalist theory is driven by the cogent idea that policy spillover is a feature of the integration process, and looks to the importance of institutions like the Commission as driving forces behind integration. This was true, for example, when the Commission acquired a high profile over administration of G24 aid to East Europe, and managed the rapid absorption of the GDR into the EC in parallel with Germany’s unification. The Commission has been pushing hard to move into the CSFP area. Members of the Community become locked in to the institutions over a period of time, and it is the Commission that reinforces this locking-in process. This explains the importance attached to the discussions on qualified majority voting on CFSP, as more majority voting would break down one more barrier between the state and the Union.

This view is echoed by those who look at international institutions in a wider context. In a condition of international anarchy which typifies the international ’system’, strong, and even hegemonic states are required to promote cooperative regimes, and it is argued that these regimes may then acquire a vibrancy and life of their own. The EU has proved itself capable of delivering public goods and relative gains, even in a changed international environment, and even without an external hegemon acting in the same supportive way that the US did in the 1950s and beyond. This is not least because the perceived costs of fragmentation appear greater than those of deepening.35 The institutional logic must therefore

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be to push ahead. Economic instruments of foreign policy are already dealt with within the Community pillar, where the hurdle of qualified majority voting (the litmus test of the potency of an international organisation without a clear hegemon) has been crossed with the Single Market. To take the analogy with the reinvigoration of the Rome Treaty clauses on a single market, and the Single European Act, one might argue that if the structures and framework for new initiatives remain there long enough, the policies will in time fill them up. In this perspective, the CFSP, and the institutional links of WEU to the EU was the thin end of the wedge to a European independent international identity, and was a serious issue that would not go away.36 The relative position of WEU in the Union thus epitomised the extent to which the great foreign and defence policy hurdles could be cleared by the integrationists. However, it remains unclear how far the logic of the third force in the foreign policy arena would ever have been pushed; whether such discussions were not a form of shadow boxing, or jostling for a European voice within the Atlantic Alliance; and whether the notion of an integrated European pillar within NATO, in which decisions on foreign policy, if not defence, were taken by majority votes, would (or indeed could) be moved forward in any federalist agenda. But that fear appears to have seemed real enough at the time, and the hostility of British policy-makers to the institutionalising of CFSP within the Community structure and majority voting within the procedure is thus explained by Britain’s reluctance to get drawn into third forcism, although the arguments deployed by the British were sometimes that majority voting would simply not be effective or appropriate.37

3) The third explanation suggested that by 1991, the dust was beginning to settle after the seismic events of 1989. American power in Europe once again appeared as purposeful, proactive and hegemonic: the British had played a role in encouraging and managing this change as it fitted their own policy objectives. The Pillar Two achievements were less than the federalists wanted because of British policy, and because of US intervention in the negotiations at the two critical stages described above.

To develop this hypothesis, we have to go back to the structural overlay of Europe, to NATO and American hegemony. US flexibility, capacity and willingness to play an on-going role in Europe and to manage European rivalries should not be underestimated. The presence of the US in Europe has played an important role in the balance that has been maintained between the three great European countries, not least in the competitive relationship for American attention that they have, and in the management of nuclear questions. The US

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was, and remains the leading European power, with a hegemonic if not an ’imperial’ position.38

This also has an institutional logic. NATO has reasserted itself, not least because of European weaknesses in the Gulf and Bosnian crises.39 Although the US went through a brief period of examining the possibilities of a more semi-detached relationship with Europe in the immediate aftermath of the end of the cold war, by 1991, it can be argued that NATO began to work hard to reinvent itself under US leadership. This was apparent in the Bartholomew telegram of March 1991, the ARRF proposal of May 1991, and the NATO summit of November 1991. If the immediate post-cold war period was one of institutional competition, NATO won out over the Community.

US and NATO positions largely dovetailed with British policy towards the Pillar Two agenda. British influence had been inflated by NATO and the US during the cold war period, and the British now pushed to keep the Americans on board through 1990, and not to allow them to drift from NATO. What may be seen as mediating, or perhaps, wrecking tactics towards a Euro-federalist, third force approach to security and defence, can also be interpreted as a reactive approach, designed to sustain the American role in Europe, from which Britain itself derives so much prestige, during a chaotic period when it was not possible "for men to organise the future, nor to foresee the caprices of fate", as André Maurois once said. By seeking to retain diversity and to keep institutions as flexible as possible, and to take a conservative view about how change should come about, in this view, the British were able to hold out until American power reasserted itself on the European continent and until the American hegemon realised the benefits of its exercise of that power. The exact role played by the British in the ’transition’ years from 1989 is not yet possible to elaborate, and indeed, should be investigated alongside those of the Germans, the French, and the Dutch in particular, as well as the twists and turns of American policy itself. Events since 1992 have made this third hypothesis seem increasingly plausible. The US has put considerable effort into remodelling NATO by working with new images, including transparency, cooperation and partnership: a collective security model coupled with a commitment to enlargement.40 The Amsterdam European Council of June 1997, which addressed the CFSP once again, appears to have had a marginal effect in promoting either closer relations between WEU and the EU, or strengthening CFSP. Indeed, commitment to NATO is now written clearly into the new Treaty. Of more importance, the pull of Atlantic power has been increasingly shown by the desire of Spain and France to enter the military command structure, although France’s Atlantic policy has undergone

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severe setbacks since the 1997 election, which the British have been unable to mitigate. Instead of looking at new institutional methods the security/defence debate has become more functional, as the developing distinction between the so-called Petersberg security and policing-type tasks, and defence reveals. If this is to determine the distribution of labour between the NATO and the WEU (or probably EU in the longer term if WEU is folded into the Union), the basic structural overlay of Atlantic defence will be preserved, not least because the Europeans lack the forces to do very much alone, so that the Americans will be closely involved even with purely ’European’ operations. NATO is now embarking on the hazardous task of transforming itself into a bigger Atlantic-European collective security system, whilst maintaining the capacity to act as a defence organisation if, for example a Russian threat, or if other threats - from China, or Islamic fundamentalism - emerge.

Indeed one could go further than this because NATO is only one facet of the Western Alliance. The alliance is based on economic and trading links far more extensive than those the US has with the new buzz region - Asia. 60% of all overseas profits to the US come from Europe and only 17% from Asia; US investments are four times higher in Europe than in Asia, and European investments nearly three times as high in the US than they are in Asia.41 There are, further strong diplomatic and cultural links between Europe and the US, and bilaterally between the US and key European players, as well as the intelligence gpnnection, all of which add up to a very formidable Alliance, although one yvhich lacks a grand strategy. While is not yet clear whether the ’glue’ of this newly developing Alliance will be military bonds or the wider civilian dimensions, it is clear that in its overall shape, it represents more accurately the kind of outcome that most British decision-makers sought than does the third force model.

*

For the historian of the early cold war, a study of this one strand of the Maastricht debate raises another absorbing question. Early historiography portrayed the cold war as a largely superpower affair, and gave low salience to the role of European powers. This view has now been overturned, as the role of Britain and France in particular has been re-examined, particularly in their strategies of pulling the US into postwar Europe.42 In the now distant Stocktaking Memorandum of 1945, written as the Second World War ended, and before the future pattern o f politics became clear, the Deputy Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, Sir Orme Sargent famously wrote that "we must

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be prepared for the United States to falter from time to time when called upon to pull their weight in Europe....We must have a policy of our own and try to persuade the United States to make it their own."*3

It is of course fanciful to draw direct parallels between the period after 1945, and that after 1989, as the international environments are different, and the presence of powerful international institutions in 1989 that did not exist in 1945 make for a different setting. Indeed, the period 1945-9 was marked by the desire to create international institutions for Europe, whilst during the period 1989-91 negotiations were largely conducted through international institutions. The US was already a key player in Europe in 1989, whereas in 1945, formal American institutional links were most strongly represented by their presence as an occupying power in defeated Germany. However, in the contemporary period, and in consideration of the development of foreign, security and defence policies, it remains true that the role of the US was central to the Elritish, and their policy towards CFSP and defence was cast in the unambiguous mould of sustaining the US presence in Europe. This clearly played a role in defining the outcomes in the Maastricht Treaty and beyond. This discussion paper thus suggests further questions for researchers. The first is how important Britain’s role in this policy area was. Was this really a case of Britain having to act, for "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"? Or does the 1990-2 period represent the ’return’ of the US to Europe which had more to do with American power and interests, and its relations with other key European players, than with British influence? Was British policy echoing rather than leading American policy?44 Whatever the answer to these question are, the outcome of Maastricht, and subsequently Amsterdam, has set in train Euro-Atlantic defence and foreign policy arrangements in what has been once again accepted as the largely civil and security space of the Union.

September 1997

Dr. Anne Deighton

European Interdependence Research Unit St Antony’s College UK-Oxford 0X 2 6JF © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Endnotes

1. Iam grateful to Professor Yves Meny for encouraging publication o f this paper; to the two anonymous peer reviewers for their thoughtful and positive remarks; and to Professor Roger Morgan, for first inviting me to EUI to give a paper on this subject.

2. There are a number o f accounts of the Maastricht Treaty. See, in particular, Andrew Duff, John Pinder and Roy Pryce (eds), Maastricht and Beyond: Building the European

Union, (Routledge, 1994); Finn Laursen and Sophie Vanhoonacker (eds), The

Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union: Institutional Reforms, New Policies and International Identity o f the European Community, (European Institute of Public

Administration, 1992); and Anthony Forster, Empowerment and Constraint: Britain and the

Negotiation o f the Treaty on European Union, (DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1996), ’The

Ratchet o f European Defence: Britain and the Reactivation of Western European Union, 1984-1991’, in Anne Deighton (ed), Western European Union, 1954-1997: Defence, Security,

Integration, (European Interdependence Research Unit, St Antony’s College, University of

Oxford, 1997).

3. The 4+2 group o f Soviet Union, United States, Britain and France - the postwar Occupying Powers - were joined by the West and East Germans.

4. Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A

Study in Statecraft, (Harvard University Press, 1995) provides a fascinating, if Americo-centric

account o f the period, and is based upon unrivalled access to primary material.

5. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs, (Doubleday, 1996).

6. See, generally, Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided

Continent, (Random House, 1993); Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified.

7. Quoted from International Herald Tribune, 20 April 1990, in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds), The Intergovernmental Conference, p. 6.

8. This letter, and the other major documentation of the IGC/PU are reproduced in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds), The Intergovernmental Conference.

9. Evidence from senior FCO official.

10. On the organisation o f the negotiations, see Alasdair M. Blair, UK Policy Coordination

during the 1990-1991 Intergovernmental Conference', (Leicester University Discussion Paper,

1997).

11. For party influence, see particularly, Forster, Restraint and Empowerment.

12. Douglas Hurd, press conference, 10 December, 1990. Quoted in Louise Richardson, ’British State Strategies after the Cold War’, Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, Stanley

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Hoffmann, (eds), After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in

Europe, 1989-1991, (Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 160.

13. Detailed and extremely useful descriptions using extensive interview material about the course o f the negotiations appear in Forster, Restraint and Empowerment; Alasdair M. Blair, Britain and the Maastricht Treaty Negotiations on Common Foreign and Security

Policy, (University o f Leicester Discussion Paper, 1997). See also, Richardson, ’British State

Strategies’; Duff et al (eds), Maastricht and Beyond.

14. Their proposal derived in part from a WEU proposal, a statement by French Foreign Minister Pierre Chevènement, and a joint statement from Kohl and Mitterrand in December

1990, Blair, Negotiations, p. 10.

15. The WEU Council meeting, the Bartholomew telegram and the Dutch rejection all occurred between 20 and 22 February, Blair, Negotiations, pp. 10-17.

16. Jacques Delors, ’European integration and security’, Survival, March-April 1991, XXX1I/2, pp. 99-109.

17. On Bartholomew Telegram, International Herald Tribune, 14 March 1991; Catherine McArdle Kelleher, The Future o f European Security, (Brookings. 1995), Roy Pryce, ’The Treaty Negotiations’, in Duff et al (eds), Maastricht and Beyond, p. 47. The text has not been released.

18. The new Dutch draft - the Dutch had taken over the Presidency in July - was flatly rejected on 30 September 1991, ’Black Monday’ for the Dutch. The pillared structure was also to be strengthened as it was to be the Council, not the Commission, which would act as the Union’s representative in matters relating to CFSP.

19. John Roper, in Laurence Martin and John Roper (eds), Towards a Common Defence

Policy (WEU Institute o f Security Studies, 1996) guides the reader through the defence

language maze.

20. Blair, Negotiation, p. 26.

21. Evidence o f senior FCO official.

22. Guardian, 24 October, 7 November, 1991; Anne Deighton, ’Conclusion’, in Dcighton

(ed), Western European Union, p. 173.

23. Evidence o f senior FCO official.

24. Evidence o f Pentagon special advisor.

25. The New Strategic Concept, Europe Documents, 1742, 9 November 1991.

26. Sections of the WEU appendices to the Maastricht Treaty, contain wording taken directly from the New Strategic Concept. Blair, Negotiation, p. 36.

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27. Treaty on European Union, signed 1992, ratified 1993; extracts from Preamble, Article

J .

28. Forster, Empowerment and Constraint, Chapter 4; p. 177.

29. In Deighton (ed), Western European Union., Forster calls his chapter, ’The Ratchet of European defence: Britain and the Reactivation o f Western European Union, 1984-199U.

It seems, although it is not possible to document conclusively yet, that there was a rather different interplay between the international and domestic, and between different groups of policy arenas. The increasingly alarming backcloth o f the acrimonious conflict in Yugoslavia played into the negotiations as the months before the Maastricht Council wore on. This arena became entwined, not so much with CFSP, but with social policy. Social policy was a far more contentious area in British domestic politics, and the Employment Secretary Michael Howard followed a sceptical approach to the Chapter, threatening resignation if it was incorporated into the Treaty. It has been described in a number of quarters that, in the margins o f the European Council, and possibly also at the critical meeting on the Social Chapter between Lubbers, Kohl and Major, the British indicated that they would not block recognition o f Croatia, whilst Kohl - who was himself under enormous domestic pressure to push ahead with unilateral recognition o f Croatia - agreed that the eleven would ’opt-in’ to the Social Chapter, thus saving face for the British. Stanley Hoffmann, ’Yugoslavia: Implications for Europe and for European Institutions’, in Richard H Ullman, The World and Yugoslavia ’s

Wars, (Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), p. 111. Hoffmann asserts, incorrectly, that the

deal was over monetary union and institutional reform, rather than the Social Chapter; see also, Misha Glenny, The Fall o f Yugoslavia, (Penguin, 1992) p. 112; and particularly Martin Bell, In Harm 's Way, (Hamish Hamilton, 1995), pp. 35-38. Officials inevitably deny this linkage when asked on the record. Apart from the enormous moral issues, and the cynical, if perhaps unwitting, approach to issue linkage that this raises, it also highlights the scholar’s difficulties in selecting particular issues areas in a multi-issue treaty.

For an anecdotal account o f the pressures, ad-hocery and brinkmanship at Maastricht, but one that does not deal directly with the above question, see Sarah Hogg and Jonathan Hill,

Too Close to Call: Power and Politics - John Major in No. 10, (Little, Brown and Co, 1995),

Chapter 9.

30. And it is interesting that, in 1963, the German Bundestag insisted on inserting an Atlanticist preamble in to the Franco-German Treaty.

31. ’Civil space’ was a term used by Ambassador Robert Hunter (US Ambassador to NATO), Oxford University, January 1996.

32. At least on the part o f the Germans, Holst Teltschik, St Antony’s College, Oxford, May 1996.

33. It is also echoed in the various proposals for new cores at the heart o f Europe for those that really want to play actively, eg, Independent on Sunday, 12 May, 1996.

34. "The Anglo-Italian initiative helped ensure an outcome at Maastricht which was acceptable to Britain," evidence o f senior FCO official.

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35. See, inter al., Keohane, Nye, Hoffmann (eds), After the Cold War, particularly ’Introduction’ and ’Conclusion’; Andrew Hurrell, ’Explaining the resurgence of regionalism in world politics’, Review o f International Studies, Vol 21, No 4, October 1995.

36. In 1995 the Reflection group repeated the need for a genuine external Union identity, and for the partners to face up to the question o f real common defence policies. It suggested creating a timetable for collapsing the foreign policy pillar - including the defence WEU component - into the mainstream Community structure, and proposed a Mr/Ms CFSP who could speak for Europe. Reflection Group, (Westendorp progress report), Europe documents, 27 September, 1995.

37. The success o f a third force, whether represented as a series o f inter-state bargains led by France and Germany, or (or as well as) an institutional configuration, raises big questions about whether a European hegemon would not emerge to replace the American hegemonic presence, and who that hegemon would be.

38. Anne Deighton, Les Etats-Unis: une puissance européenne?. Institut Pierre Renouvin, Université de Paris 1, France; discussion paper, autumn 1997.

39. Foreign Affairs, May/June 1996, published two articles on this very theme: G John

Ikenberry, ’The Myth o f Post-Cold War Chaos’, and Charles A Kupchan, ’Reviving the West’.

40. For a sceptical view, see Josef Joffe, ’Collective Security and the Future o f Europe’,

Survival, Spring 1992.

41. Michael Cox, US Foreign Policy after the Cold War: Superpower without a Mission?, (Pinter/Royal Institute o f International Affairs, 1995).

42. See, inter al., Geir Lundestad, ’Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952’, Journal o f Peace Research, 23, 1986; Anne Deighton, The Impossible

Peace: Britain, the Division o f Germany and the Origins o f the Cold War, 1945-1947,

(Oxford, 1990/1993); John W Young, France, the Cold War and the Western Alliance,

1944-9, (Leicester University Press, 1990).

43. For the full memorandum, Documents on British Policy Overseas, 1st series, p. 181 ff, (HMSO, 1984).

44. This debate also resonates with that about the 1945-9 period, in which British policy is variously seen as influential, and as having simply been ’in parallel’ to, or echoing, US policy, see, for example, Alan Bullock, Ernest tevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951, (Heinemann, 1983), pp. 840, 845. © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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