Getting It’s Act Together? The EU’s Foreign and Security Policy Towards China (The European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy Through a Neo Classical Realism Lens)

Getting it’s act together? The EU’s Foreign and Security Policy towards China (The European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy through a Neo Classical Realism Lens) “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.“ The Netherlands, Denmark and others rejects using Huawei G5 technology out of security reasons whereas Germany endorses it, and the European Union Commission (EC) stands in between, recommending that the Member States (MS) work together to handle cybersecurity, stops short of suggesting a ban on Huawei G5. Not exactly showing unity. The European Union (EU) is the world’s second largest economy, after the US and before China, and has an ambition to play a central role in international relations inter alia promoting free trade, human rights and democracy. However, the EU is struggling to get its act together, as the Huawei example suggests. The EU has an important say regarding the international economic order and it is the world’s largest aid donor. Still, it is very much absent in regards to international crisis like e.g. the Middle East. This paper will analyze one aspect of the Union’s foreign- and security policy, namely that towards China, based on an approximated neo classical realism approach (NCR). Based on an analysis of the international system (IS) and a content analysis of the MS preferences towards a) China and b) further European integration on the fields of foreign- and security-politics, the limits to the Union’s China policy are analyzed. This will give the paper the following structure. After the introduction, NCR is presented as a basis for the following analysis of the IS. Then the Common Foreign- and Security Policy (CFSP) mechanism of the EU is shortly presented, before the MS preferences towards a) China and b) further European integration are mapped and used for a discussion of how divided the EU is over its long-term strategic relationships with China, which is both a “systemic challenger” and a “strategic partner”. Søren Dosenrode, ACEuS