The European Union, Multilateralism and the Heterogeneous Multilateral System

Abstract

The attacks of 9/11 that sent the US spiralling into a neo- conservative vortex of pre- emptive warfare, regime change and unilateral military action had a well- documented spillover into the European Union (EU) (Peterson & Pollack 2003; Calleo 2004). The (in)famous reference by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ‘new Europe’ and ‘old Europe’ became the shorthand notation for the divisions in Europe over the 2003 invasion of Iraq,1 led by the US and including among its ‘coalition of the willing’ the UK and Poland. Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro sum up the complex web of political negotiations that took place across Europe and in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in New York during the months leading up to the war (Gordon & Shapiro 2004). They conclude that the divisions that emerged inside Europe and across the Atlantic were in no way inevitable. By the end of 2003, the EU, only a few months away from

In the years ahead, therefore, Europe’s attachment to multilateralism – and to the United Nations, as the pivot of the multilateral system – will help determine whether, and how, the institutional architecture established in the years after World War II can continue to serve as the bedrock of the international system.

–COM 2003 526 Final: 3

The EU is committed to strengthening the UN in line with the shared objective of building an international order based on effective multilateralism, well functioning international institutions and a rule–based approach to global issues.

–Council of the European Union, 2003a: §1