Managing Ambivalence: National Foreign Policy in an Age of ‘Power Avoidance’

Abstract

Convention has it that the EU’s foreign policy is the ‘lowest common denominator’, a calculation made on the basis of the little that EU member states can agree on given the profound differences that exist on matters of foreign and security policy (Nuttall, 2000). Commentators highlight the disagreements between Atlanticist and Europeanist, between those who are pro-Russian and those who are virulently anti-Russian, between what Donald Rumsfeld famously called ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe (Erlanger, 2005).