Graduate Student Announcements 1-26-2012
Graduate Student Announcements for the week of January 23-27, 2012
SECTIONS
A. EVENTS
B. CALLS FOR PAPERS
C. FUNDING / EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
D. EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
EVENTS
- “Universality and the European law of nations in the eighteenth century: the case of Turkey” A lecture by Dr. Jennifer Pitts, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago on January 27 from Noon – 1:30 p.m. in Woodburn Hall 218
- NEW! Sixth Annual Conference on Exploring Approaches to Cultures & Languages Across the Curriculum hosted by the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis March 9-10, 2012. Register by March 1st for best available price (Half price for graduate students)
- FILM “Le Havre” (France, 2011), Critics Choice Award nominee, by legendary Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, showing January 27, 28 and February 4. January in the IU Fine Arts downstairs Theater at 8:00 p.m. In February at the Woodburn Hall Theatre at 7:30 p.m.
- FILM “Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire” (Germany, 1987), the historic Wim Wenders film that won Best Director at the 1987 Cannes Films Festival. Showing at the IU Cinema on January 30 at 7:00 p.m.
- Norwegian & Swedish Conversation (Kaffepause & Fika) 7-8 p.m. at the IMU Starbucks – look for the flags! On January 31, February 28, March 27 & April 24
6. IUB Library workshops (throughout the semester)
CALLS FOR PAPERS
Extended Deadline: January 27
Deadline: January 27
Deadline for Abstracts: January 31
Deadline: February 1
Deadline for Abstracts: February 3
Extended Deadline: February 5
Deadline: February 15
Deadline: February 15
FUNDING / EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
1. IMPORTANT! FLAS applications are due soon!
Deadline: February 1
2. IMPORTANT! Russian and Eastern European Institute (REEI) Graduate Assistantship applications for 2012-2013 school year
Deadline: February 1
3. NEW! University of Michigan invites applications for post-doc fellowships in European Studies.
Application Deadline: Jan 31
4. NEW! Doctoral Program at the European University Institute
Application Deadline: January 31
Deadline: February 1
Deadline: February 1
Deadline: February 1
8. NEW! Mannheim Center for European Social Research invites applications for 2 post-docs in social research
Deadline: February 1
Deadline: February 1
Deadline: February 15
Deadline: February 15
Deadline: February 15
13. NEW! University of East Anglia is offering up to 25 PhD studentships in the Faculty of Social Sciences
Deadline: February 17
Deadline: March 8
16. Prague Summer Schools 2012 at the Prague Center for Public Policy, June 30 – July 7, 2012
Early Bird Application Deadline: April 30, 2012, Final Deadline: May 15, 2012
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
17. NEW! Weekly Job Listing from the Foreign Policy Association
18. NEW! Latest Job Listing from EuroBrussels.com, The European Affairs Jobsite
19. NEW! Summer Jobs with the Institute of Reading Development
20. Indiana University Summer Internship Program in Sustainability
Deadline window: January 30 – February 17
Croatia votes to enter the EU
Croatia voted by referendum yesterday to join the European Union. In the lowest turnout in any referendum deciding EU membership, Croats voted by a 2-to-1 margin to accede to the European Union. According to different reports, between 43 and 47 percent of eligible voters turned out to the polls on Sunday. Hungary’s accession vote was approved by referendum in 2003 with around 46% of voters casting ballots. According to the Associated Press, the low turnout is “a sign of how much the debt-stricken 27-nation bloc has lost its appeal within countries aspiring to join.” The New York Times writes that the large margin, “signal[s] that the bloc retains its allure despite the debt crisis engulfing the euro currency that many of its members use.”
The referendum on European Union membership drew 44 percent of eligible voters, like this man casting his ballot 25 miles outside Zagreb, a state agency said. Hrvoje Polan/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images (NY Times)
Whichever line of argument is taken, it is clear that Croatia has plenty of its own economic worries to address. Its debt is rated just above “junk” level. Fitch has rated Croatian debt at BBB-, while S&P and Moody’s are due to examine Croatian debt in the second half of February. This leaves Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic with an imperative to push through a feasible budget in the near future. With the referendum behind them, Milanovic’s administration may have better luck with the budget, according to Timothy Ash of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Croatia is scheduled to join the EU on July 1, 2013. It would be obliged to adopt the euro at a later date – possibly 2015 or 2016. This, of course, would be allowed only after Croatia meets the much-discussed Maastricht economic criteria. According to the CIA World Factbook of 2010, Croatia has a 58.2% Debt-to-GDP ratio, just below the 60% benchmark. Other data points give Croatia an even better outlook in debt while Deficit-to-GDP ratios vary below and above the desired 3%. While Croatia’s GDP was only 61% of the EU average in 2010, it is considered a “High-income economy” by the World Bank. EU members Romania and Bulgaria are in a lower classification than Croatia. Much of the rationale for a “yes” vote could be attributed to economics, as “yes” campaigners estimated $2.3 billion in aid from the EU would arrive in the next three years. “No” campaigns centered around the loss of sovereignty to the EU and the current malaise that is the Euro Crisis.
Croatian President Ivo Josipovic (l.) speaks as the president of Croatian Parliament Boris Sprem(r.) listens after announcing national referendum results in the Parliament in Zagreb, January 22. Damir Sencar/REUTERS (CS Monitor)
Of equal importance is this vote’s symbolic turn away from the repressive regime of Yugoslavia. Of the former members of Yugoslavia, only Slovenia has joined the EU. EU members voted in December against starting accession talks with Serbia and other ex-Yugoslavian states are even further behind in the accession process. For the time being, the soon-to-be EU of 28 must celebrate its newest member while facing the Eurozone of 17’s economic woes with renewed vigor.
Graduate Student Announcements 1-19-2012
Graduate Announcements for the week January 17 – 20
EVENTS
- NEW! “Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland.” A lecture by Dr. Pasi Sahlberg on January 20 at 1:20 p.m. in Wylie 005
- NEW! “Kant on Beauty and Teleology (for Example Crystals)” A lecture by Dr. Michel Chaouli on January 20 at 4:00-5:30 p.m. in Ballantine Hall 003
- NEW! “The Latvia Project: A Performance Piece Exploring Personal Mythology & National Identity” performed by Franny Silverman and Annie Levy on January 21 at 7:00 p.m. in the John Waldron Arts Center
- NEW! “Global Fractures, Cyber-Sovereignty, and Wild-Card Powers: Windows on the World’s Tomorrows” A lecture by Dr. Carolyn Nordstrom, Visiting Scholar for the Framing the Global project, on January 26 from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. in the IMU Oak Room
- NEW! “Nationalism, Statism and the Orthodox Church” A Lecture by Davor Dzalto, Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Theology and Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University. January 26 at 4:00 p.m. in the IMU Maple Room.
- NEW! “Universality and the European law of nations in the eighteenth century: the case of Turkey” A lecture by Dr. Jennifer Pitts, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago on January 27 from Noon – 1:30 p.m. in Woodburn Hall 218
- NEW! FILM “Le Havre” (France, 2011), Critics Choice Award nominee, by legendary Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, showing January 20-22. Friday and Saturday at the IU Fine Arts downstairs Theater at 8:00 p.m. Sunday at Bear’s Place at 7:00 p.m.
- NEW! FILM “The Pathfinder” – Dir. Nils Gaup (Norway, 1987). January 24 at 7:00 p.m., in Ballantine 102. Norwegian action-adventure film based on an old Sami legend. It was the first full-length film in Sami, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1988.
- NEW! FILM “Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire” (Germany, 1987), the historic Wim Wenders film that won Best Director at the 1987 Cannes Films Festival. Showing at the IU Cinema on January 30 at 7:00 p.m.
- NEW! Norwegian & Swedish Conversation (Kaffepause & Fika) 7-8 p.m. at the IMU Starbucks – look for the flags! On January 31, February 28, March 27 & April 24
11. NEW! IUB Library workshops (throughout the semester)
OPPORTUNITIES
Deadline: February 1
Extended Deadline: January 27
Deadline window: January 30 – February 17
Early Bird Application Deadline: April 30, 2012, Final Deadline: May 15, 2012
Deadline: February 1
Deadline: January 27
Deadline: February 15
Deadline: February 1
- NEW! Weekly Job Listing from the Foreign Policy Association
- NEW! Latest Job Listing from EuroBrussels.com, The European Affairs Jobsite
NEW! State Department Jobs for U.S. Citizens who speak Spanish
Scottish Independence: A Quick Road to the EU?
Last week, the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, announced that he intended to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. Besides all of the ramifications for the United Kingdom, Scottish independence has implications for the European Union. To date, only the former East Germany has joined the EU without a formal application process, and that was due to it reunifying with West Germany. Conversely, Greenland (which is an autonomous part of Denmark) is the only region to ever leave the EU.
As a result, many legal and constitutional questions remain regarding what would happen to an independent Scotland. As the Euobserver reported, two big questions would be if Scotland must apply to join the EU and if it must eventually adopt the euro (which has been required of all countries that have joined the EU since 2004). The Scottish First Minister has proposed that Scotland should receive “semi-automatic” membership, as voting rights and the number of Members of the European Parliament would need to be negotiated, but since Scotland is already part of the EU member state, it has already enacted all of the EU laws (commonly referred to as the acquis communautaire).
However, it is in the interest of many other European Union members to not let Scotland’s entry into the EU be easy. Many other EU countries also have regions that would like to become independent (Catalonia in Spain is only the most famous example), and if Scotland can both be independent and seamlessly be integrated into the EU, other regions may want to follow. Thus, the Spanish government may want to force Scotland to go through the protracted process of formally joining the EU all over again and Scotland could lose many concessions that the UK has won over the years, such as exemption from the euro and a rebate on its contributions.
Either way, Scotland’s attempt to become both independent and a full member of the EU is only the strongest example yet of “neo-medievalism” in Europe. In Medieval Europe, the continent was tied together by the loose power of the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire, and consisted primarily of small duchies, principalities, and other regions that were often only nominally part of a larger country. Some scholars argue that the EU could create a similar system where the member states slowly loose power to the supranational EU and their regions. Thus, Scotland’s attempt to leave the UK and join the EU as an independent country has ramifications well beyond the British Isles.
How to Solve the Euro Crisis? One Professor’s Ideas
On January 11th and 12th, Dr. Michele Fratianni spoke on the European Debt Crisis in Indianapolis and Bloomington. Dr. Fratianni is Professor Emeritus at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, as well as a Professor of Economics at the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy. His talks focused on the current situation of government finances in the European Union, which was directly related to the major news in Europe that France, Italy, Span, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), and six other countries all saw their credit ratings downgraded over the weekend.
Dr. Fratianni’s first point was that when you examine government debt since the creation of the euro in 2000, Japan, the US, and the UK have all seen their government debt rise much faster than the major countries of the Eurozone. In fact, Italy for instance has actually worked to reduce its government debt by consistently running a primary surplus (i.e. is government spends less than it earns in revenue, excluding debt interest payments). Yet, the Eurozone governments are those which have been attacked the hardest by the markets. Dr. Fratianni’s conclusion is that this is in part due to the fact that the euro is not a “one size fits all” currency, especially without a fiscal system that ties the 17 members together.
The talks then moved on to the high interest rates that the markets are forcing the governments to pay in order to sell their bonds and the current drive towards austerity. Dr. Fratianni’s calculations showed that Italy, Spain, and Ireland would all have to run primary surpluses of around 4% of GDP just to maintain the status quo (it is closer to 14% for Portugal!). This means that these three governments would have collect the equivalent of about four percent of the entire annual economic output of their country and instead of spending it on government services, use it to finance their pre-existing debt burdens. This situation could change if economies started to grow again, but right now that does not seem very likely. (The BBC had a story with a similar conclusion today.)
Clearly, European citizens will not tolerate their governments continually taxing them just to pay off previous debts, so what is to be done? Dr. Fratianni offered many scenarios ranging from bad to worse, but the options that he prefers have to do with freeing the European Central Bank (ECB) to inject money into the market. The ECB is the only European institution with the firepower to get European economies running again, and he believes that a little inflation will help the system. Currently, inflation in the Eurozone is around 2% which is historically very low, but a higher inflation rate would ease the pressure on governments to pay their debts. The logic is very simple—inflation helps debtors as they now have more euros (in absolute terms), while it hurts lenders since they have already loaned a fix amount of euros. Thus, governments would have more euros to pay back a debt that has stayed the same size.
Of course, there are hurdles that would need to be overcome. For instance, the ECB’s mission is to fight inflation and not cause inflation (their movie on the “inflation monster” makes this painfully obvious). In addition, Germany is very opposed to inflation due to their experience with hyperinflation in the 1920s. However, Dr. Fratianni believes that we are reaching the point where the side effects of some inflation are less bad for the Eurozone than the current prescription of austerity.
Hungary’s troubles with the EU
Belgium’s spending freeze has convinced the EU commission of its resolve to keep its deficit and debt under control. Hungary faced a similar threat, yet due to its lack of budgetary reforms, will be receiving economic punishment from the EU. Economic Commissioner Olli Rehn threatened to suspend some of its development assistance that it receives as a new EU member. In an unrelated, but perhaps more consequential decision, the EU said it would start legal action next Tuesday to resolve the increase in authoritarian measures in Hungary.
Viktor Orban and Jose Manuel Barroso meet in Brussels in 2010 (AFP)
The Hungarian regime has been under close watch by those interested in its adherence to EU standards of democracy and human rights. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Hungarian government says it is ‘ready to discuss’ the new laws but continues to maintain that they are in line with international norms.” Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who took office in 2010, has limited the authority of the Constitutional Court, reduced the power of the central bank’s president, forced out judges and prosecutors by changing retirement rules, and gerrymandered districts to solidify his party’s grip on power for years to come. The EU has seen evidence of what the New York Times calls “creeping authoritarianism” since Orban arrived in office, if not before. Counting on Hungary’s dependence on financial assistance has not created the concessions desired by the IMF and the EU, providers of said assistance.
Orban still seems dismissive of the EU’s economic complaints. He was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “They criticized only the past, it’s a clear sign that we are close or we even have an agreement on the possible and wished performance of the Hungarian economy and the budget in 2012.” He sees a promising future for Hungary despite the current difficulties. The Commission, however, says Hungary is relying on “one-off revenues,” failing to make permanent budgetary reforms. While Hungary will not face the financial sanctions made possible by the EU Council’s December treaty agreement, the withholding of development assistance may be just as significant.
Malta and Cyprus joined Belgium in making budget adjustments to meet the Commissions new requirements for economic austerity, while Poland was seen as adequately addressing their economic needs. The EU commission’s new rules have yet to show real teeth with sanctions against a Eurozone member like Belgium. Nonetheless, the EU may use Hungary as an example for other recent EU members and candidate members lacking democratic gusto.
Belgian Economy showing signs of weakness
Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo meets with EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn at the European Commission headquarters, in Brussels 12 December 2011. | BELGA PHOTO Bernal Revert
After 18 months of protracted dispute, Belgium reached agreement on a new government at the end of last year. A new crisis is emerging though – one that has struck at most of Southern Europe and is now moving north. Belgium has the EU’s fifth-highest debt in Europe according to Businessweek and has a deeply divided workforce between the robust white-collar economy of northern Flanders and the post-industrial south of Wallonia.
On January 6, the European Commission rejected Belgium’s proposed budget for 2012 for exceeding the 3.1% annual deficit-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio required of EU members under the Maastricht Treaty. According to Belgian government predictions, their budget would assume a 0.8% growth rate and incur a deficit that would represent 2.8% of GDP. The commission agreed with the growth rate figure, but not the deficit-to-GDP ratio. The commission thus rejected the Belgian budget and gave two options: cut 1.2 to 2 billion euros out of the budget or institute a spending freeze until the implementation of the new budget in February. Belgium chose the latter, equaling 1.3 billion euros in savings.
If the EU decides that this freeze does not make Belgium fit under the Maastricht criteria, it will face sanctions from the EU. This potential for sanctions was agreed upon in early December in Brussels. Belgium is in a sense the guinea pig who will be testing the veracity of the EU’s long-awaited enforcement mechanism.
King Albert II of Belgium
Belgium’s King Albert has also joined in the austerity parade. Belgium is required to keep up an automatic pay raise for its royalty to adjust for inflation (about 3% this year, or €350,000). The King has decided to use this money to pay for upkeep of the royal estate and thus freeze the €10.8 million salary he gets from the state. Other monarchs across Europe have taken to similar patriotic cost-cutting endeavors, including trimming the maintenance bill for Buckingham Palace the Dutch royal yacht.
The end is far from over for Belgium. Luc Coene, Belgian finance minister, predicted “very anemic growth and” at best, to a 0.5% contraction at worst, for the first half of 2012. The EU commission will issue opinions on five EU economies tomorrow, Belgium being the most significant of the five. If the European Commission decides to impose sanctions on Belgium, it may serve as a warning for the rest of the Eurozone. Stay tuned to find out their verdict.
2011: a Rocky Year for the Euro
Of course, the biggest news in Europe in 2011 was the European Debt Crisis. While only one new country (Portugal) received a bailout from the EU, as opposed to two in 2010, European leaders were forced to meet almost quarterly to craft solutions for the heavily indebted countries. In addition, 2011 saw the increase chance that two of the EU’s largest economies—Spain and Italy—might also need assistance. The result was that governments fell in Greece and Italy while Spanish voters replaced their government, all in an attempt to calm the markets and insure solvency.
However, the markets were anything but calm in 2011. The euro started the year off trading at about €1 = $1.33, and finished the year at €1 = $1.29, which is about a 3% decline. However, as the graph below shows, there was a lot of variation in between. At one point in early May, the euro reached $1.49 before beginning its long and less than steady decline. While the euro declined against the dollar, interest rates in Europe continued to rise, and Italy still hangs perilously close to the threshold that many believe would require a bailout (see post). 
As a result, 2012 will probably be the year of reckoning for the euro, as one of two things will occur—either a solution is found that solves the underlying deficiencies in the euro or else one or more countries could find themselves out of the currency block. The European Union Center at Indiana University will continue to offer events and information on this crisis, with our first event being The Euro Crisis: Sovereign Debt or External Imbalances? on Thursday January 12.
Constitutional Differences
In early 2002, a European Convention was formed to draw up the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (commonly called the European Constitution). The European Union was going through two major changes during this period:
- Integration: The countries were agreeing to cede more and greater powers to the EU. The biggest symbol of this increased integration was when 11 countries ended using their own national currencies and adopted the euro in 1999.
- Enlargement: The end of the Cold War allowed the European Union to rapidly expand. In the forty years since the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, only six countries had joined what is now the EU. Between 1995 and 2007, the EU would admit 15 European countries.
With the EU changing so rapidly, many thought that it was time to create a constitution that would prepare Europe for the 21st century.
Since the beginning of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the European Union and its forerunners have been established or modified by treaties. A treaty is essentially a contract between the member states, agreeing that they would cede certain powers to the European Union. This is fundamentally different than a constitution, which is a contract between a government and its citizens. In addition, while United States Constitution is fairly short and flexible, European treaties tend to be long and complicated in order to ensure that the signing states do not unintentionally give power to the European Union.
The European Convention did not do a very good job creating a simple constitution that was a clearly defined contract between the EU and its citizens. For instance, the European Constitution was over 300 pages long in its final form (the original US Constitution was four pages long), and written in a way that made it hard for anyone who was not an expert on the EU to understand. In addition, while the Constitution would make the EU more democratic, such as strengthening the elected European Parliament, the member states still jealously guarded their powers. For example, suggestions that the EU would now have a president elected by all EU citizens were scrapped in favor or a president who would be chosen by the leaders of the member states.
Source: BBC News
In October 2004, the European Constitution was signed by the 25 member states (ten countries had joined the EU in May of that year) and the ratification process began. The biggest down fall to the European Constitution was that like the treaties before it, all of the member states would need to ratify the Constitution according to their own national laws. For the US Constitution, only nine of the 13 states needed to ratify it and the Constitution would become the basic law of the land. Had the European Union been able to apply that threshold for its constitution, the European Constitution would have survived. In the end, the Constitution was ratified by 18 of the 25 member states, including by national referendums in Spain and Luxembourg.
However, referendums in France in May 2005 and the Netherlands in June 2005 failed, bringing the ratification process to an end. Besides its complexity, many voters were opposed to the Constitution for two reasons. The first is that they were fearful that the EU would become very powerful compared to the member states. Just like how states guard their powers in the United States, voters did not want to see, in their eyes, an unelected government in Brussels create an “United States of Europe.” The second problem was that just like in the US, all politics are local, and many voters, especially in France, voted against the constitution because they were unhappy with the French President, Jacques Chirac. Even had the process continued, the Constitution would have had to survive four more referendums, including in the notoriously eurosceptic United Kingdom, where voters were even more concerned about a “European superstate.”
French posters for and against the European Constitution
With the Constitution dead, European leaders began the process of writing the Reform Treaty (commonly known as the Treaty of Lisbon), which contained many of the less controversial aspects of the European Constitution in order for the EU to function with 27 or more members. Again, all member states (now 27) had to ratify the treaty. The Lisbon Treaty was signed in December 2007. Ratification was not without its controversies, as Ireland was forced to hold a second referendum, after Irish voters had voted down the treaty the first time. The treaty formally adopted on December 1, 2009.
For more information on the One State, One World series, please visit http://indianapublicmedia.org/onestateoneworld/. This episode of One State One World is produced in partnership of WFIU Public Radio and the EU Center at Indiana University with support from the European Union.
Seeking Unity On Security
From the original European Coal and Steel Community through to the present European Union, the post-war European integration project has primarily been an economic affair. The single market has strove to eliminate barriers to the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor. The adoption of a single currency strengthened monetary integration. The vast majority of discussions in ministerial meetings, European Commission working groups, and European Parliament committee hearings pertain to economic and monetary regulations and rules. On the economic front, the European Union has achieved a degree of integration and cooperation unique in the history of international relations.
Although different European leaders at various times have expressed the desire to expand that integration to new policy arenas such as foreign policy, defense policy, judicial affairs, criminal justice, and others, until recently those wishes were not manifested in the EU’s actual operations. Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) was first formally integrated into the EU’s policy purview with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 (see One State, One World blog post here). This treaty created the so-called pillared structure of the EU. The first pillar, or European Community, was comprised of the economic, agricultural, environmental, and other policies that the EU had long dealt with. CFSP fell under the second pillar, while the third pillar was Police and Judicial Cooperation.
Source: www.xanthi.ilsp.gr
The policy areas under the second and third pillars were ones in which the member states had resisted giving too much authority to supranational institutions such as the EU. While states had eagerly ceded some of their economic sovereignty to reap the benefits of trade and open markets, they still jealously protected their rights to manage their relations with other states, to react unimpeded against threats to their security, and to manage their criminal justice systems according to their own national norms.
The particular sensitivities that states have towards these policy areas is reflected in how the EU makes decisions in different policy domains. For first pillar policies, the European Commission and the European Parliament, both of which are supposed to represent European, and not national interests, have a great deal of authority. Voting in the Council of Ministers is done by qualified majority, not unanimity, making it easier for the EU to pass policies. For second and third pillar policies, however, the European Parliament does not have veto power over policy proposals, and the decisions in the Council must be reached by unanimity, giving each state a veto (although the recently enacted Lisbon Treaty changed this pillar structure and made some policy areas in justice and home affairs subject to qualified majority voting).
The 2009 Lisbon Treaty attempted to enable the EU to speak with a more unified voice on the world stage, with the creation of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. This post, currently occupied by Catherine Ashton of the UK, is akin to the American Secretary of State. It is difficult to quantify whether these efforts to create a more unified EU foreign policy have succeeded. Ashton has come under criticism for being insufficiently assertive on important foreign policy questions. Some have argued that her task is an impossible one, given that countries simply have divergent foreign policy preferences that no rhetoric about a unified EU can conceal.
What do the EU’s efforts to create a more robust, unified foreign policy mean for the US and American-EU relations? As we discuss in another post, some worry that EU forays into the military and defense arenas could make NATO increasingly irrelevant. However, former Indiana Congressman Lee H. Hamilton wrote in 1999 that is in the U.S.’s interests to see a “Europe that can act with the United States as a partner on a number of challenges with which none of us, acting alone can cope—a Europe that, in partnership with the United States, will work to find solutions to global challenges and a be a leading force for world progress.” (Brookings Review; Summer 1999, Vol. 17 Issue 3, p. 2)
For more information on the One State, One World series, please visit http://indianapublicmedia.org/onestateoneworld/. This episode of One State One World is produced in partnership of WFIU Public Radio and the EU Center at Indiana University through a grant from the European Union.
