While writing a new introduction to a book I translated some years ago titled The Shortest History of Europe by historian John Hirst, I asked an expert on European political affairs about the feasibility of the EU’s economic security strategy.

“Which one?” he answered. He went on to explain that there is a whole collection of agreements, resolutions, pledges, and recommendations bearing on the EU’s economic strategy.

They include the Democracy Defence Package and the Global Gateway Initiative, which aims to boost connectivity by enhancing smart, clean, and secure links in digital, energy, and transport sectors, and to strengthen health, education, and scientific research systems worldwide. They also include the Critical Raw Materials Act, the Chips Act, and the Zero Emissions Act. Together, these form a set of documents, varying in respect of how far they are mandatory, that aim to empower Europe’s economy.

In addition to the Zero Emissions Act, there is also the so-called Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. This controversial EU regulation will have significant impacts on the exports of the developing countries to Europe, including steel, iron, aluminium, fertilisers, cement, hydrogen products, and electricity. It will come into effect in 2026 after the transitional phase that began in 2023.

There is a witticism that says that European officials have a strategy for everything, including what to have for breakfast, and it is true that a whole industry is now involved in formulating such strategies. It sprawls across the headquarters in Brussels to ministerial offices of member states, agencies responsible for the formation of official polices, and hundreds of academic research centres and consulting firms that vie to develop and evaluate these strategies.

A particularly delightful work in this regard is Strategy: A History by Sir Lawrence Freedman, a UK expert on war and international politics. Freedman’s encyclopaedic work takes a long historical view of the development of the concept and the practice of strategy in different historical, political, and economic contexts.

Another expert on strategy but from corporate perspective is Michael Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School in the US, who offers a simplified definition: strategy is about making specific choices among available alternatives to achieve certain goals, he says.

In formulating this definition, he was focusing on market competition and devised what he termed the “Five Forces” framework for decision-making. The Forces include: competitive rivalry among existing firms in the marketplace; the threat of new entrants that would increase competition; the threat of substitutes leading customers to switch to a competitor’s product; the bargaining power of suppliers; and the bargaining power of buyers.

Freedman’s comprehensive historical approach to strategy in international policy needs to be combined with Porter’s advice to business leaders for formulating their market strategies to understand where I am going with my assessment of the latest EU economic security strategy, which is another chapter in the history of attempts to establish a cohesive European geopolitical bloc.

The EU has announced five initiatives for implementation, including reviewing and auditing the rules for screening foreign direct investment coming into Europe, developing export control regulations, especially as pertaining to high-tech products, and establishing a system for screening European direct investments outside Europe to align with the G7 group’s perspective on biotechnology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and quantum technology.

There is also the issue of advancing technological research, considering that the US is home to about 40 per cent of global research and development, followed by China at about 18 per cent, the EU comes a close third with a slightly lower percentage. And there is preventing “leakage” from the research and development system by banning third-party countries from participating in EU-funded research in sectors vital to European security.

As I wrote in my introduction to the translation of The Shortest History of Europe, “strategies can be written out and elaborated on at length, but the real measure is in execution and the results, which is to say the impact they have on a country’s advancement and status and on the conditions and welfare of its people. European history is replete with strategies and projects that were too ambitious for the countries’ means and too challenging for their leaders to implement.”

Lack of ambition was never a problem. The problem with previous strategies was in the execution, which was often hampered by bureaucratic obstacles and the adverse winds of shocks that came too rapidly for the EU’s slow-moving institutional systems to handle.

Strategy is an integrated process that entails making choices by those with decision-making power and the ability to implement those choices. The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies has identified several areas where the EU could run into trouble when carrying out its five initiatives.

The first relates to the EU’s capacity to persuade its members to implement them; the second to the EU’s ability to handle the reactions to its strategy from countries outside Europe, specifically China; and the third is the availability of sustained political will. The latter, to me, is a particularly important consideration given the possibility of changes in leadership through elections in the EU countries or potential shifts in the positions of elected leaders who manage to survive elections.

In addition to the foregoing, the implementation of the EU’s economic security strategy risks violating two principles. The first is that no country or bloc of countries can achieve economic security in isolation. It is achieved through effective integration and engagement in international trade and investment. The second is that economic security does not come from protectionist policies imposed to salvage poorly performing industries and economic activities. The costs of this are inevitably felt in budgetary strains and cutbacks and in declining living standards.

An important article by economist John Pisani-Ferry asks in its title “What Does It Take to Awaken Europe?” The author highlights the major economic challenges Europe faces, such as declining competitiveness, energy crises, and security issues. I believe these challenges are aggravated by an aging demographic structure with growing dependency rates and threatened by climate change and disparities in income and employment opportunities.

European history reminds us that such challenges can take one of two paths: the first leads to an early resolution by wise and decisive leadership, bringing Europe to a safe shore; the other leads to failure, which fuels racism and xenophobia and conflict and possibly even war.

This article also appears in Arabic in Wednesday’s edition of Asharq Al-Awsat.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly