Introduction

The most obvious way in which neoliberal politics disconnect us from ourselves is by encouraging us to think less about who we are and our actual interests than who we want to be and with what interests we identify. This is framed as ‘the politics of aspiration’. Instead of focusing on where we actually are, the emphasis becomes what, who and where we might want, or be led, to believe we can be.

Like many other ideas which started with progressive aims, like cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), the idea of aspirational politics is often used to reinforce the status quo, although it also has origins in challenging it. The broadest sense in which the idea has developed relates to setting aspirational political goals, like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to eliminate poverty and hunger, or the UN Conventions to safeguard the rights of children and disabled people. Aspirations in this sense are lofty goals ‘that exist without being fully realised, and towards which one progresses by means of change’ (Roosevelt, 2012, cited in Finnemore and Jurkovich, 2020, p 760). Our reach may always exceed our grasp, but they help by providing targets for politicians and for people to press for. They carry risks; identifying targets isn't the same as achieving them. Electorates can grow weary of such a process and become open to manipulation if their politicians can't be held to account (Finnemore and Jurkovich, 2020, op cit).

Introduction

For the first time, the European Union faces a robust alternative to liberal internationalism. The liberal internationalist substance of the EU's competing foreign policy paradigms is exemplified by their common support for multilateralism, international organizations, international law, rules-based trade, and human rights. The emerging alternative, which we have termed reactionary internationalism (de Orellana and Michelsen, 2019), sees ongoing geopolitical challenges from nationalist states on Europe's border, the decline of United States hegemony, and internal criticism from populist nationalists inside Europe, as elements in a systemic reconstitution of international order around new and different principles.

In this chapter, we explain precisely how the EU's ‘liberal-internationalist identity’ is being contested by this alternative (see Chapter 1 of this volume). Our analysis lays the groundwork for understanding how this may already be reshaping EU foreign policy paradigms.

A diplomatic compact has emerged between New Right populists in democracies like the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, Holland, India, Brazil, and Hungary, and authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. These actors share a commonly articulated desire to dismantle liberal international norms, particularly rights and rules-based multilateralism, and replace them with a distinct vision of sovereignty, prioritization of transactional deal-making, and spheres of exclusive competence (Costa Buranelli, 2020b). These actors focus on the need to correct the impacts of the ‘globalist’ institutions that arose following of the end of the Cold War, a discourse clearly articulated in Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin's public diplomacy concerning the war in Ukraine, but which long predates these events.

Introduction to Lecture 1

This chapter explores the concept of the ontological body in order to highlight the universality of vulnerability and its implications for law and policy. It presents the foundational premise of Vulnerability Theory: as embodied beings, we are all inherently and inescapably embedded in social institutions and relationships throughout our lives. Embodied vulnerability, as well as the dependency on social institutions and relationships that it inevitably generates, presents an unambiguous challenge to (neo)liberal understandings of the nature and place of the individual. In doing so, it also demonstrates the necessity of social institutions, including those of governance.

Currently, our political theory seems precariously grounded on individualized and unrealistic notions of liberty and autonomy, reliant on a political subject fully capable of marshalling resources and able to act independently and rationally in most situations. As such, these neoliberal narratives render incomprehensible the argument that the democratic state has a primary role in defining and addressing the structural conditions necessary to achieve a communal sense of social justice. In contrast, Vulnerability Theory emphasizes the fundamental role of societal institutions in addressing dependency. Instead of working through law and policy to balance the collective, often competing interests of individuals in various situations or circumstances, the guiding premise of neoliberalism is that the state is to be restrained from interfering with economic and other social arrangements in order to protect the individual's right to liberty and choice as to what is in their best interest. This preference for individual liberty and autonomy positions the individual as separate from the social or collective. It also suggests that individual wellbeing is primarily an individual responsibility.

Introduction to Lecture 4

Equality as an overarching aspiration (like liberty and autonomy) is grounded on a particular uncontextualized vision of the individual and an impoverished sense of the human condition that distorts our aspiration for justice and our expectations for collective responsibility.

Beginning with the body, Vulnerability Theory brings the temporal dimension of the life course into consideration, altering and complicating any discussion of what is the appropriate nature and extent of state responsibility for the wellbeing of the individual. A life-course perspective provides important insights into the totality of the human condition, and forces us to confront the illusion of equality as an organizing aspiration for a truly just society. It also urges us to consider how changes in the body over time should affect the ways in which we define our social institutions and relationships.

This discussion of inevitable inequality is fundamentally a discussion about the function and nature of social institutions and relationships and the role they play in shaping the individual. This discussion is not focused on the demographic differences or variations among individuals that are the focus of traditional anti-discrimination models of justice, but on the developmental changes that occur within every body. These inherent differences, which are biological and developmental, emerging over time, are largely ignored in constructing traditional theories about the appropriate relationship between the state and the legal or political subject.

Introduction

The European Union's (EU’s) foreign policy and identity as a global actor have been deeply embedded in the liberal internationalist policy paradigm (Jørgensen et al, Chapter 1 in this volume; Jørgensen et al, 2020). The principles and norms of liberal internationalism, such as free trade, mutual respect of sovereignty, collective security, multilateralism, rule of law, human rights, and the promotion of democracy, have been consistently reflected in EU treaties and even described as part of the EU's generic code (Barroso, 2010).

However, the EU's quest to defend and promote these norms and principles on the world stage have come under increasing pressure in the last decade. The global power shift away from the collective West and the rise of China have intensified great power competition at the expense of international norms and institutions. At the same time, the rise of nationalism and a widespread resistance to globalization have contributed to the British vote to leave the Union and to the democratic backsliding in some EU and NATO countries (see Michelsen et al, Chapter 2 in this volume). In the United States (US), the Trump administration's transactional approach to international politics undermined multilateralism and international organizations, while the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the EU's vulnerabilities to global supply chains and external trade partners. Finally, Russia's territorial revisionism and war of aggression against Ukraine threaten basic principles of international order as well as the liberal-internationalist policy paradigm of the EU.

Introduction

It is not at all obvious that what the member states of the European Union (EU) do collectively in the realm of foreign policy is more important than what they do separately, in groupings or alone. Yet what has attracted most attention in academic and policy circles over the last three decades is common European foreign policy, or EU foreign policy for short, eclipsing this way our understanding of both what member states do in concert, and what they do independently. Beyond exaggerating the significance of EU foreign policy, we may this way have misread the autonomy of member states to work together ad hoc, among themselves or with third states, and pursue their foreign policy goals outside EU foreign policy. Given how crucial foreign policy is for enacting sovereign statehood, it is strange not to consider the full spectrum of options that member states possess in the realm of foreign policy, whether one is interested in understanding collective or individual foreign policy of member states, or both.

This chapter seeks to address this anomaly by theorizing European foreign policy beyond the EU. It develops a new perspective to think about foreign policy options, within and outside EU foreign policy, to allow for a systematic assessment of their use and relative weight. It explores ad hoc cooperation, or minilateralism, to illustrate foreign policy action beyond EU foreign policy and the paradigm of unity that underpins it. The chapter conceives of minilateralism as a function of rival visions about foreign policy ends and uneven possession of means to attain them.

In 2022, I was invited by a group of scholars at Trinity College, Dublin to deliver a series of lectures on the concept of vulnerability as the basis for an enhanced vision of state or collective responsibility. I organized the lectures around several principles that highlighted how the insights of what is called ‘Vulnerability Theory’ reveal and challenge the foundational assumptions underlying mainstream legal and political approaches to justice. My fundamental belief, and the underlying premise of Vulnerability Theory, is that to be appropriately labelled just, a theory must be attentive to the material circumstances of the human condition, emphasizing the interconnectedness and dependence of individuals within society, as well as the complexities of contemporary life.

In viewing such circumstances and complexities as primary considerations, Vulnerability Theory could be deemed an application of Robert Merton's ‘theory of the middle range’, which posits that the most significant (and confounding) questions often arise in the tension generated in the spaces between the empirical realities of life and the grand theories or metanarratives of political and public aspirations. These tensions present a challenging and compelling occasion for theoretical, as well as practical, adjustments and revisions.

Vulnerability Theory begins by considering the corporeal body as its foundational empirical concept, focusing on the implications of the fragility and dependency of the body while critically assessing the abstract constructs that dominate our political world, such as equality and liberty, which constrain and limit our vision for change and transformation. By emphasizing the corporeal body, Vulnerability Theory foregrounds the physical and social realities of human existence, advocating for a shift in critical attention (at least initially) from abstract ideals to concrete human experiences.

Introduction

Aiming at responding to new realities in world politics, the European Union (EU) has introduced a flurry of concepts, for instance when the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the High Representative Josep Borrell, took office. They highlighted geopolitics but the framework of ideas is much wider and includes key concepts such as European sovereignty, strategic autonomy, civilization, resilience, strategic compass, responsibility, and Zeitenwende (European Council, 2003; EEAS, 2016; EEAS, 2022; European Council, 2024). Each of these concepts has triggered an avalanche of debates, focusing on how the concepts should be interpreted, their relevance and their prudence.1 Combined, the employment of the concepts and the ongoing policy debates suggest that the politics of EU foreign policy has entered a dynamic phase and foreign policy objectives, instruments as well as policymakers’ worldviews are in a process of reconsideration. What does this mean to the deeper framework of ideas that underlies EU foreign policy thinking? This is the key motivation and puzzle behind this volume.

A liberal-internationalist identity has been at the heart of the EU since its birth, evidenced in numerous foundational documents and successive EU foreign policy strategies, most notably the Declaration on European Identity (EC, 1973), the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2003) and the EU Global Strategy (EEAS, 2016). In recent years, this liberal-internationalist identity has faced new realities both at home and abroad. Major parts of the world tend increasingly to contest the liberal-internationalist ideal, envisioned and promoted by the EU.

The Law, Society, Policy series publishes high-quality, socio-legal research monographs and edited collections with the potential for policy impact. Cutting across the traditional divides of legal scholarship, Law, Society, Policy offers an interdisciplinary, policy-engaged approach to socio-legal research that explores law in its social and political contexts with a particular focus on the place of law in everyday life.

The series seeks to take an explicitly society-first view of socio-legal studies, with a focus on the ways that law shapes social life, and the constitutive nature of law and society. International in scope, engaging with domestic, international and global legal and regulatory frameworks, texts in the Law, Society, Policy series engage with the full range of socio-legal topics and themes.

Introduction to Chapter 6

As the preceding chapters have emphasized, the most significant theoretical focus of Vulnerability Theory is the concept of universal embodiment. It is an embodied (and therefore vulnerable) individual who encounters the myriad and inevitably shifting circumstances and situations of life. Rather than a distinct disadvantage or weakness attributed only to some individuals or present in distinct circumstances, vulnerability should be understood as a continuum of variations that together constitute the human condition.

In addition, the theory makes clear that the inherent dependency and limitations of the body necessitate reliance on functioning social institutions and relationships, which can foster individual resilience. Resilience is composed of social resources and relationships, which are the product of institutional policies and programmes when they are responsive and adaptive to the lived realities of the vulnerable subject.

As also emphasized in the lectures, far from being individual, variable, and particular traits or characteristics, both vulnerability (signifying our embodiment) and resilience (signifying our embeddedness) are the universal manifestations of the collective human condition. Combined, these insights form the foundation for Vulnerability Theory.

By institutionalizing the individual, we challenge the dominant legal and political narratives that prioritize individual autonomy and liberty over collective wellbeing. This approach brings the collective dimensions of justice into focus and mandates a broader and more inclusive conception of state responsibility, one that moves beyond merely safeguarding individual rights to actively shaping the social conditions necessary for resilience and wellbeing.

Introduction to Lecture 2

This lecture considers the difficulty of conceiving a truly collective approach to individual and societal wellbeing in the context of currently dominant ways of thinking about social justice. Certainly, a great deal of resistance is formed in the shadow of the individualistic non-interventionist rhetoric that dominates contemporary political discourse on the conservative level. However, the difficulty in accepting a truly all-encompassing notion of justice – one that has more universal roots – is also found in a liberal rights-based, anti-discrimination sense of social justice. This approach focuses on the compelling need to respond to the legacies of historic injustices that affirmatively targeted generally ignored, or inequitably impacted, specific groups within society, and is decidedly different than that presented by the non-interventionists.

The dominant frame for progressive critics of governmental policies, rights-based anti-discrimination approaches echo an undeniable reality. The challenge, therefore, for those seeking a broader, more generally inclusive, notion of social justice, is to imagine an overall theoretical approach that can encompass and advance remedies for past failures and faults evidenced by discriminatory policies and practices while also serving as a foundational, universally applicable, and coherent theory arguing for the just treatment of all in society going forward.

This ambition to create an expansive notion of social justice seems particularly crucial. Today we inhabit a world of dynamic complexity, insecurity, and uncertainty unimaginable to the political actors who shaped foundational governing documents, such as the US Constitution during the eighteenth century.

Introduction

Ever since the 1970s, scholars of the external dimension of the European Integration project have engaged in conceptual and empirical debates about the nature of the European Union (EU) as a specific ‘actor’ and ‘power’ in world politics. Particularly the competing paradigms of ‘Civilian Power Europe’ and ‘Military Power Europe’ have given rise to a wide range of ‘variations of the same theme’: the question of whether the external dimension of European integration is a new form of ‘post-realist’ power in global affairs that has overcome the spectre of great power competition and geopolitics on the one hand, or the view that the EU is just an extension of geopolitics by other means on the other hand.

In this context, ‘Civilian Power Europe’, first coined by François Duchêne in 1973 in an international context of great power ‘détente’, entailed a view (and EU-endorsed paradigm and discourse) of the EEC as indeed an allegedly novel foreign policy power that had moved beyond ‘traditional’ military and geopolitical power and instead reshaped international affairs through trade, international law and the values of human rights and democracy. In essence, this concept and paradigm had undergone various re-formulations during the 1990s (Maull, 1990) and 2000s (Smith, 2005) and variations, such as the EU as a ‘normative power’ (Manners, 2000, 2002), ‘transformative power’ (Leonard, 2005), soft power (Nielsen, 2013) or ‘Liberal Power Europe’ (Wagner, 2017), stressing the non-coercive and normative aspects of the EU and its commitment to multilateralism and global governance (Jørgensen, 2015).

Introduction

I need you to be much more engaged in this battle of narratives. It is not something secondary. It is not just winning the wars by sending tanks, missiles, and troops. It is a big battle: who is going to win the spirits and the souls of people? (HR/VP Josep Borrell speech, EU ambassador's conference October 2022)

In the last decade, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic arm, has evolved with an expanding mandate to increase and manage EU ‘visibility’ and to engage both external and internal publics in matters of EU foreign policy (Duke, 2013). EU visibility is thus closely linked to the aim of recognition for the EU's global role. Efforts to increase EU visibility, a responsibility inherited from the European Commission, were initially pursued by the EEAS by means of small but increasingly prioritized public diplomacy measures. In a matter of years, managing the information environment and protecting the visibility of the EU became a goal more directly integrated in the foreign policy ambitions of the EU (EEAS, 2016) and intimately entangled with digitalization. By the end of 2022, a new competitive and security-laden reinterpretation of EU visibility was firmly embedded in the EU's involvement in ‘battle of narratives’ (EEAS, 2023a) and the expanded agenda for EU digital diplomacy (Council of the European Union, 2022a, 2023).

The change from a technocratic term to a deeply political practice reflects a reinterpretation in power political terms and some of the major power shifts and changing conditions facing the EU, as a foreign policy actor explored in this volume.

Introduction

At the end of his first year as High Representative of EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission (HRVP), Josep Borrell conceded that references to Europe being obliged to ‘learn quickly to speak the language of power’ had turned into the landmark quote of his mandate (Borrell, 2020). For the leadership of the EU institutions in the period 2019– 2024, the heightened rhetoric testifies to the adjustment to a geopolitical international order which has brought profound changes to the EU's foreign and security policy.

The shift from a liberal-oriented, rules-based international system to a geopolitical order amounts to a shock to the EU leading to changes in the worldviews and threat perceptions of European political and bureaucratic elites and thereby potentially also the paradigmatic foundations of the EU (Jørgensen et al, 2022; Jørgensen et al, Chapter 1 in this volume). The challenges they face range from the weakening of the rules-based order and break-down of global values-chains, to Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China's belligerence in the South and East China Seas and these powers’ weaponization of economic interdependence. Furthermore, the increasing polarization of American politics has added to the uncertainty concerning the international order as fears abounded of the return to power of Donald Trump, who under his first presidency 2017-2021, withdrew or threatened to suspended the US's participation from international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), respectively, and questioned its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Introduction

The Russian invasion of Ukrainian territories in February 2022 spurred the EU into a frantic search to update its grand strategy and develop new policies regarding its eastern neighbourhood. The unprovoked war sparked a zeitenwende for Europe, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it in his 27 February 2022 speech to the German Bundestag (Scholz, 2022). This is so, not only because the brutal war has come with much Ukrainian suffering and destruction, but also because the European Union (EU), with much success in keeping the continent in relative peace since 1945, has belatedly realized that it urgently needs to revamp its grand strategy given the new existential threats and challenges that have destabilized the continental and global order.

Understandably, the Russian war in Ukraine has also led to a renewal of European and global interest in Europe's recent peripheral dynamics. There have been important geostrategic shuffles in the EU neighbourhood over the last two decades, which has prompted the EU to develop new policy responses to them. In this context, the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2003), the European Neighbourhood Policy (Commission of the European Communities, 2004), the EU Global Strategy (EEAS, 2016) and a few other interim initiatives all reflected the trajectory of the EU's evolving grand strategy and neighbourhood policies. However, two more recent developments in the wake of the war in Ukraine have been particularly significant in this evolving EU strategic trajectory.