Introduction

As stated by Buzan and Lawson (2014: 71) there is ‘general agreement that the world is changing, but considerable disagreement about how it is changing’. Climate change is a disruption that challenges both humankind as a whole and the international order. To deal with this, the Paris Agreement from December 2015 aims to limit the global temperature rise to no more than two degrees Celcius by the year 2100 at the latest (UN, 2017). This ambitious political agreement, however, has no credible sanction mechanism for punishing potential defectors that do not wish to reduce greenhouse gases. The risk of free riding is prevalent in climate negotiations (Svendsen, 2005). Thus, swift and decisive action is needed if the political goals are to be achieved. Here, the European Union (EU) and the European External Action Service (EEAS) have, in particular, showcased their commitment to assuming the role of a prominent global climate leader to solve the collective action problem (Jørgensen et al, 2022).

This is no modest ambition, nor an easy path to take for the EU, as we shall see. First, it is not clear from the literature how this collective action problem should be tackled in an efficient way that rewards changes in polluting behaviour and, at the same time, encourages countries to reduce emissions and undertake investments in new green technology (Svendsen, 2020a, 2020b). Second, this cannot be achieved within the traditional foreign policy paradigm of liberal internationalism, as a market failure occurs if the dysfunctional effects of free trade are not corrected by intervention.

Introduction to Chapter 1

This chapter traces the feminist origins of Vulnerability Theory, considering how some early feminist legal critiques by focusing on the social institution of the family also laid the groundwork for a more comprehensive understanding of equality and social justice. The family is a fundamental social institution, which performs a range of socially essential tasks. Those tasks historically have been allocated based on the construction of gender differences. This chapter suggests that, in bringing the gendered family within a gender-equality (or neutrality) paradigm, reformers erred in focusing too much on gender discrimination or disadvantage and not enough on the need to reallocate the necessary dependency work that must be done to replicate society across a wider range of social institutions.

By framing the issue primarily as one of individual rights and gender equality, reformers left unexamined the structural inequities that persisted in the allocation of caregiving duties. The failure to challenge the underlying assumption that the family is the primary and ‘natural’ institution responsible for managing dependency left intact a system that continues to rely heavily on unpaid or underpaid caregiving labour.

This chapter contends that the feminist legal reformers’ pursuit of gender equality, while a necessary step in the quest for social justice, was incomplete. Vulnerability Theory advances the social justice project by offering a more comprehensive framework that recognizes the universality of human dependency and calls for a redistribution of the burdens of care across all of society.

This book is an outcome of the research project ‘Cultivating the Union's Foreign Relations: The EEAS and International Diplomacy’ (EURDIPLO). Full of inspiration from some of the panels at EISA's 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations (Prague 2018), the project idea was penned during the train journey back to Aarhus. The project went live on 1 July 2019, and continued until 31 July 2023, and, informally, throughout 2024 to complete this book. The project's distinct methodology was meant to be direct observation of diplomats at work, a choice inspired by Christian Lequesne and Iver Neumann's eminent research on diplomacy. However, the project was severely impacted at the outset by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the research team and the diplomats had to work at home, and travelling, not to mention research stays abroad, was significantly restricted until renewed academic interaction and creativity kicked in under rapidly changing international circumstances with profound implications for the EU.

The chapters of the book were presented at three workshops. They took place in Rafina (30 August to 1 September 2022), in Rapallo (7–10 November 2022) and in Brussels (15 June 2023). While the framework chapter provided the rationale and background for each workshop, it was different configurations of participants that characterized them. During the process the chapters eventually crystallized, shaped by the different settings and participants’ vivid exchange of ideas, valuable insights and generous suggestions.

In the 5-year duration of the project, we have benefitted tremendously from the contributions of many who engaged in the project and its papers, as well as from the financial support of the Danish Social Science Research Council.

Introduction

The European Union (EU) has over the past decade been confronted with considerable internal and external challenges. The so-called migrant crisis of 2015, the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU (Brexit), the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 are just some of the significant challenges that have placed demands on the EU to reshape its foreign and security policy. At the same time, the EU is also under pressure from within. Increasing contestation between member states can be identified in relation to issues such as human rights, sexual health, and reproductive rights, external aspects of migration and relations with major powers such as Russia, the US, and China (Balfour et al, 2016; Koenig, 2020; Müller et al, 2021; Barbé and Badell, 2023).

However, while EU foreign policy has been labelled as increasingly fragmented and politicized (Barbé and Morillas, 2019; Costa, 2019; Crombois, 2019; Hegemann and Schneckener, 2019; Johansson-Nogués et al, 2020; Juncos and Pomorska, 2021; Müller et al, 2021), there is a clear discrepancy between these challenges and what the EU actually does in practice. Within the sphere of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the EU continues to produce strategy documents and council conclusions, and implement sanctions against individuals and companies. In other words, despite these challenges, the EU continues to produce a common foreign policy. How is this possible?

Introduction

This chapter examines changes in the EU's foreign policy towards Russia by assessing their gradually increasing contentions over Ukraine in two phases: First, from the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 until November 2018 when Russia was shelling Ukrainian vessels in the Kerch Strait. Second, since this incident in the Sea of Azov until January 2025. The chapter considers Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the shelling of Ukrainian vessels in the Sea of Azov in 2018, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as critical junctures, demonstrating Russia's increasing threat towards Ukraine and shaping the EU's changing policy paradigm towards Moscow since 2014. In line with this book's main objective, the chapter examines paradigmatic and strategic shifts in the EU's policy goals and instruments (Hall, 1993) since 2014 in the context of power transition, Russian aggression and the spread of anti-Liberal ideas (see Chapters 1 and 2 in this volume). This chapter demonstrates that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced the EU to adapt its foreign policy and reconsider its underlying liberal-international principles in its relations with Russia. The study of this change in the EU's response to Russia's aggression since 2014 is embedded in a historical institutionalist framework, an approach in political science assuming that political decisions are shaped in a respective context but open for change, for instance following shocks or policy failures (Hall, 1993; Steinmo, 2016).

To further conceptualize the EU's abilities and constraints in its foreign policy towards Russia, this chapter applies Charlotte Bretherton and John Vogler's concept of ‘actorness’.

Introduction to Lecture 3

This lecture considered the limited ways in which injury or harm is understood, particularly in US political and legal culture. The concern is with the inability of contemporary constitutional or political theory to interpret the failure of collective or state action as constituting a harm worthy of recognition and compelling remedial action. In this lecture, I am interested in the norms and values that inform the principles governing the exercise of action and restraint on the part of the state when it acts as sovereign and in its relationship with individuals as political or legal subjects.

The idea that constitutional injury or harm can be caused by state inaction is not well-developed in US political and legal culture. Indeed, the norms and values informing our ideas of appropriate actions on the part of the state, as well as defining the corresponding entitlements of political or legal subjects, are firmly anchored in the principle of non-intervention or inaction. The spectre of state or public interference with individual privacy or liberty interests haunts the American constitutional order and shapes what is perceived as constituting injurious state action. Restraints on the state are viewed as imposed by the terms of the social contract, which is often referred to as creating a system of ‘negative rights’. By contrast, ‘positive rights’ would place affirmative obligations on the state (and/or others) to act in the interest of others.

Introduction

A liberal internationalist identity has been at the heart of the European Union (EU) since its foundation. The main conclusion of this volume is that this distinct identity remains at the heart of the EU. Accordingly, liberal values and principles continue to characterize the EU's foreign policy paradigm. Given that liberal values and principles also traditionally characterize American foreign policy, it was for the EU plain sailing in tandem, especially during the unipolar moment in world history. However, the liberal internationalist orientation is increasingly and strongly challenged by anti-liberal powers and their international practices. Thus, EU foreign policymakers are faced with an international environment that is characterized by power politics, growing great power rivalry, and the ongoing Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The analytical questions posed at the outset of this volume pertain to how shocks and challenges might influence EU policymakers’ worldviews, problem definition and their reasons for action or inaction, respectively. How do policymakers define the problems they face, that is, the situation in which the EU is situated? Do they reconsider the EU's foreign policy objectives and means? What constitutes the nexus between their worldviews and the EU's liberal internationalism? In this conclusive chapter, we address these issues in three sections, focusing on changing ideas and thinking among EU policymakers, changing strategies and policy paradigms towards other powers, and changing institutional settings and strategic communication. In order to reduce possible misunderstandings, we emphasize that the definition of policy paradigms causes an exclusive focus on policymakers. Hence, one should not expect a tableau of scholarly paradigms.

Energy justice is a rapidly growing social science construct that allows policymakers, academics and practitioners to unpack how energy interfaces with modern society. There could be no better time to consider these links than now, as climate change is rapidly pushing governments around the world to permanently shift their systems of energy production and consumption.

In the last half a decade, energy justice has become a popular research agenda (Jenkins et al, 2016) and a robust conceptual, analytical and decision-making framework (Sovacool and Dworkin, 2015) to explore ‘injustices in the energy system related to aspects such as class, race, ethnicity, age, gender or spatial and economic inequalities’ (Hanke et al, 2021). A significant proportion of the contexts where this framework has been applied, however, have been situated in the Global North, mostly in Europe and the US. As Jones (2022) points out, the specific socio-economic, political and gender sensitivities that dominate the Global South are plainly absent in the North. As such, currently knowledge of experiences of energy justice or injustice is not robust enough to draw on and inform policymaking in the Global South, where the overwhelming share of the world's energy poor live.

Jones’ chapter makes a novel contribution by bringing to the academic discourse on energy justice a critical assessment of ‘lived’ experiences of energy injustice and long-term implications for human rights from the Global South. Collecting first-hand information from one of the world's most poor, densely packed urban slum regions, the chapter provides a ‘grounded’ assessment of what energy injustice means and how it manifests locally at an individual and household level.

China under Xi Jinping has become increasingly assertive in claiming a leading position in the world. It does not conceal its ambition to become a ‘global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence’ (Xi, 2017c). Most observers have no doubt that China is an emerging global power, if not superpower, that will play a decisive role in the world of the 21st century and possibly challenge the hegemonic position of the United States. China's rise to power started in the late 1970s with Deng Xiaoping's policy of reform and opening up to the outside world, which led to an unprecedented economic development and made China the second largest economy worldwide, second only to the United States. More recently, China has significantly increased its military capabilities. Although it is far from becoming a global military power, its military build-up in the South China Sea and increasingly close partnership with Russia causes concern among its neighbours and members of the US-led liberal international society.

Economic and military power are essential for a state to become a global leader. However, it must not be ignored that international leadership demands more than hard power. To exert leadership also means influencing the rules of international relations and shaping global international society according to one's interests and values. Therefore, analysis of China's ambitions of enhancing its international influence must include its policy of increasing its normative power. If, as most observers maintain, China is challenging, if not threatening, the dominance of the United States and liberal international society, it is not sufficient to look only at its economic and military strength and try to contain it in some way.

As the previous chapter has shown, China uses the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a regional international society serving as a testing ground for establishing new normative concepts in interstate relations. Assuming that China's ambitions as a normative power go beyond the SCO, this chapter gives examples of how China, with the help of the SCO, attempts to institute specific interpretations of existing norms and infuse its own concepts into the discourse of global international society.

The first section outlines the SCO's codification of China's interpretation of the universally accepted ‘principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states’. Following, I turn to the organization's changed interpretation of a major norm of liberal international society, ‘democracy’. Third, the SCO's institutionalization of the ‘Community of Common Destiny’ is discussed, which is a concept China has created and strives to promote globally. The analysis reveals that China has been able to use the SCO as a multilateral platform to institutionalize its interpretation of existing international norms and support the promotion of a flagship concept of its foreign policy. The last part of the chapter highlights the ambiguity and overlap of norms championed by China to explain the connections between the concepts.

The principle of non-interference: a foundational norm of international relations

The ‘principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states’ (hereafter: ‘principle of non-interference’) is one of the foundational norms of international relations.

The year 2049 marks both the centenary of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the scheduled completion of the ‘Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation’, which has been a core slogan of Xi Jinping's rule ever since he became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012 and President of the PRC in March 2013. According to Xi, a ‘rejuvenated’ China will act as a ‘global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence’ (Xi, 2017c). It is the declared aim of the Chinese government under Xi to make China pre-eminent in international affairs by no later than 2049. China has become and remains the world's largest trading partner, steadily increased its military budget, campaigned for more Chinese leadership positions at the United Nations (UN) specialized agencies, and built new international networks and connections through frameworks such as its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). All of this is occurring at the same time as the worldwide appeal of the current leading power, the United States, is dwindling, and the European Union (EU) – once perceived as a ‘model regional organization’ – seems to be slipping from one crisis to another. Considering these rather favourable conditions, China's ambition to become a global leader by 2049 is by no means illusionary. But what would an international order led by China look like and how is China seeking to shape international rules and norms? What role do its self-created intergovernmental organizations play in this context and to what extent is the Chinese government able to dictate the rules of these multilateral formats?