Europe’s Common Foreign and Security Politics in Historical Perspective: From Post-Colonialism to the Contemporary Debates on Empire and Security

This paper discusses the early beginnings and history of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and explains its close relationship to Britain’s EC membership, and diplomacy in post-colonial near abroad destinations in Northern Africa and across the Mediterranean. The paper proceeds chronologically to discuss the relationship of the CFSP with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the early years of the EU and the immediate years after the break down of the Soviet Union. The paper develops lastly an argument about how the roles of the policy have adjusted to the re-emergence of great power politics both from Russia and the United States in the contemporary period and how the establishment of the European External Action Service has affected the conceptual focus of the policy. The aim of this paper is to provide and develop a narrative of the EU’s CFSP that is conceptually related to post-colonial environment and challenges as well as the re-emergence of Great Power politics that challenges the EU and its federal ideals. The paper’s purpose is also to write and provide a short history of the CSFP while tackling these contemporary sets of issues important to the future of the EU in the short and in the long term.