European Geostrategy | 13:44, 26 February 2010

By James Rogers

In the British media and political discourse, the recently appointed President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is often poked as a figure of fun. He frequently gets called ‘Rompuy-pumpy’; the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a humorous video about him; and Nigel Farage, the anti-European UKIP MEP created a storm when he called him a ‘damp rag’ and a ‘low-grade bank clerk’ in the European Parliament. While many of these attitudes smack of British arrogance, it is fair to say that President Van Rompuy lacks the aura of power or charisma of someone like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Tony Blair.

However, these slights aside, Mr. Van Rompuy has battled on. Yesterday, he gave his first major speech – called ‘The Challenges for Europe in a Changing World’ – on foreign and security policy since he assumed his presidency, choosing the College of Europe as his venue. And actually, it was quite impressive. The President began his speech by looking into the changing global balance of power, which has begun to have a profound impact on the place of Europeans in the world: on their own, the Member States are no longer strong enough to have much influence on the key issues. This, he says, should not turn Europeans into ‘declinists’; rather, he points out, the only way forward is for the Member States to work together to project their power – yes, power – across the globe through the European Union.

As such, he outlined two key objectives for his presidency:

1. Reforming the European economy, because this will provide the means to remain relevant and provide an incentive for Europeans to remain heavily involved in world politics;
2. Transforming the European Union into a global power, because it is only through having influence and the means to enforce it, that Europeans will get their way and protect their social and economic well-being in the twenty-first century.

As he put it:

As you have learned here at the Collège, Europe started as a market, with a unique working method. We can be proud of what it achieved. However, building a market is different from being a power. “L’Europe-puissance”, as the French like to call it. [. . .] At the Copenhagen Summit we experienced that Europe can no longer shine by the “force of its example” only. You need more than the conviction that your proposal is the best, to win them over. To get in the deal-making game, the Union needs to assert itself politically.

President Van Rompuy’s approach seems to be informed by the approach taken in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which was a seminal book by Paul Kennedy published in the late 1980s. Professor Kennedy argued that a country’s geopolitical power can be correlated to its financial dynamism, economic productivity and industrial might; successful powers are those most able to project themselves economically and geopolitically, without over-extending themselves. In this respect, Mr. Van Rompuy’s approach suggests a good dose of critical strategic thinking on his part, which is a breath of fresh air for those of us who often deplore the wishy-washy mumbo jumbo so frequently pumped-out by Europeans on foreign affairs.

So is Herman Van Rompuy a ‘Rompuy-pumpy’, or is he a closet Machiavelli? Is he a ‘damp rag’, or is he a quiet but clever strategist, working tirelessly behind the scenes to flesh out and project the European interest? Only time will tell. But his first speech on foreign and security policy certainly shows promise, and demands that Europeans should have more respect for their new president, and pay him more attention.

• Credit to Luc Van Braekel on Wikipedia for image.