This story shows what is wrong with ‘EU Foreign Policy’.
As previously posted, in dealing with difficult problems a thematic, sustained and firm approach can bring positive results. Especially if it is thematic, sustained and firm.
In this case the EU responds reasonably firmly to terrible killings by the Uzbekistan authorities in May 2005. But then is neither thematic or sustained.
Craig Murray would have us believe that it is ‘short-sighted US Republicans’ who turn the biggest blind eye to Uzbekistan abuses, because the USA has a huge airbase there.
Yet lo, it turns out that Germany has a goodly airbase there too, and in a generous gesture of humanitarianism issued a visa to the cancerous Uzbekistan Minister responsible for the massacre to help him be kept alive in a German hospital. Germany is said to be leading the push to drop EU measures.
Good news: US troops can use the German base now, the offending US base having been closed in 2005 after the short-sighted Republican Bush team spoke out against the Uzbeks’ massacre.
So EU pressure on Uzbekistan looks to be dwindling a mere 170 weeks after the massacre, although various restrictions remain in place.
Why?
Basically because it is all Just Too Difficult.
The key argument in favour of an ‘EU Foreign Policy’ we hear in the UK is that it acts as a multiplier for British positions.
What tends not to be mentioned is that it acts as a multiplier for other EU Member States’ positions too, not least when they disagree with us.
Result?
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