A long report by the ‘European Council on Foreign Relations’ describes how the EU is losing ground at the UN in terms of mobilising support from other countries for votes on human rights issues.

A summary is here. See also the Guardian account.

The general problem? Thus:

"The EU is suffering a slow-motion crisis at the UN," says the report, noting that the west is now being regularly outwitted in global diplomatic poker by the Chinese and Russians. "The problem is fading power to set the rules. The UN is increasingly being shaped by China, Russia and their allies … The west is in disarray. The EU’s rifts with the US on many human rights issues at the UN in the Bush era have weakened both."

… The assembly kicked off this week in New York with the west bracing itself for another debacle. Serbia is to use the session to demand a vote on the "illegality" of the secession last February of Kosovo, whose breakaway was strongly backed by the US and most of the EU, and to refer the dispute to the UN’s international court of justice.

Despite strenuous lobbying by the Europeans to prevent the vote, they have conceded defeat. Only 46 of the 192 UN states have recognised Kosovo’s independence. And western attempts to rally support for Georgia in the Caucasus crisis will be rebuffed by the Russians.

… The poor European record on winning the world’s hearts and minds contrasts with Brussels’ habit of talking up the merits of its "soft power" attractiveness, and indicates that the EU’s huge financial investment in being the world’s biggest aid donor and the UN’s biggest funder is not translating into political gains.

Well.

All this is not surprising.

The point is that ineffectiveness in EU ‘foreign policy’ is not a problem. It’s a feature!

Once a decision is taken to try to coordinate views on difficult foreign policy issues between 27 countries (many lacking any serious analytical/operational capacity) and then try to swing resources into play to pursue the decisons finally taken, a crashing dumbing-down and sluggishness are inevitable.

As the report points out, instead of getting stuck in lobbying in UN corridors, EU diplomats in New York spend huge amounts of time ‘coordinating’ … with each other.

Of course the EU tries to compensate for this by proclaiming that it uses nice, palatable ‘soft power’ rather than all that nasty ‘hard’ power deployed by the Americans, Russians and Chinese.

The EU prides itself on being a cheery, unthreatening Fotherington-Thomas, its blonde curls shining as it dances gaily on the world stage and urges everyone else to look at climate change: "hullo clouds, hullo sky!"

To the surprise of no-one but EU ideologues, a punch on the nose attracts global attention in a way that the busy waving of a powder-puff does not.

These are deep waters, swirling around the viability of the EU’s external efforts as now designed.

The ECFR report contains this astonishing inept sentence:

The EU has to develop a political narrative around creating momentum for new human rights initiatives while protecting established principles against sovereignty hawks.

That n-word again. Followed by a long list of windy bureaucratic let’s-keep-digging suggestions whose beneficial effect will be exactly nil (more human rights envoys, a new independent fund for campaigns run by NGOs!)

Wrong.

What the EU should do is stop sitting down at the UN or anywhere else to pronounce on human rights with countries who fail to meet basic human rights standards.

This means above all walking out from and de-legitimizing (and ideally collapsing) the so-called Human Rights Council at the UN, a body whose substantive role is to validate regimes which abuse human rights.

It also should start to use the aspect of hardish power where it has real weight, namely money. Countries which vote against key human rights positions at the UN get no more EU assistance. Create a different incentive structure. At the moment too many countries think the EU is a group of weak suckers.

To do this, take foreign policy and assistance policy out of the EU structure altogether, ie deliberately retreat from the Lisbon Treaty. Give back to member states their assistance money to spend in support of hard-headed objectives.

Stop all those debilitating coordination meetings. Start working hard and well to get what we want.

Redefine European power away from a slow, portly, doomed Hindenburg to become a series of small mobile attack helicopters.

Those member states which are generally strong at foreign policy can set up light-touch ad hoc coordination where it makes sense. Those member states which add something on specific issues can buy in if they like.

Above all, stop thinking in outdated categories.

Start looking at whether the ‘concert of democracies’ idea (which even Timothy Garton Ash thinks worth considering) is a better way to exert muscle.

Bottom Line:

There are two basic ways to advance the cause of intelligent pluralism.

One is persuasion – and the UN system is designed to make that work incredibly badly. So European states need to be extra smart and nimble.

The other is by creating sharper incentives for countries to move in an intelligent pluralist direction. And the EU as such is designed to make much of the effort we devote to achieving that neither smart nor nimble.

The point about EU-style intelligent pluralism is that it needs to be itself intelligent.

What we have now – and what the ECFR recommends – are not.