Can the EEAS Deliver Diplomacy for the Era of Grey Zones and Intensified Geopolitical Competition?

Does the European Union (EU) have the right institutional tools to support its external action in a highly turbulent world characterised by intensified geopolitical confrontation? The global security environment has been deteriorating rapidly in the course of the last two decades. With Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014 (and its major escalation into a fully fledged war of aggression in February 2022), full-scale conventional warfare was once again brought back to Europe. The ongoing global confrontation between, on the one side, an increasingly coordinated front of authoritarian powers including Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea and, on the other side, the liberal democracies of the global West, has been characterised by both inter-state- and proxy-warfare in various parts of the world.