11. Reconceptualizing the World and the Liberal Delusion

The stakes have seldom been so high. The (in) ability to shape strategy and to inculcate a strategic culture at the European level will say much about the EU’s role, purpose and identity on the global stage for the forthcoming years. Successive external strategies will say at least as much about the internal state of the Union as it does about the world around it. The EU’s own inter-institutional examination of the world in 2030 suggested, ‘The EU will need to gather all of its strength and resilience to preserve its values, its prosperity and security, and perhaps its very survival in its present form’. The High Representative has even referred to the use of strategy as a tool to ‘forge a new social contract with European citizens’ through foreign policy. This, in essence, is the challenge for the EU’s external strategy, now and into the near future. It is one that must be met with not a strategy, but the adoption of a habit of regular strategic review based upon sound analytical capacities and the necessary political will. Muddling through is no longer an option, or as the Commission’s 2016 work plan put it in its subtitle, this is ‘No time for business as usual’.