JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.
WORLD POWERS IN THE LAST DAYS (END OF AGE OF GRACE NOT THE WORLD)
EUROPEAN UNION-KING OF WEST-DAN 9:26-27,DAN 7:23-24,DAN 11:40,REV 13:1-10
EGYPT-KING OF THE SOUTH-DAN 11:40
RUSSIA-KING OF THE NORTH-EZEK 38:1-2,EZEK 39:1-3
CHINA-KING OF THE EAST-DAN 11:44,REV 9:16,18
VATICAN-RELIGIOUS LEADER-REV 13:11-18,REV 17:4-5,9,18
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:(1X7=7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,(3 1/2 yrs in TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADING BLOCKS-10 WORLD REGIONS/TRADE BLOCS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 NATIONS-10 WORLD DIVISION WORLD GOVERNMENT) that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(TAKE OVER 3 WORLD REGIONS)
THE RUSSIA - UKRAINE SITUATION AT 9:25 AM TUE APR 01,14
Russia announces massive hike in Ukraine gas price
Today @ 10:45-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
Russian firm Gazprom has said Ukraine must pay $385.5 per thousand cubic metres of gas from April instead of $268. The lower price had been agreed with ousted Ukrainian leader Yanukovych in return for his rejection of an EU treaty, which was part-signed with the new Ukrainian authorities in March.
Nato door still open to Ukraine, Georgia
Today @ 09:24-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
US secretary of state John Kerry has said that Nato's door remains open "to any European country in a position to undertake the commitments and obligations of membership, and that can contribute to security in the Euro-Atlantic area" - a reference to Georgia and Ukraine.
Weimar states propose Russia talks on Eastern Partnership
Today @ 10:41-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
Foreign ministers from France, Germany and Poland, at a "Weimar" meeting in Berlin called for trilateral talks with the EU, Russia and Eastern Partnership states on future EU integration. "We propose EU-Russia talks with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia about the consequences of the EU-association agreements," they said in a statement.
NATO plans more support for east Europeans worried by Crimea
By Adrian Croft 2 hours ago-APR 1,14-Yahoonews
A T-72B Russian tank manouvers shortly after Russian tanks arrived at a train station in the Crimean settlement of Gvardeiskoye-BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will decide new steps on Tuesday to reinforce eastern European countries worried by Russia's annexation of Crimea, and on how to bolster Ukraine's armed forces.Diplomats said NATO foreign ministers will look at options ranging from stepped-up military exercises and sending more forces to eastern members states, to the permanent basing of alliance forces there - a step Moscow would view as provocative.Ministers from the 28 alliance members are meeting in Brussels for the first time since Russia's military occupation and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region caused the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.While the United States and its allies have made clear they will not intervene militarily in Ukraine, which does not belong to NATO, they have scrambled to reassure anxious NATO members in eastern Europe, particularly ex-Soviet republics in the Baltics, that they are sheltered by the alliance's security umbrella.The United States has increased the number of U.S. aircraft in regular NATO air patrols over the Baltic States and beefed up a previously planned training exercise with the Polish air force.U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said the ministers, including Secretary of State John Kerry, would discuss further measures to reassure the eastern European allies."They will talk about ... what more can be done to amplify the measures that have been taken already and to sustain them over time so that these measures are not simply short-term gestures," Lute told a news conference.Since 1999, when it began admitting former members of the Soviet- led Warsaw Pact, NATO has had a self-imposed restriction on permanently basing alliance forces in eastern Europe. However, Poland and Romania have agreed to host parts of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield and NATO air forces take turns to provide air cover over the Baltic states.A senior NATO diplomat said the Crimean crisis would probably lead to the issue of permanent bases being discussed. "I think that these are the sorts of things that ministers are likely to talk about in the next couple of days," he said.The ministers' meeting continues on Wednesday, although it is due to discuss Afghanistan then.
FLAUNTING RUSSIA'S GRIP
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flaunted Russia's grip on Crimea by flying to the region and holding a government meeting there on Monday. But in a gesture that could ease tension, Moscow said it had pulled some troops back from near Ukraine's eastern border.Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters last week that the United States would increase temporary deployments of ground and naval forces to NATO allies in eastern Europe. "We expect other European partners to step up and join us in doing so," he said.U.S. forces in Europe have fallen from just over 300,000 in the final years of the Cold War to about 100,000 in 2005. The number is estimated at about 80,000 in 2014, including 14,000 civilians, according to the U.S. military's European Command.Many European allies have slashed military spending in response to the financial crisis and the United States also recently unveiled cuts. Washington is pressing European allies to reverse the cuts, but is likely to face an uphill struggle.Ministers will review NATO's cooperation with Russia, but it was unclear if they would announce further steps on Tuesday.NATO announced soon after the Crimean crisis broke that it would no longer hold lower-level meetings with Russian counterparts and would suspend planning for a joint mission linked to Syrian chemical weapons. NATO and Russian ambassadors could continue to meet but "other forms of practical cooperation, military cooperation are likely to be in the deep freeze for the time being," one senior diplomatic source said.At a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, the NATO ministers are also expected to offer help to make Ukraine's armed forces more efficient.Ukraine has sent NATO "a huge list of equipment requests" which had been forwarded to individual allies for them to decide on what they could do, a senior NATO official said.Ministers are expected to agree to step up cooperation with Ukraine's armed forces, which already includes training officers, holding joint exercises and promoting reforms.Diplomats said they expected no discussion this week on whether the Crimean crisis would put Georgian and Ukrainian membership of NATO back on the agenda. Possible future expansion of NATO will be discussed at another meeting in June.A divided NATO reached a compromise at a 2008 summit, declaring that the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine would one day join the alliance, but without setting them on an immediate path to membership.Georgia's membership prospects were put on ice after it fought a war with Russia later that year while Ukraine's former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, ousted in February, ditched the goal of joining NATO in 2010.(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Phil Stewart in Washington; editing by David Stamp)
A 10-step plan to making the EU a strategic actor-31.03.14 @ 08:30-EUOBSERVER-By Daniel C. Thomas
Leiden - The European Union’s awkward efforts to shape events in Ukraine and to deter Russia from taking actions that threaten the EU’s interests and values there, like the EU’s massive failures in the former Yugoslavia two decades ago, yield one undeniable lesson: the European Union must learn to think and act strategically.Given Russia’s new assertiveness and the inevitability of the United States’ ‘pivot to Asia’ over the next few decades, the urgency of this challenge cannot be overestimated.Some observers of EU foreign and security policy argue that the EU is condemned to strategic irrelevance as long as it remains a union of states rather than a single state.There is undoubtedly some truth here: 28 (or more) governments, foreign ministries, defense ministries, and national electorates do not facilitate easy consensus in policy-formation or consistent policy-implementation, not to mention rapid reaction to fast-moving crises.And treaty change to give the EU a single foreign policy identity is simply not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.But the Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s External Action Service would enable the Union to be a far more effective strategic actor if its member states were truly committed to this goal. The first step in this direction is being clear about what the EU’s institutions and member states could do, within current treaty conditions, to make the Union a more effective strategic actor.
1. Be far-sighted and realistic about the EU’s interests and values. This requires sustained collective reflection on what principles the EU believes should underlie the world order of the twenty-first century, the concrete international conditions that are necessary to ensure the well-being of European citizens and society in the decades to come, and how tensions between these values and interests are to be managed. This means overcoming the EU’s long-standing reluctance to supplement normative discourse with the language of (collective) self-interest when discussing its role in the world.
2. Don’t confuse foreign policy and enlargement policy. While the lure of accession was for many years the EU’s most successful technique for managing relations with its nearest neighbors, this policy has its limits. Offering membership to additional states may still be advisable in some cases, but most of the EU’s international challenges cannot be addressed this way, either because enlargement often just pushes the problems to the next border or because the problems exist so far beyond Europe that membership is on nobody’s agenda. In addition, whereas public support for further enlargement is wearing thin, there is still considerable public support for using the EU to address major international challenges.
3. Be realistic about the adversaries that the EU faces abroad. It’s an uncertain and often hostile world out there. Despite the EU’s success at creating a non-competitive, post-territorial order among its members, many other states rely on domestic practices that threaten the EU’s values and/or readily pursue commercial and territorial gains that compromise the EU’s interests. Cooperation with these states is often possible, but it must be pursued in a pragmatic spirit focused on the conditional pursuit of overlapping interests, rather than by any idealistic expectation that adversaries can easily be converted into partners.
4. Be realistic about the foreign partners whose cooperation the EU needs to achieve its aims. Even states that share many of the EU’s core values and are not inclined to act in ways that compromise the EU’s core interests make choices based on their own international aims and domestic constraints. As seen in the EU’s weak response to the Bush Administration’s challenge to the International Criminal Court and the EU’s poor preparation for the Obama Administration’s approach to climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, the EU needs to be more strategic in its approach to even its closest partners.
5. Don’t over-estimate Europe’s appeal abroad. European governments and EU officials are rightfully impressed by the accomplishments of European integration, but leaders and publics elsewhere in the world are keenly aware of the EU’s institutional shortcomings and policy contradictions, and thus respond pragmatically to its declarations, offers and threats. The more the EU assumes that everybody admires Europe, or even wants to remake their region in its image, the less effective its foreign policy will be.
6. Be pragmatic about the EU’s resources and capabilities. The EU cannot be effective abroad if it is weak at home: restoring economic growth and competitiveness is essential to the EU’s international authority and to mustering the resources needed for international effectiveness. In addition, the EU must stop wasting scarce resources on unnecessary duplication in military hardware and impeding greater efficiency in its defence industry, as seen in Germany’s veto of the proposed BAE-EADS merger.
7. Be less didactic in the application of EU power. Strategic action requires more than taking (what the EU considers) a moral stance and then encouraging others to follow suit. The EU’s tendency to lecture others often undermines its legitimacy and distracts the Union from making the hard choices needed for effective action. Moral suasion has its place, but the EU must be far more willing to make costly investments of diplomatic, economic and occasionally military resources in pursuit of its aims, even when doing so compromises narrow commercial interests or contradicts the preferences of one or several member states.
8. Minimize dependencies that limit the EU’s freedom of action, particularly dependencies on states that are not trustworthy partners. The EU’s current dependence on Russian energy supplies has constrained the EU’s choices in the Ukraine crisis and previously in responding to Putin’s crackdown on protesters and NGOs, and it could be an even more unwelcome factor if Russia’s territorial ambitions extend beyond Crimea. Reducing and diversifying the EU’s dependency on foreign energy supplies is therefore an urgent priority. But a similar point could be made about dependence on US military assets: the link to NATO remains essential, but as long as European states depend on the US for transport aircraft and advanced munitions, to cite just two examples evident in recent conflicts, the EU will never be able to make its own decisions about where and when military force is needed to protect its interests and values.
9. Avoid self-inflicted injuries. The EU must be vigilant to ensure that its internal decision-making processes and policy trade-offs not undermine its ability to act strategically abroad. For example, the EU’s decision to accept Cyprus as a member state after it rejected the UN’s Annan Plan for reunification of the island was a major strategic blunder, contradicting the EU’s commitment that candidate states must resolve their border disputes before accession and complicating the EU’s relationship with Turkey, an essential regional partner and candidate state. The British government’s continued flirtation with exiting the Union, which would be bad for the EU and even worse for the UK, threatens another major self-inflicted injury.
10. Be pro-active about building and maintaining internal support for EU action abroad. As was done during the Cold War, Europe’s leaders must work tirelessly to ensure that voters, political parties and opinion leaders understand the importance of strategic action at the EU level and support the resource allocations and policy compromises that this requires. Failing to invest in public support for EU action while taking national credit for EU successes and blaming Brussels for EU failures is simply unsustainable. This is just as true in foreign policy as we now know it to be true with regard to the single market and common currency
The writer is Professor of International Relations at Leiden University and editor of Making EU Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan). d.c.thomas@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
OTHER RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWS I DONE
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-ukraine-situation-week-05.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/merchant-ship-shot-at-in-strait-of.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/us-gives-russia-free-military-equipment.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-says-un-crimea-is-legit-its-my.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/european-and-obama-meet-in-brussels-on.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/china-india-brazil-side-with-russia-and.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/obama-trys-to-rally-world-to-oust-putin.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/i-can-do-what-ever-i-want-russia.html
WORLD POWERS IN THE LAST DAYS (END OF AGE OF GRACE NOT THE WORLD)
EUROPEAN UNION-KING OF WEST-DAN 9:26-27,DAN 7:23-24,DAN 11:40,REV 13:1-10
EGYPT-KING OF THE SOUTH-DAN 11:40
RUSSIA-KING OF THE NORTH-EZEK 38:1-2,EZEK 39:1-3
CHINA-KING OF THE EAST-DAN 11:44,REV 9:16,18
VATICAN-RELIGIOUS LEADER-REV 13:11-18,REV 17:4-5,9,18
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:(1X7=7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,(3 1/2 yrs in TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADING BLOCKS-10 WORLD REGIONS/TRADE BLOCS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 NATIONS-10 WORLD DIVISION WORLD GOVERNMENT) that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(TAKE OVER 3 WORLD REGIONS)
THE RUSSIA - UKRAINE SITUATION AT 9:25 AM TUE APR 01,14
Russia announces massive hike in Ukraine gas price
Today @ 10:45-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
Russian firm Gazprom has said Ukraine must pay $385.5 per thousand cubic metres of gas from April instead of $268. The lower price had been agreed with ousted Ukrainian leader Yanukovych in return for his rejection of an EU treaty, which was part-signed with the new Ukrainian authorities in March.
Nato door still open to Ukraine, Georgia
Today @ 09:24-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
US secretary of state John Kerry has said that Nato's door remains open "to any European country in a position to undertake the commitments and obligations of membership, and that can contribute to security in the Euro-Atlantic area" - a reference to Georgia and Ukraine.
Weimar states propose Russia talks on Eastern Partnership
Today @ 10:41-APR 1,14-By EUOBSERVER
Foreign ministers from France, Germany and Poland, at a "Weimar" meeting in Berlin called for trilateral talks with the EU, Russia and Eastern Partnership states on future EU integration. "We propose EU-Russia talks with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia about the consequences of the EU-association agreements," they said in a statement.
NATO plans more support for east Europeans worried by Crimea
By Adrian Croft 2 hours ago-APR 1,14-Yahoonews
A T-72B Russian tank manouvers shortly after Russian tanks arrived at a train station in the Crimean settlement of Gvardeiskoye-BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will decide new steps on Tuesday to reinforce eastern European countries worried by Russia's annexation of Crimea, and on how to bolster Ukraine's armed forces.Diplomats said NATO foreign ministers will look at options ranging from stepped-up military exercises and sending more forces to eastern members states, to the permanent basing of alliance forces there - a step Moscow would view as provocative.Ministers from the 28 alliance members are meeting in Brussels for the first time since Russia's military occupation and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region caused the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.While the United States and its allies have made clear they will not intervene militarily in Ukraine, which does not belong to NATO, they have scrambled to reassure anxious NATO members in eastern Europe, particularly ex-Soviet republics in the Baltics, that they are sheltered by the alliance's security umbrella.The United States has increased the number of U.S. aircraft in regular NATO air patrols over the Baltic States and beefed up a previously planned training exercise with the Polish air force.U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said the ministers, including Secretary of State John Kerry, would discuss further measures to reassure the eastern European allies."They will talk about ... what more can be done to amplify the measures that have been taken already and to sustain them over time so that these measures are not simply short-term gestures," Lute told a news conference.Since 1999, when it began admitting former members of the Soviet- led Warsaw Pact, NATO has had a self-imposed restriction on permanently basing alliance forces in eastern Europe. However, Poland and Romania have agreed to host parts of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield and NATO air forces take turns to provide air cover over the Baltic states.A senior NATO diplomat said the Crimean crisis would probably lead to the issue of permanent bases being discussed. "I think that these are the sorts of things that ministers are likely to talk about in the next couple of days," he said.The ministers' meeting continues on Wednesday, although it is due to discuss Afghanistan then.
FLAUNTING RUSSIA'S GRIP
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flaunted Russia's grip on Crimea by flying to the region and holding a government meeting there on Monday. But in a gesture that could ease tension, Moscow said it had pulled some troops back from near Ukraine's eastern border.Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters last week that the United States would increase temporary deployments of ground and naval forces to NATO allies in eastern Europe. "We expect other European partners to step up and join us in doing so," he said.U.S. forces in Europe have fallen from just over 300,000 in the final years of the Cold War to about 100,000 in 2005. The number is estimated at about 80,000 in 2014, including 14,000 civilians, according to the U.S. military's European Command.Many European allies have slashed military spending in response to the financial crisis and the United States also recently unveiled cuts. Washington is pressing European allies to reverse the cuts, but is likely to face an uphill struggle.Ministers will review NATO's cooperation with Russia, but it was unclear if they would announce further steps on Tuesday.NATO announced soon after the Crimean crisis broke that it would no longer hold lower-level meetings with Russian counterparts and would suspend planning for a joint mission linked to Syrian chemical weapons. NATO and Russian ambassadors could continue to meet but "other forms of practical cooperation, military cooperation are likely to be in the deep freeze for the time being," one senior diplomatic source said.At a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, the NATO ministers are also expected to offer help to make Ukraine's armed forces more efficient.Ukraine has sent NATO "a huge list of equipment requests" which had been forwarded to individual allies for them to decide on what they could do, a senior NATO official said.Ministers are expected to agree to step up cooperation with Ukraine's armed forces, which already includes training officers, holding joint exercises and promoting reforms.Diplomats said they expected no discussion this week on whether the Crimean crisis would put Georgian and Ukrainian membership of NATO back on the agenda. Possible future expansion of NATO will be discussed at another meeting in June.A divided NATO reached a compromise at a 2008 summit, declaring that the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine would one day join the alliance, but without setting them on an immediate path to membership.Georgia's membership prospects were put on ice after it fought a war with Russia later that year while Ukraine's former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, ousted in February, ditched the goal of joining NATO in 2010.(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Phil Stewart in Washington; editing by David Stamp)
A 10-step plan to making the EU a strategic actor-31.03.14 @ 08:30-EUOBSERVER-By Daniel C. Thomas
Leiden - The European Union’s awkward efforts to shape events in Ukraine and to deter Russia from taking actions that threaten the EU’s interests and values there, like the EU’s massive failures in the former Yugoslavia two decades ago, yield one undeniable lesson: the European Union must learn to think and act strategically.Given Russia’s new assertiveness and the inevitability of the United States’ ‘pivot to Asia’ over the next few decades, the urgency of this challenge cannot be overestimated.Some observers of EU foreign and security policy argue that the EU is condemned to strategic irrelevance as long as it remains a union of states rather than a single state.There is undoubtedly some truth here: 28 (or more) governments, foreign ministries, defense ministries, and national electorates do not facilitate easy consensus in policy-formation or consistent policy-implementation, not to mention rapid reaction to fast-moving crises.And treaty change to give the EU a single foreign policy identity is simply not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.But the Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s External Action Service would enable the Union to be a far more effective strategic actor if its member states were truly committed to this goal. The first step in this direction is being clear about what the EU’s institutions and member states could do, within current treaty conditions, to make the Union a more effective strategic actor.
1. Be far-sighted and realistic about the EU’s interests and values. This requires sustained collective reflection on what principles the EU believes should underlie the world order of the twenty-first century, the concrete international conditions that are necessary to ensure the well-being of European citizens and society in the decades to come, and how tensions between these values and interests are to be managed. This means overcoming the EU’s long-standing reluctance to supplement normative discourse with the language of (collective) self-interest when discussing its role in the world.
2. Don’t confuse foreign policy and enlargement policy. While the lure of accession was for many years the EU’s most successful technique for managing relations with its nearest neighbors, this policy has its limits. Offering membership to additional states may still be advisable in some cases, but most of the EU’s international challenges cannot be addressed this way, either because enlargement often just pushes the problems to the next border or because the problems exist so far beyond Europe that membership is on nobody’s agenda. In addition, whereas public support for further enlargement is wearing thin, there is still considerable public support for using the EU to address major international challenges.
3. Be realistic about the adversaries that the EU faces abroad. It’s an uncertain and often hostile world out there. Despite the EU’s success at creating a non-competitive, post-territorial order among its members, many other states rely on domestic practices that threaten the EU’s values and/or readily pursue commercial and territorial gains that compromise the EU’s interests. Cooperation with these states is often possible, but it must be pursued in a pragmatic spirit focused on the conditional pursuit of overlapping interests, rather than by any idealistic expectation that adversaries can easily be converted into partners.
4. Be realistic about the foreign partners whose cooperation the EU needs to achieve its aims. Even states that share many of the EU’s core values and are not inclined to act in ways that compromise the EU’s core interests make choices based on their own international aims and domestic constraints. As seen in the EU’s weak response to the Bush Administration’s challenge to the International Criminal Court and the EU’s poor preparation for the Obama Administration’s approach to climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, the EU needs to be more strategic in its approach to even its closest partners.
5. Don’t over-estimate Europe’s appeal abroad. European governments and EU officials are rightfully impressed by the accomplishments of European integration, but leaders and publics elsewhere in the world are keenly aware of the EU’s institutional shortcomings and policy contradictions, and thus respond pragmatically to its declarations, offers and threats. The more the EU assumes that everybody admires Europe, or even wants to remake their region in its image, the less effective its foreign policy will be.
6. Be pragmatic about the EU’s resources and capabilities. The EU cannot be effective abroad if it is weak at home: restoring economic growth and competitiveness is essential to the EU’s international authority and to mustering the resources needed for international effectiveness. In addition, the EU must stop wasting scarce resources on unnecessary duplication in military hardware and impeding greater efficiency in its defence industry, as seen in Germany’s veto of the proposed BAE-EADS merger.
7. Be less didactic in the application of EU power. Strategic action requires more than taking (what the EU considers) a moral stance and then encouraging others to follow suit. The EU’s tendency to lecture others often undermines its legitimacy and distracts the Union from making the hard choices needed for effective action. Moral suasion has its place, but the EU must be far more willing to make costly investments of diplomatic, economic and occasionally military resources in pursuit of its aims, even when doing so compromises narrow commercial interests or contradicts the preferences of one or several member states.
8. Minimize dependencies that limit the EU’s freedom of action, particularly dependencies on states that are not trustworthy partners. The EU’s current dependence on Russian energy supplies has constrained the EU’s choices in the Ukraine crisis and previously in responding to Putin’s crackdown on protesters and NGOs, and it could be an even more unwelcome factor if Russia’s territorial ambitions extend beyond Crimea. Reducing and diversifying the EU’s dependency on foreign energy supplies is therefore an urgent priority. But a similar point could be made about dependence on US military assets: the link to NATO remains essential, but as long as European states depend on the US for transport aircraft and advanced munitions, to cite just two examples evident in recent conflicts, the EU will never be able to make its own decisions about where and when military force is needed to protect its interests and values.
9. Avoid self-inflicted injuries. The EU must be vigilant to ensure that its internal decision-making processes and policy trade-offs not undermine its ability to act strategically abroad. For example, the EU’s decision to accept Cyprus as a member state after it rejected the UN’s Annan Plan for reunification of the island was a major strategic blunder, contradicting the EU’s commitment that candidate states must resolve their border disputes before accession and complicating the EU’s relationship with Turkey, an essential regional partner and candidate state. The British government’s continued flirtation with exiting the Union, which would be bad for the EU and even worse for the UK, threatens another major self-inflicted injury.
10. Be pro-active about building and maintaining internal support for EU action abroad. As was done during the Cold War, Europe’s leaders must work tirelessly to ensure that voters, political parties and opinion leaders understand the importance of strategic action at the EU level and support the resource allocations and policy compromises that this requires. Failing to invest in public support for EU action while taking national credit for EU successes and blaming Brussels for EU failures is simply unsustainable. This is just as true in foreign policy as we now know it to be true with regard to the single market and common currency
The writer is Professor of International Relations at Leiden University and editor of Making EU Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan). d.c.thomas@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
OTHER RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWS I DONE
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-ukraine-situation-week-05.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/merchant-ship-shot-at-in-strait-of.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/us-gives-russia-free-military-equipment.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-says-un-crimea-is-legit-its-my.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/european-and-obama-meet-in-brussels-on.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/china-india-brazil-side-with-russia-and.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/obama-trys-to-rally-world-to-oust-putin.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2014/03/i-can-do-what-ever-i-want-russia.html
