Conflict or Convergence?: The Challenges of Foreign Policy in a Globalized World

In 2010's The Foreign Policy of the European Union, Federiga Bindi concluded that the lack of institutional coherence within the European Union was reflected in its lack of a unified foreign policy. In the wake of the Lisbon Treaty and the Arab Spring, Bindi and coeditor Irina Angelescu have teamed with an international roster of foreign policy experts to address the challenges and advantages that the treaty and contemporary international challenges pose for successful formulation and execution of an EU foreign policy.

This book analyzes the degree of policy convergence ?and divergence ?among a select group of EU member states on topical issues (e.g., energy security and defense) and toward specific countries and regions, including the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The first section of the book presents the EU position on these issues, providing a basis for a comparison with those of individual member states. Finally, the book juxtaposesEU foreign policy to that of the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, India, Turkey, and Egypt.

Contributors include Giovanni Andornino (University of Torino), Stefan Bielanski (University Jagiellonski, Krakow), David Cadier (Sciences Po, Paris), Come Carpentier (Euro-Asia Institute), Khalid Emara (Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Marcos A. Guedes de Oliveira (University of Pernanbuco, Brazil), Erik Jones (Johns Hopkins-SAIS, Bologna), Jonas Parello-Plesner (European Council on Foreign Relations), John Peet(The Economist), Lazzaro Pietragnoli (freelance journalist), Joaquin Roy (University of Miami), Jan Techau (Carnegie Europe), Dmitri Trenin (Carnegie Moscow), Raffaele Trombetta (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Carlo Viviani (Italian Regulation for Energy and Gas), Kurt Volker (Johns Hopkins?SAIS, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO), Nathalie Tocci (Institute of International Affairs, Rome), and Bernard Yvars (University ofMontesquieu, Bordeaux).

Federiga Bindi is Jean Monnet Chair and Director of the European Center of Excellence at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata," and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Transatlantic Relations. She is the editor of The Foreign Policy of the European Union (Brookings). Irina Angelescu is a researcher with the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe and the European Center of Excellence of theUniversity of "Tor Vergata" in Rome. Bindi and Angelescu are coeditors of The Frontiers of Europe: A Transatlantic Problem? (Brookings, 2011).