ABSTRACT
Is the European Union (EU) truly an international power? Everyone from Robert Kagan to Joseph Nye, from Tony Blair to Jacques Chirac, agrees that the EU is not a superpower in the traditional sense. But there is little consensus on how exactly to characterize European power (Kagan 2003; Nicolaïdis 2005). Cynics (or realists?) argue that the rhetoric of the EU as a civilian power or purveyor of soft power simply dresses up the EU's fundamental weakness on the international scene. By contrast, Euro-idealists (or pragmatists?) argue that it is precisely its non-military and non-coercive character that is the key to the EU's actual and potential influence in the world — in particular the spreading of its norms and values (Manners 2002; Leonard 2005; Smith 2005). Others suggest that the notion of the EU as a normative power must be critically assessed, in light of its neo-colonial implications and echoes of nineteenth-century ‘standards of civilization’ (Nicolaïdis and Howse 2002; Diez 2006).
