Congratulations on your appointment to the job of running Europe's foreign and security policy. Congratulations, too, on your performance as secretary-general of Nato. Of course, having a predecessor who left under a cloud, after an undistinguished tenure, helped. But getting three new members into the alliance without undue diplomatic fracas, negotiating a cooperative relationship with the old adversary, Russia (looking a bit frayed just now, but still a crucial building-block for a more secure Europe), and handling successfully a conflict as complex as Kosovo is not bad going.
What you are letting yourself in for next will be a huge cultural shift. In place of the Rolls-Royce which is Nato-a series of careful drivers and elaborate maintenance schedules, never driven at excessive speed and rarely under difficult conditions-you are getting behind the wheel of an oddly designed and untested vehicle whose wheels are all too likely to come off the first time you take it round a corner. Moreover, the EU states have not given you much in the way of tools to do the job-no foreign ministry, no network of diplomats, just a planning unit and, if you are lucky, a new committee of representatives of the member states whose backing will be vital to you but whose propensity for back-seat driving will be exasperating.
You will need to press the member states, quite soon, over the inadequacy of the resources put at your disposal. You will certainly need some military advice if the security dimension of your responsibilities is to be fulfilled-all the more so if, by the end of next year, the WEU ceases to exist and the process begun by the British and French at St Malo is brought to a conclusion. You will also need access to intelligence material jealously guarded by the member states, if you are not to be left miles behind.
The EU is facing a big cultural shift too, by appointing a senior political figure to head a policy which hitherto has existed mainly on paper. It is not clear that the member states realise what they have let themselves in for. The old excuses for the ineffectiveness of Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) won't wash now. And all the joint actions so lovingly crafted around conference tables in Brussels will not answer Harold Macmillan's greatest concern: "Events, dear boy, events...." The new strategy for Russia is not, for example, going to tell you what to do if an ultra-nationalist government in Moscow starts to turn up the heat under one of the Baltic states.
The problem is not so much that there are fundamental conflicts of interest between the member states. It is that these 15 countries (shortly to be more), so different in size and historical experience, ranging as they do from small, neutral states to former imperial powers, expect quite different things from a foreign policy. Taking decisions involving the projection of the potential power which the EU possesses in economic, aid and military terms will not be simple. You will have to be the teacher; and the learning curve could be pretty steep.
As a former member of the trade union of foreign ministers you hardly need to be told that; while your ex-colleagues' sustained and loyal support will be absolutely vital for your own credibility and effectiveness, their support cannot be taken for granted. After all, you will be taking the bread off their plates. So they will need sensitive handling; and you will have to keep a sharp eye on those who represent the larger member states, still not averse to a bit of private enterprise.
One of your biggest problems will be just across the road in Brussels: the commission itself. The decision to appoint you represents a probably terminal setback to the commission's own ambition to play a leading foreign policy role. Nothing would be easier or more natural than a prolonged turf-fight with them, with you and Chris Patten travelling about the world tripping over each other. The commission controls many of the levers upon which you depend. It is responsible for trade policy, for aid programmes, for bringing the countries of central, eastern and southeastern Europe, ever closer to the EU. So, unless you can work with the commission, the EU will not punch above its weight, but below it.
You will not, of course, escape the eye of the newly elected European parliament feeling its oats after the dispatch of the previous commission. Luckily for you it will have no formal power over you or your policies. But some of the instruments of that policy do fall within its sphere of activity; and its capacity to embroil you and the council in unnecessary rows with foreign countries by adopting flamboyant resolutions in a thin house is well-established.
One particularly attractive feature of your change of job may be putting some distance between yourself and big brother in Washington. Don't count on it turning out that way. American interest in the way CFSP develops will be keen. It would be na?ve to assume that when Henry Kissinger said he did not know whom in Europe to telephone, and when Dick Holbrooke complained about Europe "sleeping through the night" in a recent crisis, it was because they wanted a cosy chat in the small hours-it was because they wanted a Europe responsive to American leadership. The EU needs to work closely with the US on a wide range of issues, but this will have to be done in a different way from the past. It cannot simply be Americans taking the decisions and Europeans writing the cheques. Your own experience at Nato, and the respect the Americans have for you will be assets, but the process will not be without its ups and downs. You will probably need some formal link with the US which stops short of giving it proxy membership.
The system of which you have been put in charge has many weaknesses. It will need to evolve in the light of experience. Far better that it should be developed in a cautious, pragmatic way, learning by doing rather than by making big leaps forward. Most of the adaptations required can be decided collectively by the foreign ministers without any need for changing the treaty. Let us hope that you will be able to persuade them to work in that way.
It is in all our interests, both nationally and as Europeans, that you succeed. We must avoid excessive expectation leading to disillusionment and retreat. I hope that somewhere in your office you will have a sign with the words, in letters a foot high, "Remember Poos", to remind you of the debacle in 1991, when Jacques Poos, then Luxembourg foreign minister, said at the beginning of the break-up of Yugoslavia: "This is Europe's hour."
