The Union for the Mediterranean: a peace-project or a security strategy?

The Union for the Mediterranean was launched by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential campaign in 2007. It is a revive of the Barcelona Process and includes all 27-member states within the European Union and states from Balkan, north Africa, the Arab world and Israel. In his presidential speech Sarkozy stressed the importance of making peace in the world. He said that with this project “we will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe”. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7504214.stm retrieved 28.11.2010)

However, this peace-project has been criticized for being far too Europeanized as to make any sense for most states involved. Words such as ‘failure’ ‘falter’ and ‘weakness of the Union’ are being used when describing this project. In the newspaper Afrique en ligne one could read that Tawfik Ben Adallah, the General Secretary of African Social Forum says that this Union has ‘very little chance of success’ because of the ‘overwhelming influence of Europe’. (http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/economist-predicts-failure-of-the-mediterranean-union-2009073132667.html retrieved 28.11.2010) Moreover, Sarkozy has been criticised for initiating this project as a way to keep Turkey and other candidate countries at a safe distance. One could argue that this area building project is marked by deficiency. The theory of Felix Ciuta would be useful in understanding the reason behind and perhaps even the supposedly failure of the making of a Mediterranean Union.

Following Felix Ciuta, a senior lecturer in IR, and his article Region? Why Region? Security, Hermeneutics, and the Making of the Black Sea Region regional entrepreneurs uses different ‘conceptual categories’ as a mean for justifying their initiatives. (Ciuta,2008, p.120)  Ciuta argues that in order to understand the reasons behind area/regional making one need to look at the different contexts, main actors and their meaning of the concept of area/region. Thus having a Hermeneutic perspective is important because according to Ciuta, regions do not exist objectively. There is ‘interplay between conceptual logic and political praxis.’ (Ciuta, 2008,p.138) Hence, if we were to apply this theory to the making of the Mediterranean Union, we would have to consider the different concepts used by all main actors as well as the effects it have and from which political context it is taking place. Due to the large amount of actors and their presumably different reasons for such an area-making there would most probably be different answers to the question. This is not necessarily a problem per se, due to the different interpretations of concepts and contexts this would come down to the idea of ‘double hermeneutics’ Anthony Giddens theory on which Felix Ciuta builds his theory on.

Within his article and in relation to the Black Sea regional making, Ciuta brings forward four different conceptualisations of the region as:

‘(1) a security complex,

(2) a geopolitical entity,

(3) the product of a historically and geographically grounded common identity and

(4) a discursive construction.’ (Ciuta, 2008, p. 128, )

As mentioned, critics from non-European countries have been raised concerning the ‘Europeanized’ focus on the Mediterranean Union project. This and the fact that all countries involved are geographically spread make it hard to believe it would ever be considered as having a historically and geographically grounded common identity. However, Sarkozy’s normative focus on building peace, stability and prosperity could be seen as belonging within this concept.

But what is most interesting within this discourse is the overall limited use of these previously mentioned concepts by different actors. As mentioned, the focus seem to be on the supposedly ‘failure’ and the problems surrounding this project. In this sense, using Ciuta’s theory would be useful when looking at the project of the Mediterranean Union.  The focus on multiple concepts that together shape and are shaped by the making of an area/region is one reason.  In this case different perceptions of what the aim for the Mediterranean Union is. Is it a peace-project or a security strategy? Perhaps both?  From the perspective of the European Union? Or France?  Turkey? The political context in which it takes place is most important and for this reason there would not be one answer to why the Mediterranean Union came in place ? There will be different reasons depending on context, the actors and their meaning of the regional concepts. For this reason Felix Ciuata’s Hermeneutical contribution to the study of regions is important. There is a growth of regionalism within Europe and a static view is not enough for understanding this contemporary process.    

Sami El Habti

Ann Mårtensson

Ozan Tekin

are we all missing the forest ?

We have recently come across a really interesting article written by Vicente L. Rafael entitled “The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States”. As students of European studies, we found this piece interesting because it was simply a critical case study on regional studies focusing on the Asian Studies, done within USA. Before going any further into the article we think it’s really important to get a grasp on the author to have better understanding on his point of view.

As we find it on Wikipedia, Mr. Vicente L. Rafael is a professor of history at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in history at Cornell University in 1984 and a B.A. in history and philosophy from Ateneo de Manila University in 1977. Mr. Rafael has researched and taught on Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, comparative colonialism, mainly of Spain and the United States, and comparative nationalism. The author, in this particular piece that we are examining is critical towards the accuracy of regional studies and argues that regional studies are biased and their aim is to create information that will serve to national purposes. Another point he makes is that regional studies may be inadequate to understand cross regional relations and interactions of different regions because their narrow focus. Regional studies according to Vincente may skip to examine the areas between regions that may have “hybrid” attributes because regional studies tend to divide the world leaving some areas in between that may be skipped while focusing on regional studies.

He supports his arguments by examining the concept of region. According to him there is a lot of ambiguity and little consensus about the meaning of the word “region” as far as Europe is concerned, while in East Asia there is similarly a long and unsettled history of debating just what exactly counts as “regional”.  A “region” is something that can alternately or simultaneously appear in various guises: politically as an administrative unit, culturally as an ethnic enclave or linguistic community, economically as zones of production and exchange. In any and all cases, the regional only comes into view comparatively: vertically related to that which seeks to maintain and subsume it, such as the metropole or the supranational authority; and horizontally in a relation of complementarity and conflict with other regions.

The author is exploring the nature of the relationship between area studies and “the disciplines”, which, to our understanding, are other subjects of social sciences and humanities. The case of South Asian studies that the author presents might be universal when it comes to a general discussion, and thus we will try to apply the same rules to the “European” area “studies”.
We will raise the same questions for the European studies. Should they be a mere supplement to another field of study that a person is proficient in? On the one hand, such a combination would create a highly valuable professional able to perform within his/her field in the country of study. On the other hand, it is certainly an advantage for a researcher to engage onto interdisciplinary, or focus on a certain aspect and connect it to the field of area studies.
As far as European studies are concerned, most of the programs/research in this field has been closely connected with political science. However, interdisciplinary is gaining more and more popularity and support in the academics and research. We believe that in the case of a more interdisciplinary approach to area studies, the assumption mentioned by the author is gaining more importance: be a professional in one certain area but have a wide and deep understanding of the general processes happening in the entire area of European studies. What is more, European studies as such are as difficult to define as Europe itself. A focus can be brought to any particular element, from national languages to cultures, history of a country or a region or the current political affairs. All in all, European studies are a specific type of area studies. Having encompassed a great variety of languages, cultures, and other elements, it resembles in its nature the South Asian studies in the U.S, as described in the article. However, the conditions of research on European studies are quite different, since we can say that these area studies are young and widely dynamic – for example, only decades ago European studies started to include regions which were hidden behind the Iron Curtain before.

So in these times that everything is globalizing and it’s all about seeing the bigger picture, are we all missing the bigger picture by looking at regions? In today’s interconnected world order is that possible to come into unbiased, scientific conclusion with inductive method? Or one shall must see the world as a whole and examine it like that in order to not to have a better understanding of it?

What if we are all missing the forest and bigger picture while stuck on the trees?

Alisa, Olgu and Paula