Many Europeans have long dreamt of a multipolar world, in which diplomacy and international law replace American dominance and military muscle-flexing. But EU-style soft power is turning out to be less useful than expected in dealing with China and other rising powers.
"China and Russia see the world in totally realist, zero-sum terms," says Mr. Grant, adding: "If we want China to take us seriously we have to have hard power," or the ability to twist arms through economic, military or other means. The EU is inherently unsuited to wielding hard power "because it is not a state," says Francois Heisbourg, special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris think tank.
When India's foreign ministry commissioned Mr. Kumar and other scholars to identify India's strategic interests for coming decades, the experts concluded India could ignore the EU's pretensions to be a world player. The EU has one "silver bullet" that could boost its external influence, Mr. Kumar says: admitting Turkey. "That would change the EU's demography, make it seem like less of a Christian bloc, and raise its acceptance" in Asia and the Middle East, he says. However, Turkey's EU membership talks have stalled amid growing mistrust on both sides.
Note EU-Digest: It is amazing how vindictive Anglo-Saxon conservative forces will become when the EU, or for that matter also more liberal forces in their own countries, take a different course economically or politically.
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