Interventions, state building and the future of European Foreign Policy

Photo: ESI

A forgotten promise will attend "Interventions, state building and the future of European Foreign Policy" on Friday, 26 November 2010, 15.00 hours
At Haus der Musik, Seilerstätte 30, 1010 Wien

The last two decades have been the age of humanitarian intervention, of regime change and hugely ambitious state building efforts. From Bosnia to Kosovo, from Afghanistan to Iraq, nation states and international organisations have intervened by military force to change institutions, topple regimes and reshape societies.

What have we learned? What worked? Is this the dawn of a new era, in which a "responsibility to protect" overrides traditional state sovereignty? Or is the age of liberal imperialism, which begun in the mountains of the Balkans in the 1990s, coming to an end in Afghanistan, the graveyard of Empires? What does this generational experience mean for the EU?

Is there an emerging future vision for a proactive European common foreign and security policy? Is there going to be a European approach to interventions, as new institutions are being established following the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty?