The Capability-Expectations Gap in a Time of War

The concept of the capability-expectations gap (CEG) which I originated in 1993 arose out of the debate about the Maastricht Treaty. Hopes, ambitions and predictions had been proliferating about the possibility of a genuinely common European foreign policy developing in the new post-Soviet international order. My view was more sceptical, even though positive about the idea in principle, on the grounds that the EU was still a long way from making the sovereignty derogations in in foreign policy which had been made in commercial policy. My argument was therefore that a gap was likely to open up between the expectations of progress towards European foreign policy and the ability to deliver it in practice. This could only be closed by either lowering expectations or increasing capabilities. In a further article in 1998 I showed that the gap had closed somewhat because of the disillusion which had set in through the EU’s poor performance in the Balkans crisis. The current article is the first time I have returned to the question of the CEG since then and it therefore takes the long perspective of 30 years. It concludes that the gap is now certainly narrower than in the optimistic early days. Realism about decision-making, resources and instruments has prevailed amongst most EU Member States even if the momentum for progress is not wholly stalled – foreign policy has not been “re-nationalised”. Still, the problems caused by populist souverainisme mean that truly unified positions among the 27 are the exceptions more than the rule.