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THE EU’S DIVERGING STRATEGY
FORA CHANGING IRAQ
Oz Hassan
1
T
he European Union’s (EU) relationship with Iraq is mired by a complex history and
tainted by the greatest source of public disagreement between Member States in
modern times. Indeed, the British decision to join the United States (US) led invasion
of Iraq in 2003, joined later by Spain and Italy, was in direct opposition to the positions adopted
by Germany and France. Whilst the EU largely remained above the fray until after the fall
of Saddam Hussein’s regime, there were certainly recriminations between Member States.
Within this context the EU, during the preliminary post-Saddamperiod, remained a peripheral
international player in Iraq. Having failed to convince the wider international community that
the United Nations (UN) should lead Iraq’s post-war reconstruction, as opposed to the US-led
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the EU was somewhat withdrawn from events. That
is to say, the EU became a key actor in humanitarian relief and foreign aid, and contributed
to election funding and technical support inside the country, but the EU remained side-lined
towards issues beyond these spaces (see Salem, 2013, pp. 28-9).
Being side-lined led to the EU becoming complacent and neglecting its Iraq strategy.
How, after all, was the EU to help shape Iraq, when following the end of the US military
surge in 2007, the Obama administration was eager to expediently withdraw American
forces from what the President termed “a war of choice”? Yet, as one analyst has described,
if the US was caught “napping on Iraq, then the EU can only be described as suffering from
narcolepsy” (Burke 2010: 1). As a result, Iraq has slipped into crisis, becoming fused with
the neighbouring civil war in Syria. On the tailwinds of external challenges presented by the
1 Associate Professor in the Politics and International Studies Department at the University of Warwick.