Fundamental questions of the CFSP in theological-ethical approaches © European Union Foundations of foreign EU security policy from a theological-ethical perspective. The example of Mali/central SahelEuropean Doctoral ColloquiumDoctoral Project: A Feminist Foreign Policy for the EU-Iran relations? Assessing the EU’s options for a strategy change To deal with security policy from the perspective of theological ethics does not fall within the core area of this discipline. Also, those who deal with the external action of the European Union (EU) from an ecclesial context tend to be on the periphery of the church. From the perspective outlined above, combining both could be seen as an entirely offside object of interest: Especially if it is to be developed on the basis of the exemplary events in Mali/central Sahel. But this is not the case at all. © Marco Schrage Firstly, security is a genuinely theological-ethical field of reflection, because the study of it confronts us both with the irritating insight that any knowledge of security can only be hypothetical and with the virulent temptation that we want to create perfect security ourselves in quasi-demiurgical attitudes. Secondly, the EU is supported by an effort of respect and cooperation in its interior, so that, coherently, its external action also has to be entirely influenced by this attitude: Since life based on faith, since church life is aimed precisely at creating and strengthening peace, the EU is a genuinely ecclesiastical place against this background. Thirdly, Mali/central Sahel is a plausible and worthwhile example. On the one hand, its problems – poverty, lack of education, corruption, lack of common good awareness, inter-ethnic power and resource struggles, smuggling of weapons, drugs and human beings – can be found mutatis mutandis in many other African states. On the other hand, the crises and shocks of the coming decades in this part of the world will affect Europe more intensively than other parts of the world and, at the same time, the European states are named within the Western world as having the primary responsibility for stabilising and strengthening this continent. Last but not least, Mali/central Sahel is the African region in which the EU is most committed in terms of security policy; and the need for this commitment will remain for Europeans for many years to come. Methodologically, the project follows the classical, three-step approach of moral theology: seeing – judging – acting. It therefore unfolds in three (exemplary) steps – an epistemic, a normative, an evaluative: • How does the EU conceptualize security policy and what are its significant contributions to security policy? • How can standards for this be formulated in the context of the Catholic social doctrine? • What are the implications for exemplaric fields/projects/missions: how should the past be evaluated; what should future actions look like? At the end of 2020, after gradual preparation and coordination, a ‘European Doctoral Colloquium’ on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) could be launched: The partners involved are – besides the Institute for Theology and Peace (IthF) in Hamburg – © pixabay.com • the Accademia Alfonsiana (AA) in Rome • the Katolieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Faculteit Theologie en Religiewetenschappen in Leuven, and • the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), Faculty of Theology and Philosophy in Lviv. These four institutions link North and South, East and West as well as the three large language areas within Europe in a very appropriate way. At each of these institutions, a supervisor and a doctoral candidate are involved in theological-ethical work in the field of the CFSP. The current working titles of the individual dissertations are: • Cuius rex veritas, cuius lex caritas, cuius modus aeternitas: The Ethics of Citizenship in Post-Secular European Society – an Augustinian Prospect (AA) • Healing a wounded imagination: Fear, identity and religion in Central Europe (KUL) • […] (UCU). • A Feminist Foreign Policy for the EU-Iran relations? Assessing the EU’s options for a strategy change (IThF) The ‘European Doctoral Colloquium’ consists in particular of meeting in turn at the participating locations every six months, exchanging ideas and at the same time inviting practitioners and scholars for impulses, as well as sharing insights and results with students from the participating institutions: In this way, the aim is to benefit from each other in the extremely specific and little dealt with area of theological-ethical debate on the CFSP. • to benefit from each other, • to bundle competences and thus also • to achieve a stronger external impact. Since May 2018, the EU lacks a foreign policy strategy for Iran. Even though the EU continues to sustain talks on a new treaty regarding Iran’s nuclear programme and at the same time, she maintains international sanctions against Iran. But a possible new “nuclear deal” does not yet solve the major diplomatic challenges and sanctions are not a strategy, they are a mean, at best a tactic. This becomes particularly clear by analysing the EU-Iran relations from the perspective of a feminist foreign policy. This is precisely where this research project comes in. Which options arise for the European foreign security policy to pursue the approach of feminist foreign policy towards Iran? To answer this and related questions, clarity will first be brought to the concepts of feminist foreign policy, which are currently being taken up in many places. This is followed by an analysis of sanctions as a foreign policy tool from the perspective of feminist foreign policy. These results are discussed with approaches from the field of realism, out of whose critique the feminist perspective on foreign policy has been co-developed. The central interest of the research project is to argue for a paradigm shift in the EU-Iran relationship. To strengthen this stance, the empirical interest focuses on the unintended consequences of sanctions for marginalised groups in Iran. One aim of feminist foreign policy is to take into greater account the perspective of those affected by policy measures. This is where the thesis intends to make its academic contribution and to test systematically the viability of the concept of feminist foreign policy. The aim of the work is to contour the value of a feminist foreign policy of the EU towards Iran. Project Researcher Lisa Neal, M. A. Project Supervisor N.N.
