EU in the struggle for global governance: geopolitical ethics

摘要

This article argues in favour of a coherent and active European Union foreign policy based on the idea of 'geopolitical ethics'. In the first part of the article, the situation of the international system since 1990 is outlined. It seems that after the financial crisis of 2008 the world has lost its global governor - the USA - and thus plunged into a non-polar structure. The second part of the article will present the concept of 'geopolitical ethics'. Namely, analogical to the personalistic 'ethics of responsibility', in which an individual is the primary focus, 'geopolitical ethics' considers the nation as the constituent unit in the international system. In the final section, two case studies, both involving the internal (policy making) and external (policy implementation) dimensions of the EU's grand strategy - 'geopolitical ethics', are presented.