the eu common foreign policy in the persian gulf region: the kuwait crisis of 1990-91

foreign policy cooperation and coordination among the european community member states and presenting europe with a single voice, has long been an important challenge within the european community/european union, especially since early 1970s. in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the ussr and the end of the cold war, there was a general speculation in europe that the ec may be able to play a new role in international system and fill the vacuum created by the the soviet union. the kuwait crisis, in the wake of iraqi invasion of kuwait in august 1990, was the first test for the european ambitions in the post-cold war era. many european leaders saw it as an opportunity to present a european initiative and play an effective role towards the crisis. then, the first reactions of the ec, unprecedentedly, were quick and unanimous. this unanimity continued during the first phase of the crisis, when the counter-measures to the crisis were mainly economic and to a lesser extent political. but with the appearance of the military dimension of the crisis, the ec was no longer able to maintain unanimous standand the member states were divided into two camps: atlanticists and europeanists. britain, occasionally supported by denmark and netherlands, sided with the us which pursued a military solution to the crisis. while the franco-german axe, followed by the rest of member states, preferred a diplomatic solution to the crisis in a longer span. as far as the military operation seemed imminent, the division became deeper. in practice, when military operation began, the europeans have no choice except to follow the american lead. these developments were influential on formation of the common foreign and security policy (cfsp) as the second pillar of the eu in maastricht in 1992.