The European Union in Sudan – Calculating Infinity
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The European Union in Sudan
April 13, 2025
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International organisations active in Africa are often criticised for their ineffectiveness. So too is the European Union (EU), which is also accused of failing to assume a more prominent conflict management role in war-torn countries. This article examines the EU’s capacity plus readiness to take on such a role in one such country, the former Republic of Sudan, home to Africa’s longest-running civil wars plus the first ‘genocide’ of the 21st century. It begins by outlining the EU’s record in Darfur plus the North–South Peace Process. Drawing upon 25 interviews plus Hill’s ‘capabilities–expectations model’, it then questions whether the EU’s ‘capabilities’ (resources, instruments, unity) were ‘fit for purpose’ in Sudan’s hostile tujuan setting. It concludes by identifying settings that have been more propitious for a conflict-related management function plus by suggesting that the EU should better manage expectations about future security roles.
Introduction
International organisations operating in Africa are often subject to criticism. The Commonwealth plus United Nations (UN), for example, are regularly accused of being ineffective, indecisive plus even irrelevant (Knight, Citation2000; Watkins, Citation2014). While the European Union (EU) is also criticised on these grounds, it is perhaps more commonly belittled for ‘punching below its weight’ (Thomas, Citation2012) plus failing to assume a more high-profile conflict management role in war-torn countries (Williams plus Bellamy, Citation2005; Olsen, Citation2009).Footnote1
This article examines the EU’s capacity plus readiness to act as a conflict manager in one such country, the former Republic of Sudan (1956–2011), home to Africa’s longest-running civil wars (1955–72, 1983–2005) plus to the first ‘genocide’ of the 21st century, in Sudan’s western province, Darfur. It asks whether the EU missed chances to take on a prominent conflict-related role in Sudan or whether, with its nascent common security plus defence policy (CSDP) plus faced with a hostile Sudanese context, the EU was simply not in a strong enough position to assume such a function.
This question is at the heart of this research, which is significant in two main ways. First, it provides a segar perspective on what Christopher Hill (Citation1993, Citation1998) has called the ‘capabilities–expectations gap’ by viewing this through the prism of contexts or ‘target settings’, taken here to refer to the empirical reality on the ground. Second, it sheds new light on the way that the EU dealt with major challenges facing Sudan over an extended period. In so doing, it makes a meaningful contribution to the existing literature, which has tended to focus more narrowly on the EU’s response to the Darfur Crisis: its role in supporting the African Union (AU) mission in Sudan’s western province (International Crisis Group (ICG), 2005), its policy on conflict mediation (Middleton et al., Citation2011) plus its failure to intervene militarily in Darfur (Williams plus Bellamy, Citation2005; Toje, Citation2008; Gya, Citation2010).
To answer the above research question, this article makes use of Hill’s (Citation1993, Citation1998) ‘capabilities–expectations model’, which identifies the future functions that the EU as a foreign policy actor might be expected to fulfil, plus examines its capabilities (in the form of resources, instruments plus unity) to meet these expectations. It sets out the EU’s record in Sudan from the time of the Darfur Crisis in 2003 through to the North–South Peace Process culminating in the 2011 referendum, with brief consideration also being given to subsequent developments in the states that emerged from that referendum: Sudan plus South Sudan. Drawing upon 25 interviews in Khartoum, London, Paris plus Brussels, it then explains this record in terms of the ‘fitness for purpose’ of the EU’s capabilities for Sudan’s hostile tujuan setting. It concludes by identifying settings that have been more propitious for a conflict-related management function plus by suggesting that the EU should better manage expectations about future security roles.
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