Europe's despot dilemma

摘要

If ever there was a moment for Europe to come up with new policies for dealing with despots, it is now. The muscular American approach to effecting regime change has few takers these days. The club-of-autocrats approach, exemplified by China's see-no-evil relations with Myanmar and Sudan, is ineffective and may be vulnerable to pressures from today's interconnected world (Olympic boycott, anyone?). In theory, the European Union is ready. It is eager to show off the fledgling common foreign policy of a regional power that is big, rich and noisily principled, but also an exponent of "soft power".