What Happened to Europe's Principled Foreign Policy?

Europeans are hardly new to Realpolitik (the clue is in the word). There has long been a division of foreign-policy labour within the EU, says Michael Leigh of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank. Larger countries delegated values-based policy to Brussels while they got on with the hard stuff, such as security or access to oil. For every pious expression of support for international justice or condemnation of capital punishment, there was a shabby energy deal or quiet support for a useful dictator. Some feel this category includes the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would run directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea and could undermine the EU’s energy policy, but which has the support of Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.