Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos recalled this week that it had been said of the previous U.S. administration that what American diplomacy needed was “regime change”. Europeans, meanwhile, he said, simply needed “a regime”.

America got its regime change with President Barack Obama, Moratinos explained this week, while Europeans got a new regime with the Lisbon treaty, a document that is supposed to help bolster the EU on the world stage and creates a more powerful foreign policy chief for the bloc.

The question now is whether the EU, a group of 27 nations and 500 million people that has consistently punched below its weight in foreign affairs even as its economic influence grows, will be bold enough to seize the opportunity Lisbon presents to make it presence fully felt in the world.

Europhiles have argued for years about the need for Europeans to back their ability to exert “soft power” through aid and trade with a united approach to international diplomacy backed by credible “hard power”, or military capability (Reuters, January 21, 2010).

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