IT SEEMS safe to assume that Johnny Cash, born in Arkansas in 1932, gave little thought to European foreign policy. Yet one of the Man in Black’s better-known numbers sums up the European Union’s troubles with its neighbours. “Love is a burning thing,” he sang in “Ring of Fire”, a hit in 1963, “and it makes a fiery ring. Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire.”Wild desire is a mild overstatement, but there was certainly an abundance of goodwill behind the EU’s decision to launch its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004. Aiming to construct a “ring of friends” to its east (former communist countries) and south (across the Mediterranean), the EU took enthusiastically to the task of transforming its 16 ENP partners. Like Cash with his guitar, the EU had powerful instruments, including trade, aid and political reform. Fresh from an enlargement that took in eight central and east European countries, the club believed itself influential enough to bring about change in its neighbours without the carrot of eventual membership.Yet ten years on, the EU is facing a ring of fire on its eastern and southern flanks. Over 3,000 people have been killed in Ukraine…
