What You Need to Know About Playing the EU
From AICbackground
--Europe has a very large population of Middle Eastern descent, particularly North Africans in France and Turks in Germany, Italy, and Greece. Along with large numbers of South and Southeast Asian post-colonial immigrants, this gives Europe a substantial Muslim population. This population faces many economic and social challenges within the European Union, making many of them identify more strongly with their heritages in the Islamic world: reactions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can therefore have serious consequences for European domestic politics.
--Europe is much more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the US or Russia are, making the EU much more sensitive to regional issues from an energy perspective—the war in Iraq and the failure of Iraqi oil to penetrate world markets have made the EU very sensitive to further disruptions in world supply: for the EU, the world energy system cannot be destabilized any further, making peace in the Middle East a serious EU economic concern.
--American—European relations were seriously damaged as a result of the Iraq war, and these two major forces in Middle East peace talks do not work together as effectively as they once did: the Europeans are convinced that America relies too much on force and not enough on diplomacy. The EU will therefore almost unquestionably stand against any further attempt to resolve regional disputes by force. Most notably, this includes finding a diplomatic route to solving the Iranian nuclear dilemma.
--EU trade is incredibly important to Middle Eastern countries. The EU is Israel’s largest trade partner, and Lebanon and Syria are both striving hard to reach advantageous trade agreements with the EU. Trade is thus a potent weapon in the European diplomatic arsenal, which could be brought to bear in lieu of force against a number of regional problems.
--Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Middle Eastern nations funded clandestine agents, spies, and terrorists who fought each other across the cities of Europe. As a body, the EU is therefore much more familiar with the tendency Middle Eastern conflicts have of spreading internationally, becoming security threats as far away as London and Oslo.
