In an attempt to live down to already low expectations, European officials selected Herman Van Rompuy as the EU's first president and Lady Catherine Ashton as its first foreign policy chief. Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton are underwhelming choices at best, preposterous at worst.

Europe now has a president with lower name recognition than most members of the US Congress and a foreign minister with no foreign policy experience. Just as Sarah Palin serves as a base caricature of American political life, Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton embody the most frustrating elements of European politics.

Their qualifications for the new positions seem to be almost entirely derived from their banality. And while some apparently believe this is a positive, the issues facing Europe today are far too pressing for these sort of carefully manicured, technocratic choices.

As Martin Kettle at the Guardian puts it: "The choices of Van Rompuy and Ashton suggest that the EU remains in thrall to the lowest common denominator politics of deals made behind closed doors and, by the same token, is collectively averse to taking risky or difficult decisions that threaten the EU's comfort zone, even when such decisions are in Europe's longer term interests."

If anything, the move is indicative that Europe's national leaders, despite their acquiescence to the Lisbon Treaty, are not ready to give up real power any time soon.
 

Robert Kaplan on Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall:

Europe, having been liberated from nuclear terror at the conclusion of the Cold War, proved unable to muster the gumption to deal with Yugoslavia on its own, or, as the case of Afghanistan shows, to demonstrate much enthusiasm for any great collective effort. Which leads to the question: What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence.

Thus, with their patriotism dissipated, European governments can no longer ask for sacrifices from their populations when it comes to questions of peace and war. Ironically, we may have gained victory in the Cold War, but lost Europe in the process.

Apparently, Tony Blair is out of the running for European Council President. Instead, the favored candidate of the moment is the Prime Minister of Belgium (who was reluctantly appointed PM by the Belgian king 11 months ago), and right behind him are his counterparts in Holland and Luxembourg. Give me a break. Does Europe really want to be ignored?

The biggest opponents of Blair claim that he was a neo-imperialist in socialist clothing who helped Bush invade Iraq. But in some ways this is a proxy for a referendum on whether the EU should maintain a credible ability to use force, or if it still believes that the world is a Kantian lovefest that responds to genocide with a handful of barely armed Dutch peacekeepers. Leaders should remember that after Iraq, Europeans replaced Chirac (currently under indictment) and Schroeder (works for Gazprom) with rightist Atlanticists.

More importantly, it seems that national leaders of big states, namely Sarkozy and Merkel, don't want their influence abroad diminished by a more powerful EU President, so they oppose leaders with clout from other big states. Leaders of small nations are ignored anyway, so they would be delighted at the chance to have one of their own rise to power. Thus, by analyzing individual interests, it seems that the EU is bound to have a weak president. Perhaps this will all change in future-- someone strong is bound to rise to power eventually. But for the time being, please pick someone with a better resume than Herman van Rompuy.

While the Baltic economies will eventually recover after the recession is over, what won't change is their location. Despite distinct advantages over other post-soviet successor states, the Baltics remain geopolitically trapped inside the historical no-man's land that exists between Germany and Russia.                   
Lucas does a great job of articulating this issue:

"...the Baltic states' future is not just in their own hands. The economic crisis coincides with the rise of a resurgent, revanchist Russia and its alliances with a divided and demoralized Europe. The most threatening prospect for Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians is the "Schroederization" of German foreign policy—derived from former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose conspicuous friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin while in office morphed into the chairmanship of a controversial Russian-German gas pipeline consortium within months of his stepping down. The Baltic states feel squeezed. Who will defend their economic and political interests when big countries once again make decisions over their heads?"