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The EU's foreign policy response(s) to the unfolding Ukraine crisis has further illustrated its difficulty in making effective foreign policy decisions. Using a neoclassical realist analytical framework, this paper argues that although the EU did have tangible collective interests in pursuing its Ukraine foreign policy, it was unable to adequately filter these through its domestic setting. Three key constraints to the EU's Ukrainian foreign policy were identified: decision-makers' miscalculations; rigid normative demands; and a reliance on consensus politics. Ultimately, the Ukraine crisis illustrated that the EU, in current incarnation, cannot translate interests into effective foreign policies, even when making policy for their direct neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neglected since his death after having been all at once criticized and hailed during his lifetime, Raymond Aron's approach challenges any easy classification within the discipline. An interesting attempt has been proposed by Michael Doyle, who considers Aron to be a constitutionalist realist. While basically agreeing with this proposal, our contribution purports to show that Aron actually was a neo-classical realist before the term was invented. After recalling Aron's common points with Morgenthau's classical realism and Waltz's neo-realism, the article analyses the numerous epistemological and ontological affinities linking the French IR scholar to the contemporary North-American neoclassical realists who ignore that they ignore Aron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]