Abstract

Strategic partnerships have become very fashionable. They are blossoming in the post-Cold War era, partly due to their inherent flexibility and ambiguity, making strategic partnerships a central feature of the early twenty-first century diplomatic discourse. Such grand rhetoric can be misleading, however, as strategic partnerships can mean everything – and thus mean little or nothing. Most governments probably do not even realize how many they have signed. Every government has its own definition, and every partnership is a variant in itself. In this globally accepted confusion, the EU is no exception.