PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The European Union is increasingly showing a new independent stance on foreign-policy issues as the logic of its industrial and economic integration plays out in the international arena.
Already the EU has taken a distinct and independent approach to both the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the nuclear crisis in Iran. Now it has broken ranks over the Korean Peninsula, fed up and concerned with the failure to resolve the ongoing crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear arms.
Reflecting this new stance, the European Parliament this week passed a comprehensive resolution on the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and nuclear arms in North Korea and Iran: