European Military Culture And Security Governance

This book offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of military education and training in Europe within the context of the post-Cold War security environment. Based on an analysis of military education institutions in the UK, Germany, Finland, Romania and the Baltic States, this book demonstrates that the convergence of European military cultures since the end of the Cold War is linked to changes in military education. The process of convergence originates, at least in part, from the full or partial adoption of a new concept by post-commissioning professional military education institutions: the National Defence University. Officers are now educated alongside civilians and public servants, wherein they enjoy a socialization experience that is markedly different from that of previous generations of European officers, and is increasingly similar across national borders. In addition, this book argues that with the control over the curricula and graduation criteria increasingly set by civilian higher education authorities, the European armed forces, while continuing to exist, and hold significant (although declining) capabilities, stand to lose their status as a profession in the traditional sense. This book will be of much interest to students of military, European security policy, European politics, and IR in general.

European countries work together in crisis management, conflict prevention and many other aspects of security and defence policy. Closer cooperation in this policy arena seems to be the only viable way forward to address contemporary security challenges. Yet, despite the repeated interaction, fundamental assumptions about security and defence remain remarkably distinct across European nations. This book offers a comparative analysis of the security and defence policies of all 27 EU member states and Turkey, drawing on the concept of ‘strategic culture’, in order to examine the chances and obstacles for closer security and defence cooperation across the continent. Along the lines of a consistent analytical framework, international experts provide case studies of the current security and defence policies in Europe as well as their historical and cultural roots. ​

EU Security Governance links the challenges of governing Europe's security to the changing nature of the state, the evolutionary expansion of the security agenda, the growing obsolescence of the traditional forms and concepts of security cooperation, and assesses the effectiveness of the EU as a security actor. The book has two distinct features. Firstly, it is the first systematic study of the different economic, political, and military instruments employed by the EU in the performance of four different security functions. Secondly, the book represents an important step towards redressing conceptual gaps in the study of security governance, particularly as it pertains to the European Union. The book demonstrates that the EU has emerged as an important security actor.

This book focuses on the problems of, and prospects for, strengthening the global system of security governance in a manner consistent with the aspirations and practices of the EU. The EU approach to security governance has been successful in its immediate neighbourhood: it has successfully exported its preferred norms and principles to applicant countries, thereby 'pacifying' its immediate neighbourhood and making all of Europe more secure. The EU governance orientation ultimately seeks to enlarge the European security community and expand the geopolitical area within which armed conflicts are inconceivable, and where state and private actors converge around a set of norms and rules of behaviour and engagement. The EU's success along its immediate boundaries has not yet been replicated on a global scale; it remains an open question whether the EU system of governance can be exported globally, owing to different normative structures (for example, a tolerance of armed conflict or non-democratic governance internally), great-power competition (such as US--China), or ongoing processes of securitization that has made it difficult to find a commonly accepted definition of security. Moreover, the EU system of security governance clashes with the continuing unwillingness of other major powers to cede or pool sovereignty as well as varying preferences for unilateral as opposed to multilateral forms of statecraft. This edited volume addresses both the practical and political aspects of security governance and the barriers to the globalization of the EU system of security governance, particularly in the multipolar post-Cold War era. This book will be of great interest to students of security governance, EU politics, European Security and IR in general. James Sperling is Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron, Ohio, USA. Jan Hallenberg is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Security and Strategic Studies, Swedish National Defence College. Charlotte Wagnsson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategic and Security Studies at the Swedish National Defence College.

This book argues that we can understand and explain the EU as a security and peace actor through a framework of an updated and deepened concept of security governance. It elaborates and develops on the current literature on security governance in order to provide a more theoretically driven analysis of the EU in security. Whilst the current literature on security governance in Europe is conceptually rich, there still remains a gap between those that do 'security governance' and those that focus on 'security' per se. A theoretical framework is constructed with the objective of creating a conversation between these two literatures and the utility of such a framework is demonstrated through its application to the geospatial dimensions of EU security as well as specific cases studies in varied fields of EU security. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Security.

This edited collection examines changes in national security culture in the wake of international events that have threatened regional or global order, and analyses the effects of these divergent responses on international security. Tracing the links between national security cultures and preferred forms of security governance the work provides a systematic account of perceived security threats and the preferred methods of response with individual chapters on Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, UK and USA. Each chapter is written to a common template exploring the role of national security cultures in shaping national responses to the four domains of security governance: prevention, assurance, protection and compellence. The volume provides an analytically coherent framework evaluating whether cooperation in security governance is likely to increase among major states, and if so, the extent to which this will follow either regional or global arrangements. By combining a theoretical framework with strong comparative case studies this volume contributes to the ongoing reconceptualization of security and definition of threat and provides a basis for reaching tentative conclusions about the prospects for global and regional security governance in the early 21st century. This makes it ideal reading for all students and policymakers with an interest in global security and comparative foreign and security policy.

International demand for military crisis-management missions continues to grow and demand for troops continues to outstrip supply. Like other Western democracies, European Union member states, because of their wealth, relative military competence and commitment to human rights, bear a particular responsibility to expand the international communitys capacity for action. But while the EU has succeeded in defining a complex military-technical and political-strategic framework to boost its role and that of its member states in crisis management, its performance so far has fallen well short of its ambitions. This paper analyses what the EU wants to be able to do militarily its level of ambition and contrasts this aspiration with the current reality. To explain the gap between the two, the paper examines national ambitions and performance across the EU and analyses their domestic determinants using the examples of Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by suggesting that the EU might need to strike a new balance between the inclusiveness and the effectiveness of its activities in this area if it wants to increase its military crisis-management performance and live up to its declared ambitions.

Recent debates in security policy have highlighted trends towards fragmentation, informalisation and privatisation in the diverse field of security policy, with its increasingly transnational security risks. In this context, the concept of security governance has risen to prominence and has inspired much valuable research. Yet, there are not only very different conceptual understandings of security governance; there is also a lack of clarity regarding its empirical manifestations and normative connotations. After a decade of research, this book therefore puts security governance to the test and scrutinises its analytical and political pitfalls and potentials. It reviews the concept of security governance and identifies central conceptual, empirical and normative challenges that need to be addressed. Moreover, this book scrutinises critical examples of security governance from EU security policy as well as in a comparative regional perspective. Case studies include EU efforts to counter piracy off the coast of Somalia, combat terrorism inside European societies and protect critical infrastructures. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Security.