The Eu Strategy And Security Policy

This edited collection is a timely and in-depth analysis of the EU’s efforts to bring coherency and strategy to its security policy actions. Despite a special European Council summit in December 2013 on defence, it is generally acknowledged that fifteen years since its inception the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has yet to acquire a clear sense of purpose. This book investigates those areas where the EU has established actorness in the security and defence field and asks whether they might constitute the elements of an emergent more coherent EU strategy on security. Taking a critical view, the contributors map the EU’s strategic vision(s) across particular key regions where the EU has been active as a security actor, the strategic challenges that it has pinpointed alongside the opportunities and barriers posed by a multiplicity of actors, interests and priorities identified by both member states and EU actors. By doing this we demonstrate where gaps in strategic thinking lie, where the EU has been unable to achieve its aims, and offer recommendations concerning the EU’s future strategic direction. This book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU policy, strategic studies and IR in general.

This book examines the degree to which the European Union has responded as a coherent and strategic actor towards the developmental and security needs of its immediate neighbourhood in the post-Cold War era.

This volume addresses how and in what capacity the European Union and its member states are able to respond to fundamental shifts occurring in global politics and remain relevant for the future. The changing nature of the international system is subject to considerable contestation among scholars, with many claiming that the fundamentals of the post-war international system are being rewritten. This volume brings together prominent scholars in the field of European security to address a range of pertinent issues related to Europe’s role in the context of evolving global challenges. The first section focuses on whether the EU is an actor with a strategic nature and the means to act on a global security strategy. The second section considers the institutional dynamics and the approaches at the EU’s disposal to fulfil its possible intended global roles. The third section addresses Europe’s most important strategic relationship—the partnership it has with the United States. This section considers the recalibration of the transatlantic relationship in light of the changing international system and the reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. This book will be of much interest to students of European Union policy, European Security policy, European Foreign policy and International Relations in general.

The European Security Strategy (ESS) has become an important reference framework for the EU since its inception in 2003. Without strategy an actor can only really be a ‘reactor’ to events and developments. In the ESS the EU now has a strategy, with which it has the potential of shifting boundaries and shaping the World. This volume explores this statement and examines the underlying concepts and implementation of the ESS as a judging tool of all the European Union’s external actions. Contributors, closely involved in the early debate leading up to the ESS, assess questions such as how the strategy has shaped EU policy, how it relates to existing policies but also how it has added value to these policies and whether the strategy’s objectives are sufficient to safeguard EU interests or whether they should be reviewed and added too. The outline of the strategy itself is followed; addressing its historical and conceptual context, the threat assessment, the multilateral and regional policies of the EU, its military capabilities and its strategic partnerships. This book offers a comprehensive vision of how the EU can achieve the ambitious objectives of the European Security Strategy and become an effective global actor as the strategy helps to forge a global Europe. The EU and the European Security Strategy will be of great interest to students and researchers of European politics and security studies.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the policy-making processes of EU strategies in foreign and security policy and external action. It uses the European Security Strategy and the EU Global Strategy to assess their policy-making dynamics both before and after the Lisbon Treaty. Inter-institutional relations in strategy-making are put into the context of current debates in European integration, questioning the assumption that the EU is a body increasingly ruled by intergovernmentalism - as reflected by the new intergovernmentalism literature. The book also provides a categorisation of EU strategies and considers them as policy-inspiration documents, acting as frameworks for policy-making. This reading of strategies lies behind the analysis of the policy-making processes of the ESS and the EUGS, unpacked into four phases: agenda-setting, policy formulation, policy output and implementation. By looking at the shifting policy-making dynamics from foreign and security policy to external action, the author sheds light on the current shape of EU integration.

This volume offers a coherent analysis of the European Union’s security strategies within a comparative framework. If the EU is to survive and prosper as an effective security actor, it requires that greater attention be devoted to taking a cohesive and common position on the relationship between EU foreign policy means and goals. The major claim of this edited collection is that there is a European grand security strategy that disciplines member state security strategies. That grand strategy has two distinct substantive goals: (1) the preservation and expansion of the EU system of security governance; and (2) the implementation of specific strategies to meet internal and external threats and sources of insecurity. The EU has sought to develop a grand security strategy that not only accounts for the proliferation of threats possessing a military or non-military character and differentiates between core and peripheral regions of interest, but also addresses the requirements to bridge the increasingly blurred boundary between internal and external security threats and the necessary reconciliation of the competing security preferences of its member states. The empirical contributions to this volume examine the EU security strategies for specific issue areas and regional threat complexes. These case studies assess whether and how those strategies have consolidated or expanded the EU system of security governance, as well as their successes and limitations in meeting the security threats confronting the EU and its member-states. This volume will be of great interest to students of EU policy, foreign policy, security studies and IR.

In December 2003 the EU adopted the European Security Strategy, the first ever common strategic vision of the Member States. This volume examines how the Strategy can form the basis of a comprehensive approach that integrates all dimensions of EU external action, from aid and trade to defence, under the same agenda of 'effective multilateralism' or global governance. This agenda can be translated into the core public goods to which every individual on earth is entitled; promoting access to these global public goods can be the essence of a distinctive European approach emphasizing long-term stabilization and conflict prevention. On that basis, the Strategy can be a global agenda for positive power - global because of its worldwide scope and comprehensive nature - for an EU with effective power to achieve positive objectives. The book will appeal to audiences interested in the EU as an international actor, foreign policy, security and defence, development and trade. It is also suitable for policy makers in the EU institutions and the Member States.

In times of rapid change and unpredictability the European Union’s role in the world is sorely tested. How successfully the EU meets challenges such as war, terrorism and climate change, and how effectively the Union taps into opportunities like mobility and technological progress depends to a great extent on the ability of the EU’s institutions and member states to adopt and implement a comprehensive and integrated approach to external action. This Research Handbook examines the law, policy and practice of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, including the Common Security and Defence, and gauges its interactions with the other external policies of the Union (including trade, development, energy), as well as the evolving political and economic challenges that face the European Union.