Intet nytt fra Vestfronten – EUs forsvarssamarbeid 20 år

20 år er gått siden St-Malo avtalen i 1998 markerte starten på EUs forsvarssamarbeid. Planene lå der allerede i den tentative formuleringen “den eventuelle utviklingen av en felles sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk”, som ble tatt inn i Maastricht-traktaten i 1993. Men det var en bilateral erklæring fra Europas to sterkeste militærmakter, Frankrike og Storbritannia, som satte planene ut i livet. Den ene av de to, Storbritannia, er nå på vei ut av EU. Det bør være unødvendig å påpeke at BREXIT vil ha stor betydning for det europeiske forsvarssamarbeidets videre skjebne

Convergence towards a European strategic culture? A constructivist framework for explaining changing norms.

The article contributes to the debate about the emergence of a European strategic culture to underpin a European Security and Defence Policy. Noting both conceptual and empirical weaknesses in the literature, the article disaggregates the concept of strategic culture and focuses on four types of norms concerning the means and ends for the use of force. The study argues that national strategic cultures are less resistant to change than commonly thought and that they have been subject to three types of learning pressures since 1989: changing threat perceptions, institutional socialization, and mediatized crisis learning. The combined effect of these mechanisms would be a process of convergence with regard to strategic norms prevalent in current EU countries. If the outlined hypotheses can be substantiated by further research the implications for ESDP are positive, especially if the EU acts cautiously in those cases which involve norms that are not yet sufficiently shared across countries

Who Speaks for Europe While We Wait for the EU Foreign Minister?

[From the introduction]. Although it may be too early to write the obituary for the Constitutional Treaty, the French and Dutch no votes make it unlikely that it will be ratified without some major revisions. This will take years. In the meantime, a number of less contested and much-needed innovations in the area of EU foreign policy have been put on hold, such as the establishment of a permanent president of the European Council; a Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, merging the posts of High Representative for the CFSP and External Relations Commissioner; and an External Action Service (EAS), bringing together the external services of the Council and the Commission in one EU diplomatic service. Especially in terms of providing the EU with foreign policy leadership, the establishment of the post of a double-hatted Union Foreign Minister (FM) would represent a potentially significant step forward at a time when the Union is seeking a more active role on the world stage. Having a person speak on behalf of the Union as its Foreign Minister would, however, not in itself provide it with the necessary leadership, since the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is—and would remain so under the Constitutional Treaty framework—firmly in the hands of the member state governments.1 Yet in some respects, the High Representative Javier Solana already fills such a role de facto, notably by taking the lead in the process that ultimately produced the 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS) and by representing the Union, for example, as events unravelled in the Ukraine in 2004, at a time when the member states were still recovering from the Iraq debacle. On the other hand, Solana has been effectively sidelined together with the larger part of the EU membership, although he was eventually taken on board, in negotiations with Iran, where the exclusiveness of the club of the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) has revived the notion of a directoire—an EU “Security Council” of sorts—to lead an ever larger Union of 25. This raises the question whether the Foreign Minister would, indeed, receive the backing needed from large and small member states alike in order to exert the political leadership that the Union so desperately needs in order to fulfil its ambitions as a global actor

Intet nytt fra Vestfronten – EUs forsvarssamarbeid 20 år

20 år er gått siden St-Malo avtalen i 1998 markerte starten på EUs forsvarssamarbeid. Planene lå der allerede i den tentative formuleringen “den eventuelle utviklingen av en felles sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk”, som ble tatt inn i Maastricht-traktaten i 1993. Men det var en bilateral erklæring fra Europas to sterkeste militærmakter, Frankrike og Storbritannia, som satte planene ut i livet. Den ene av de to, Storbritannia, er nå på vei ut av EU. Det bør være unødvendig å påpeke at BREXIT vil ha stor betydning for det europeiske forsvarssamarbeidets videre skjebne

Intet nytt fra Vestfronten – EUs forsvarssamarbeid 20 år

20 år er gått siden St-Malo avtalen i 1998 markerte starten på EUs forsvarssamarbeid. Planene lå der allerede i den tentative formuleringen “den eventuelle utviklingen av en felles sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikk”, som ble tatt inn i Maastricht-traktaten i 1993. Men det var en bilateral erklæring fra Europas to sterkeste militærmakter, Frankrike og Storbritannia, som satte planene ut i livet. Den ene av de to, Storbritannia, er nå på vei ut av EU. Det bør være unødvendig å påpeke at BREXIT vil ha stor betydning for det europeiske forsvarssamarbeidets videre skjebne

European strategic culture revisted: the ends and means of a militarised European Union

Does EU have the institutionalised cooperation and the self image of a strategic actor who will act rapidly when necessary? Over the last decade the European Union has engaged in increasingly demanding military operations. Recognising the need to supplement European crisis management and prevention instruments with the use of force, the European Security Strategy of 2003 asserted that the EU needed “to develop a strategic culture that fosters early, rapid and when necessary, robust intervention”. Do the European Union’s ambitions to play a role in international relations mean that it can also be seen as an emerging strategic actor with the will and means to use military force as part of its foreign policy repertoire? Supplanting the traditional intergovernmental focus of European Union foreign policy studies with a systematic analysis of the effects of institutionalised cooperation, this study takes a holistic approach based on the concept of “strategic culture” to the analysis of the European Union. By studying the emergence of a European “strategic culture” from within four central dimensions of the European Security and Defence Policy, the author provides a comprehensive assessment of developments that are of great importance to anyone interested in European security.This study addresses whether the EU, as an emerging strategic actor, (1) has developed a capacity to formulate common security interests (ends), and (2) can generate the relevant capabilities (means) which it has the resolve to use to defend these common interests. The study employs the concept of strategic culture as a framework for strategic analysis in an attempt to capture the intergovernmental, institutional, formal and informal mechanisms that underpin the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It first shows how the EU, as a result of an institutionalisation process, has moved from a purely intergovernmental system towards a system of governance in security and defence, then briefly revisits the field of strategic culture studies to argue that strategic culture should be seen as essentially a product of strategic discourse and practice. These two factors are, in turn, traced along four strategic dimensions—the social, the logistical, the technological and the operational—to provide a comprehensive overview of the ESDP. The article concludes that the emergence of a European strategic culture, as an ongoing process, has allowed the EU to leapfrog many of the obstacles inherent to a transnational security polity. The most significant factor in this process has been the establishment of a central institutional capacity, which in key areas has facilitated the emergence of the EU as a strategic actor