The Common Security and Defence Policy maps out how the EU – established primarily to be an economic organisation – can purposefully prepare for and apply the use of military force. In this ...insightful work, Per M. Norheim-Martinsen argues that, since the EU is not a state but nevertheless does embody some non-intergovernmental characteristics, neither EU studies nor strategic studies is sufficient for fully understanding the Policy itself. Combining the two fields, the author utilises the instrumentality and clarity of the strategic approach, while retaining an understanding of the unique character of the EU as a strategic actor. In so doing, he provides a fruitful conceptual framework for analysing the development of the CSDP, how it functions in practice and how it will continue to evolve in the face of the challenges which lie ahead. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of European studies, international relations and strategic studies.
Over the last decade, the EU has developed into a regional institution whose military ambitions extend well beyond Europe. This development counteracts the assumptions of realist and ...intergovernmental theories, raising the question of what concepts are appropriate for understanding security and defence policy in the EU. It has been argued that governance approaches are particularly well‐suited to describe the functioning of the EU. Yet analyses of the EU's common security and defence policy (CSDP) have to date not been granted the benefits of this insight. This article seeks to remedy this by venturing down the yet unfulfilled EU trail of a burgeoning literature on security governance. Exploring five features of security governance, the article identifies the most promising questions and approaches of the so‐called governance turn in IR theory, ending up with a putative EU security governance research agenda that will lead to a deeper understanding of the kind of security actor that the EU has evolved into.
After being debated in academic circles for years, the idea of a common European Union strategic culture was elevated to a policy objective in the 2003 European Security Strategy. However, whether ...the European Union has a strategic culture or not is still up for debate. By drawing on developments in strategic culture theory, this article demonstrates that the idea of strategic culture is not only compatible with the European Union, but may be a particularly useful conceptual tool for studying actors for which cultural factors can make up for the lack of more material ones, such as borders, language, political structure, national history, and so on. Offering a fresh perspective on the European Security Strategy, it shows that a specific strategic culture has evolved in the EU, in which consensus on a comprehensive approach to security as a unique European asset has become a focal point for the fledgling European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). However, the article concludes that this does not provide for a robust strategic culture. The repeated emphasis on the EU's unique potentials as a comprehensive security actor will also invite criticism if the EU fails to mount operations that reflect its own success formula.
Despite problems of violence domestically, Brazil has played a key leadership role as part of MINUSTAH peacekeeping operations in Haiti since 2004. This article addresses how Brazil's international ...military engagement is shaping domestic approaches to urban security, and what may be the implications of the use of military strategies, operations, and norms to address issues of public security in Brazilian cities. It is argued that current approaches toward urban security employing military-trained peacekeepers actually represent a continuation of old paradigms, yet these recent militarised approaches are likely evolving into newer and potentially more accountable forms by constraining indiscriminate use of force and establishing a positive state presence in marginal urban areas. As such, the article connects long-established issues of dealing with urban violence in Latin America with ongoing debates in the United States and beyond about post-counterinsurgency approaches to increasingly urban conflict settings. It reflects on potential lessons to be learned from the Latin American perspective, while showing also how these have changed over the last decade. The article concludes that despite the potential utility of force in some urban conflict settings, this approach could entail a normative shift towards legitimising forceful containment of violence, and hinder democratic consolidation in Brazil.
The literature on how European states have adapted to the post-cold war security environment ffocuses invariably on different understandings of military transformation, a process which is seen as ...inherently different from other forms of organizational change. However, as this paper argues, new management practices, going back to the introduction of so-called New Public Management (NPM) reforms throughout Europe in the 1980s, have eventually penetrated also the last bastion of the old state - the defense sector. Taking a critical approach to the idea of military transformation and existing theories of military change, the paper demonstrates how other international developments have pushed towards what may be seen as a "normalization" of Europe's defense sectors. This has important implications for how we approach and understand change in contemporary defense organizations.
The Common Security and Defence Policy maps out how the EU - established primarily to be an economic organisation - can purposefully prepare for and apply the use of military force. In this ...insightful work, Per M. Norheim-Martinsen argues that, since the EU is not a state but nevertheless does embody some non-intergovernmental characteristics, neither EU studies nor strategic studies is sufficient for fully understanding the Policy itself. Combining the two fields, the author utilises the instrumentality and clarity of the strategic approach, while retaining an understanding of the unique character of the EU as a strategic actor. In so doing, he provides a fruitful conceptual framework for analysing the development of the CSDP, how it functions in practice and how it will continue to evolve in the face of the challenges which lie ahead. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of European studies, international relations and strategic studies. Summary reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press
PDF