European Security Policy and Strategic Culture

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EU’s operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations.

The contributors find that strategic culture is a useful tool to explain and understand the EU's civilian and military operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Accordingly, classical notions of strategic culture in the field of international security must be adapted to highlight the specific character of Europe's strategic culture, especially by taking the interaction with the United Nations and NATO into account. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defence missions have demonstrated or promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors reveal a growing sense that a cohesive strategic culture is critical in the EU’s ambition of being a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its actions will be based much more on flexibility than on cohesion.

Contents:

+ 1. European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation? Peter Schmidt and Benjamin Zyla

EUROPEAN STRATEGIC CULTURE
+ 2. ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’? Security Culture as Strategic Culture David G. Haglund
+ 3. EU Strategic Culture: When the Means Becomes the End Per M. Norheim-Martinsen
+ 4. Strategic Culture and the Common Security and Defense Policy: A Classical Realist Assessment and Critique Sten Rynning

TESTING STRATEGIC CULTURE: MILITARY OPERATIONS
+ 5. From Words to Deeds: Strategic Culure and the European Union’s Balkan Military Missions Charles C. Pentland
+ 6. EU’s Military Involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Security Culture, Interests and Games Peter Schmidt
+ 7. The Failure of a European Strategic Culture: EUFOR CHAD: The Last of its kind? Jean Yves Haine

TESTING STRATEGIC CULTURE: CIVILIAN OPERATIONS
+ 8. In Search of aTtrademark: EU Civilian Operations in Africa Reinhardt Rummel
+ 9. Putting Ideas into Action: EU Civilian Crisis Management in the Western Balkans Arnold H. Kammel

CONNECTING: THE EU, UN AND NATO
+ 10. Strategic Culture and Multilateralism: The interplay of the EU and the UN in conflict and crisis management Ingo Peters
+ 11. Overlap or Opposition? EU and NATO’s Strategic (Sub-)Culture Benjamin Zyla

This book was also published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy