1st Edition
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.
This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.
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 (Queen’s University, Canada)
3. EU Strategic Culture: When the Means Becomes the End Per M. Norheim-Martinsen (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment)
4. Strategic Culture and the Common Security and Defense Policy: A Classical Realist Assessment and Critique Sten Rynning (University of Southern Denmark)
TESTING STRATEGIC CULTURE: MILITARY OPERATIONS
5. From Words to Deeds: Strategic Culure and the European Union’s Balkan Military Missions Charles C. Pentland (Queen’s University, Canada)
6. EU’s Military Involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Security Culture, Interests and Games Peter Schmidt (University of Mannheim)
7. The Failure of a European Strategic Culture: EUFOR CHAD: The Last of its kind? Jean Yves Haine (University of Toronto)
TESTING STRATEGIC CULTURE: CIVILIAN OPERATIONS
8. In Search of aTtrademark: EU Civilian Operations in Africa Reinhardt Rummel (University of Munich)
9. Putting Ideas into Action: EU Civilian Crisis Management in the Western Balkans Arnold H. Kammel (Austrian Institute for European & Security Policy)
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 (Free University of Berlin)
11. Overlap or Opposition? EU and NATO’s Strategic (Sub-)Culture Benjamin Zyla (University of Ottawa)
Biography
Peter Schmidt is Honorary Professor at the University of Mannheim and a former senior fellow of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. He organizes regular international crisis management simulation with Queen's University and has published widely on issues of European security, transatlantic relations, regional crisis management, and sustainability questions of the armed forces.
Benjamin Zyla joined the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa as an Assistant Professor in July 2011. He holds a PhD from the Royal Military College of Canada, an MA from Carleton University, and bachelor degrees from Uppsala University and the University of Göttingen. His research interests include international security, international organizations & global governance, and foreign policy analysis.
