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European Security (european + security)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

A common European foreign policy after Iraq?

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2003
Brian Crowe
Taking as read the wide range of other instruments that the EU has for international influence (enlargement, aid, trade, association and other arrangements, etc.), the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), under pressure from the Kosovo conflict, has been shaped by two important decisions in 1999: the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) to give the EU a military capability when NATO as a whole is not engaged, and the appointment as the new High Representative for the CFSP of a high-profile international statesman rather than a senior civil servant. A major European effort will still be needed if Europe is to be effective militarily, whether in the EU/ESDP or NATO framework. The management of the CFSP has been held back by the doctrine of the equality of all member states regardless of their actual contribution. This in turn leads to a disconnect between theory (policy run by committee in Brussels) and practice (policy run by the High Representative working with particular member states and other actors, notably the US). It has been difficult for Javier Solana to develop the authority to do this, not in competition with the Commission as so widely and mistakenly believed, as with member states themselves, and particularly successive rotating presidencies. It is important that misdiagnosis does not lead to politically correct solutions that end up with the cure worse than the disease. Ways need to be found to assure to the High Representative the authority to work with third countries and with the member states making the real contribution, while retaining the support of all. Then, with its own military capability, the EU can have a CFSP that is the highest common factor rather than the lowest common denominator, with member states ready to attach enough priority to the need for common policies to give Europeans a strong influence in the big foreign policy issues of the day. [source]

ESDP as a Transatlantic Issue: Problems of Mutual Ambiguity,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Ingo Peters
European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) has become a contentious subject in transatlantic security relations. This essay identifies the ambiguities that have occurred in the policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic that appear to have generated a basic lack of confidence and trust in the other side's good intentions and commitment to cooperation. It does so by sketching three historical time periods,1981,1986, 1988,1996, and 1998,2004,that convey the recurrent patterns and outcomes in the ESDP dispute. These three cases cover the periods (1) from the London Report on European Political Cooperation to the Single European Act and the Western European Union Security Platform, (2) the Maastricht Negotiations on a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and (3) the evolution of ESDP from St. Malo to Brussels. [source]

The European Defence Agency on Europe's Future in a Globalizing World

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
Article first published online: 27 NOV 200
For a number of years the European Union has been building a common European security and defense policy. The European Defence Agency (EDA) was established in 2004 "to support the Member States and the Council [of Ministers of the EU] in their effort to improve European defence capabilities in the field of crisis management and to sustain the European Security and Defence Policy." A report prepared by EDA under the title An Initial Long-Term Vision for European Defence Capability and Capacity Needs was submitted to the Agency's Steering Board (the decisionmaking body on which the Defense Ministers of the Agency's 24 participating member states sit) on 3 October 2006. The report was endorsed by the Board "as a reasonable foundation for the EDA's medium-to-long-term agendas." The 28-page document addresses its topic with a 20-year perspective in a global setting. It finds the perspective "sobering, with the central predictions of demography and economics foreshadowing a Europe which, two decades hence, will be older, less pre-eminently prosperous, and surrounded by regions (including Africa and the Middle East) which may struggle to cope with the consequences of globalisation." Excerpts from the report are reproduced below. Paragraph numbers have been omitted. The full report is accessible at «http://www.eda.europa.eu/ltv/ltv.htm». [source]

The Prime Minister and the Core Executive: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Reading of UK Defence Policy Formulation 1997,20001

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2005
Robert Dover
This article explores the domestic formulation of UK European defence policy 1997,2000 through the intergovernmental meetings at Pörtschach and Saint Malo which set in train the development and codification of a common European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 2000, through a Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LI) framework. This research leads to five conclusions: first, that the Saint Malo initiative was a tactical shift of government policies rather than core preferences; second, that the prime minister centralised European defence policy-making within the core executive; third, that the prime minister was crucial to the development of the initiative; fourth, that the presentation of the initiative was made on lowest common denominator grounds; and, lastly, that the ,successive limited comparisons' framework provides an effective corrective to LI's domestic policy formulation hypotheses. [source]

NATO expansion: ,a policy error of historic importance'

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 6 2008
MICHAEL MCCGWIRE
European security depends on the effective collaboration of the five major powers; it will be undermined by the extension of NATO, a policy driven by US domestic politics. The main threats to security are: the breakdown of political and economic stability; unintended nuclear proliferation and/or failure of the START process; Russia's evolving political and territorial aspirations. All three will remain marginal as long as Russia is constructively engaged with the West. NATO expansion threatens that engagement. It is seen by all strands of Russian opinion as violating the bargain struck in 1990 and will likely lead to the withdrawal of cooperation. Invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic cannot be rescinded, but the consequences can be mitigated by refraining from integrating them into NATO's military structure, by ceasing to insist that NATO membership is open to all, and by perpetuating the de facto nuclear-weapons-free zone that presently exists in Central and Eastern Europe. Britain's stance could be pivotal. [source]