107 The Contingency of the Eu's Crisis Management Operations

Wednesday, June 26, 2013: 9:00 AM-10:45 AM
2.04 (Binnengasthuis)
In the last decade the European Union (EU) has emerged as an increasingly important security actor in international politics, launching both civilian and military missions beyond its borders. After a dynamic start, the Union’s development in this respect has however almost ground to a halt over the last 3 years. This panel aims to investigate this operational side of the Common Security and Defence policy (CSDP). Despite extensive scholarly attention to CSDP operations, the literature still suffers from a lack of theoretical development. The first two papers seek to contribute to our theoretical understanding by offering broad interpretations of these dynamics. Benjamin Pohl (“Analytic eclecticism and EU foreign policy (in-)action”) calls for analytic eclecticism to explain the incidence of CSDP operations, and proposes a two-stage model: if structural changes have pushed EU policy-makers to accept a greater role in policing the world, the costs and benefits of specific undertakings were calculated by individual EU governments on the basis of anticipated domestic consequences . Nicola Chelotti (“Bounded Rationality in Brussels: elements of an EU foreign policy”) investigates the decision-making logics of CFSP/CSDP outputs – how and according to what practices EU members states negotiate in EU foreign policy. Using original data drawn from 138 close-ended questionnaires and 20 interviews with national officials, it offers a general overview of the negotiating atmosphere, tactics and outcomes in this policy field.

The final three papers are more detailed explorations of particularly important CSDP missions. Niklas Novaky (“Deploying Military Force under CSDP: The Case of EUFOR Althea”) presents a case study on the EU's military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using collective action theory, he argues that Althea was deployed because various EU governments saw it as a lucrative joint product activity, i.e. a collective action producing both public and private goods. Sofia Sebastian (“The EU and Humanitarian Intervention: the Case of Libya”) concentrates on the links between the developments of CFSP/CSDP and the humanitarian intervention in Libya in 2011. By focusing on this military intervention, the paper aims to contribute to the debate on European defense and Europe’s ability to provide itself with defense and military capabilities in the midst of a financial crisis. Finally, Michael E. Smith (“EU Grand Strategy and the Ethics of Military Force: The Case of EUNAVFOR-Atalanta”) shows that if the EU generally faces recurring difficulties in projecting its various forms of power in a coherent fashion, the EU’s counter-piracy naval operation – EUNAVFOR-Atalanta – clearly breaks with this trend. He argues that the EU’s approach to ‘new security’ issues could become very important in light of current trends involving the role of non-state actors, the concept of ‘human’ security, and security aspects of globalization and development. By combining detailed case studies and theoretical generalization, this section gives a nuanced analysis of the current state of EU security policy, its inherent contingencies, and its underlying drivers.

Chair:
Nicola Chelotti
Discussant:
Adam William Chalmers
Analytic eclecticism and EU foreign policy (in-)action
Benjamin Pohl, University of Aberdeen
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