Part IV Power Politics, International Law, and Global Security, Ch.47 Europe
This chapter discusses the role of Europe as an actor of global (in)security. The place of Europe in the global security landscape is often analysed with a focus on the European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or both. But European States’ security approaches are not subsumed under the policies and politics of these organizations. The chapter looks at the National Security Strategies (NSSs) of nineteen European States to identify the security approaches of European States’ from their national perspectives, inquiring at the same time whether an embryonic ‘European’ security perspective emerges from them. To evaluate whether this is borne out in practice, the chapter then considers two spheres of securitization which, as evident from the NSSs, are perceived as essential to the maintenance of Europe itself: security at its borders and in its wider neighbourhood.