Foreign, Security, and Defence Policy

Author(s):  
Ben Tonra

This chapter explores the roots of Irish foreign, security, and defence policy, placing them in the context of a deeply pragmatic approach to public policy. Those roots are defined in terms of nationalism, solidarity, and global justice, which are themselves deep markers within Irish political culture. Ireland’s pragmatic approach is then grounded in a meticulously crafted rhetoric surrounding key foreign policy priorities but an associated reluctance to devote substantial resources towards these foreign policy and defence goals. Together, this gives rise to an assessment that the interests of smaller and less powerful states such as Ireland are best defended within legitimate, strong, and effective multilateral institutions such as the UN—even as the state continues to face adaptation challenges arising from a deepening foreign, security, and defence policy engagement within the EU.

Subject Belarus's attempts to court the EU and the United States. Significance The Belarusian government has shifted from an exclusively Russia-oriented foreign policy to a campaign to mend fences with the West. Government statements and a defence policy document speak of equal, non-adversarial relationships, while President Alexander Lukashenka has encouraged greater engagement with the EU and United States. Impacts Western governments will grant more legitimacy to the government. Opposition parties will find it harder to cite international isolation as a failed government policy. The EU's Eastern Partnership may be revitalised by its emerging role as conduit for ties with Belarus.


2020 ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Boris Litwin

With the 2019 EU–China Strategic Outlook, the EU has revalidated its dual perspective on China as cooperation partner and strategic competitor at the same time. So far, considerations of China in EU and EU Member States have primarily focused on economic questions. However, as China‘s foreign policy becomes more assertive and visible via military deployments in the EU‘s geopolitical neighbourhood, the EU needs to confront this challenge by giving appropriate and concrete political responses in a geostrategic context as well. Based on the concept of „coopetition“, this article provides an analysis and subsequent recommendations on how the EU can integrate the “China factor” in its Common Security and Defence Policy, while ensuring that a balance of cooperation and competition in EU’s China policy is retained


Author(s):  
Ian Bache ◽  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Stephen George ◽  
Owen Parker

This chapter examines the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). From 1993 to 2009, external political relations formed the second pillar of the EU, on CFSP. Although CFSP was officially an intergovernmental pillar, the European Commission came to play an important role. There were serious attempts to strengthen the security and defence aspects of the CFSP in the face of the threats that faced the EU from instability in its neighbouring territories. However, the EU remains far from having a truly supranational foreign policy and its status as a ‘power’ in international relations is debatable. The chapter first provides a historical background on the CFSP, focusing on the creation of the European Political Co-operation (EPC), before discussing the CFSP and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It concludes with an assessment of EU power and its impact on world politics.


Author(s):  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Owen Parker ◽  
Ian Bache ◽  
Stephen George ◽  
Charlotte Burns

This chapter examines the European Union’s (EU’s) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It tells the story of increasing co-operation between member states on foreign policy matters, first with European Political Co-operation (EPC) and, since the 1990s, with CFSP and a Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The chapter highlights the internal dynamics and external events that drove the member states towards such co-operation and considers the most recent example of such efforts: the 2017 attempt to create a system of permanent structured co-operation (PESCO). However, it is noted that the EU remains far from having a truly supranational foreign policy and there remains a reluctance from member states to push much further integration, given states’ keen desire to remain sovereign in this area. Finally, the chapter considers the EU’s status as a ‘power’ in international relations, noting that it has diminished in important respects since 2003, but remains an important economic power.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Wallace

The European Union has declared ambitious objectives for a common European foreign policy since the end of the cold war. Through successive revisions of its constitutional treaties, it has built may of the institutions that might support such a common policy. Incremental changes and adaptation through experience of successive crises have strengthened practices of cooperation and consultation. Yet the retention of sovereignty over foreign and defence policy by national governments, and the unwillingness of national governments and parliaments to engage in any EU-wide reconsideration of strategic needs and objectives has left these common institutions without the permissive consensus needed to support effective shared action. National inhibitions about subordinating particular interests and assumptions to a wider European consensus have left the EU institutions without the ability either to promote shared European interests or to act effectively when those interests are threatened.


European View ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-229
Author(s):  
Richard G. Whitman

Brexit has transformed the EU–UK relationship into a foreign-policy challenge for both sides. The negotiations on the EU–UK future relationship have been a process in which both sides have been learning about the other as a third-party negotiator. The UK has taken a very different attitude to the Political Declaration, agreed alongside the Withdrawal Agreement (covering the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU), treating it as a guide rather than a roadmap for negotiations. And the UK has decided not to pursue negotiations with the EU on a future foreign, security and defence policy relationship. This is in a context in which the EU’s member states have committed to deepening security and defence cooperation. At present, and despite shared international challenges, a formal agreement on EU–UK foreign, security and defence policy looks set to be replaced by an approach of ‘muddling through’.


2020 ◽  
pp. 137-169
Author(s):  
Alexander Sidorov ◽  

The article is devoted to the analysis of the complex of problems associated with the organization of the defence structures of the European Union and the role of France in this process. The focus of the project «European defenсe», the possibility of its implementation within the EuroAtlantic space are investigated. The continuity and evolution of the European defence potential building program are shown. The concepts of «European defenсe», «European army» are analyzed and their real content is revealed. The pairing of France’s national efforts with partners in the framework of the Permanent Structured Cooperation on Security and Defence (PESCO) projects is shown; the importance of a pragmatic approach to building a «European defenсe» on the basis of a number of interstate programs of military-industrial cooperation is highlighted. The connection between the new stage of scientific and technological progress and the revitalization of plans to strengthen the defence potential of the EU is revealed. The evolution of the French leadership’s approach to building a «European defenсe» is presented, its assessment of the current state of this project, and in connection with this, features of its views on the prospects for developing a dialogue with Russia. Against the background of a slowdown in the development of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy, the role of interstate initiatives outside the EU, aimed at accelerating and increasing the effectiveness of military operations, has been highlighted. The examples of individual actions emphasize the key role of states, in particular France, in the implementation of missions of a pan-European character. As a result of the analysis, a conclusion was made about the sustainable and non-opportunistic nature of the transformations in the field of military construction in the EU. A forecast is given regarding the possible scale and real fulfillment of European defence construction plans. The conclusion about the significance of the «European defenсe» project for the implementation of France’s geopolitical plans and the strengthening of its positions in the EU and in the Euro-Atlantic field is substantiated.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Mete Kaan Kaynar ◽  
Gökhan AK

At the outset, Europe needed to develop its defense policy and structure in line with its foreign policy while the Union was evolving in institutional enlargement process during every other 10 years of time. The reason was not behind it, but in the façade of the Union building. Otherwise the Union would not be able to enable Europe to play its full part in world affairs while the ‘security’ was gaining a key-role in the international politics and relations. Since there was a security vacuum in Europe after WW’, the US urged European states to create a sort of defence structure embedded to already-formed NATO or integrated with NATO, but including German Army in both cases. Decades had passed and in the late 1990s the European Security Defence Identity and Policy was formed up as a parallel structure to NATO systems. Eventually in the start of 2000s, the EU system turned into a Common Security and Defence Policy for member states only. This research tries to explore and analyze the effects, paradigms, prospects and coexistence possibilities of this two polar-defence-system in the Europe, that’s to say between NATO and the CFSP.


2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Devine

This article examines the content of concepts of neutrality articulated in elite and public discourses in the context of the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In parallel with security and defence policy developments in successive EU treaties, many argue that the meaning of neutrality has been re-conceptualized by elites in EU ‘neutral’ member states (specifically, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) to the point of irrelevance and inevitable demise. Others argue that the concept of ‘military’ neutrality, as it is termed by elites in Ireland, or ‘military non-alignment’, as it is termed by elites in Austria, Sweden and Finland, meaning non-membership of military alliances, is compatible with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty. An investigation of these paradoxical discursive claims as to the status of neutrality yields findings of a divergence in public ‘active’ and elite ‘military’ concepts of neutrality that embodies competing foreign policy agendas. These competing, value-laden, concepts reflect tensions between, on the one hand, the cultural influences of a domestic constituency holding strong national identities and role-conceptions informed by a postcolonial or anti-imperialist legacy and, on the other hand, elite socialization influences of ‘global actor’ and common defence-supported identity ambitions encountered at the EU level that can induce discursively subtle yet materially significant shifts in neutral state foreign policy. The article concludes with an analysis of the compatibility of both ‘military’ neutrality and the ‘active’ concept of neutrality with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty and draws conclusions on the future role of neutrality both inside and outside the EU framework.


Baltic Region ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
Oksana V. Grigoreva ◽  
Nikita O. Plyusnin

The growing number of participants in foreign policy decision-making calls for a study of the forces affecting the behaviour of states in the international arena. In contemporary states, parliaments are increasingly challenging the exclusive prerogatives of executive power in foreign and defence policy. Many experts stress that the powers of the Danish Parliament in these fields are among the most considerable in the world. The question is, however, whether these powers are exercised in the same manner towards different states and regions. This article aims to find out how the Danish Parliament contributes to the country’s foreign policy towards the EU and Russia. The concentric circles model is employed to assess the level of the Danish Parliament’s participation in the foreign policy of the Kingdom of Denmark in different regions of the world. The study conducts a comparative analysis of the evidence of the Parliament’s influence on Denmark’s relations with the EU, the EFTA, and Russia. The findings lead one to conclude that the Danish Parliament’s participation in the country’s foreign policy towards EU bodies is highly institutionalised and coherent, which can be explained by close integration of Danish political elites into European ones as well as by European processes being clear and predictable for Danish parliamentarians. The participation of the Parliament in Danish—Russian relations is less systematic and structured since the Danish Parliament sometimes lacks diplomatic experience and resources to influence more complex and ambiguous relations with the Russian Federation.


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