EU Military Operations as a Tool in the EU’s Foreign Policy Toolbox – The Main Trends and Limitations

The main aim of the article is to characterise and analyse EU military operations, taking into account their objectives, assumptions, successes as well as their limitations and weaknesses. The author focusses his research on EU activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The following research questions were posed: – what is the specifi city and characteristic features of EU military crisis management operations; – to what extent and in what direction are military operations launched by the EU evolving; – in what way do EU military operations infl uence the perception of the EU as a civilian and normative power and affect the development of the EU as a security actor; – what are the main limitations and weaknesses of EU military operations and what is their future in EU foreign policy? The author applied the following research methods: factorial, comparative, scenario, quantitative, and qualitative analysis. The main conclusion is that the EU’s military operations and its military training missions should solely be perceived as one of the elements (measures) in EU foreign policy. As has been indicated in the title of the article, they are “a tool in the EU’s foreign policy toolbox”.

European Strategic Autonomy: The Test Case of Iran

The ideal of the European Union (EU) as a global peace and security actor is increasingly clashing with the reality of a multipolar world defined by militarised conflict, and a loosening of the formerly close trans-Atlantic relationship with the United States. European policy-makers have identified strategic autonomy as a possible remedy in the face of a growing number of internal and external security threats. This paper adds to the conceptualisation of strategic autonomy by contextualising its current usage and political genealogy. Empirically, European strategic autonomy is examined concerning the efforts to preserve the Iranian nuclear deal after the Trump administration had ceased US participation in May 2018. In particular, the paper assesses the European response to counter the re-imposed unilateral United States (US) sanctions against European individuals and entities by updating the so-called blocking regulation, and setting up a special purpose vehicle (spv) for facilitating trade with Iran. The results show that the European struggle toward achieving strategic autonomy has largely failed, but that it holds valuable lessons to approximate this ideal in the future.

A Challenge to the Liberal Peace? European Union Peacebuilding faces China in Nepal

How does China’s rising presence in Nepal affect the European Union’s own peacebuilding efforts in the country? As a global peace and security actor, the EU has followed the liberal peacebuilding model that promotes peace by strengthening democratic institutions. China’s rise as a “pragmatic” peacebuilder is often called non-conducive to this approach, but how this dynamic plays out has rarely been studied with detailed case evidence. We narrow this gap using the case of Nepal. Drawing on interviews conducted between 2015 and 2020, we find that China’s rise has decreased the EU’s leverage in promoting peace in the areas of civil society, human rights, and constitution-building. But some setbacks in the peace process were unrelated to China. Instead, they were also linked to the EU’s own reform neglects and policy differences, and to local perceptions about peacebuilders, showing how external and internal challenges jointly affect the EU’s role as peacebuilder.

The European Union as a Security Actor in the Sahel

In the past decade, the EU has significantly stepped up its profile as a security actor in the Sahel. Drawing on historical institutionalism, we conceptualise path-dependencies and lock-in effects as elements of a “foreign policy entrapment” spiral to analyse the EU’s policies towards the Sahel. Specifically, we seek to explain the EU’s increasingly widened and deepened engagement in the region. Hence, this article traces the evolution of the EU’s Sahel policy both in discourse and implementation. We identify a predominant security narrative as well as a regionalisation narrative and show that EU action has followed these narratives. Based on this analysis, we argue that the evolution of the EU’s Sahel policy can be understood as a case of “foreign policy entrapment”. Initial decisions on the overall direction of EU foreign policy have created strong path-dependencies and lock-in effects that make it difficult for EU policy-makers to change the policy course.

Guardian of Pax Transatlantica

This chapter focuses on NATO, the institutional core of Pax Transatlantica. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has enlarged its membership and ventured beyond its immediate neighborhood. Its significance as a security actor has been enhanced, not least because of the actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria. By 2020, NATO was bigger and more engaged than ever before, with military capacities that dwarfed those of any of its real or potential adversaries. Yet, the success story was hampered by widespread pessimism about NATO’s future on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the post–Cold War era had seen numerous inter-alliance crises: the Iraq War of 2003 being the most obvious example. Nevertheless, three decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, NATO retained its function as the basic building block of Pax Transatlantica.

Legitimizing China's Growing Engagement in African Security: Change within Continuity of Official Discourse

Peace and security were once marginal in Sino-African relations. Recently, however, reflecting China's more proactive role as a global security actor, they have become central. Yet while China's actions mirror this shift, the official China–Africa discourse has not changed. This article, based on fieldwork interviews and discourse analysis of official Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) documents, proposes a theoretically grounded study of China's Africa discourse to account for the role it plays in maintaining continuity through time. It makes a threefold claim. First, while the China–Africa discourse has not been given much attention in the literature, it is crucial to explaining the overall success of China's engagement in the continent. Second, the shift in China's policies towards greater participation in peace and security is not mirrored by changes in the official discourse. Third, and related, this is owing mostly to the successful articulation of the link between the promotion of economic growth and the achievement of stability – the security–development nexus – and to the generally positive reception the discourse has found among African leaders.

The Security Sector Governance–Migration Nexus: Rethinking how Security Sector Governance matters for migrants’ rights

The main argument is that improving migrants’ rights and conceptual linkages between SSG/R and migration is best achieved, by decentring our gaze, namely going beyond the ‘national’ and ‘state-centric’ view that characterizes traditionally SSG/R and to consider the agency of both migrants and SSR actors. First from a migrants’ perspective, it is key for SSR actors to go beyond traditional legal classifications and to consider the diversity of personal situations that involve refugees, stranded migrants and asylum seekers, which might endorse different roles at different times of their journeys and lives. Second, the transnational nature of migration calls for a transnationalization of SSG/R too. For too long the concept has mostly been applied within the national setting of SSR institutions and actors. Migration calls for a clear decentring that involves a transnational dimension and more work among transnational actors and policymakers to facilitate a norm transfer from the domestic to the interstate and international level. As such, the ‘transnational’ nature of migration and its governance needs to be ‘domesticated’ within the national context in order to change the mindset of SSG/R actors and institutions. More importantly, the paper argues that poor SSG/R at home produces refugees and incentivizes migrants to leave their countries after being victims of violence by law enforcement and security services. During migrants’ complex and fragmented journeys, good security sector governance is fundamental to address key challenges faced by these vulnerable groups. I also argue that a better understanding of migrants’ and refugees’ security needs is beneficial and central to the good governance of the security sector. After reviewing the key terms of migration and its drivers in section 2, section 3 reviews how SSG is part of the implementation of the GCM. SSR actors play a role in shaping migratory routes and refugees’ incentives to leave, in explaining migrants’ and refugees’ resilience, in protecting migrants and refugees, and in providing security. Although it cautions against artificial classifications and the term of ‘transit migration’, section 4 reviews what the core challenges are in the countries of origin, transit and destination. Section 5 provides a detailed overview of the linkages between migration and each security actor: the military, police forces, intelligence services, border guards, interior ministries, private actors, criminal justice, parliaments, independent oversight bodies and civil society. Section 6 formulates some recommendations.

Part V Global and Regional Security Mechanisms, Ch.57 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

This chapter focuses on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is a political-military alliance that currently includes thirty Allied Nations. NATO Allies deal with a wide range of peace and security issues. NATO also cooperates with a wide range of partners in the broader Euro–Atlantic neighbourhood and across the globe. Its foundational document is the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty. The chapter then reviews the Treaty’s principal provisions to illustrate the general international legal framework in which NATO operates, the scope of its activities, and how and where it places the emphasis in its day-to-day work. It describes NATO’s role as a global security actor, reviewing NATO’s mission and mandate, its institutional structure, and its current priorities.

Human rights in the EU’s common security and defence policy

This chapter examines the European Union’s (EU´s) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and discusses how the EU’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights and support to democracy and rule of law are included in this foreign policy area. It begins with an analysis of the origins, evolution, and structures of CSDP. It then considers the legal and policy framework on the protection and respect for human rights in CSDP missions and operations, and continues by identifying and discussing the opportunities and challenges at the conceptual, legal, and operational levels, and in the ambit of policy discourse, that the integration of human rights into crises management operations raises. The chapter provides some recommendations to improve the EU approach to human rights issues when establishing and deploying its crisis management missions and operations. It concludes by asserting that if the EU does not live up to its own proclaimed standards of human rights protection, it would not only jeopardise the success of its missions and operations but, it would also weaken its credibility as an international security actor, capable of losing its international legitimacy in the long run.