European Security Policy and Strategic Culture [Paperback]

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EUs operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations.

The contributors find that strategic culture is a useful tool to explain and understand the EU's civilian andmilitary operations, not in the sense of a cause, but as a European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Accordingly, classical notions of strategic culture in the field of international security must be adapted to highlight the specific character of Europe's strategic culture, especially by taking the interaction with the United Nations and NATO into account. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defence missions have demonstrated or promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors reveal a growing sense that a cohesive strategic culture is critical in the EUs ambition of being a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its actions will be based much more on flexibility than on cohesion.

This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

1. European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation?  Peter Schmidt andBenjamin Zyla  EUROPEAN STRATEGIC CULTURE  2. Lets Call the Whole Thing Off? Security Culture as Strategic Culture  David G. Haglund  3. EU Strategic Culture: When the Means Becomes the End  Per M. Norheim-Martinsen  4. Strategic Culture and the Common Security and Defense Policy: A Classical Realist Assessment anlƒ5