The EU and the European Security Strategy

Forging a Global Europe

Sven Biscop, Jan Joel Andersson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415393171
• eBook ISBN: 9781134162857
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The European Security Strategy (ESS) has become an important reference framework for the EU since its inception in 2003. Without strategy an actor can only really be a 'reactor' to events and developments. In the ESS the EU now has a strategy, with which it has the potential of shifting boundaries and shaping the World.

This volume explores this statement and examines the underlying concepts and implementation of the ESS as a judging tool of all the European Union's external actions. Contributors, closely involved in the early debate leading up to the ESS, assess questions such as how the strategy has shaped EU policy, how it relates to existing policies but also how it has added value to these policies and whether the strategy's objectives are sufficient to safeguard EU interests or whether they should be reviewed and added too.

The outline of the strategy itself is followed; addressing its historical and conceptual context, the threat assessment, the multilateral and regional policies of the EU, its military capabilities and its strategic partnerships. This book offers a comprehensive vision of how the EU can achieve the ambitious objectives of the European Security Strategy and become an effective global actor as the strategy helps to forge a global Europe.

The EU and the European Security Strategy will be of great interest to students and researchers of European politics and security studies.

1 The European Security Strategy in context

A comprehensive trend

Sven Biscop

If the task given to Javier Solana by the May 2003 informal Council meeting to draft a European strategic concept came as a surprise, it was because it happened at a time when the CFSP seemed to be in shambles as a result of the fierce intra-European debate over the American-led invasion of Iraq. Only a few months before, on 10 February, Belgium, France and Germany had provoked what seemed to be the worst crisis yet for both the CFSP and the transatlantic Alliance when they broke the ‘silent procedure’ introduced by NATO Secretary-General George Robertson to approve a number of US requests in the framework of the planned invasion. Although on 19 February consensus was reached on defensive measures to assist Turkey in the event of any Iraqi incursion, other proposed measures, including advance planning for a post-invasion NATO peacekeeping mission in Iraq, were silently removed from the agenda (Pailhe 2003). Seen to be too evidently framed in a war logic at a moment when they felt non-military options were still available, Belgium, France and Germany could not consent to such measures without betraying the principles of their own foreign policy. Fierce recriminations across the Atlantic as well as between EU member states were the result.

Yet a few months later these same member states agreed to have the first ever common European foreign policy strategy drafted, which on 12 December 2003 they duly adopted. How was it that at exactly the moment of what seemed to be the lowest point of the CFSP the European Union achieved what right up until then had been considered politically unfeasible?

Codification of a strategic orientation

It was of course evident from the beginning that the CFSP – as is not entirely uncommon in policy-making – did not follow the scientifically prescribed logic of first adopting a strategy and then designing specific policies and acquiring the required capabilities to implement it. The notion of strategy was not, however, completely absent either. The Amsterdam Treaty added the ‘common strategies’ to the range of CFSP instruments; these are strategies – now effectively sub-strategies vis-à-vis the ESS – on specific functional or geographical issues. Only three have ever been adopted by the European Council: on Russia, Ukraine (both 1999) and the Mediterranean (2000). Subsequently more documents of a similar scope have been adopted by the Council and European Council though, only in other legal formats, even if some carry the word ‘strategy’ in the title – which also holds true for the ESS itself. Examples are the European Strategy Against the Proliferation of WMD (2003b), the Council decision to launch the European Neighbourhood Policy (2004), and the European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy (2005c). None of these amounts to a strategy for foreign policy as a whole. So if prior to 2003 the member states were familiar with the idea of strategies – plural – they probably also became aware of ‘possible deficits in coherence and completeness among the strategies so far adopted on a piece-meal basis (and perhaps of a quality problem as well)’ (Bailes 2005a: 8).

This strategic void became particularly evident after 1999, when the European Union started to build a military dimension, ESDP. Although the Petersberg-Tasks as included in the Amsterdam Treaty describe which types of operations the European Union can undertake – really anything but collective defence – without a foreign policy strategy it was far from clear in support of which political objectives forces were to be deployed under the EU flag. Member states were very much divided over the desired degree of autonomy of ESDP vis-à-vis NATO and the United States. In view of the perceived unfeasibility of achieving anything like a strategic consensus at the time, it was decided to push on with those elements on which agreement existed, i.e. the development of command and control structures and the making available of military capabilities to the European Union, assuming that the strategic debate would inevitably resurface at another, hopefully more suitable time. Again this is a tactic which is not uncommon in EU policy-making, nor is it necessarily an unwise one, for otherwise the window of opportunity to launch ESDP might have been missed. In 2001 the Belgian Presidency did propose to task the Paris-based EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) with the drafting of a strategic concept, but in the face of strong opposition from a number of member states the mandate was watered down to the elaboration of a number of scenarios with which the European Union might be confronted and an assessment of the required capabilities to deal with such situations. Eventually published in 2004 (EUISS 2004), this is a stimulating contribution to the debate on ESDP but nothing like a strategic concept.

It seems as if the intra-European crisis over Iraq finally provided the stimulus that made a breakthrough possible. On the one hand, the member states supporting the invasion would have been motivated to demonstrate that the European Union does care about the security threats perceived by the United States and that the transatlantic Alliance is viable still. Hence the similarity between the threat assessment in the ESS and the 2002 US National Security Strategy (NSS), which must be seen as a political message to Washington, and the strong emphasis in the ESS on transatlantic partnership. On the other hand, the member states opposing the invasion would have been equally eager to show that even though the threat assessment is to a large degree shared with the United States – be it perhaps not the perception of the intensity of the threat (see Chapter 2) – there are other options available to deal with these threats. In that light the heavy criticism of the NSS by many European observers, because of its emphasis on unilateralism and the – pre-emptive – use of force, is significant. The context of mid-2003 partially also favoured the adoption of the ESS (Bailes 2005a: 9–10): the successful conclusion of the European Convention and the grand and – then still – promising undertaking to draw up a Constitutional Treaty created a climate in which the elaboration of a strategy seemed more feasible than before. Prominent members of the Convention, such as Wim van Eekelen, former WEU Secretary-General, had explicitly called for the formulation of a strategic concept. The summer of 2003 also witnessed the first EU military operation without the use of NATO assets and outside of Europe: Operation Artemis in the DRC (12 June – 1 September).

The main reason why these partly contradictory motivations led to results is that the European Union was able to build on an extensive foreign policy acquis. Many of the strategic choices contained in the ESS were already evident as emerging strategic orientations in actual EU policies. Rather than adopting a fundamentally new orientation, to a large extent therefore the ESS must be seen as the codification of existing foreign policy guidelines. In other words, although the context of the Iraq crisis would suggest a deep division between member states, the ESS actually builds on a strong consensus on the basic orientations of EU foreign policy. Indeed, the real intra-European divide over Iraq did not concern the substance and principles of policy. Based on an assessment of past policies, it can safely be argued, e.g. that all member states agree that in principle the use of force is an instrument of last resort which requires a Security Council mandate. As in 1999, the real issue at stake was still the nature of the transatlantic partnership. If the United States reverts to the use of force in a situation in which the European Union in principle would not do so, or not yet, what then has priority for the European Union: steering an autonomous course, based on its own principles, or supporting its most important ally? Besides, it should not be forgotten that on a number of foreign policy issues the European Union had already unanimously taken positions contrary to those of the United States, e.g. on the ICC, on the Kyoto Protocol and on various trade issues.

If the motivation to effectively pursue this codification and draft the document was context-specific, the ESS itself thus is not. Because it builds on the past, on existing guidelines established during ten years of CFSP, and even before, the ESS has been able to transcend the context of its adoption. It thus has the potential to have a durable impact on the future of EU foreign policy-making, as is testified to by its omnipresence in EU foreign policy documents. A comparison can be made with the codification of European Political Cooperation (EPC), the predecessor of the CFSP, in the Single European Act (SEA) of 1986. The SEA did not really strengthen the informal mechanisms of EPC, but by giving them a legal basis did prevent them from weakening. Codification creates a framework from which it is afterwards more difficult to depart; it circumscribes the room for manoeuvre of future policy-making. In the same sense the ESS has consolidated the strategic orientations that were already emerging. To the extent that the ESS will now effectively function as a reference framework for daily decision-making in all fields of foreign policy, it will promote consistency and the emergence of a strong strategic culture. The fact that the ESS, as a European Council declaration instead of a ‘common strategy’ as defined in the Amsterdam Treaty, is politically rather than legally binding is of less importance in this context.

Naturally, the ESS is not perfect. It can only build on consensus in areas where that existed. On a number of issues it remains particularly vague because consensus was absent or not yet strong enough. Many issues are mentioned in the ESS, because not to do so would have invoked strong criticism, but no more than that: no real choices are made on notably the nature of the transatlantic partnership and the degree of autonomy of the European Union as an international actor. This divide remains a fundamental obstacle to a fully cohesive and resolute CFSP (Dassù and Menotti 2005: 107). Nevertheless, the ESS does contain a number of clear choices and thus certainly has the potential to serve as a strategic framework for EU foreign policy.

Building on a comprehensive acquis

The main characteristic of the foreign policy acquis on which the ESS builds is its comprehensive or holistic nature, i.e. the integration of all dimensions of foreign policy, from aid and trade to diplomacy and the military.

A holistic approach has been particularly characteristic of EU policy with regard to its neighbouring states, which it attempts to integrate in an encompassing network of relations, witness the Stability Pact for the Balkans, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), and the successful transition of Central and Eastern Europe, probably the most significant European achievement since the start of the European integration project itself. Under the heading of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) an enhanced framework for relations between the European Union and all of its neighbours has now been created, in the same period in which the ESS was drafted. In the bilateral ENP Action Plans with each individual neighbour an attempt is made to link all dimensions of relations through the mechanism of ‘positive conditionality’ (see Chapter 4). At the global level, the 2000 Cotonou Agreement with the ACP countries, replacing the 1975 Lomé Convention, has similarly become wider in scope, including notably an enhanced political dimension. The holistic approach was also evident in the adoption of the EU Programme for the Prevention of Violent Conflictsby the Göteborg European Council (15–16 June 2001), which called for the streamlining of short-term prevention and long-term stabilisation n EU policies across the pillars. The picture that emerges is what Keukeleire (2003) has dubbed the ‘structural foreign policy’ of the European Union and has been so well described by Bretherton and Vogler (2005): a European Union that is – perhaps not always too visibly – seeking to influence the international environment in the long term, attempting to use all the instruments at its disposal, across the pillars, in an integrated way.

This comprehensive approach can be conceptualised through the notion of global public goods (GPG), which emerged in the context of the UN at the end of the 1990s (Biscop 2005). GPG have traditionally been seen in the context of development, but currently the concept is being used more and more in more general political terms, e.g. by Joseph Nye (2002). The starting point of this approach is the assumption that there are a number of ‘goods’ that are global or universal in the sense that it is generally felt – at least in Europe – that every individual is entitled to them.¹ If to a certain extent the definition of the core GPG is a political and normative choice – Rotberg (2004) uses the term ‘political goods’ – many elements have been recognised as being universal beyond any doubt, notably in the field of human rights. Like in the ‘human security’ approach, the individual is the point of reference. These goods are public in the sense that their provision cannot be left to the market but should be supervised by government at the different levels of authority (local, national, regional and global). These core GPG can be grouped under four broad headings:

• physical security or ‘freedom from fear’;
• political participation, the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms;
• an open and inclusive economic order that provides for the wealth of everyone or ‘freedom from want’;
• social wellbeing in all of its aspects – access to health services, to education, to a clean and hazard-free environment etc.

These GPG are strongly interrelated: ultimately, one cannot be ensured or enjoyed without access to the other; the four categories are therefore equally important. Effective global governance means ensuring access to GPG; a system that fails to provide the core GPG lacks legitimacy. Global stability, and therefore the security of all states, depends on the availability of sufficient access to the core GPG. Rather than terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or other military threats, the most important threat is the ever growing gap between haves and have-nots, a gap which can be best expressed in terms of access to the essential GPG. While this gap and the feelings of exclusion, marginalisation and frustration resulting from it certainly do not justify conflict, they do help to explain it, which is a prerequisite for prevention and resolution of conflicts. The gap between haves and have-nots is foremost among the challenges of the globalised world, because it is a threat of a systemic nature, i.e. it results from the malfunctioning of, and impacts on, the global order itself. For unless mechanisms of governance are created or rendered more effective that can alleviate this situation, at a certain level of inequality, the resulting political upheaval, extremism of all kinds, economic uncertainty and massive migration flows will become uncontrollable. Because of this interdependence GPG are non-exclusive, like true public goods: ultimately maintaining our access to GPG requires improving others’ access. Since it denies access to core GPG to a large share of the world’s population, the status quo is not an option.

Against this background, specific politico-military challenges do stand out. They include regions of chronic tension and long-standing disputes and conflicts, failed states and civil wars, proliferation of WMD and excessive militarisation, and terrorism. These challenges directly threaten people, states and regions. They have to be tackled head-on, but as they are symptoms of the ‘dark side of globalization’, effective global governance, improving access to GPG, must be pursued at the same time as the key to preventing such threats. ‘Security is the precondition of development’, the ESS states, but this works the other way around as well. Of course, the strength of the causal relationship between, on the one hand, the gap between haves and have-nots in the broadest sense and, on the other hand, specific politico-military issues differs from case to case. Nonetheless, in the long term no durable solution of politico-military problems can be achieved unless the stability of the world system itself is assured.

The keyword when implementing a comprehensive or holistic approach, based on the notion of GPG, is integration. Because the core GPG are inextricably linked together, action must be undertaken to address all of them simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion, by all relevant actors, in all fields of external policy, putting to use all the instruments at their disposal, including trade, development, the environment, police, intelligence and legal cooperation, diplomacy, and security and defence. In the words of the ESS:

Spreading good governance, supporting social and political reform, dealing with corruption and abuse of power, establishing the rule of law and protecting human rights are the best means of strengthening the international order.

The same plea for a comprehensive approach could be found in the objectives of EU external action as formulated in the draft Constitutional Treaty (Article III-292), which put additional emphasis on aspects of global governance, such as sustainable economic, social and environmental development, the eradication of poverty, the integration of all countries into the world economy, and the abolition of trade restrictions. In its recent communications on development, the Commission has explicitly mentioned the provision of ‘universal public goods’ as a basic factor (European Commission 2005a) and has emphasised the link between security and development:

Development is crucial for collective and individual long-term security: they are complementary agendas and neither is subordinate to the other. There cannot be sustainable development without peace and security, and sustainable development is the best structural response to the deep-rooted causes of violent conflicts and the rise of terrorism, often linked to poverty, bad governance and the deterioration and lack of access to natural resources.

(European Commission 2005c: 8)

Although policies in all of these fields must be integrated under the same overall objective of increasing access to GPG, in order to avoid contradictory actions being undertaken, each policy should continue to operate according to its own rationale and dynamic. ‘Securitisation’, i.e. the instrumentalisation of non-military dimensions of external policy in function only of ‘hard’ security concerns or ‘freedom from fear’, must be avoided, for it ignores the intrinsic importance of the other GPG. Here a difference can be seen between the ESS and the NSS. The latter actually devotes more space to issues such as democracy, human rights and trade than the ESS, but these fields are all instrumentalised in function of the one near exclusive priority of US strategy: the ‘war on terror’. An integrated approach deals with all GPG simultaneously, but does not require that all issues must be put under the label of security. On the contrary, although this may raise their importance in the eyes of states, it also blurs the distinctions between policy areas. Poverty or HIV/AIDS are of a different nature than terrorism, proliferation or conflict: they can be life-threatening but they do not imply a threat of violence and cannot be tackled by politico-military means. Accordingly, rather than including all challenges under the label of security, issues must not be dealt with as security threats unless they pose an effective threat of violence. In that sense, the ESS has perhaps not really been aptly named. It really is a foreign policy strategy rather than just a security strategy, a title which apparently has been chosen in reference to the NSS (Toje 2005: 120).

By thus addressing the root causes of conflict, a policy oriented on the core GPG emphasises structural conflict prevention. This presents a formidable challenge: it implies dealing with more issues, related to all the core GPG, at an earlier stage, before they become security threats. Effective prevention is much more than mere appeasement: it demands a proactive stance, aiming to change circumstances that induce instability and conflict. Mark Duffield analyses how structural prevention in effect amounts to the ‘merging of development and security’:

[Development] is no longer concerned with promoting economic growth in the hope that development will follow. Today it is better described as an attempt, preferably through cooperative partnership arrangements, to change whole societies and the behaviour and attitudes of people within them.

(Duffield 2002: 42)

In this broad sense, development ‘not only leads to the reduction of poverty, more political fre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The European Security Strategy in Context
• 2 The European Security Strategy Coping with Threats
• 3 The European Security Strategy’s Global Objective
• 4 The European Security Strategy’s Regional Objective
• 5 The European Security Strategy and Military Capacity
• 6 The European Security Strategy and the Partners
• 7 The European Security Strategy and the Continuing Search for Coherence
• 8 The European Security Strategy and the United States
• Conclusion
• Bibliography