EU Security Policy and Crisis Management

Nicole Koenig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317335290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Paix et développement mondial

This book explores European Union crisis management and draws implications for its role as an international security actor.

The success of EU crisis management has varied greatly and this book aims to identify the key factors that explain the differing degrees of coherence through a comparative analysis of its multidimensional crisis responses in Africa. The empirical focus lies on three prominent EU crisis management cases, namely Libya in 2011, Somalia in 2011-2012, and the Sahel in 2012-2013. It analyses the activities and interaction of EU institutional actors and member states, with a focus on France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The book argues that the EU represents a rather unpredictable security actor, whose multi-level coherence is contingent on the congruence of domestic economic and electoral interests, as well as national threat perceptions, and the extent to which EU-level coherence norms resonate with national norms on the use of force and modes of multilateral cooperation. In sum, this book offers systematic insight into EU crisis management and clarifies the conceptual and empirical boundaries of the comprehensive approach. Finally, the study of the micro-foundations of coherence allows for policy-relevant suggestions on the EU's future role as a security actor.

This book will be of much interest to students of EU policy, European Security, Peace and Conflict Studies, African Politics and IR in general.

1
Introduction

The EU aspires to be a coherent and effective international actor in order to “defend its fundamental interests and values, promote its key political objectives and prevent crises or help to restore stability” (European Commission and HR 2013).¹ The degree to which the Union has been able to live up to this aspiration has varied throughout the past decades. Faced with the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jacques Poos, prominently announced that the “hour of Europe” had dawned. However, the Union failed to stop or even contain the violence in its own backyard. The next ‘dark hour’ of EU crisis management arrived when the American-led invasion in Iraq (2003) split the continent into ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe (Rumsfeld 2003).

Shortly after the divisions over Iraq, the Union published its first strategic document, the European Security Strategy. The Strategy stated that the EU could only live up to its full potential if it became more coherent. It specified that “[g]reater coherence is needed not only among EU instruments but also embracing the external activities of the individual member states” (Council 2003: 13). Six years later, the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), with its central objectives of increasing coherence in EU external action, raised expectations that the hour of Europe had finally come.

However, faced with the first major foreign policy crisis after the ratification of the Treaty, these expectations were dashed. In early 2011, the Europeans openly clashed on the Libyan crisis and failed to provide a unified response. In the meantime, and perhaps less prominently, Somalia – one of the world’s most complex conflict theatres – had become the Union’s prime example of coherent and effective crisis management. This book aims to explain such observed variation in the coherence of EU crisis management. It investigates the influence and interaction of conflicting interests and values across governance levels. It thereby questions the assumption implicit in the introductory quote, namely that the Union’s “fundamental interests and values” are truly shared.

The quest for coherence

In EU studies, coherence is often conceptualised as an independent variable. Many studies evaluate the impact of (in)coherence on the effectiveness, credibility, and power of the EU as an international actor (for example Lerch and Schwellnus 2006; Olsen 2008; Pace 2009). This conceptualisation is in line with the official Brussels discourse, which depicts coherence as an essential ingredient for effective external action. The Council (2000), for instance, declared that “reinforcing the coherence of the Union’s external action and realising its policy objectives are priorities if the Union is to pull its full weight in international affairs”. However, the present study takes a step back and conceptualises coherence as a dependent variable. It analyses the causes of coherence and discusses potential implications.

“Conflicting interests and values are the main cause of incoherence within most systems and at most levels” (Forster and Stokke 1999: 24). This is one of the key messages of a seminal volume on Policy Coherence for Development (PCD).² In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reiterated the message, stating that coherence “has always been and will continue to be a function of competing and conflicting interests and values” (OECD 2003). Taking these statements as working assumptions, this study addresses the following question: how does the interaction of interests and norms influence the degree of coherence in EU crisis management? Findings are discussed in light of the broader debates on effectiveness and the Union’s role and future as an international security actor.

In this book, coherence is understood as the absence of contradiction (consistency) and existence of synergies between various crisis management policies, instruments, and activities geared towards a set of overarching objectives. The analysis distinguishes vertical, horizontal, and institutional coherence (Nuttall 2005: 97). Vertical coherence refers to the interaction and congruence between the EU-level and member state crisis responses. Horizontal coherence designates the interaction between the objectives and instruments of different EU-level crisis management policies and activities. Finally, institutional coherence – a sub-category of horizontal coherence – is understood as the interaction between EU-level institutions and actors responsible for crisis management.

Coherence is used as a conceptual tool to analyse the implementation of the Union’s comprehensive approach to crisis management. The latter is defined as the integrated use of political, economic, and military instruments and policies towards the overarching objective of changing the dynamics of a given crisis or conflict to achieve increased security and stability (European Commission and HR 2013). The analysis thus extends to five policy areas, namely:

• diplomacy;
• humanitarian aid;
• development aid;
• economic sanctions and restrictive measures; and
• crisis management operations and missions in the framework of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSPD).³

The empirical focus of this book is on post-Lisbon crisis management in Africa. The analysis evaluates and compares EU crisis responses and concentrates on internal dimensions of coherence. The historical development of the Union’s crisis management and foreign policy do not constitute central analytical categories of this study. Neither does it provide comprehensive analyses of the internal dynamics and drivers of conflicts or crises. The study further excludes a category of coherence that has become known as multilateral or external coherence (Versluys 2007). The latter can be understood as the extent to which the Union’s crisis management is in line with, or positively contributes to, the activities and measures of other international actors (Koenig 2011: 17). While this dimension is certainly relevant, the Union’s ability to interact at the international level is – at least partially – contingent on its ability to agree on common policies or activities internally.

Coherence, efficiency, and effectiveness

The practical benefits of coherence are widely recognised in the broader multilateral governance context. There is general agreement that incoherence increases the risk of duplication, inefficient spending, and ineffective policies (de Coning 2008). But what is the specific rationale for coherence in EU crisis management? And what contextual factors make these topics relevant?

The conflicts in the Balkans, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan have shown that “the usefulness of military power alone has serious limits” (Howorth 2007: 93). They led to the recognition that military instruments need to be combined with political and development instruments to produce a lasting effect. This recognition triggered an inflation of concepts on how civilian and military actors and instruments could be combined. The United Nations (UN) introduced the ‘integrated approach’ to capture “new multi-polar coordination challenges facing complex peacekeeping operations” (de Coning 2008: 3). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO 2014) adopted a comprehensive approach to facilitate cooperation with “civilian partners on the ground, and at a political level”. And nation states introduced terms such as ‘3-D security’, the ‘whole-of-government approach’, or ‘inter-linked security’ to enhance cooperation among ministries, departments, and agencies.⁴ Overall, comprehensive approaches have become “the gold standard in international security affairs” (Gebhard and Norheim-Martinsen 2011: 221).

Reconciling various dynamics of multidimensional crisis or conflict management represents a challenge for every governance system. Yet the Union’s sheer number of civilian and military instruments as well as its various decision-making layers and procedures compound the challenge. Over the years, the EU has introduced various legal provisions and institutional coordination mechanisms to enhance coherence in its external action in general, and in crisis management in particular (for an overview, see Gebhard 2011).

Nevertheless, the 2008 Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy concluded that, despite some progress, the need to strengthen coherence remained (Council 2008). In 2013, the European Commission and the HR (2013: 2) noted that the comprehensive approach had yet to be systematically applied to conflict prevention and crisis resolution. In a respective Action Plan, the European Commission and the HR (2015) identify a set of priority challenges and lessons that need to be learned for the comprehensive approach to “develop its full potential”.

This is part of the continuous learning process the Union has been undergoing to enhance its capacity for comprehensive crisis management. However, the politicisation of internal lessons learned and their negative perceptions as “shaming and blaming exercises” tends to dilute their results (Dari et al. 2012: 13). In addition, documents on lessons learned are often not publicly available and thus evade external, and potentially more objective, scrutiny. Meanwhile, the discrepancy between comprehensive ambition and implementation continues to call for in-depth investigation.

Recent developments in the Union’s neighbourhood and the emergence of new, inter-linked security challenges make this call even more pressing. The Arab uprisings, starting in 2010, have thoroughly destabilised the Union’s Southern Neighbourhood while the conflict in Ukraine has called Europe’s post-Cold War security order into question. In the meantime, globalisation and the growing trans-nationalisation of threats such as Ebola or the self-styled Islamic State have pushed the boundaries of the EU’s neighbourhood. Decision-makers and scholars increasingly include Sub-Saharan African countries in Europe’s so-called “broader neighbourhood” (Biscop 2013; Simón 2013).

This book focuses on a particularly challenging area for comprehensive crisis management, namely the African “arc of instability” stretching from Somalia across the Sahel towards Western Sahara. Externalities emanating from instability in this area – including terrorism, organised crime, and migration – affect Europe more than any other region. In addition, several EU member states have a particular responsibility in the African continent due to their colonialist past. The combination of rising and interlinked security, development and governance challenges; potential negative externalities; and historical responsibility provide powerful political rationale for a more effective implementation of the comprehensive approach.

Furthermore, there is considerable economic rationale. The financial and economic crises entailed Europe-wide austerity measures and budget cuts. The effects were particularly marked in the area of defence, where expenditures had already been on a course of decline since the end of the Cold War. As a result of austerity, almost all EU member states cut their defence budgets. In some smaller member states, those amounted to one third (Mölling 2011). The EU’s defence expenditures as a percentage of GDP dropped from 1.5 in 2008 to 1.3 per cent in 2014 (SIPRI 2015).⁵ An effective implementation of the Union’s comprehensive approach would allow the member states to pool scarce military and civilian resources to ensure peace and stability in the increasingly volatile neighbourhood. Identifying the causes of continued incoherence and duplication represents a necessary step towards this aim.

Coherence and EU actorness

Studying the causes of (in)coherence is also relevant to the broader academic debate on the EU’s nature and role in international affairs. Coherence is usually seen as a central component of EU ‘actorness’ (Niemann and Bretherton 2013; Thomas 2012). Scholars commonly define actorness as the “capacity to behave actively and deliberately in relation to other actors in the international system” (Sjöstedt 1977: 16). Jupille and Caporaso (1998: 215) view cohesion, defined as the ability “to formulate and articulate...