Is an Eu Strategic Culture Taking Shape?

April 2011

Boston University Brussels

IR 589 - North Atlantic & European Security Issues

Dr. Kyriakos Revela

End-of-term paper by Claudia Ritter

Is an EU strategic culture taking shape ?

1. Introduction

With the establishment of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in 1998 the EU formally gained a security and defense dimension, which is characterized by its integrated civilian and military approach. Its strive for an independent global security role is significant considering the coupling of the security of the US to that of Europe throughout the decades of the Cold War. This has indeed changed patterns of security cooperation in that the collective identity of the US and the EU, i.e. what is commonly called ‘the West’, has disintegrated into two separate entities, though at the same time remaining “two hearts in one breast”[1].

Does the EU’s strive to be an independent security actor lead to the emergence of a common strategic culture, which in turn would improve the EU’s coherence of their policies and actions in managing crises?

The present paper addresses this question. It sets out with a definition of the term “strategic culture” (section 2) and a description of the historic background of EDSP (section 3). This section also looks at the publication of the “European Security Strategy Paper” in 2003, which was seminal in that it enshrined a core set of EU common foreign policy values and thus provided the normative basis for EU military action.

The paper next examines some research on the emergence of a common strategic culture undertaken from both the neo-realist and the constructivist perspective (section 4). This section concludes that in the absence of a tangible common strategic culture, the EU can nevertheless position itself as a global security actor. There is a distinct European way of conducting civil and military operations and, to a certain extent, a common mindset.

Section 5 looks at...