Europe's Common Security and Defence Policy
Capacity-Building, Experiential Learning, and Institutional Change

A new conceptual framework for explaining and evaluating EU security assistance operations, supported by extensive interviews with high-level policy-makers.

Michael E. Smith (Author)

9781316625514, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 June 2017

342 pages
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'An excellent job of highlighting the weaknesses and strengths, limits, and potential of security and defense cooperation in the EU.' Stanley Sloan, Scowcroft Centre/Atlantic Council of the United States and Middlebury College

The EU's emergence as an international security provider, under the first Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations in the Balkans in 2003, is a critical development in European integration. In this book, which relies on extensive interviews with CSDP officials, Michael E. Smith investigates how the challenge of launching new CSDP operations causes the EU to adapt itself in order to improve its performance in this realm, through the mechanism of experiential institutional learning. However, although this learning has helped to expand the overall range and complexity of the CSDP, the effectiveness of this policy tool still varies widely depending on the nature of individual operations. The analysis also calls in to question whether the CSDP, and the EU's broader structures under the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, are fit for purpose in light of the EU's growing strategic ambitions and the various security challenges facing Europe in recent years.

Introduction
1. Experiential institutional learning and the CSDP
2. The first CSDP actions: taking over from the UN and NATO in the Balkans
3. Independent military peacekeeping operations
4. Civilian police and monitoring missions
5. Rule of law and security sector reform missions
6. The EU as a maritime actor: EUNAVFOR Somalia
7. The CSDP and the comprehensive approach under the Lisbon Treaty
8. Conclusion: security, strategy, and the EU's global role.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]