EU Foreign and Security Policy: Theories and Frameworks

Introduction: Security Policy and the European Union

The matter of personal and national security has been a long-lasting concern throughout history. Leaders were selected and favored based on their ability to safeguard the interests and well-being of their peoples. States with lower levels of security were attacked and conquered by larger, better-developed countries.

While we might like to think that armed conflict is no longer a viable means of resolving disputes — and that references to national insecurity belong to the era of the Roman or Ottoman empires — the fact remains that international disputes continue to the present day. Vietnam, the Gulf War, the ongoing wars in the Middle East, and the War on Terrorism as prosecuted by the Bush administration all demonstrate this reality.

Given this context, one can easily conclude that we live in a dangerous world and that our safety and well-being could easily be disrupted. The central question at this level concerns what actions might be taken to reduce the incidence of armed conflicts and further increase national security. Each country implements a different approach as it sees fit. While one party decides to intervene in a conflict and help end it, another chooses to remain aside. Each of these positions attracts both praise and criticism. On one hand, an intervening country may be accused of pursuing personal interests — the most prominent example being the American troop deployment in the Middle East and the perception that it was driven by a desire to gain access to the region's oil reserves. On the other hand, remaining neutral in an interstate conflict can invite criticism for demonstrating a lack of concern for international safety and stability.

Regardless of perception, the actual position a country takes is directly tied to the nature of its security policies. The aim of this paper is to assess the foreign security policies promoted by the European Union. The importance of the topic derives from the fact that security issues affect every one of us, and the EU presents a particularly interesting case given its historical responses — or hesitancies — in situations of international insecurity.

From an economic standpoint, measured by gross domestic product, the European Union is the largest international player, making it an extraordinary force in the global context. Nevertheless, despite this great power, the EU has remained rather distant from matters of international security and has often delayed taking an official position on emerging conflicts or deciding how to handle them.

Given this status quo, it is valuable to examine some of the most pivotal policies of the European Union relative to security. The central theory underlying this research is that these policies are prudential and passive — in the sense that they do not promote proactive approaches. This theory is grounded in historical observations of the EU's approach to conflicts, such as the fighting in Somalia, where the United Nations and the United States intervened promptly but where the European Union delayed action. The EU's reticence regarding the War on Terrorism is another relevant example of this restrained approach to international insecurity.

Having established the importance of the topic and the elements that raise the observer's curiosity, it is necessary to identify the variables of the inquiry. The dependent variable is the European Union's security policy. The independent variables refer to: (1) interstate collaboration in the field of foreign and security policy; (2) the international context, including the security policies of the United States, the United Nations, and other global entities; and (3) the internal characteristics of EU member states. The premise is that each of these three variables generates an impact on security policy. These three hypotheses will be developed in the third section.

Literature Review

The first step in any research endeavor is to assess existing materials in order to identify major research areas and pivotal variables. To this end, three articles presenting features of the European Union's security policies are reviewed below.

Explaining Government Preferences for Institutional Change in EU Foreign and Security Policy

This first article was authored by Koenig-Archibugi in 2004 and published in the International Organization journal, volume 58, number 1, under the aegis of Cambridge University Press. Koenig-Archibugi teaches courses in global politics at the London School of Economics.

Explaining Government Preferences… is a complex and lengthy article detailing the reasons that determine different perceptions regarding political cooperation among the EU's member states. Koenig-Archibugi begins from the premise that the fifteen members of the European Union at the time revealed different perceptions regarding the possibility of an integrated stand in terms of foreign and security policy. In other words, while some countries declared themselves in favor of a unified position under the umbrella of the European Union, others advocated for independence in foreign and security policy.

Given this situation, a question arises as to what determines these differing perceptions of integrated versus divided security policy. Mathias Koenig-Archibugi addresses this question by examining four independent variables and one dependent variable. The independent variables are:

1. The role of relative power capabilities; 2. National interests linked to foreign policy; 3. The strength of European culture as perceived by individual nations; and 4. The internal governance structures that determine a country's preference for integrated or independent security policy.

The dependent variable is the resulting national stance on security policies — whether they should be integrated and uniform across the EU or independent and reflective of each country's individual position.

Koenig-Archibugi draws on a wide range of sources, which enhances the reliability and relevance of the article. The data sources fall into two categories. First, there is theoretical evidence represented by the works of other economists and political experts — such as Thomas Banchoff's German Identity and European Integration and Robert O. Keohane's After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy — among many others. The second category consists of primary sources dealing directly with the national positions of EU member states. Official documents were retrieved for fourteen countries, revealing their governments' official stances. These countries are (in alphabetical order): Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The article leads the reader to three major conclusions. First, the governments of weaker states are more willing to accept an integrated security policy than the governments of stronger states. Second, countries with multilayered governmental structures are more likely to embrace supranational foreign and security policy than countries that perceive leadership as indivisible. The remaining two variables did not generate a quantifiable impact on national perceptions of an integrated approach to foreign and security policy.

The End of Architecture and the New NATO

Paul Cornish's article was featured in the October 1996 edition of the International Affairs journal, published by Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The underlying question concerns the elements that triggered the major debate of 1996 regarding Europe's approach to security policy. Additionally, it seeks to answer questions about the prospective future of the concepts and policies relating to the European Security and Defense Identity. In answering these questions, Cornish assesses the evolution of the three institutions that shaped policies in European security in the aftermath of the Cold War — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Western European Union, and the more recent European Union — as well as the relationships that developed and changed among them.

Similar to the previous article, The End of Architecture and the New NATO is constructed on a complex data source incorporating both secondary and primary materials. Secondary sources include J. Solana's NATO in Transition, A. Menon's From Independence to Cooperation: France, NATO and European Security, and various articles from specialized journals and magazines such as The Economist, The Independent, Foreign Report, and the Financial Times. The use of primary resources is comparatively limited but includes notable components such as communiqués of the North Atlantic Council, the Treaty of the European Union, and other political declarations. Notably, the use of books as source material is relatively limited in both articles reviewed thus far.

After a series of analyses, Paul Cornish concludes that, despite tremendous international movements and advances, the security policy of the European Union remains unclear. The main reasons for this uncertainty include the difficulty in predicting a country's exposure to military threats, the changing shape and size of the European Union, and the opaque interests of the formation. What does improve the EU's strategic position is the adherence of its member states to NATO, which remains the most credible security organization in the world.

The political approach of the European continent to security issues thus appears to be influenced primarily by NATO rather than by the Western European Union or the European Union itself. This context produced a situation in which EU member states became aligned with ideologies of cooperation. In the words of the author, "the European security dialectic seems to have come closer than ever before to the realization that the specters of 'inefficiency' and 'duplication' are to be found not so much in Europeans and Americans building more tanks and combat aircrafts than are jointly needed, but in sustaining more institutions than are required, and in devising ever more complex arrangements by which these institutions may cooperate" (Cornish, 1996). This conclusion may well explain the less proactive stand taken by the European Union in response to global security challenges.

Developing the Common Foreign and Security Policy

Similar to the previous article, Developing the Common Foreign and Security Policy was published in the International Affairs journal under the aegis of Blackwell Publishing. It was authored by Hurd and featured in volume 70, number 3, of the 1994 series. It is the most compact of the three works reviewed here, but its findings are nonetheless conclusive and relevant, owing both to its reliable sources and to the author's extensive expertise — Hurd occupied the position of Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

The core question in Hurd's study is in essence a straightforward one, relating to the very nature of the EU's foreign and security policy. What is compelling, however, is the four-sided framing of that question: the author strives to identify the origins of the policy, its development over time, its present characteristics and manifestations, and its future potential for implementation.

Unlike the previous two works, Hurd's article does not conclude with a section of closing remarks that restates the most important findings. These can nevertheless be identified through the analysis itself. The author identifies the following key points:

1. European cooperation on foreign policy issues began in 1970. 2. In the mid-1980s, a treaty was signed for European cooperation in the fields of foreign and security policy. 3. Evolution has manifested in the convergence of national security and foreign policy goals. 4. The future of the common foreign and security policy depends entirely on sustained human efforts toward collaboration.

This last article also differs from the previous two in terms of its data source. While the previous articles drew on dozens of resources, Hurd's only secondary source is David Heathcoat-Amory's The World Today, mentioned as a reader's note for further information. What is notable is that the work begins with a study the author himself conducted in 1981. Those earlier findings are considered in light of subsequent evolutionary forces and corroborated with data retrieved through direct observation. The second source used is therefore the author's own Political Co-operation, featured in volume 57 of the International Affairs journal, 1981 series.

The use of so few literary sources could negatively affect the credibility of the final product. Nevertheless, viewed through a different lens, the limited data source might enhance the article's credibility in the sense that the information is retrieved through direct observation and the findings are not biased by the personal opinions of other researchers.