European Union Security and Defence: Policies, Operations and Transatlantic Challenges 9783030488925

Table of contents :
Foreword About the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence
Preface
Acknowledgments
Disclaimer
Contents
Contributors
Part I: The EU Internal-External Security Nexus
Soft Power, European Security Strategy and Radicalism: Cultural, Religious and Dimensional Challenges
1 Introduction
2 Soft Power Elements as Normative Tools
3 Soft Power and the Challenge of Multiculturalism
4 Soft Power and Interreligious Dialogue
5 Soft Power Within the EU´s Institutional Setting
6 Soft Power and Islamic Radicalism
7 The Spatial Dimension of Exercising Soft Power and Internal Soft Balancing
8 Radicalism, Soft Power and EU Internal Security
9 Internal Balancing
References
The Strategic Context of the European Security and Defence Policy
1 Introduction
2 The American Factor: The Pivot to Asia and the Trump Administration
3 Brexit from European and Security Policy?
4 The Evolving Strategic Context in the EU of Limited Resources
5 Conclusion
References
Securitization: Theoretical Underpinnings and Implications
1 Introduction
2 Securitization and Security as a Speech Act
3 Securitization and Security Beyond the Speech Act?
4 (De)securitization and Implications for Politics
5 Concluding Remarks
References
Small EU Member States and the European Security and Defence Integration
1 Introduction
2 Small States and the EU
3 Small States and the ESDP
4 Different Small Member States Have Different Approaches to the ESDP
5 Developments in the Areas of Security and Defence and the New Challenges for Small States
6 Conclusion
References
Part II: EU Operations: From the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to the European External Action Service (EEAS)
EU Peace Operations in a Changing World: A Multilayer Evaluation
1 Introduction
2 Soft Power as the Foundation of EU Involvement in the World
3 EU Peace Operations as an Expression of Multilateralism
4 Hindrances to the EU Peace Operations
5 Epilogue
References
European Participation in International Military Operations: National Decision-Making and the Role of EU Institutions
1 Challenges to the EU
2 Institutions and the Challenge to Defence
3 The EU at a Crossroad
References
The European External Action Service: An Encompassing and Adaptive Agency at the Service of the EU Global Security Strategy?
1 Introduction
2 Theorizing Dynamic Hybridities of the EEAS
3 Multifaceted Security Challenges Drive the Form of Policy Formation by the EEAS
4 Cooperation Hybridity to Serve Interoperability: Joint-Up Coordination to Forming Comprehensive Responses
5 Conclusion
References
The Evolving Role of FRONTEX in Implementing an EU Comprehensive Approach on Security
1 Introduction
2 The Operational Map
3 Conclusion
References
The Role of the European Commission/DG ECHO in Crisis Response and Institutional Cooperation for an EU Comprehensive Approach
1 Introduction
2 Challenges to European Integration
3 The European Institutions
4 Focusing on Elements of the EU´s Comprehensive Approach
References
Part III: EU, Russia and Transatlantic Challenges
Russia´s Challenges to International Security and the Western Response: Moscow´s Objectives in the Middle East
1 Introduction
2 Russian Foreign Policy
3 Conclusion: Means to an End
References
West v. Russia: A Role for Diplomacy
1 Introduction
2 The West´s Russian Dilemma
3 Epilogue
References
Transatlantic Relations at a Time of Uncertainty: The Formation of Transatlantic Axis
1 Introduction
2 Two Strategic Partners with Divergent Views?
2.1 On Power, Soft and Hard
2.2 On International Order
2.3 On Institutions
3 Evaluating Current Trends in Transatlantic Relations
References
Augmenting European Security and Defence: A Multiple Challenge for the EU
1 Introduction
2 From CSDP to the Security and Defence Union?
3 Building a Security Union
4 Towards a Defence Union?
5 Formulating an Advanced EU-NATO Cooperation to Serve the Security and Defence Union?
6 Conclusion
References
NATO Security Challenges
1 Introduction
2 Multifaceted Challenges to the Atlantic Alliance
3 Conclusion
References

Citation preview

Contributions to Political Science

George Voskopoulos Editor

European Union Security and Defence Policies, Operations and Transatlantic Challenges

Contributions to Political Science

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11829

George Voskopoulos Editor

European Union Security and Defence Policies, Operations and Transatlantic Challenges

Editor George Voskopoulos International and European Studies University of Macedonia Thessaloniki, Greece

ISSN 2198-7289 ISSN 2198-7297 (electronic) Contributions to Political Science ISBN 978-3-030-48892-5 ISBN 978-3-030-48893-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword About the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence

In this book, the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Research on Crucial Issues of European Integration” of the University of Macedonia presents results of three conferences and the research carried out within the framework of the center’s first research axis entitled “Constitutional Values, Rights and Citizenship in the European Union,” under the directions of its thematic coordinator, Associate Professor George Voskopoulos. The Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Research on Crucial Issues of European Integration” was established in 2015 after having been selected for co-funding by the ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Action Program. It was hosted by the Institute of International Relations and European Integration of the Department of International and European Studies (IDEA) at the University of Macedonia, Greece, directed by Professor and Dean Ilias Kouskouvelis. The main purpose of the center was to conduct research on topical and crucial issues of European integration in five research axes: • • • • •

The European Union in the international system: Security and defense European economic governance The development of the European Union Constitutional values, rights, and citizenship in the European Union Research, education, and youth policies in the European Union

Each axis had three research projects. Overall, 38 researchers participated in the respective 15 research projects, most of them from the University of Macedonia, some from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and some from other universities and research centers in Greece and abroad. The research was supported by researchers’ study visits abroad and the organization of 18 Roundtable Discussions and Conferences on the aforementioned topics with guest speakers. In addition, three summer academies for the EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, a seminar, and a webinar on hate speech were also

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Foreword About the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence

organized. Moreover, the “Observatory of EU Constitutional Values” was established with its main aim to report and comment on relevant EU legislation and case law. International and European Studies, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

Despoina Anagnostopoulou

Preface

The EU is facing a number of multifaceted, multilayer challenges in a world order under transition. This imposes reevaluating strategies, regional policies, and an organizational structure disposing of the means to deal with existing and emerging challenges. This volume scrutinizes challenges to the EU and its security complex in a comprehensive way that overtly or covertly links security issues. Contributions look into the security nexus (internal–external dimension), the EU’s external relations, the challenges from regional and global antagonism, the current status of transatlantic relations, small states security, terrorism, the EU’s Global Strategy, and European Security and Defense Policy. By default, the spectrum of issues scrutinized and the degree of their inter-relatedness constitute a challenge to any theoretical, organizational, cognitive, institutional, and strategic analysis. They are formulated under the impact of urgency and fluidity in a rapidly changing world order challenging roles, structures, alliances, and eventually the terms of conflict and cooperation. These challenges cannot be explained and understood without defining the crucial focal points that interconnect them in a covert or overt way. For the EU to produce desired outcomes, the precondition is a thorough use of disposable means and a concrete strategy aiming at coping with the fluidity of the emerging international order. Contributions cover a number of interlinked, theoretical, structural, institutional, and organizational issues with the aim not only of pointing to the challenges but also of suggesting alternative strategies that will maximize gains for the EU and its historical, strategic allies. George Voskopoulos’ chapter titled “Soft power, European Security Strategy and radicalism: cultural, religious and dimensional challenges” looks into dimensions of radicalism and the multifaceted way they threaten European security. The analysis is based on a multidimensional spectrum, using evaluating criteria such as multiculturalism, inter-religious dialogue, radicalism, the EU’s institutional setting, and

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normative elements of soft power with the aim of providing the means for internal balancing of radicalism. Fotini Bellou’s contribution “The strategic concept of the European Security and Defense Policy” looks into the European Union’s Security and Defense Policy with a view to illustrating the challenges and opportunities presented. Under the impact of the newly emerging threats and the interlinked nature of internal and external aspects of security, the EU is moving forward to a comprehensive response framework. Kyriakos Mikelis contribution, “Securitization: Theoretical underpinnings and implications,” scrutinizes aspects of securitization seen through security studies with a view to theoretically elaborating the concept. Securitization and security are used in a dual mode of analysis. He builds his analysis on the articulation of the concept in terms of speech act providing innovative insights. Rebecca Pedi’s contribution “Small EU Member States and the European security and defense integration” focuses on security and defense integration and the strategy of small members. The issue refers to power differentiation and the way it affects choices made by small member states in a changing security environment. George Voskopoulos’ chapter “EU peace operations in a changing world: A multilayer evaluation” looks into the EU’s international presence as part of its involvement as a peace and stabilizing force. The axis of his analysis bears on two cognitive and at the same time operational choices: the use of soft power as the foundation of the EU’s international action and EU operations as an expression of its support for a multilateral world order. The final evaluation criterion is based on the degree of the EU’s strategic autonomy, a fact that will define its role as a global power. Kjell Engelbrekt’s contribution “European participation in international military operations: National decision-making and the role of EU institutions” focuses on aspects of defense that could enhance the international role and efficiency of the EU. His analysis underpins the need to boost the military component of the EU’s comprehensive approach in a way that evades hindrances on the domestic and the EU levels. Fotini Bellou’s chapter titled “The European External Action Service: An encompassing and adaptive agency at the service of the EU Global Security Strategy?” scrutinizes the security environment of the EU and its efforts to assist the materialization of the EU’s Global Strategy. Focal point is the evolving role of the European External Action Service and cooperation schemes that could advance EU policies. Georgios Vourekas looks into “The evolving role of FRONTEX in implementing an EU comprehensive approach on security.” He focuses on the complex, multidimensional operational axis of FRONTEX and the multiple factors involved in its operational framework. Stephen Blank’s chapter “Russia’s challenges to international security and the Western response” covers EU–Russia relations and the way Moscow operates as a major challenge to the EU’s security. Its focus is on Russia’s view of the world and particularly on the vision of its world status as communicated domestically to justify its policy choices.

Preface

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Younes El Ghazi’s chapter “Russia and the issue of its expanding influence” looks into EU-Russian relations and the challenges to European security. His analysis investigates alternatives to a modus vivendi with Russia while bringing to the surface the actual security dilemmas for Russia’s neighbors. George Voskopoulos’, “Transatlantic relations at a time of uncertainty” looks into the challenges to transatlantic relations stemming from divergent views on the use of power, soft and hard, visions of international order, the role of international institutions, and the evolving framework of EU–NATO cooperation. The convergence– divergence ratio will define the degree to which the transatlantic relations will be eu-functional. Fotini Bellou’s chapter titled “Augmenting European Security and Defense: A multiple challenge for the EU” looks into the overall cooperation framework set by European Global Strategy. She investigates the prospects for a future Security and Defense Union on an inclusive spectrum with the aim of producing desired outcomes. Vittorio Stella’s chapter looks into the challenges for the Atlantic Alliance and the threats stemming from both the international environment and the member states’ national priorities. This very fact causes introvert dilemmas and does not enhance the cohesion of the alliance at a time when unity will define its ability to deal with security challenges. Thessaloniki, Greece

George Voskopoulos

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the distinguished speakers and contributors in this volume, each and every one individually, and all those who supported the Center of Excellence in organizing all the conferences and events. I would like to thank Ambassador Mrs. Mara Marinaki (European Agency for External Action), Professor Dr. Sven Biscop (Egmont Institute), and Lieutenant Commander Mrs. Vasiliki Sartzetaki (Hellenic Navy Military Academy), who have participated in our roundtable discussion, but due to growing professional commitments were not able to contribute to this volume. I am also thankful to Assistant Professor Fotini Bellou, who actively supported our work, contributing efficiently in the organization of two events in the framework of the first research axis. I would like to express my appreciation for the voluntary work of the interns at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, i.e., students from the Department of International and European Studies of the University of Macedonia, the Law School, and the Department of Political Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: (a) Ms. Anastasia Boursanidou, Mr. Dimitrios Kaloutsikos, Ms. Katerina Alexandridou, Ms. Martha Douna, Mr. Andreas Rentzis, and Ms. Ioanna Tsatse who assisted in the administrative support of the conferences; (b) Ms. Martha Symeonidou, Mr. Kyriakos Lefkopoulos, and Ms. Despoina Damianidou who were selected to conduct relevant research and prepare the notebooks of the first research axis which are posted on our website “jmcexcellence.uom.gr”; and (c) the postgraduate student Mr. Ayodele Lawrence Onijigin and the undergraduate students Ms. Korina Maniaka and Mr. Christos Zois, who reviewed the transcripts of certain presentations in order to assist the contributors in the preparation of their chapters. My acknowledgments are also addressed to Ms. Chrysothea Bassia and Ms. Theofano Mantzari, PhD researchers, who assisted Assoc. Professor Voskopoulos and me in organizing the events of the first research axis, as well as Ms. Antonia Koumpoti, for her voluntary assistance to complete the necessary

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paperwork in the later stages of the Jean Monnet Centre administrative procedures and for coordinating the review of the relevant transcripts. I am also grateful to Mrs. Dionysia Tsolaki, PhD candidate, at the Department of International and European Studies of the University of Macedonia, for proofreading and structuring the early versions of the manuscript and checking the use of the related referencing system. I would like to thank Professor George Voskopoulos, who undertook the difficult task of editing this research volume, which combines academic research with practice. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Jean Monnet Team in EACEA and, most of all, the project officer Ms. Alexandra Campos Bray, for her valuable advice and support during the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence project, as well as Springer publications, and in particular Mr. Niko Chtouris, for accepting this book as part of the respective publication series. None of this would have been possible without the Erasmus+/Jean Monnet Action co-funding arrangements, which contributed significantly to the outwardness and cross-fertilization of our research. Thessaloniki, Greece January 2020

Despoina Anagnostopoulou

Disclaimer

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Research on Crucial Issues of European Integration” University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.

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Contents

Part I

The EU Internal–External Security Nexus

Soft Power, European Security Strategy and Radicalism: Cultural, Religious and Dimensional Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Voskopoulos

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The Strategic Context of the European Security and Defence Policy . . . . Fotini Bellou

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Securitization: Theoretical Underpinnings and Implications . . . . . . . . . . Kyriakos Mikelis

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Small EU Member States and the European Security and Defence Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revecca Pedi Part II

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EU Operations: From the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to the European External Action Service (EEAS)

EU Peace Operations in a Changing World: A Multilayer Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Voskopoulos

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European Participation in International Military Operations: National Decision-Making and the Role of EU Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kjell Engelbrekt

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The European External Action Service: An Encompassing and Adaptive Agency at the Service of the EU Global Security Strategy? . . . 101 Fotini Bellou

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The Evolving Role of FRONTEX in Implementing an EU Comprehensive Approach on Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Georgios Vourekas The Role of the European Commission/DG ECHO in Crisis Response and Institutional Cooperation for an EU Comprehensive Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Apostolos Nikolaidis Part III

EU, Russia and Transatlantic Challenges

Russia’s Challenges to International Security and the Western Response: Moscow’s Objectives in the Middle East . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Stephen Blank West v. Russia: A Role for Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Younes El Ghazi Transatlantic Relations at a Time of Uncertainty: The Formation of Transatlantic Axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 George Voskopoulos Augmenting European Security and Defence: A Multiple Challenge for the EU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Fotini Bellou NATO Security Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Vittorio A. Stella

Contributors

Fotini Bellou Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece Stephen Blank Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC, USA Kjell Engelbrekt Political Science, Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden Younes El Ghazi Global Diplomatic Forum, London, UK Kyriakos Mikelis Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece Apostolos Nikolaidis DG Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), European Commission, European Union, Brussels, Belgium Revecca Pedi Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece Vittorio Stella Staff Plans Division, NRDC-GR, Naples, Italy Italian Southern Land Forces HQ, Naples, Italy George Voskopoulos International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece Georgios Vourekas Pooled Resources Unit – Capacity Building Division, FRONTEX, European Border and Coast Guard Agency, European Union, Warsaw, Poland

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Part I

The EU Internal–External Security Nexus

Soft Power, European Security Strategy and Radicalism: Cultural, Religious and Dimensional Challenges George Voskopoulos

Abstract European security has been at the epicentre of the EU’s macro-strategic planning in an effort to deal with the onset of Islamic radicalism. By default, this effort is built on alternative/parallel strategies aiming at maximizing desired outcome. Soft power is a means the EU disposes to enhance the nexus between external and internal security in order to build bridges across religions and establish the basis of mutual understanding. Internal balancing is a prerequisite to create strong and efficient nuclei to deal with the major causes of the radicalization process. The challenges are not single dimensional but stem from a multidimensional milieu. This chapter scrutinizes a number of cultural, cognitive, religious, historical and institutional issues that will determine the ability of the EU to limit multifaceted threats.

1 Introduction Instability in the EU’s periphery caused dramatic changes in the security domain. One aspect refers to the challenges in the external borders of the European Union and the way they affect the EU’s internal security (Trauner 2011)1 and eventually the overall European security equation. The second aspect refers to the way these changes affect the internal security of the EU (Justice and Home Affairs Council 2010) and how they impose the adoption of a common strategy vis-à-vis extremism or radicalism (Bötticher 2017).2 Following the original idealism of the Arab Spring (Voskopoulos 2015) phenomenon, the EU has become the target of small groups of terrorists or individuals who

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On the way internal and external security issues link after the signing of the Lisbon Treaty. On the difficulties on academically defining them.

G. Voskopoulos (*) International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_1

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threaten the EU’s cohesion and stability in a way that affects its institutional order, aspects of the European acquit (Byman 2019),3 the democratic acquit and finally its internal security. The Arab Spring has triggered dramatic domestic changes (Bauer 2013) in countries whose stability has affected defining parameters of European internal security. The new given has altered the perception of Europeans towards the Muslim world (European Commission 2019), enhanced Islamophobia (Clay 2017)4 and led to political support for right-wing parties (Mayer and Froio n.d.) operating as centrifugal powers. Empirical evidence illustrates that external security operates as an input mechanism that multiplies internal threats (Lutterbeck 2005),5 putting pressure on societies, individuals and political systems (Al Yafai 2019).6 EU internal security (European Commission n.d.)7 should not be scrutinized only on the basis of hard security (Lindley-French 2004)8 but also on the basis of the side effects it has produced on the political domain. As a result, radicalism and terrorism have created a wave of Islamophobia in Europe. In its turn this has led to main challenges in the domain of domestic politics and the axis of intercultural (Weller 2007)9 and interreligious consensus, since identity and religion have operated as defining factors of political behaviour and a catalyst in making evaluative judgements (Foret 2015).10

2 Soft Power Elements as Normative Tools The concept of soft power (Nye 2006)11 was first introduced by Joseph Nye in his work Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Nye 1990, 2004). It meant to challenge the traditional Realist concept of power associated with the disposal of military means and thus hard power. Almost by definition soft and hard power refer to different means, strategies, concepts and approaches to security issues. In terms of organizational elements, soft power found fertile ground in the EU’s mode of international interaction, at least on a nominal level (Tuomioja 2009).

As plausibly suggested, “The fear terrorism generates can distort public debates, discredit moderates, empower political extremes, and polarize societies”. On the way terrorism undermines democracies and their institutions. 4 On a prevention strategy. 5 On the convergence of the external and internal security agendas. 6 Divergent views on the way to collectively deal with immigration/refugee influx have operated as an ideological tank for the far right and eurosceptics in the EU. 7 The 2015–2020 EU Internal Security Strategy (“renewed internal security strategy”) was set on the 16 June 2015 Council Conclusions. 8 For a comparative approach on hard and soft security and the way viewed by the EU and the USA. 9 Cultural consensus theory may offer some useful insights. 10 On the relation between religion and politics and the public sphere. 11 On the misunderstanding of the use of the concept of soft power. 3

Soft Power, European Security Strategy and Radicalism: Cultural, Religious and. . .

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By default, it is a long-term strategy, investing in the complex cognitive bias of individuals with the aim to affect the stages of radicalization (Maclin 2010).12 In IR soft power is based on the utility and assumed force of persuasion (Heywood 2015).13 This very basis is nominally expected to change the international behaviour of states in a way that will assist cooperation, understanding and avoidance of zero-sum games and security dilemmas. In terms of means to be used, soft power is built upon a strong spatial and time dimension, since nominal outcomes are expected on a long-term basis. Conceptions of the EU as a normative power (Voskopoulos 2007) are criticized (Hyde-Price 2006) as being without precision (Sjursen 2006). Normative elements do not successfully respond to the need of urgency, thus failing to satisfy the time dimension of a counterterrorist strategy. Cultural and religious cleavages have added to an ever-expanding gap between alternative sets of culture in a value-divided world (Weitz 2019).14 By western standards any attempt to approach the issue through legal approaches and international law is by default insufficient, since radicalism has demonized the West in an aphoristic way. Still the EU’s status as a civilian power provides alternatives for the use of soft power and at the same time exposes the operational limits of the concept vis-à-vis terrorism and the EU’s internal security. The EU operates as a normative power (Sjursen 2016)15 advancing norms of state interaction falling outside the traditional tools of state behaviour and state interaction. This affects not only the ability of a diversified EU (Vimont 2016)16 to implement a Common Defense Policy (Smith 2017)17 but also its ability to conceptualize a comprehensive soft power strategy vis-à-vis radicalism. This is due not only to the lack of a compact European strategy (Dempsey 2015) but also to the issue of the EU being a sui generis actor, a fact that affects its ability to turn common positions to joint action. Intergovernmentalism and the intensity of threats stemming from radicalism vary due to the different burden undertaken by member states and their geographical proximity (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty 2012) to flashpoints.

As suggested, “the path to jihadism is the result of many factors, including political outrage against what the jihadis perceive to be the injustices of their own governments or the actions of distant governments against fellow Muslims, subjection to torture, peer pressure, economic deprivation, or even religious alienation”. 13 For a comparative approach on soft, hard and smart power. 14 Values affect overlapping fields in a complex way, thus creating crises (i.e. human rights, refugee, migrant crises). 15 The approaches to the EU as a normative power are often identified as biased because they pay little attention to hard power issues. 16 Pluralism in the field of national interests may have paralysing effects at a time of transition in international politics and more particularly in Europe’s periphery. As suggested, “the common interest of all Europeans especially lies in the stability and security of the regions on the EU’s periphery”. 17 On the need for adaptation and improving performance. 12

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3 Soft Power and the Challenge of Multiculturalism By default, the EU constitutes a multicultural environment acknowledged by European Treaties. This was a sine qua non in an effort to unite an ever-expanding forum of states disposing of distinctive organizational and cultural elements. Within this setting, Muslims constitute a minority, interacting with the majority in different ways. The challenge to the EU has diachronically been the inclusion of these people so as not to operate as a threat to the rest. Having in mind the rather limited interaction framework between Islam and Christianity, an inclusion strategy is by default a painstaking task. The cultural and normative gap between Islam and the rest in the massively Christian EU is a multilevel challenge for all sides. At the very basis of the problem lies the realization of a triple aim, namely, mutual understanding, acceptance and policies of inclusion. Article 2 of the Treaty of Lisbon underpins that the EU: Shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced. In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.

The issue of cultural diversity has operated as a dividing force, a centrifugal power in the EU during the last years. In the 2011 report of the Eurobarometer, it was evident that there was scepticism towards people belonging to a non-European cultural and value environment. This gradually magnified insecurity perceptions and cognitive biases towards otherness. Until 2011 multiculturalism was accepted to a workable degree (Eurobarometer 2011).18 Workable is defined here as one that allows cognitive evaluations to operate as a mode of accepting cultural and religious differences. Yet, the onset of terrorist attacks in Europe has changed this co-existence mood. The new evaluations were formulated on the basis of threats to everyday life. The findings of the Autumn 2015 Standard Eurobarometer are revealing (Eurobarometer 2015). Immigration and terrorism were defined as the most important threats in the EU. Both these issues have resulted in specific reactions to “otherness” (i.e. political support for right-wing parties) (Fig. 1).

When asked about intercultural and interreligious relations, the findings illustrated that “the EU perception on the [then] situation was very slightly positive (0.1). The situation was seen to have worsened over the last 5 years (
23) and the outlook for the next 12 months is similarly gloomy (
11). The figures relating to the current situation and five-year comparison have fallen since the last wave of analysis. The 12-month expectations score has evolved positively, by +1. These changes are relatively limited, and overall, the situation has stayed quite stable regarding this dimension since the May 2010 survey”.

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Fig. 1 EU important issues (Eurobarometer 2015, p. 16)

A causational approach to what attracts certain Muslim Europeans to jihadism is required in order to decode motives (Malik 2015),19 cognitive biases and reactions to their respective milieu. This process will allow identification of internal balancing tools in order to deal with cognitive sources of radicalization. Approaches are not characterized by unanimity due to different if not contending evaluation criteria. This is a critical point when looking for a counterterrorism policy, especially one that builds upon a comprehensive soft power policy. A rather nonconventional approach suggests that it is not just a question of radicalization (Malik 2015), since there is evidence that de-links religious faith, or fundamental religious beliefs and jihadism (Malik 2015). The finding paves the cognitive and operating way for a wider approach to European counterterrorism strategy based on the stages of radicalization, which builds upon a number of defining elements (Malik 2015): • “People become terrorists because they acquire certain, usually religiously informed, extremist ideas”. The suggestion here is that at a certain time, a process of indoctrination takes place and affects personal beliefs and behaviour. The critical point is to cognitively intervene before this “acquisition” (“acquire”) phase when the process might break up.20 • “These ideas are acquired in a different way from that in which people acquire other extremist or oppositional ideas”. The suggestion implies a differentiated, multilayered process through which radicalization takes place. Other kind of extreme behaviour is explained on a divergent cognition process. Yet, compared

A number of critical and at the same time ontological questions are made, namely, “What is it that has led 4000 to travel to Syria to fight for the so-called Islamic State?” “And what is it that leads European citizens to engage in barbarous carnage such as those witnessed in Paris?”. 20 The 2017 London attack illustrated that the perpetrator had been indoctrinated in a relatively short time and this sets questions as far as the time dimension of the radicalization process is concerned. 19

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to other forms of extreme behaviour, radicalization might take place in a short period. • “There is a conveyor belt that leads from grievance to religiosity to the adoption of radical beliefs to terrorism”. The suggestion here is that radicalism bears elements of an automated process taking within a causational explanation mode. If it is so, then there is space for early intervention in order to break up the indoctrination circle. • “The insistence that what makes people vulnerable to acquiring such ideas is that they are poorly integrated into society”. This element is built upon the nominal, structural failure of integration, a fact that facilitates the cognitive and operational way to radicalism and limits the time dimension of the indoctrination phases. Kenan Malik questions the validity of these assumptions, a fact that in his opinion gives little sense to European domestic counterterrorism policy. He questions the validity of both the independent and dependent variables of the EU internal security equation. This very fact leads to the adoption of ineffective strategies. Still radicalization is above all a cognitive process and should be analysed within a causational approach framework built on a twin pillar, explaining and understanding.

4 Soft Power and Interreligious Dialogue Soft power is based on the utility and assumed force, at least nominally, of persuasion (Michalski 2005). This includes the psychological elements of persuasion. At the centre of the process lies the ability to alter, influence attitudes and reformulate cognitions, a process of paramount importance in an effort to apply an internal balancing policy towards terrorism (Petty and Cacioppo 1986).21 In terms of means to be used, soft power needs a strong spatial and time dimension to bear results since it constitutes a long-term strategy bearing a strong time dimension enriched with cultural elements. The EU constitutes a multicultural, multireligious environment22 trying to institutionally accommodate a diversified public. Diversification is not only defined in terms of national identities but also on the basis of religious beliefs. Multilayer accommodation of at times contending identities is by no means an easy goal to achieve under the impact of multilevel heterogeneity. The motto “united by diversity” has been at the forefront of European policy vis-a-vis otherness in order to

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Especially this chapter. Article 1a (Lisbon Treaty) underpins that “the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”. In effect, Article 1a puts ample emphasis, even indirectly, on the need to apply elements of soft power.

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provide ample space to religions and cultures co-existing within the European space. It was based on an inclusive strategy, aiming at providing organizational and valuebased norms of co-existence within the European common value public sphere. This choice has been an externalization of Europe’s soft power strategy and its organizational, normative effort to provide an environment for positive intercultural interaction. This would nominally enhance the internal security of the EU and accommodate contending value sets. It was inaugurated in the past, but it has been advanced on a sporadic, inconsistent way due to, among other things, a lack of urgency and consistency (Tulmets 2007). As a result, it has had a fragmented triggering effect, since it has not been adopted on a long-time basis. Evidently there is a problem of consistency, a need for acknowledging differences and establishing a tangible basis of mutual understanding on a macro-strategic level. At the same time, terrorism operated as a catalyst in the way Christian populations looked at Muslims in the EU.

5 Soft Power Within the EU’s Institutional Setting Soft power is an essential part of the EU’s institutional and operational setting, its organizational structure and its normative character. It is based and reflected on the choices made by leaders in a Treaty-based Union of politically autonomous states. It is also reflected by the EU’s operating mode as a normative, regulatory power and the institutionalized cultural aspects of exercising soft power. Under this spectrum the EU should be or is expected to operate as a force of persuasion. In their turn EU Treaties reflect the organizational structure, normative basis and strategic orientation of Europe as a whole, although this evades the question of various needs on national levels. Treaties clearly describe the image and role of the EU according to the means disposed. Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty states that: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail”. The key words of the above are “pluralism”, “non-discrimination”, “tolerance”, “justice”, “solidarity” and “equality”. The application of such policies falls within the operational scope of soft power and bears cultural elements. To a great extent, these goals have been materialized, since non-Christians have enjoyed the social dividend of European integration and its policy of tolerance. In its turn Article 3 of the Lisbon Treaty states that: The Union’s aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice. . .in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.

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G. Voskopoulos It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination. . .shall promote social justice and protection. . .shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.

The key words of the above are “cultural diversity” and “values”. In terms of semantics, the text refers to European values, which, in a way, may be taken on a minimal basis, meaning Christian values. This could be a facilitating factor in terms of integration, since the EU, as an open space, has allowed diversity and openness to enhance its multicultural, multireligious environment. Yet, this institutional and operational setting was formulated under different circumstances. The emergence of terrorism as a primary threat to the EU’s internal security has created new pressure on Europe and its ability to cognitively accommodate otherness.

6 Soft Power and Islamic Radicalism Under the cognitive and operational basis of this analysis, soft power is associated mainly but not exclusively with the EU’s internal security and specific needs to be covered under the impact of the spread of terrorism. The central elements of the EU’s soft power within its extended territorial base are or should be constructed on the need to: • Persuade a diversified European public that radicalism is a common threat to the peaceful co-existence of European citizens in a multicultural Europe. • Establish multilevel links among various cultures and religions in order to enhance mutual understanding. • Support moderate Islam (Muqtedar Khan 2007),23 or trigger an open dialogue as far as the merits of constructing moderate Islam microcosms are concerned. • Provide an operational supplement to hard power needed to deal with multiple hard security issues raised from radicalism. The EU constitutes a multicultural environment acknowledged by European Treaties across European integration history. This was a sine qua non in an effort to unite an ever-expanding forum of states disposing of distinctive organizational and cultural elements as well as divergent cognitive views towards otherness. Within this setting, Muslims have constituted a minority interacting with the majority in different ways, not always in harmony. The challenge to the EU has diachronically been the adoption of an inclusion strategy for Muslims so as not to evolve into a threat to the rest, not to be open to radicalism. By western standards this is a herculean task, since there is a limited

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The concept of moderate Islam is questioned in terms of validity and ontology. Still even if it does not exit, security considerations lead to the need to “invent” it, meaning to create nuclei of moderate Islam across Europe. For a thorough analysis of what constitutes moderate Islam.

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interaction framework between Islam and Christianity, a fact that sets a painstaking goal to all the parties involved. Islamic radicalism has set main challenges to the EU and its internal security, a fact that affects the overall performance of the EU in terms of the democratic acquit and the operational mode of western liberal democracies. The links between internal and external security by default affect the democratic acquit due to the urgency of the issues (Lamy 2019).24 The EU has become the target of small groups of terrorists (Richards 2003)25 who threaten in essence the EU’s cohesion and internal stability in a way that affects its liberal institutional order, aspects of the European acquit and eventually the unity of the Schengen area already under strain. The EU’s multilevel internal security issues are interconnected in a complex, multifaceted way with the EU’s external security in a world where disorderly transition and fluidity are almost inherent features of unstable security systems and subsystems (Middle East, the Mediterranean). Interconnection of security systems and subsystems is a fact of international politics and security; thus changes may have triggering effects. The Arab Spring phenomenon has triggered unprecedented domestic changes in countries whose stability has affected defining parameters of European internal and external security. The new given forced European leaders to revise already held perceptions of Europeans towards the Muslim world and heavily securitized the issue of migration as well as their cognitive ability to accept refugees.

7 The Spatial Dimension of Exercising Soft Power and Internal Soft Balancing The strategy of adopting soft power is by default synonymous with the EU’s role and organizational character. It is related with the EU’s internal security and internal setting and the means disposed to deal with clearly defined security concerns. This very fact provides the space dimension of exercising soft power but also the actual limitation of soft power itself. The ontological and organizational question is how to deal with Muslim microcosms across Europe. The ideal strategy should be based on satisfying two interconnected needs: first, to enhance European security and at the same time secure the constitutional order of liberal democracies. An equally important question that rises is whether the use of soft power is enough to deal with the EU’s internal security challenges. Nominally one should have limited expectations at least as far as short- and medium-term results are

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This is the case of France and the protracted state of emergency due to the terrorist attacks. On the social and economic elements of the radicalization process.

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concerned. The use of soft power refers to a long-term strategy to be applied on a macro-strategic planning framework. It bears focal intercultural elements so much needed to operate as a uniting force in a diversified space. Soft power should be seen as a means of socialization, a route to inclusion and positive interaction. At this point another crucial question rises. Is there such a thing as moderate Islam to apply soft power? The answer should be given on a need-tocreate basis in order to support modest Muslims who have adopted an open-minded approach to otherness. As a consequence, if there is not such a thing as moderate Islam, then there is a strong need to invent it. This should be constructed on a capabilities-expectations realistic axis and the need to transform cognitive elements of evaluation in both sides (Muslim and Non-Muslim). This will eventually define outcomes and above all expectations. Such strategy has no guarantees for success a view based on empirical evidence referring to the limits of interaction between Islam and the rest of the world. The application of a soft power strategy makes sense on the basis of the anticipation of nominal long-term results, since it does not deal with internal security issues on an urgency basis nor does it establish concrete external security issues as an input to internal security and the way these interact. The process of balancing radicalism refers to the need to produce inaction. Definitions of balancing refer to it as “a state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancelation of all forces by equal opposing forces” or “an influence or force tending to produce equilibrium; counterpoise” (Free Dictionary n.d.). By definition a strategy of internal balancing builds upon the ability to crucially modify perceptions that may eventually lead to operational radicalization. These elements involve, inter alia, choices made within the EU and bear a strong normative basis of soft power. As suggested, “a country’s soft power can come from three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)” (Nye 2006). The above sets the epicentre of the EU’s multilayer problem in applying soft power within Europe. European “culture”, just like European identities, is not a uniform value but reflects the diversity of an ever-expanding Union of states with different cultural and religious backgrounds constructed on a national framework. Having in mind that cultural traits may cause and at times have caused cognitive schisms in evaluating otherness, terrorism has added to suspicion towards Muslims. When dealing with internal security, military or police measures are not enough to deal with potential or potentially emerging threats. There is a clear need for balancing mechanisms of threats formulated at the cognitive level before they are externalized. The former is a stage where soft power may have significance and produce desired outcomes, while the latter refers to an outcome that cannot be reversed. The means to be used for internal balancing of radicalism may vary and fall within a wide spectrum of dealing with cognitive stereotypes, sociocultural alienation and religious fanatism.

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8 Radicalism, Soft Power and EU Internal Security Radicalism has become the primary concern of the European internal security in a fluid international environment producing asymmetric threats. The EU is urgently asked to deal with inconsistencies in European counterterrorism strategy vis-à-vis radicalism and the nonmilitary means to deal with it within its territorial base. Soft power is just one of the main tools to be used in terms of European internal security. Police measures only cannot offer added value to the need to safeguard the normality of Europeans in everyday routine. If hard power is needed to operationally cripple ISIS, then soft power is a must-use instrument in societies where diversity and conformity to common rules ought to co-exist by default. EU internal security agents (Bigo et al. 2007) are expected to commonly provide a basis for deep understanding and at the same time protect individual freedoms and the constitutional assets of liberal democracies. Radicalism is among other things a threat to democracy, as it forces taking measures that threaten fundamental constitutional liberties in the western world. If, according to Joseph Nye, soft power is constructed on a country’s “resources of culture, values and policies” (Nye 2008), then the EU should use it in a more elaborate and systematic way. This should be the core of a compact smart power (Gallarotti 2015)26 strategy. According to Joseph Nye, “soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A smart power strategy combines hard and soft power resources. The current struggle against transnational terrorism is a struggle to win hearts and minds, and the current overreliance on hard power alone is not the path to success. Public diplomacy is an important tool in the arsenal of smart power, but smart public diplomacy requires an understanding of the roles of credibility, selfcriticism, and civil society in generating soft power (Nye 2008)”. The above suggestions underpin the need for: • An elaborate and concrete approach to internal security cultural parameters and the need to apply soft power in a diversified way. • The sole use of hard power within the EU is not an option, as it is bound not to affect “hearts and minds”. On the contrary, it might give vent to a reflexive radicalism as a result of short- or middle-term suppressive policies. • Soft power should be seen as part of an overall smart power strategy (Nye 2009; Nossel 2004)27 differentiated in terms of space, intensity and scope. This should be applied in a way that it covers the void in terms of institutional, conceptual and political questions (Wilson 2008).

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For an overview of the term. The term smart power was developed by Joseph Nye in his effort to illustrate the need for the use of combined tools of action, namely, soft and hard power, while Nossel’s analysis is based on, inter alia, liberal internationalism and exercising foreign policy. 27

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• Soft power should be used in a way that makes sense to a target group whose cognitive biases are non-western, non-Christian and even non-liberal, a fact that by default makes it non-receptive to western ideas and value system. Under this spectrum, emphasis should be put to “tolerating” rather than “accepting”. The above are just a part of an overall strategy that needs to emanate from what has been termed as the “triangle of forces”, namely, the European integration process, the developments in the Islamic world and the responses of the USA (Smith 2009). In effect the suggestion refers to the equivalent proposed by liberal internationalists in the USA who tend to build their strategies on diplomacy, trade and foreign aid (Nossel 2004). The problem with liberal internationalism is that it puts emphasis on democracy, thus setting a herculean task for westerners in the Muslim world. Western liberal democracy builds upon a value system imposed by the rule of law and constitutional arrangements. By contrast in Islam, the appeal and eventual implementation of these rules is limited due, among other things, to a fundamental clash of values. In his 2002 article, Ian Manners (Manners 2002) investigated the role of Europe as a normative power. The ontological question that arises today vis-à-vis radicalism is whether the EU is a normative power by destiny or whether it should be operating as such by, among other things, urgency. Joseph Nye defined soft power as “cultural power”, and this is how it should be used as an internal balancing tool. De-radicalization is not an automated process but one to be triggered and assisted at various levels (i.e. government, regional, municipal) and intensity. As pointed out in a 2008 study in the UK, conducted by MI5 on extremism, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practice their faith regularly” (Malik 2015). This was the case with the perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Nice when personal data illustrated that he was not essentially religious. This differentiates perpetrators from the mass of Islamist extremists providing an alternative causational explanation. Threat levels rising can be seen in Fig. 2 (Bakker and de Roy van Zuijdewijn 2015). This brings the issue to a critical question originally set by Y. Trofimov. Are we witnessing a process of radicalization of Islam or rather a process of Islamization of radicalism? The answer bears ideological, religious but also sociological elements and points to alternative strategies. As pointed out, “If the true problem is the shift of some Muslim communities in the West, to a more fundamentalist version of the faith that becomes violent over time, then the recipe is to increase policing and surveillance, and government intervention in the running of mosques, charities and Islamic schools” (Trofimov 2016). He also sets the issue within a different dimension by asking a critical question: “What if the real issue is that nihilistic misfits and violent malcontents in the West turn to Islamic State simply because it is the most obvious foe of the system? In this case, the prescription would be far more complicated focusing on the destruction of

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Fig. 2 Feelings on immigration (Eurobarometer 2015, p. 27)

Islamic State’s allure, the aura of invincibility that allows it to motivate new “lone wolf” attacks and draw actual recruits (Trofimov 2016). Studying the historical process of radicalization and the multifaceted ways it affects personal beliefs in specific socioreligious and economic milieu will allow the disruption of this process and provide at least less fertile ground for its raison d’etre. In a way this is meant to internally balance the process of conversion to radicalism. Operationally it will take an interdisciplinary approach to scrutinize the motives of the radicals, as certain of them did not in reality practice religion nor did they belong to observant families (Trofimov 2016). A nominal facilitating factor for the appeal of radicalization is the demise of ISIS, since its success had been an appeal to radicals in Europe (Trofimov 2016) who looked for a cause and operated as the revolutionaries described by Martin Wight (revolutionist tradition). Yet, to define the accuracy of the suggestion that nonobservant Muslims engage in radicalism, one should have a clear picture of the terrorists’ background and the number of those who come from observant and nonobservant families (Trofimov 2016).28 As suggested, “while in Iraq and Syria Islamic State draws on local Sunni grievances, in the West it attracts a very different crowd. Roughly one-quarter of its recruits in Europe are converts from non-Muslim backgrounds. Many of those born to Muslim parents don’t come from observant families”. 28

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On the other hand, there is an alternative explanation that sees the emergence of radical Islam as a response to an anticapitalist, counter-hegemonic struggle (Abbas 2011). In this case radicalism intrudes Islam and may take the form of a pseudoreligious cause (Trofimov 2016), while it bears elements of a revolutionary political movement that may fall within Martin Wight’s revolutionist tradition. This might provide explanation for the mass attacks against fellow Muslims in the Middle East and the way they were practically ex-communicated by ISIS followers, simply because they were moderate (Hayden 2017).29

9 Internal Balancing A strategy of internal balancing by default emphasizes the role of those moderate Muslim communities across Europe and the way they are expected to take initiatives in terms of practices and de-indoctrination. After all, the idea of a Caliphate is not a common belief among Muslims across the world, but simply describes the specific aim of a certain extreme ideology, not shared by the vast majority of Muslims. Still cognitive limits between extreme and moderate in Islam constitute a red thin line easily crossed, due to cultural and religious particularities. Under this spectrum, tackling trigger effect mechanisms may enhance European internal security. Two issues are fundamental in devising a counterterrorism policy that builds upon recent events. The first refers to terrorists taking advantage of the weaknesses of the system (Hecker 2015), and the second the fact that ISIS targeted moderate Muslims (Stern 2016) whom they considered a grey zone, a non-facilitating factor in their effort to appeal to masses of Muslims in Europe. At the end of 2015, the European Parliament’s culture committee inaugurated a public debate on marginalization and extremism. The estimation of Julie Ward was that terrorist acts “were perpetrated by a small minority of people, in many ways damaged people. The terrorist attacks were not the result of multiculturalism at all, but of exclusion”. Focus was put on intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity, EU fundamental values, education, inclusion and racism (Ward 2015). A key word of her evaluation is the term “damaged” explained in terms of people who formulated distorted cognitions of the non-Muslim world or people who crossed the aforementioned thin red line under the impact, among other things, of mechanisms to deal with exclusion (Townsend 2019).30 As suggested, “there are radicals who simply look for an ideology and only find one. But at the same time, all those who are

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Eventually the majority of ISIS victims were Muslims. On the relation between radicalization and societal exclusion. As pointed out, “the links between extremism, social exclusion and radicalization corroborate some previous research with one report commissioned by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham after the Arena attack identifying a lack of social integration”. 30

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Fig. 3 Muslim population (Pew Research Center 2017)

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Fig. 4 Growth of Muslim population (Pew cited in Lipka 2017)

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radicalized share the same ideology, which is why we have to take its content and its sources seriously” (Trofimov 2016). Almost by default the process of internal balancing focuses on “content” and “sources”, with the final aim being interfering with them and providing non-radical outcomes. Internal balancing almost by default needs to overcome a critical issue, namely, the cultural basis of the organizational and value structure of western societies (Borstlap 2019).31 This sets an actual dividing line of what is and is not acceptable, since the western way of life is by default alien and at times unacceptable to Muslims. As underpinned, “the Islamist vision denies explicitly the relevance to the Muslim world of what are seen as alien, secular, criteria of assessment” (Halliday 2003, p. 13). In effect secular approaches to values (Zilliacus and Kallioniemi 2016)32 are fundamental in western liberal democracies where European Muslims reside. This puts them in a position to question not only the validity of the western cultural framework but also the semantics of their mode of accepting them, despite being Muslim. Those who belong to what has been termed as moderate Islam have managed to strike a balance between “must” and “need”, thus becoming more “flexible” when using evaluating criteria or when making fundamental evaluation judgements.

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This is related to the danger of identity politics and their impact on radicalization. As pointed out, “The more worrying populist development in the West is the emergence of rightwing extremism which practices ‘white identity politics’ and thinks that ‘the West’ should consist of homogeneous white ethno nations”. 32 Education and value formulation play a catalytic role and may provide a premium to deal with radicalization. An interesting case study.

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Fig. 5 Migration scenarios (Pew cited in Lipka 2017)

All the above mingle with the historical legacy of confrontation between Europe and the Middle East (Halliday 2003, pp. 22–30) scrutinized through the traumatic past of this relation in a region where western presence has always been considered an intrusion. Actually this was used by the Islamic State in his attempt to refer to the Sykes-Picot Agreement (Oxford Public International Law n.d.)33 as a “historical injustice” forced by “western imperialists”. The impact of such historical evaluation should not be underestimated by any evaluative judgements and cognitive criteria, at least as far as European Muslims (Lipka 2017)34 are concerned. A mix of religious books distortion and historical facts may be the cognitive and evaluative basis of forming radical approaches to the West. Causation approaches to the emergence of radicalism in Europe are useful in order to streamline soft power on the right direction (Pollock 2009). Some of them are pinpointed at multiple levers such as “economic and social alienation, political and cultural marginalization, gender and masculinity, and psychological issues, both at an individual and community level” (Abbas 2007). It is a question of ethnoreligious conflict stemming from clashing or incompatible identities that need to be accommodated on a wide symbiosis pattern (Taras 2013). The issue becomes more complicated due to nonreligious but rather religious-related causes of radicalism (Pettinger 2015)35 such as social and economic issues that may be defined as facilitating to radicalism factors (Richards 2003). They are defined as “facilitating” because they may provide the cognitive foundation of radicalization, due to the realities of the complexity of Islam (Springer et al. 2009). In effect, jihadist ideology (Moghadam 2008, pp. 14–16) is defined as “a set of structured cognitive and affective attitudes that form a belief system for an individual or group” (Springer et al. 2009, p. 5). These are formed at different levels (Springer et al. 2009, pp. 6–7)36 where soft power balancing is of a varied efficiency (Hecker 2016). Finding traces of

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For the texts of the Agreement. On the demographics see end Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. 35 On the nonsocial causes of radicalization. 36 Where the philosophical foundations, strategic goals of the movement and tactics of jihadism are scrutinized. 34

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Fig. 6 Muslim projected population (Pew Research Center 2017)

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Fig. 7 Views of Muslims (Wike et al. 2016)

radicalism is by no means an easy task. Thus any long-term implementation strategy demands time and human resources at different levels. Under this spectrum the use of interdisciplinary professionals is a must (Smit 2012) (Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7).37

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The Strategic Context of the European Security and Defence Policy Fotini Bellou

Abstract The context in which the EU aspires to play its role as a security provider to its citizens and in its general vicinity has changed dramatically in the last several years. External and internal factors have established a particularly challenging environment in which EU governments had to move from the lethargic prosperity of the early 2000s to the demanding policy agenda of Defense (and Security) Union, as advocated by the European Commission. The last decade has brought major changes in the way in which the EU has responded to the evolving character of its security challenges. The EU and its governments could not avoid moving towards fashioning a comprehensive response to these challenges that were apparently connecting external and internal aspects of security.

1 Introduction For several decades, the institutional and political orchestration of Western European security has relied on the USA’ security and defence commitments in the context of NATO. In the last 25 years, the European Union (EU) has wrestled to develop its security and defence instruments through establishing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and its operational branch, through the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). Yet, CSDP policies have primarily focused on regions outside the EU’s territory, in areas and states in the EU immediate environment and its entire vicinity, which were considered to be in need of stability and resilience. In the early 2000s, the formative years of the CSDP, the EU adopted (December 2003) its first European Security Strategy (ESS) in which it was recognizing its territory primarily as ‘secure and prosperous’, while the EU governments defined the EU security strategy by means of external action in order to respond to a number of

F. Bellou (*) Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_2

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security threats and challenges deriving from outside its borders (Council of the European Union 2003). However, not much commitment was discerned amongst EU member states on issues related to European defence since it remained a contested area so long as several EU governments continue to turn to the Atlantic Alliance (NATO) to ensure their security and defence.1 However, three important changes have taken place in recent years generating a new strategic context within which the EU has been compelled to respond. The first is related to the American pivot to Asia, as this was announced during the Obama Administration. It regards the strategic turn of US interests towards Asia and the Pacific, fundamentally altering Washington’s commitment to European security. The American perspective has been further complicated after the Trump Administration assumed power. The ‘new American perspective’ of uncertainty seemed to have concentrated the minds of the Atlantist camp of the EU governments (Stahl et al. 2004) around the assumption that Washington should not be expected to continue bearing the cost of defending the West. Another development affecting, even at a key moment, the decision of the EU governments to move towards empowering their defence cooperation was the British decision to abandon the EU—Brexit. Such a prospect, at a certain point, seemed to have facilitated a process on defence cooperation that was previously rather contested. Nevertheless, the most important factor for the augmentation of the defence cooperation in the EU context and the calls for greater EU cooperation on security and defence leading perhaps to a Security and Defense Union (European Commission 2016) was the intensive deterioration of the strategic context around and within Europe. The dramatic shifting of threats and perils that has taken place in the last decade has rendered the EU and its member states unable to remain lethargic to realities on the ground. If the EU aspired to perform an effective role as a global security actor, it had to acknowledge the complex strategic reality and, in effect, assume the responsibility to effectively respond not only outside its borders but also within Europe. It is no longer simply a matter of EU actorness abroad. The character of the security challenges currently facing the EU cuts across domestic and external policy calling for more complex, coordinated and combined responses. It would have been an oxymoron for the EU to remain loath to the reality that the protection and security of EU citizens, especially after 2015, have been upgraded nowadays into a priority of utmost importance. In this context, the EU has been called to meet demanding security commitments in a strategic context in which Washington’s role will be certainly reduced or at least nuanced. This analysis advocates that the security challenges facing the EU are particularly demanding, and for this reason, member states have been engaged in significant co-operational efforts in the context of EU defence as well as a greater

1 A number of EU member states are not members of NATO such as Sweden, Ireland, Austria, Malta, Finland and Cyprus. With the exception of Cyprus, all these countries are members of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme of the Alliance according to which they have formulated a co-operational relationship with NATO.

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burden sharing within the Alliance. The current strategic context within which the EU is called to perform its Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), as this analysis advocates, is particularly complex requiring the intertwining of internal with external policies while combining military and civilian sectors. The chapter begins with an analysis of the evolving challenges facing the EU starting with the American pivot (rebalancing) to continue with a short discussion on the way in which the decision of the United Kingdom (UK) to exit the EU (Brexit) can affect the EU security and defence. It then moves to an analysis on the current composite security challenges stemming from within and beyond the EU territory at a time of budgetary limitations.

2 The American Factor: The Pivot to Asia and the Trump Administration The emerging shift of US interests to the Asia-Pacific region indicates that the hitherto US security commitment to Europe is rather diminishing. This should not be interpreted as a gradual US removal from European security practices. Rather, it reflects a policy stance that drives Europe to assume greater responsibilities of its own security and its role as a factor of international stability. No doubt, this is neither a simple nor easy a task. The term American ‘pivot’ was introduced by the US Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton, who in an article published in Foreign Policy in November 2011 advocated that the USA in the aftermath of two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and a financial crisis, through the next decade, will seek to invest in regions vital for maintaining its international status (Clinton 2011). In Washington’s view, the Asia-Pacific is the region driving global politics. ‘Stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas, the regions span two oceans—the Pacific and the Indian—that are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy’ (Clinton 2011). Indeed, that particular geographic area is inhabited by almost half of the entire Earth population as well as by some of the ‘key engines of the world economy’ (Clinton 2011), while valuable allies and emerging powers such as China, India and Indonesia are located in that region. Hence, as Tom Donilon, the National Security Advisor, had stated at the time, the USA in order to renew its leading position had to redirect its efforts and resources not just on the events making daily headlines but ‘on the regions that will shape the global order in the decades ahead’ (Donilon 2013). The USA thus considers itself more of a Pacific state than an Atlantic security provider. In other words, Asia poses an existential challenge to Washington, while Europe is considered an area of states with which Washington can collaborate better in order to assume more effectively its wider interests. Not surprisingly, this development has raised several questions in other parts of the world and profoundly in Europe. Washington was quick to confirm that US pivot to the Asia-Pacific never meant an abdication from European security deliberations

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and that Europe remains valuable to the USA. In reality, this rebalancing implies the US intention to gradually reduce its budgetary defence commitment towards Europe and Washington’s expectation that Europeans would take the lead in dealing with issues in their immediate neighbourhood. More specifically, the Obama Administration had reportedly committed to cutting almost $500 billion from the defence budget over the next decade (Rachman 2012), while President Donald Trump has loudly argued that NATO is ‘costing us a fortune’ that cannot be afforded anymore (Rucker and Costa 2016). In fact, the USA committed itself to a disproportionate burden in substantiating the Alliance’s objectives. In 2018, the US contribution to the overall defence spending of the Alliance amounted to around 69.3%, while the rest was covered by European allies and Canada (NATO 2018). In 2000, this equation was more balanced to an almost 50–50 split. Therefore, Washington anticipated from its European allies, as the US ambassador to NATO put it in 2013, ‘[W]hen it comes to defense, current spending floors must not become new political ceilings’ (NATO 2018). However, one can advocate that arguments related to the diminishing salience of NATO in American strategies and the shift in the transatlantic bond used to be rather oversimplified in the past (Nielsen 2013). Instead, what was becoming clear in US thinking was that, as Coelmont and de Langlois have rightly observed, ‘the US no longer sees Europe as a security consumer but as a security provider’ (Coelmont and De Langlois 2013, p. 2). In effect, the evolving policy stance that Washington fashions nowadays towards European security is leadership from behind, as the case of the Libya crisis in 2011 has demonstrated (Kamp 2013). On the other hand, the American rebalancing seems to have unveiled the erstwhile differentiations and gaps that have existed amongst European governments as regards European security. ‘Washington, through its leading presence in NATO, had been the catalyst to an otherwise European cacophony in security and defense perspectives’ (Bellou 2016). In fact, European governments have never seriously challenged the American post-Cold War commitment to European security. Despite the disagreements, in particular concerning the US-led operation in Iraq in 2003, no major anti-American balancing has existed in the practice of post-Cold War European governments. On the contrary, as Dyson rightly argues, European states during the Cold War used to bandwagon around US power, while in the post-Cold War, a reformed bandwagoning evolved around two convictions (Dyson 2013, p. 388; Dyson 2010, pp. 102–116): a potential US abandonment of European security concerns and a fear of an ‘entrapment’ in US strategic interests in Europe. Although both sides of the Atlantic used to share common security concerns, at times the prioritization and the means used to address them differ amongst the allies. Nowadays, however, there is a growing conviction in the European continent that American and European priorities on security and defence issues are not quite the same (Denison 2019) and, thus, the EU should be striving for a strategic autonomy in order to better serve its interests (Fiott 2018). The establishment of the CFSP and most importantly its hesitant operational pillar, the CSDP, came to confirm this reformed bandwagon. The ‘separable but not separate’ scheme was frequently adopted by the Europeans as the preferred modus

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operandi of the European perspective within the Alliance indicating their willingness to move towards a strategic autonomy in capabilities and decision-making without challenging NATO. Indeed, the need for a CSDP was announced in the midst of the Kosovo crisis in late 1998, at a time when the Alliance was not directly threatened while it was under a transformation process as to meet at the time the evolving security challenges of its members. Yet, the USA was certainly performing the role of the catalyst in decision-making within the Alliance, which could easily be seen, as ‘the world’s most consistent and effective alliance among nations’ (Holt 2013, p. 166). Whether the American pivot is going to challenge Alliance’s cohesion remains to be seen. As discussed below, the evolving cooperation amongst NATO and the EU since 2016 indicates that complementarity rather than confrontation is the preferred modus operandi at the moment. For 2016 signalled the time at which the EU governments had to abandon their previous sclerosis in fashioning shared security and defence synergies (Bellou 2016). EU member states gradually became more engaged than ever as regards security and defence synergies and further empowered what they had already started hesitantly to build. This logic was also reflected in the important European Council on Defense in December 2013 as discussed below, in which EU governments clearly committed themselves, at least on paper, to start forming greater synergies within the European defence scheme in general and to also empower the framework for defence common projects offered by the European Defense Agency (European Council 2013). Since 2013, several security challenges had started to emerge in Europe. These were to make the EU governments realize that given the American pivot, they had to reconsider their security and defence commitments to both organizations and the particularities of their mutual relationship. The evolving strategic situation in Europe demanded prompt responses. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in spring 2014 and its military involvement in eastern Ukraine, the terrorist attacks within EU territory including a number of EU capitals and cities (e.g. Amsterdam, Brussels, Liege, Strasburg, Vienna, London) were establishing a very perilous environment for the internal and external security of the EU. The mounting terrorist activity on EU territory is directly threatening EU citizens and is largely originated from within rather from outside the EU territory. In other words, as explained below, the threat assessment in the European context has evolved into a particularly demanding undertaking.

3 Brexit from European and Security Policy? The decision of the United Kingdom (UK) in spring 2016 to withdraw from the European Union (EU) has raised several questions as regards the future form of Common Security and Defense Policy. Despite its initial contribution to the establishment of the CSDP through the Anglo-French St Malo agreement of 1998, London never was the most important functional component within the CSDP. For

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several years the UK had ‘ceased to invest politically or militarily in the CSDP in any substantial manner’ (Heisbourg 2016, p. 13). However, it remains a very committed ally in NATO. Thus, London may be absent from decision-making, when it will officially withdraw from the EU, but its effective contribution shall be considered almost a certainty, especially on issues related to the EU and NATO cooperation framework as these were agreed in July 2016 and are elaborated constantly ever since. In the context of CSDP operations, London was never a real factor. Between 2007 and 2015, the British share in troops in all EU missions and operations was 4.33%, whereas it should have been 14.8% to be proportionate to the UK’s population size (Martill and Sus 2018, pp. 846–863). More importantly, the UK has several times blocked many EU initiatives concerning the EU defence and security while prioritizing NATO involvement in the respective areas. Today’s new complex security environment creates a coincidence of interests between the EU and the UK in the aftermath of the financial crisis facing all EU member states. The two actors share a great deal of common interests and priorities especially when it comes to security and defence. Both the European Union’s Global Strategy (EUGS) of 2016 and the UK’s 2015 Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) prioritize mutual areas, such as the significance of dealing with terrorism, extremism and instability, cyber threats, state-based threats, of responding to crises rapidly and effectively, of strengthening the rules-based international order and of building resilience at home and abroad (Martill and Sus 2018, p. 853). In addition, the common concern about the reliability of the transatlantic alliance in the light of the Trump Administration era also gives floor for cooperation between the two actors (Chalmers 2017). Yet, the EU framework through which relations on security and defence amongst the two actors will evolve remains to be finalized in light of the unfinished process of Brexit (De Hoop Scheffer and Quencez 2018; Tardy 2014). Perhaps the most important contribution of the UK to the augmentation of European security and defence after Brexit is likely to revolve around its certain contribution, as a NATO member or on a bilateral basis as a third party to the CFSP and CSDP (Heisbourg 2018; Martill and Sus 2018). This points to an expectation according to which a more robust British contribution is likely to occur by not necessarily involving the EU strategic framework. Instead, the implementation of the 74 policy sectors on which the EU and NATO have agreed to cooperate following the Joint Declaration of EU-NATO Cooperation in July 2016 and July 2018 (Council of the EU, 2016 and Council of the EU 2018), as explained in another chapter in this volume, is more likely to be fully implemented in contexts led by individual EU governments rather than within an all-encompassing EU framework (Bendiek 2017, p. 16).

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4 The Evolving Strategic Context in the EU of Limited Resources In December 2003 EU governments adopted the first European Security Strategy (ESS) in order to provide direction to an evolving CFSP and, primarily, to its operational wing, CSDP. It was a document celebrating the EU security and prosperity and was focusing on the EU’s neighbourhood and perhaps its wider vicinity to which the EU was bound to operate at the time. In the document, it was assumed that the EU was becoming ready to address security issues stemming from a region covering the EU’s neighbourhood as well as the ‘neighbourhood of the EU neighbourhood’. It was considered a region that could directly or indirectly challenge the EU stability and security. As for the nature of challenges and threats at the time, they included terrorism, regional conflicts, international organized crime, state failure and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) (Council of the European Union 2003). Although strategic priorities were never made clear (Biscop 2013, p. 1127), the document, despite its descriptive character, provided the EU with the thematic context around which its policies were to be implemented. It was a document that was primarily reflecting a threat assessment that had attributed the EU the characteristics of unprecedented security and prosperity. In 2008, a new document, the ‘Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy—Providing Security in a Changing World’, complemented the ESS as it added the challenges of cybersecurity, energy security, climate change as well as piracy and maritime security and trafficking of small arms and light weapons (Council of the European Union 2008). Importantly, it was underscoring the interconnected character of these threats. At the time, NATO was considered as the proper framework for the orchestration of larger military operations. For this reason, EU governments had indicated at the time a somewhat restricted appetite to empower their defence. Yet, within NATO, although collective defence comprised the first—and fundamental—of the three pillars in the Alliance’s Strategic Concept of 2010, in practice, NATO allies had little appetite to empower their collective defence within the Alliance. Instead, emphasis was placed on crisis management and the operations that the Alliance was conducting in the Balkans and primarily in Afghanistan. In other words, economies of scale were favoured which had taken the form of what had become known at the time as smart defence (NATO Chicago Summit Declaration 2012). This meant, for a number of states the promotion of a logic of mutual contributions on complementary defence assets or procurements in order to produce certain defence capabilities the cost of which was shared amongst them. A similar logic, yet at a much-limited level of ambition, was promoted within the context of the EU, supported by the European Defense Agency, known as the ‘Pooling and Sharing’ framework (European Defense Agency 2013). However, a number of events started to erupt rendering necessary not only a strategic re-evaluation of the previous EU strategic documents but also a fundamental change on the way in which the West was bound to evaluate European security. The annexation of Crimea by Russia in spring 2014 and the ensuing Russian military

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aggression towards Eastern Ukraine dramatically altered the security equation (Krastev 2014). It brought back the preeminence of collective defence not only within the Alliance’s deliberations but also within EU security discussions. Russia’s revisionism had made the West ‘to shift gears towards the ‘significant other’ which Russia has now become’ (Heisbourg 2015, p. 35). In an already difficult strategic context, a number of terrorist attacks since January 2015 in Paris that followed a concatenation of attacks in several other European capitals and cities stemming from Islamic fundamentalists supporting Al Qaeda or hailing the Islamic State (Daesh) further complicated the situation. The internal security of the EU was immensely threatened, and the previous euphoria regarding the immunity of European citizens from direct attacks to their security vanished. The Arab uprisings in 2011 and its mismanagement from the internationals had also different security consequences in the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (Bellou 2016, pp. 11–12). In the aftermath of the international intervention in Libya in 2011, the country soon evolved into a chaotic failed state and a functional shelter to terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and organized crime. Its reverberations were also evident in Syria, which became and continues to be until today, the terrain of multiple proxy wars and a major exporter of regional instability. As a consequence, the massive terrorist activities by Daesh in the Middle East region and the war environment generated massive waves of refugees to the European continent. The EU border countries became unable and at times unprepared to manage the precarious circumstances. This compounded an already difficult security situation. The massive migration/refugee flows during the 2015 and 2016 ‘offered’ a fertile ground for EU border crossings by terrorists wishing to spread havoc within the EU territory. This was a strong warning message to both the EU institutions and to EU governments that policies related to internal security and counterterrorism had to be further strengthened since the security of EU citizens within or outside the EU was seriously threatened (Monar 2015). It was the time at which EU governments started to realize the inevitability of augmenting policies related to border security and counterterrorism by empowering the EU internal security and its connectedness to its external security. In such a dramatically demanding context, a paradox was observed. On the one hand, the EU institutions and governments had to effectively tackle a particularly demanding and complex policy agenda on security and defence, within and without the EU, while, on the other hand, they kept reducing their defence budgets (Bellou 2016). In 2014, even the most powerful EU members and NATO allies had proceeded in considerable reductions in military personnel and equipment given the financial crisis of 2008 that plagued the West (Rickman 2014). During the past decade, European defence spending has shrunk from €251 billion to €194 billion (Barcikowska 2013). Importantly, between 2005 and 2010, European R&D budgets fell to €9 billion, creating an unbalanced relation in which the USA alone, as Barcikowska argues, appeared to be spending seven times more than all 28 EU member states combined (Barcikowska 2013).

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Fig. 1 Comparative regional defence spending in Europe ‘2007–2014, as % of 2007’ (EDA, NATO, SIPRI, IISS cited in De France 2015)

In practice, European defence spending in total is considerable (Kashmeri and Howorth 2013). The Defence Budget of EU-28 is second only to the USA (Leonard and Bildt 2019). However, it remains segmented, and to a large extent, it primarily fulfills the different demands and understandings of national governments. A look at the regional defence spending in Europe in the period between 2007 and 2014 as a percentage of 2007, as de France (2015, p. 2) had shown, indicated the level of reductions as can be seen in Fig. 1. This complex strategic environment made evident to the EU institutions and governments, as expressed in a report by the European Parliament at the time, that ‘the international law-based order and stability and security of Europe are challenged to a degree unprecedented since the beginning of European integration. . .’ (European Parliament 2015, p. 3). The EU structures were called to form certain policy priorities concerning the territorial defence of the EU member states as well as its citizens’ security. Perhaps the most important task of the six mentioned in the report for the EU governments was to improve the EU ‘internal structures and working methods in order to strengthen its resilience and allow it to unleash its full potential as a global player’ (European Parliament 2015, p. 3). In other words, it was becoming evident to both the EU institutions and its member states that it was of profound importance for the EU to assume a greater

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responsibility to defend itself and its interests (Bendavid 2015). For EU governments, such an acknowledgement had to touch upon at least two important variables, apart from the need for an increase in their defence budget, which was about to be increased (Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018). The first variable regarded the need for an acceleration of previous defence cooperation in the context of the EU as to augment the military capabilities of its member states by capitalizing on the economies of scale. The second variable had to be related to the prospects for greater coordination between NATO and CSDP capabilities. The American rebalancing compounded by the hitherto severe budgetary cuts on defence in Europe has arguably compelled also the EU institutions to facilitate the empowerment of the defence capabilities of the EU member states by fashioning defence cooperation. As Churchill had famously argued, ‘Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we must think’ (cited in Coelmont and De Langlois 2013, p. 1). It was a similar logic that EU governments were compelled to fashion. It was precisely that very logic on which the European Commission had earlier reflected in a document submitted to the member states in summer 2013 advocating the need for greater cooperation on defence amongst EU states (European Commission 2013a). At the time, the European Council (on Defense) in December 2013, now considered as the milestone in the process of augmenting European defence, set the stage for greater cooperation on defence by supporting a number of defence initiatives amongst some EU governments with the strong support of the European Defense Agency (European Council 2013). Up until now, defence cooperation was rather lukewarm, and it was primarily concentrating on fostering capabilities serving the comprehensive approach to crisis management which was deemed, at the time, the paramount objective of the EU’s response to external challenges (European Commission 2013b; Council of the European Union 2014). However, since 2015, the situation had dramatically changed. The EU structures as well as the EU governments have started to realize that serious reconsiderations on EU security and defence were paramount in order to improve the mechanisms and tools with which the EU could respond to an evolving framework of multiple security dilemmas that had both external and internal dimension. Moreover, the return of defence questions and counterterrorism had gone up in the catalogue of challenges facing the EU governments. It was the changed strategic dynamic in the context of European security that almost compelled the EU governments to bolster their security and defence cooperation and a greater European integration on these issues with a view to build sooner rather than later, as discussed in another chapter of this volume, a European Security and Defense Union.

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5 Conclusion The complex security environment that has evolved in the last few decades in the European context has raised serious questions to governments as well as the related institutions, the EU and NATO, about the most appropriate policies, synergies, commitments and subsequent financial resources to better address them. The return of realpolitik in European Security, especially after the Crimea annexation by Russia, and the uncertain Trump Administration have increased the level of uncertainty as regards the degree to which European governments will increase their defence budgets or whether they will move towards more cooperative solutions in order to work economies of scale on common defence. In addition, the increasing number of terrorist attacks within EU territory, radicalization, cross-border crime, maritime security and hybrid threats have manifested the inevitability of connecting internal and external security. It has been that very context in which the EU started to fashion the augmentation of its European Security and Defense Policy.

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Securitization: Theoretical Underpinnings and Implications Kyriakos Mikelis

Abstract The introduction of ‘securitization’ has aimed at putting emphasis on the construction of intersubjective understandings, within discursive processes, pointing to a threat and subsequently justifying exceptional measures. The chapter tackles the role of this concept in international relations and particularly security studies, offering an overview of its theoretical pathways and challenges as well as of the interplay among several standpoints (e.g. constructivist, critical, post-structural, etc.), within the Copenhagen School and beyond as well. Securitization has been basically linked to security as a speech act and to the facilitating conditions which make it more or less likely. However, further elaboration has been called for, often entailing a diversified reading of theory’s content, function and ontological underpinnings. Notable examples relate to the comprehension of securitization as an ideal type or as a concept affecting the relation between security and identity and to its expansion to something more than a speech act. Overall, new impetus has been given to security studies, through a varied discussion of securitization and its features, reflecting the diversified trajectory of IR theory.

1 Introduction Securitization has initially been defined as the discursive process with respect to the construction of intersubjective meaning within political communities, whereby something is treated as an existential threat vis-à-vis referent objects. This subsequently enables calls for urgent and exceptional measures. Accordingly, (de)securitization was defined as the discursive process through which these communities cease to treat something as an existential threat, thereafter reducing calls for those measures (Buzan and Wæver 2003, pp. 491, 489). In this regard, (de)securitization issues were at first meant to be about the construction of collective

K. Mikelis (*) University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_3

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understandings, through discursive processes, pointing to (or away from) threat and thus justifying urgent action (or its termination). A non-securitized issue is dealt in politics as usual, with no exceptionalist references. It becomes securitized insofar as it is accepted to be subject to a special response. From the angle of the concept’s initiators, this definition reflected an antiessentialist, process-oriented, nominalist and nonobjectivist stance towards security. To analyse the latter in terms of securitization rather than of objective security problems simply means that ‘we do not ask whether a certain issue is in and of itself a “threat”, but focus on the questions of when and under what conditions who securitizes what issue’. Securitization is then taken to be the source of origin for distinct security dynamics. Attention is given to how something is labelled and framed as a security issue as well as to how this process transforms it (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 71). The respective theory is consequently perceived as ‘a theory of. . .security. . . that is structured around a core concept designed to preserve a truly open, political, constitutive space of human inter-/co-action’, allowing though for various forms of research, such as causal and philosophical analysis as well as discourse and conceptual analysis (Wæver 2015, p. 124). It is also claimed to be about ‘how security problems emerge and dissolve’ (Balzacq 2011a) or ‘how are securitizing moves accepted or rejected?’ (Salter 2008, p. 321). It simply ‘seeks to answer the question-what does security do?’ (Taureck 2006, p. 55). In any case, the emphasis in existential threat and in the normal/exceptional distinction, filtered through the orientation on ‘how’ and not on ‘what now’, does not imply a reification of the concept of ‘threat’. One of the most indicative examples relates to the emergence of migration and migrants or refugees/asylum seekers as a security issue. From the aforementioned point of view, the handling of such an issue begs analysis in terms not of how migrants or refugees are in themselves a security problem. What matters is the manifestation of specific processes which associate them with such a problem and allow for exceptionalism and urgency in the respective treatment. Immigration as a non-security issue means immigration as a non-securitized issue, and the latter in turn means a politicized issue. So, it is dealt within the realm of normal politics. On the other hand, immigration as a security issue means immigration as a securitized issue, that is, as one out of the realm of normal politics. However, having in mind the difference of the conclusions on a specific case, namely, whether migration was securitized within the European Union (Balzacq and Guzzini 2015, p. 98), the complexities and intricacies of securitization itself seem difficult to grasp in a single model. While this shift of emphasis from ‘what is a threat’ to ‘how is an issue securitized’ justifies the claim that ‘with this definition of security, the approach has clearly turned constructivist’ (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 71), the notion of securitization was worked out since the 1990s as a part of the broader agenda of the so-called Copenhagen School. The latter consisted of scholars who had worked on or were quite familiar with political realism (Buzan) or post-structuralism and discourse analysis (Wæver). Their aim was to offer ‘a wider conceptual net within which the state-centric position is a possible but not a predetermined outcome’ or—bluntly put

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in a footnote—‘a picture of a world of multiple units, which might be called post sovereign realism’ (Buzan et al. 1998, pp. 37, 47). This concept was predominantly developed within the Copenhagen School along with ‘sectors of security’ and ‘regional security complexes’, which were actually identified by the interlinkage of (de)securitization processes of the respective units. It was during the next decade that it became popular and was increasingly recognized for bearing theoretical significance, as attested by a sharply rising number of articles or ISA papers devoted to it (Gad and Petersen 2011, p. 316). To be sure, it is not its popularity per se which would have it appraised or even dismissed as just another fad, but the acknowledgement of its impetus to security studies. Such impetus is illustrated by the fact that critique of the original postulations on the concept has usually lied more in how to expand on it or to go beyond it and less in how to move away from it and to return to the ‘basics’ of security studies. In fact, further elaboration entails a diversified reading of the theory’s content, function and ontological underpinnings. To be sure, there have been calls for keeping security research focused on the study of large-scale conflict and for a state-centric and objectivist view of threat (Knudsen 2001, esp. pp. 357–361) or for viewing securitization as a subfield of framing, whereby security would be of interest as one out of many master frames (Watson 2012). The point of appeals for ‘the construction of security beyond Copenhagen’ lies in the very success of the securitization framework to having radically enriched the security research. It brought to the fore the construction of security, which yet came along with the tendency of equating the latter with securitization (McDonald 2008, p. 580). Bearing this in mind, the chapter tackles the role of securitization in international relations (IR) and particularly security studies, offering an overview of its theoretical pathways or challenges as well as of the interplay among several standpoints within the Copenhagen School and beyond. The next section centres around the central feature of the respective framework, namely, security as a speech act, followed by a section focusing on modifications of the original formulation, regarding the possibility of expanding on the notion of speech act or even supplementing it. After that, another section tackles the political implication of (de)securitization. The final section offers the concluding remarks. Overall, the varied discussion of securitization and its features reflects the diversified trajectory of IR theory. The initial aim of rethinking security has been achieved. The calls for moving beyond the original conceptualizations of securitization often reflect a concern how much this aim has been fulfilled.

2 Securitization and Security as a Speech Act Securitization was explicitly introduced on the grounds of the need for reconstructing the concept of ‘security’ rather than taking its meaning as a given. Such reconstruction would get down to the focus on the field of practice: working inside the classical discussion, yet underscoring what makes something a security problem, specifically security as speech (illocutionary) act. The politics of security

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are thus entangled with the politics of naming, in the sense that the utterance of security is the act. Consequently, it makes sense how certain issues are put in or out of the security agenda. Both ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ mark the presence of a security problem. They differ regarding whether measures are taken in response or not. (De)securitization’s relevance is empirically manifested in specific European developments, namely, European détente as negotiated (de)securitization, the emergence of Europe as a referent object of security during the post-Cold War and the dependence of regional integration on the terms of securitization of immigration, i.e. societal security vs state security (Wæver 1995). The analysis of securitization as an illocutionary act allows the theoretical articulation ‘around the constitutive and transformative event of actors reconfiguring the relationship of rights and duties, rather than seeing an external cause-effect relationship between speech and effect’ (Wæver 2011, 2015, p. 123). The manifestation of a threat argument and the claims for extraordinary measures entail the existence of a potentially existential threat and the acknowledgement of the possibility and relative advantages of security handling compared to non-securitized handling (Wæver 2011, pp. 472–473). In blunt words, to analyse security begs rethinking how to do security, and the latter is translated to how to speak security, advancing a rather negative conceptualization, contra the view of security in terms of emancipation. This conceptualization comes down to a predisposition for (de)securitization, which yet does not equal to an automatic or self-evident view of it as necessarily beneficial, as it will be argued below. For the initiators of the concept, the study of securitization entails an inquiry not to an objective measure for security but to the speech act’s facilitating conditions. Those relate to both the internal-linguistic-grammatical realm and the externalcontextual-social realm. In particular, the first realm is about the intrinsic features of speech, i.e. the demand internal to the speech act of following the rules. This involves the security form, the grammar of security and the construction of a plot. The latter includes existential threat, point of no return and possible way(s) out. The second realm is about the group authorizing and recognizing speech and about holding a position from which the act is made. That includes the relationship between speaker and audience, i.e. the social capital and position of some sort of authority of the securitizing actor (enunciator), along with the audience’s likelihood accepting the respective claims, as well as the features of the perceived threat, insofar as they either facilitate or impede securitization (Buzan et al. 1998, pp. 32–33). Ultimately, the options and the success of speaking security depend upon the degree of following the rules of speech formation, the relation of X who speaks with X’s listener and the features of the threat. Aside from the facilitating conditions, there has been similar attention to aspects such as scale or level. For example, pointing to a threat is no single move, as it may take place ‘too much’, with distinct features in scale and scope. This is covered by the notion of ‘hyper-securitization’, i.e. the expansion of securitizing moves beyond a normal level through the exaggeration of threats and the promotion of excessive countermeasures (Buzan 2004, p. 172) as well as of ‘deep securitization’, i.e. the engulfment of societies in profound existential uncertainty, particularly

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entailing the explicit framing of threats through widespread discourses. The latter includes the intense intertwining of security sectors, nonlinear securitization steps and the emergence of polity/identity as the object of political legitimacy (Abulof 2014, esp. pp. 396–397). Similarly, the introduction of ‘macro-securitization’ aims at the emphasis on referent objects above the middle level/states, like universal religions or political ideologies, incorporating lower-level securitizations (Buzan and Wæver 2009). In turn, the ‘securitization of indistinctiveness’ denotes the invocation of multiple referent objects to various audiences. The loss of identity is thought as the result of blurring boundaries between disparate identity groups (Vaughn 2009, p. 264). Moreover, securitization has been claimed to involve a distinct two-stage process marked by a ‘stage of identification’ and a ‘stage of mobilization’ (Roe 2008) as well as to relate to an articulation of security as translation (Stritzel 2011), to the internal-external security nexus (transboundary security problems and the blurring of domestic and international security) (Eriksson and Rhinard 2009, p. 251) and to ‘riskification’ oriented towards the conditions of the possibility of harm (Corry 2012). Overall, securitization is by definition linked to threat construction, yet specific features of the latter lead to essentially distinct forms of the former. Finally, the variety of the characteristics of the respective processes is equally illustrated via the identification of multiple modes of securitization, which relate to national security (with a predominant classical security logic and the inextricable linkage of Self-Other to territory) or societal security (with prevailing logics of exclusion-inclusion and self-other assimilation) but also human security (manifesting an inclusionary logic) (Doty 1998, p. 74). Although several points of criticism include doubts against the illocutionary logic with which securitization was principally associated with, it is also noted that this very logic manifests itself in the type of securitization, whereby it was originally articulated. But it is just one strand of securitization. In fact, differences in the illocutionary force of the speech acts, utilized in constructing security realities, produce multiple types of securitization, regarding the elementary speech act sequence (e.g. request, suggest, declare, explain, require), the illocutionary point (e.g. directive, declarative, assertive), the perlocutionary aim (legitimacy, intimidation/deterrence, obedience/discipline, convincing, etc.), temporality (future or past) and the degree of strength (has to be argued or requires formal authority). Depending upon those types, securitization may be about legitimating future acts (as in Wæver’s case) but also about raising an issue on the agenda, deterrence, control and finally legitimating past acts/ reproducing the security status of an issue (Vuori 2008, p. 76). In short, there is no refutation of security as a speech act. There is though a reminder of the several facets of the purpose and function of securitization.

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3 Securitization and Security Beyond the Speech Act? The concept has been developed quite a bit since its first articulation, in the study of securitization per se and also within security studies generally. Actually, an illustrative codification of key interventions by various scholars is set around three relevant categories, namely, actions, actors and outcomes. The core assumptions of the Copenhagen School include, respectively, speech acts, state as speaker (or society as audience) and extraordinary measures. All of them have been subject to a noticeable range of proposed modifications. In particular, actions have been claimed to include not only speech acts but also images, practices, physical action and silence. Actors may also be conceived in terms of bureaucracy (as speaker) and societal groups (as audience). Finally, exceptional measures do not exhaust the outcomes, since the latter can be extended to linguistic structures, iterative processes, risk management and social contestation (Ilgit and Klotz 2014, p. 139). Another typology of interventions, verifying the respective framework’s complexity, includes (a) the explanatory power of the theory in relation to advancing operational criteria as well as to its applicability in a non-Western context, (b) the theory’s normative/political implications for the meaning of (de)securitization and (c) the everyday formation and development of politics and security issues expressed in the practices of bureaucracies along with the impact of speech and practices to the normal/exception distinction (Gad and Petersen 2011, esp. pp. 316–317). This variety should not be taken to mean the obsolescence of the core assumptions but instead proves their fruitfulness in initiating new insights. After all, features such as audience and nature of threat were included in some of the early articulations of the ‘securitization’ concept, given their inclusion in the facilitating conditions. An equally indicative reformulation of those objections towards the Copenhagen School includes the critique for its presumably narrow definitions in three realms: the form of the act (speech and dominant voices), the nature of the act (threat) and the context of the act (moment). The first realm is about the possibility of going beyond dominant and legitimate actor’s discursive interventions to other forms of representation such as images or material practices. The second has to do with moving away from the act’s conceptualization only as designation of threats to security, whereby the latter acquires content through representations of danger and a negative/reactionary argumentation, to the way in which security is understood both as normative goal and expression of core values. The third is about moving from the moment of intervention to time which allows for a range of incremental processes and representations (McDonald 2008, pp. 564–565). The variety of modifications or objections towards the Copenhagen School reflects a tension among two understandings of securitization theory, corresponding to rather distinct readings of securitization and the role of the theory. The first (‘an “internalist”, more post-structural/postmodern reading of securitization’) is grounded in the concept of performativity or textuality, emphasizing the speech act event. The other (‘an “externalist”, more constructivist reading of securitization’) theorizes the process of securitization, based on embeddedness. Arguably, the

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former ‘is stronger in Wæver’s early works but has become much weaker in the joint works with Buzan’. Elements of the latter are found in the joint works of Wæver and Buzan, like facilitating conditions, authority of the speaker or structured field, but ‘such a reading is strongly underdeveloped and has even been explicitly rejected by Wæver’ (Stritzel 2007, pp. 359–360). From similar angles, it has made sense to understand the primary debate as one between two logics of securitization, namely, exception vs routine (Bourbeau 2014, pp. 189–190) or ‘philosophical securitization’ (focusing on self-referentiality and speech acts) vs ‘sociological securitization’ (primarily addressing argumentative processes and practices) (Balzacq 2011b, pp. 18–28) or performativity vs practice. This debate has emerged on the basis that, despite acknowledging that security is practice, the Copenhagen School’s focus to traditional discourse analysis presumably ‘evacuates the practical logics that make the securitizing discourse possible’. Also ‘taking a practice turn promises to help overcome the representational bias in IR theory, whether rationalist, constructivist, or postmodernist’ (Pouliot 2008, p. 265). As Wæver himself acknowledges, it is a case of ‘sociology of securitization’ opposing ‘(classical Copenhagen style) theory of securitization’, as far as ‘the former means pragmatism and micro-sociology and the latter means illocutionary logic’ (Wæver 2015, p. 125). The whole debate over securitization is not covered exclusively and totally by this distinction, but certainly the latter constitutes one of the major key issues about the specifics of this process. One formulation of the externalist position, i.e. a more embedded understanding of securitization, entails its conceptualization as a dynamic three-layered triangle of text, context and positional power. This means attention, respectively, to the performative force of articulated threat texts through different semantic or semiotic threat structures, their embeddedness in existing discourses and the positional power capacity, i.e. actors who influence the process of defining meaning (Stritzel 2007, pp. 360, 368–372). For T. Balzacq, a context-/practice-oriented approach to securitization, corresponding to a strategic/pragmatic view of security rather than a speech act view, emphasizes security not as a speech act but as a pragmatic act, without necessarily refuting the need for accommodation of the linguistic manufacture of threats. Its orientation goes to the context dependency of securitization as well as the audience centeredness about the nature or status of audience and the power-laden character of successful securitization. There is a lesser degree of formality in the discursive action of security, which operates at the level of persuasion by using various artefacts. Put differently, the context is modified by the ‘security’ concept but remains independent from the use of language, which is found to have an intrinsic force resting with the audience’s scrutiny of truth claims, in a condition of inequality of access to discursive resources (Balzacq 2005, esp. pp. 171–174, 179). This perspective has been explicitly elaborated in terms of a sociological theory of securitization, underscoring the intertwinement of audience assent with practices, bureaucratic routines or policy instruments as well the creation of deontic powers. Consequently, it combines constructivism about facts with objectivism about rational explanation. An intersubjective representation of reality is compatible with the fact that certain features of the world, independent of actors and their beliefs about them, can help explaining a community’s view of why something is a threat.

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The trade-off between the two positions allows the connection of language and mind to the impact of the external world. Causal mechanisms can thus be investigated not only regarding the effects of securitization but also to the mechanisms how securitization arises (Balzacq 2015). In this respect, the identification of multiple settings of securitizing moves, which take place within different sociological settings operating with unique rules/norms and practices, gives rise to a model of at least four distinct types of audiences and speech contexts (popular, elite, technocratic and scientific). It therefore justifies attention to the process of securitization in terms of an iterative process between speaker and audience (Salter 2008). Succinctly put, the ability of expanding the study of securitization beyond linguistic representations and speech acts enhances the understanding of the threat’s emergence regarding contextual factors and particularly internal psychological and external social structures that impact upon securitizing actors and audiences (Karyotis 2012). This is also the case with security in particular contexts (McDonald 2008) and the embodiment of security discourses within technological processes that govern everyday practices (Huysmans 2004) as well as causal mechanisms in an interpretivist rather than naturalist or individualist framework (Guzzini 2011). Moreover, the focus on the dynamics of interactions within a given structural setting, principally among states in a states system, arguably undermines the ability of accounting for wider geo-historical processes and structural transformation. How do the dynamics of global political economy affect structural relations and contextual circumstances? In this sense, discussing future dangers presupposes the analysis of likely futures in open systemic, nonmechanical and non-deterministic contexts. The transformation of structures is deemed possible, through the introduction of critical reflexivity to scenario building (Patomäki 2015, pp. 128–129, 133). On the other hand, a contextual hermeneutics of security uncovers the contextual variety of the meaning of the concept. Contexts of security can be studied even in the absence of a perennial category of security (Ciuta 2009, p. 324). Similarly, a communicationbased approach ambitiously gives the ‘threat’ a voice of its own, contra the view of securitization and othering as unidirectional process between active sender and passive receiver (Cavelty and Jaeger 2015), while the incorporation of modern systems theory and sociological neo-institutionalism is justified on the basis of helping appreciate the structural factors concerning the (de)securitization of an issue and how the latter is understood within broader frames of reference (Stetter et al. 2011). Finally, attention to audience is deemed compatible with a post-structuralist conceptualization in discourse analysis, underscoring the processes leading to the securitization of a given issue area. That justifies emphasis on the audience in terms of the ‘audience discourses’ and their interplay with official discourses (Jensen 2012). This is also the case with securitization running through the visual rather than the textual, necessitating a framework focused on the constitution of visuals as ‘speaking security’, which is built around four components: the visual itself with strategies of depiction, the immediate context and genre of its publication, the wider policy discourse and the constitution of the image (Hansen 2011a, esp. pp. 68–69).

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Overall, while the intricacies of securitization were acknowledged via the inclusion of various elements in the facilitating conditions, further elaboration was pursued in diverse directions.

4 (De)securitization and Implications for Politics The debates over securitization include the speech act/pragmatic act controversy as a key issue, without yet being exhausted in it. Indeed, they heavily involve the role of the ‘political’. The variety of the latter’s conceptualizations, within the securitization framework, is eloquently reflected in a typology of ‘conversations on politics’. Politics as an act impinges upon two such major conversations, namely, on the role of action or intentionality and on ethics or science. At the same time, a third one emphasizes the institutional or spatial structures of government, specifically the modern organization of politics, spheres and sectors. In the first of those conversations, politics is understood as an activity of establishing meaning and identity, constantly (re)written and thus inherently instable. Three relevant positions have risen up in terms of politics as interventions by the willful agency of subjects, of the intersubjective production of meaning or politics and of processes rather than intentional acts. The second conversation also conceptualizes politics as an activity but in terms of the conduct of ethics or science and of the self-reflection on the scientific vision for change and progress. The key issue of contestation here is about how research affects future political life, including answers pinpointing deconstruction, emancipation and pragmatism. Finally, in the last conversation, politics refers to the societal organization of space in specific historical settings, around the contextual ties of the meaning of politics and security to modernity. Specific reference can be made to functionalism, differentiation and the extensiveness in terms of time and space. This intellectual range may be appreciated as far as it reflects a readiness for opening new spaces of dialogue over issues such as the responsibility of the statesman, the role of differentiation and the reflexive potential of political strategy (Gad and Petersen 2011, pp. 317–322). To sum it up, the novelty of predominantly viewing security as security construction and the latter as speech act is connected to keeping open political spaces, but this process relates to several points of view. This complexity is bluntly pinpointed by a certain ambivalence over (de)securitization, taking into account the theory’s presumed bias for the latter, along though with the simultaneous acknowledgement that ‘(de)securitization is not always better than securitization’. It is often preferable generally, yet not necessarily in all specific cases. There may be an empirical analysis of the possible outcomes of a securitized approach. This preference is not appraised as a political stance. Instead, it is based on the relation of key causal mechanisms and the inevitable negative effects of securitization, like the logic of necessity, the narrowing of choice or elite empowerment. It thus results from bringing attention to the costs of securitization.

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Nevertheless, the latter might help society to deal with important challenges through focusing and mobilizing attention and resources (Wæver 2011, p. 469). A typology of four conceptions of politics, corresponding to equivalent forms of (de)securitization, further illustrates the varied stakes in the concept. In the first case, securitization theory is claimed to rely upon a Schmittian understanding of the political, especially regarding the conceptualization of security, thus rendering securitization a highly political concept. A second reading emphasizes how (de)securitization reconstitutes the public sphere and the friend-enemy distinction towards a Habermasian discourse ethics as well as a more critical post-structuralist understanding of subjectivity and power. A third one emphasizes the role of responsibility, choice and decisions, bringing out the inherently political status of the choice to (de)securitize. This is done by drawing on Derrida’s critique of universalism, thus underscoring the unpredictability of political decisions. The fourth reading traces (de)securitization to its initial historical context, namely, the Cold War détente, allowing for a discussion of the respective political dynamics (Hansen 2012). Expanding on certain examples, a post-structuralist variant within securitization may emphasize how a securitizing and multifaceted discourse shapes the understanding of war (Wilhelmsen 2017). It would also be built around certain questions, enabling a more critical engagement with the politics of security. With what discursive structures are cases represented into a larger discursive field? Through which epistemic terrain are phenomena known? Which substantial modalities determine the nature of a security problem? Answering those questions, three concepts are deemed relevant: structural incorporation (the substantial signs relevant to discursive formations), epistemic terrain (the asserted episteme) and substantial modality (the type of logic through which ‘security’ is constituted). The self-referentiality of security does not imply a disconnection from intersubjective processes or a negation of the audience. Rather, it identifies the absence of an extra-discursive criterion upon which security is grounded (Hansen 2011b, pp. 357–359). However, one of the most adamant objections towards the Copenhagen School relates to its negative conceptualization of security, rather than viewing security as emancipation (Booth 2007), and to its analytical rather than political focus on security. In this regard, some sort of emancipation, which is informed by the principles of universality or recognition and linked with democratic politics, is projected away from both (de)securitization and the equation of emancipation with security (Aradau 2004). Moreover, a similar objection is cast towards attempts to harness the concept of security by assigning a foundational logic to it. They merely replace an essentialization of the object of security (the state) with another essentialization (the logic of security). Little margin is left for security as not depending upon a particular understanding of danger (Doty 1998, pp. 80–82). This is concomitant with the critique for the relevance of the securitization framework in a non-Western context, in the sense that the former is heavily affected by the ‘Westphalian straitjacket’, i.e. Eurocentric assumptions about the social and political context of securitization. The exclusion of other forms of expression, such as physical action, is claimed to lead to Westernized accounts. Escaping this entails

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taking into account local context and particularities especially in the societal sector (Wilkinson 2007). In turn, an anthropological extension of securitization theory, focusing on the contingency of empirical materials, may accommodate especially various non-Western contexts. A revised model based on revolutionary politics (i.e. an alternative and non-liberal political ontology) views the move of securitization not as a passage from ordinary politics into a realm of emergency but as a deliberate ontological fusion of the two (Holbraad and Pedersen 2012, esp. pp. 165–169). In this respect, it makes sense to address the role of speech and also silence in analytical pathways that shift away from the viewpoint of the powerful to that of the less powerful (Guillaume 2018). On the other hand, the relation between securitization and the politics of fear is not single. This evidently includes the role of fear in the facilitation of the respective processes and the extension of security logics. Yet attention is raised on the dependence of the practice of securitization upon the capacity of generating collective fears (Van Ryhtoven 2015) as well as on the liberalism of fear, whereby the latter might operate in ways that can inhibit those processes. Here, the fear of fear or else ‘the securitization of securitization’ functions as a (de)securitizing resource in normal politics, i.e. as a logic or method countering processes of intensification or restraining securitizing moves within both ‘normal’ and ‘security’ politics (Williams 2011, esp. pp. 459–460). After all, the affinities of the securitization framework with certain elements of the C. Schmitt’s thought (exceptionalism and existential threat) may mean a realist touch in the concept’s roots, but not an advocacy of authoritarian politics, in light of the speech act’s function in the realm of political argument and discursive legitimation. Security practices are thus susceptible to criticism and transformation (Williams 2003, p. 512; McDonald 2008, p. 580; Williams 2015). The narrower view of securitization comprising of enmity, emergency or exceptionality may be tackled through an interpretation of securitization within the wider lenses of the so-called politics of the extraordinary. This allows for a combination of normal politics and security as well as of the empirical and the philosophical, by linking philosophical and sociological concerns within security politics and simultaneously shifting away from Schmittian decisionism’s strict division of the normal and exceptional (Williams 2015, esp. pp. 114–115, 118–119). In this respect, attention is well brought to the need for distinguishing between the ontological and physical security, i.e. the constitution of a distinct Self vs the freedom of a pre-constituted Self from harm or threat, or else security as being vs security as survival. Their conflation leads to overlooking both possibilities for and limits to (de)securitization. The latter is possible because ontological security is distinct from physical security, entailing a twofold process. The removal of physical concerns may be coupled with a reconfiguration of Self/Other relations which (re)institutes ontological security (Rumelili 2015, esp. pp. 70–71). Overall, ontological security is not reduced to identity preservation, while identity stabilization is not exhausted to securitization (Browning and Joenniemi 2017, pp. 32–33). Finally, moral/ethical criticism directed against securitization theory, for disregarding the political consequences of the analysts’ speaking security, is countered with reference to the possibility of misconceiving the analytical goal of the

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theory, i.e. the offer of a tool for practical security analysis. In this vein, the securitization framework is projected as an analytical tool for tracing incidences of (de)securitization. So, a moral/ethical critique should distinguish between securitization viewed as a tool facilitating actors’ analysis and as a political method, from the point of view of the securitizing actor (Taureck 2006, pp. 56–60). De-essentializing the practices evoked by speaking security enables meaningful engagement with conceptions of ‘positive’ security (Roe 2012). Greater attention to the varied social, historical and political contexts, in which security is constructed, means a dissatisfaction with the assumption that security has an inherent universal logic, for example, associated with urgency and exceptionalism. Both the Copenhagen and Welsh (critical security) schools are claimed to reproduce a problematic binary in critical security studies, through the tendency of viewing the politics of security, respectively, as either pernicious or benign. What is missed here, according to this line of reasoning, is the recognition of the temporal and spatial specificity of security logics (Browning and McDonald 2013, pp. 43–44). Similarly, it is pointed out that securitization is neither mainly ‘negative’, as suggested by the former school, nor necessarily ‘positive’, as suggested by the latter, but rather issuedependent (i.e. that every incidence of securitization is unique), just like the form the concept of (in)security takes after all. Consequently, a third approach to the study of security is possible, striving for an evaluative strategy of the consequences of (de)securitization. Succinctly put, security is ‘neither as good nor as bad as the two camps argue, but rather it is a mixed bag’ (Floyd 2007, p. 337). At the end of the day, thinking over securitization necessitates reflection about the nature of security.

5 Concluding Remarks Nowadays, the orientation towards securitization is a recurring feature within IR and particularly security studies. It is subject to appraisal on several grounds. According to an extended relevant account, the articulation of the concept in terms of speech act has contributed to the broadening and the dynamic reformulation of security studies. The emphasis on performative speech acts, including threats and commands, institutional contexts and embodied meanings, is not merely a manifestation of ‘idealism’, if the latter is taken to mean the tendency of ignoring power politics and the conditions or consequences of violence. Moreover, through this de-essentializing approach, light is shed on perceptions, claims and strategies presumably enhancing or undermining the identities or resource bases of individuals and collectivities. In light of institutional facts embedded within speech acts, there is a margin for the comparative investigation of (de)securitization practices in diverse societies and politics (Alker 2006, pp. 72–73). Evidently, this account affirms the securitization framework’s potential in rethinking security, however with no easy shortcuts. As illustrated above, an immense variety of contending views of securitization has emerged, since the introduction of the concept two decades ago. One way to deal with the variety is to bring to the fore a respective ideal type. The latter may relate to

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a set of essential qualitative features. Consequently, the growth of the aforementioned views is explained as the result of scholars’ choices to foreground elements which are compatible with their ontological and epistemological claims. Those features of the ideal type are identified, as the following: the dependence of threats as social facts on an intersubjective commitment between an audience and a securitizing actor, the co-dependence of securitizing moves and context, knowledge claims about an existential threat to a referent object as the drivers of securitizing moves, the fact that power relations among stakeholders structure both the processes and outcomes of securitizing moves, the engravement of securitizing moves in social mechanisms (persuasion, propaganda, learning, socialization, practices), the instantiation of policy changes concerning rights/obligations/derogations and the ascription of responsibility (Balzacq 2015, pp. 106–107). This intellectual move receives the criticism that if ‘securitization’ is allowed by a sociological version of the respective theory to occur, without political co-production between securitizing actor and audience, then securitization no longer means the same thing (Wæver 2015, p. 124). In any case, the departure from the definition of securitization, as outlined earlier above, to a specific theory about it entails the adoption and discussion of some of the aforementioned features. Evidently, this contention between linguistic/discursive and practice-oriented approaches of securitization or sociological versus philosophical views, along with explanatory versus constitutive/normative approaches, reflects different logics of theorizing. Those address pertinent questions: what does it mean that securitization is intersubjective, how significant is the claim that context matters, and how one makes sense of the relationship between politics and securitization? The diversity of the securitization framework is attributed to its initiation as constitutive or ontological theorizing, in the sense of identifying and understanding central phenomena in the social and political world, like ‘security’, expanding though to other forms of theorizing. A great challenge arises, then, regarding the translation of results from one logic of theorizing to another. Untangling the theoretical nature of securitization is deemed necessary, as far as certain choices about the proper kind of theory lead to different selections of methods, puzzles and types of evidence, potentially affecting even research results (Balzacq and Guzzini 2015, pp. 97–98). Utterly, intricacies over theory, which have largely been discussed within IR especially in the post-Cold War, are also reflected in the debates over securitization. Finally, empirical analysis may also include whether ‘extreme policies’ are decentralized to the point of responsibility’s disappearance or justified by other reasonings instead of threat and necessity. Are they recoded in a format other than that of securitization, or are they dependent on the securitization rationale although less explicitly manifested? Therefore, comparative case studies would illustrate which issues are moving from one coding to another (Wæver 2011, p. 474). While caution is raised on whether almost ‘everything goes’ in the name of securitization, in the sense of possible limits to the enlargement of the respective framework with multiple logics and mechanisms, open space and mind is left for the function of other processes. In any case, the introduction of the concept and theory of securitization within security studies and IR is deemed a success, as far as its initial aim of

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rethinking ‘security’ has been largely accepted as a valid one. Therefore, the multiple calls to go beyond the original formulation of the concept are not a nuisance. They may signify a complaint about the degree of the aim’s fulfillment but not a rejection of the aim itself. Acknowledgements The chapter draws from a paper presented at the conference of the International Studies Association—Comparative and Interdisciplinary Studies Section ‘Boundaries and Borders in an Evolving World Order: Challenges and Prospects’. Thessaloniki/Greece, 13-15/6/ 2016.

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Small EU Member States and the European Security and Defence Integration Revecca Pedi

Abstract One of the most researched topics regarding small states in the EU concerns small member states and the Union’s security and defence policy. This should not come as a surprise as in these areas the interests and amount of power of small member states can diverge considerably from those of bigger EU member states, as well as their strategies do. Given the unprecedented progress that has been achieved by the Juncker Commission in the areas of security and defence integration, the goal of this chapter is to identify the new challenges and opportunities with which small EU member states have to deal. To this aim, it takes stock of previous research on small EU member states in ESDP/CSDP and also explores primary resources. The first part of the chapter discusses the developments concerning security and defence integration in the EU. The second part analyses the main debates in the literature on small EU member states in ESDP/CSDP. The third part builds upon the previous two in order to present the new challenges and opportunities that small member states confront in these areas.

1 Introduction Given the unprecedented progress in the areas of security and defence integration that has been achieved during the Juncker Commission (Bassot and Hiller 2019), it could be argued that the European Union (EU) finds itself in front of a new integrationist project, despite the crises that have adversely affected the Union and the disorder in the international system, or maybe because of it. In this sense, the current state of the Union has much in common with that at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Then, while the world was in disarray due to the 9/11, turbulence in the Balkans and the Middle East and the emergence of the so-called rising

R. Pedi (*) Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_4

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powers, the EU was introducing its first European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP)—what is now the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP)— and its European Security Strategy (ESS). The emergence of the ESDP and the ESS were followed by a wave of scholarship in European Studies focusing on the challenges that member states will face due to further integration in the areas of security and defence and the influence that the former could have upon the latter. Since then, a plethora of scholars have studied small member states in this context (Jakobsen 2009; Mouritzen and Wivel 2005; Nasra 2011; Fiott 2015; Wivel 2005). Currently, although integration in the areas of security and defence and the Global Strategy have been much debated (Fiott 2018, 2019; Mälksoo 2016; Pedi 2019; Pishchikova and Piras 2017; Smith 2016; Tocci 2016, 2019), there is little discussion about small EU member states positions towards further integration, in contrast with the early 2000 period. Indeed, one of the most researched topics regarding small states in the EU concerns small member states and security and defence integration (Pedi 2016). This should not come as a surprise as in these two areas, the interests and the power of small states can considerably diverge from those of bigger EU member states, as well as their strategies do. The goal of this chapter is to discuss the challenges and opportunities with which small EU member states have to deal with due to new developments in the area of security and defence integration. To this aim, it takes stock of previous research on small EU member states in ESDP/CSDP and identifies small member states stance towards further integration in the areas of security and defence as well as the challenges that have stemmed from such a development. The first part of the chapter discusses small member states in the EU. The second part analyses the main debates in the literature on small EU member states in ESDP/CSDP. The third part briefly presents the developments in the areas of security and defence integration and builds upon the previous parts in order to delve into the new challenges and opportunities that small member states confront in these areas. It suggests that security and defence integration nowadays pose to small member states similar dilemmas with those that small member states confronted in the initiation of the ESDP. The most pressing among them concerns the “abandonment or entrapment dilemma” and the future of the transatlantic relationship. But there are also differences. The most striking of them is that small member states now see in further integration not only the possibility to punch above their weight in matters of security and defence but also the opportunity to make economic gains and get access to valuable technology.

2 Small States and the EU The history of the European integration is often told from the side of the Great Powers of Europe. Its progress or stagnation has been usually understood in relation to the preferences and the initiatives of France, Germany and the UK, as the European project proceeded through the conflict and cooperation among them

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(Moravcsik 1993). Indeed, several times the Franco-German cooperation has been the steam engine of the European integration (Heisbourg 2004). In addition, it was the convergence of the Franco-British views that initiated the development of a Common European Security and Defense Policy at Saint Malo, while later Germany, motivated by fears of exclusion, made every effort to formalize the agreement in the EU context during its presidency (Deighton 2002). The creation of the Eurozone itself was designed as a project supposed to respond to the German reunification (Maes and Verdun 2005). It was again French and German initiatives, along with the British indifference due to BREXIT, that gave new impetus to the European defence and security project (Ayrault and Steinmeier 2016). Thus, there should be no doubt that the big three, Germany, France and the UK, have shaped the development of the European Union. However, if we look at major debates in EU studies such as what kind of power the EU is (Manners 2002; Smith 2005; Toje 2010; Pedi 2019), the capabilitiesexpectations gap (Hill 1998), the consensus-expectations gap (Toje 2008), the problems of coherence and consistency (Nutall 2005), EU’s governance and decision-making after enlargement(s) (Nugent 2016), the role of the EU in the UN (Hill 2006), the EU-NATO partnership (Ojanen 2006) or the transatlantic relation (Riddervold and Newsome 2018) and the euro-crisis (Thorhallsson and Kirby 2012), all somehow impact upon the small member states or even are influenced by them to a certain degree. What is more, in the EU of 28 member states, the small state is the typical type of state. The issue of Great Powers’ responsibilities, cooperation or competition among them and the need for leadership in the EU has been of the utmost importance, both in scholars’ and policymakers’ circles. In studies concerning the EU’s foreign and security policy, there are several works on Germany, France and the UK (Hill 2006; Giegerich 2006; Whitman et al. 2006). The CFSP’s evolution is associated with the so-called Directoire, and there have been many voices calling for the need of leadership by the big three in the CFSP (Keukeleire 2001; Crowe 2003; Grant and Leonard 2006). In these studies, small member states are downplayed, if not completely ignored, when they are not perceived as obstacles to a stronger EU foreign policy and/or as ineffective partners (Everts 2001; Sangiovanni 2003; Grant and Leonard 2006). At the same time, there is a great body of literature concerning these areas, which deals with small member states. Most of them focus on the ways small member states employ in order to influence those policies and their role in the EU’s foreign and security policy as well as with the challenges that these policies pose to them (Arter 2000; Grøn and Wivel 2011; Wivel 2010). Thus, small state scholars concentrate on the challenges and opportunities for influence that small states in Europe are offered in a milieu set up mostly by the preferences of the big three. Looking into how the literature on small states and the EU has evolved, one can identify four underlying assumptions. First, the research of small state in the EU has followed the course of the European integration. Second, smallness within the EU matters. It is a common point among the different studies that, although the EU is an institution of shared leadership and equality, the size factor has always played a role

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(Archer and Nugent 2006). Thus, in the case of the EU, too, we are in front of the familiar pattern where formal equality among the member states co-exists with informal inequality. Small state scholars are interested in the implications of this power disparity. Therefore, research on small state behaviour in the EU focuses on what the Lilliputians in the Union can attain within and through the EU and also on the ways through which small member states respond to the challenges and opportunities that arise from the European integration. Third, there is a special interest in the areas of security and foreign policy. Most scholars agree that the power disparity among the EU member states is greater in these areas (Wallace 1999; Duke 2001; Wivel 2005) and therefore it is in them that small states are faced with greater challenges and dilemmas of “abandonment or entrapment” (Wivel 2005); at the same time, though, participation to EU activities in both areas enables small member states to “have a say” in world affairs and escape from their smallness (Wallace 1999; Archer 2010; Bailes and Thorhallsson 2013). That is why “[S]mall member states have made an important contribution to the ESDP. They have encouraged the EU to take on defense and security tasks and they have been active in the development of this policy, especially its civilian side”, as stated by Archer (2010, p. 58). What is more, the development of a Common European Security and Defense Policy seemed a very promising and simultaneously challenging field of action in the early 2000s and therefore got much scholarly attention (Posen 2004; Sjursen 2004; Menon 2009) which spilled over to the small state field of study as well. Fourth, against this background, small state influence constitutes a central issue. Most small state scholars agree that the EU is an arena where small states can, want and try to maximize their influence. From the very beginning of the European integration, Hirsch (1976) observes that its story can also be told in the terms of David and Goliath because small states see their membership in the EU as an opportunity to enhance their role, reject domination by the larger states and manage to increase their leverage, as the cases of Luxembourg and Belgium show. In a similar vein, Wallace (1999) asserts that through their participation in the EU, small member states aspire to exert influence over their larger neighbours and have a seat at the table when important developments about Europe are discussed. Moreover, Wivel (2010, p. 26) suggests that “[D]espite their weakness in material capabilities, small states may act as policy entrepreneurs and maximize their influence in the European Union by employing a smart state strategy”. To this background, Nasra (2011, p. 164) advocates that small states “may be small in terms of resources but not necessarily small in terms of influence”, and Ojanen (2000, p. 23) notes that “[‘P]articipation and influence’ has been the motto of Finnish integration policy: one has to participate in order to have influence on decisions that in any case have consequences on oneself”. Although Latvia and Finland have many differences from each other, it seems that they share the same rationale with regard to their EU membership. Galbreath (2006, p. 449) states that “[P]ost-enlargement foreign policy strategies overall focus on Latvia’s membership of the EU and how to utilize this position to maximize the influence of a small state”. In this context and from their very early days into the EU, Sweden and Finland, for example, sought to play an active role, and they have proved that exerting influence upon the EU is possible for

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a small state, if the latter employs an appropriate strategy. Their initiative for the adoption of the Petersberg Tasks is probably the most successful example of small state activism within the EU (Björkdahl 2008; Jakobsen 2009). Pastore (2013) suggests that even newer member states like Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus do not spare efforts and opportunities in order to upload to the EU’s foreign and neighbourhood policies their interests stemming from specific geographic considerations. In this context, small states act as entrepreneurial states (Pedi and Sarri 2019) or as smart states (Joenniemi 1998; Arter 2000; Grøn and Wivel 2011; Wivel 2010). Arter (2000) associates smartness with the maximization of influence and presents as essential elements of a smart strategy traits such as innovativeness, impartiality and cooperativeness. Moreover, he stresses that for any initiative to be successful, it has to create some value for the whole of the EU as an institution and the rest member states. In this way Arter explains how Finland managed to promote the Northern Dimension Initiative and transform the EU’s foreign policy, as he suggests. However, asymmetry in resources remains and it matters. Wivel (2005, p. 408) underlines that in order to benefit from the developments in the EU’s security and defence areas “small states need to accept some inequality in decision-making power, reflecting the inequality in resources provided for operations and risks taken to implement them”. According to him, small EU member states should not try to bind the three Great Powers but revise their strategies and “maximize influence. . . by acting as ‘smart states’, focusing on institutional innovation and flexibility” instead. Beyond the emphasis on innovation, Wivel also stresses the importance of a “small but smart state” for picking the right issues to “fight” for, while seeking for consensus by playing the role of “honest brokers” and forming workable coalitions. Later, elaborating upon the above “small but smart” strategy elements, Wivel (2010, p. 24) notes that “small states may thrive in an institutional environment rewarding innovation”, while he supports that “the European Union creates new possibilities for small member states in realizing their normative power potential”. In this context, Wivel echoing Arter (2000) emphasizes the need for political substance, which means that a “small but smart state” strategy “must present the solution to a problem recognized by all or most of the relevant actors”; then, he reaffirms the importance of prioritization and finally underlines small states’ ability to act as mediators because their small power and limited interests help them to appear as neutral actors. The transition from a conventional strategy that simply aims at binding the big three to a smart one that harnesses small state weakness constitutes the central issue in the work of Grøn and Wivel (2011), who focus on small states’ options after the Lisbon Treaty. The two authors observe that as the leverage of both the Commission and the rotating presidency has been mitigated, the position of small states in the EU has become more vulnerable and therefore the latter should undertake specific roles in order to maximize their influence. Thus, they advance as compatible with a “small but smart state” strategy, three roles: • The state as lobbyist • The state as a self-interest mediator • The state as a norm entrepreneur

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Hence, diplomatic skills and innovative ideas, which lead to the establishment of new policies, play a central role if small states are to maximize their influence. Small state scholars also underline that there are limits in what small states can attain (Thorhallsson and Wivel 2006; Wallace 1999; Nasra 2011). Exerting influence within the EU is a bidirectional process; small states can be influential, but they are also influenced (Ojanen 2000; Lee-Ohlsson 2009). Therefore, EU membership comes with both benefits and costs (Steinmetz and Wivel 2010; Bailes and Thorhallsson 2013), and it is a common ground that small member states have to act strategically and meticulously follow a series of steps in order to maximize their influence (Maes and Verdun 2005; Bunse 2009; Nasra 2011; Nasra and Debaere 2012; Pedi and Sarri 2019).

3 Small States and the ESDP The small states within the ESDP context confront a situation similar to that which international relations scholars in the field of small state studies have been analysing for years (Neumann and Gstöhl 2006). Further integration in the areas of security and defence poses to the small EU member states a series of challenges, while they can have only limited control upon its evolution. Although membership in the EU was always identified with greater security, for the most part of the EU’s history, further integration in the areas of security and defence has been unthinkable. However, the developments following the end of the Cold War, the new international security environment and the EU’s failure to respond successfully to the crises that arose in the Balkans during the 1990s revealed the need for the European states to be capable of taking effective action in the new international security environment. Although the member states had already expressed their will for further cooperation in security and defence in the Treaty of Maastricht and that of Amsterdam, it was the Franco-British agreement in 1998 in St. Malo that accelerated such a development; later in 1999, during the German Presidency, the Franco-British agreement was Europeanized and gave birth to the ESDP (Deighton 2002). The EU leaders agreed in Cologne that the Union should acquire the capacity for autonomous action and committed themselves to a series of efforts in order to create the conditions to support this action. A series of subsequent developments in both institutional and operational terms led Cornish and Edwards (2005, p. 801) to argue that the “EU member-states, both old and new, have been slowly establishing the will and the capacity to make the EU’s security and defense policy credible and useful”. This was only the beginning of a demanding but promising process, which is today of great importance within the CFSP context specifically and that of the EU in general. However, this has not been a simple process, as the ESDP presents a series of challenges. The most important among them is that first, it transforms the EU’s security identity. Having been a security community (Deutsch 1957), the EU is becoming an outward-looking security actor. This impacts upon the role that it plays

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in the international arena and opens a great debate over what kind of power the EU is (Smith 2005; Stavridis 2001). Moreover, it requires the Union to develop the necessary capabilities in order to implement such a policy. In addition, the ESDP’s evolution has led the EU to establish its strategic culture (Toje 2010; Cornish and Edwards 2005; Meyer 2005), whose first signs have been evident in a series of institutional arrangements (Cornish and Edwards 2005) in the European Security Strategy (Toje 2005) and also in the missions undertaken and later on in the EU’s Global Strategy. What is more, these developments have put the Union’s relationship with both the UN and NATO in a new framework. It is evident that such a process affects the Union itself and all the member states regardless of their size and power. However, they have a particular impact on the international relations of the small EU member states as they lack the advantage to set the ESDP’s agenda and most of the times find themselves facing a fait accompli. Indeed, since the initiation of the ESDP, small states have had little choice but to fit into. The dominance of the big three (B3) and the need for leadership has been evident from the early days of the ESDP. It has been undoubtedly a “Directoire-led” process, whose needs strikingly reveal the material and reputational discrepancies between the big and the small states within the EU. The UK and France initiated its development, and Germany formalized the agreement in the EU context during its presidency (Deighton 2002). The B3 make the biggest contributions (Smith 2005, p. 161), and it is doubtful that without their agreement and involvement, the ESDP can evolve (Gegout 2007; Nasra 2011). In this context it was argued that the ESDP cannot work without effective leadership. Thus, according to many scholars back then, small states should accept a form of formal inequality (Keukeleire 2001; Wivel 2005; Crowe 2003), whereas proposals reached the point of suggesting that states’ influence on the ESDP should be proportionate to their contribution (Crowe 2003). The idea of an EU Security Council with permanent seats for the B3 and small states’ participation on a rotating system went even further (Everts and Missiroli 2004). Possibly, there is no other policy more identified with the means and the goals of the B3 than the ESDP. The case of the EUFOR mission in Congo offers a good example (Gegout 2007, p. 8). According to Gegout, Germany was eager to lead the EUFOR because it wanted to strengthen the CFSP, but also because its leadership would offer adequate evidence that it deserves a place in the UN Security Council. Moreover, France was keen to involve Germany in the mission, as “it was Germany’s turn to be responsible as a ‘framework nation’, after France with Artemis in DRC, and Britain with Althea in Bosnia” French Colonel, quoted in Gegout (2007, p. 8). Once Germany took the lead, European officials stated that the ESDP was not just a Franco-British matter anymore. However, once Germany had made its presence felt, it was reluctant to go beyond and extend the mission. Thus, the feeling in Kinshasa was that the Europeans just wanted to show that they were capable of acting globally and once this was done, the subsequent success of the mission was of no importance (Gegout 2007). Then, if the ESDP is a B3 affair and if its outcomes are conditioned upon the competition among the B3, the question of what the stance of the small states towards it has been is begging for an answer.

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The influence of the small states on the EU’s security policy is indeed small. In this sense, Wivel (2005, p. 404) argues that “the most discernible pattern regarding small states and European security in recent years is the ‘extent to which the small states were excluded from the ad hoc decision-making processes and military action” and that there are no signs that this situation will be different in the future. Wivel suggests that small states are at the risk of being simultaneously abandoned and entrapped, whereas their security identities and interests are seriously threatened. The ESDP has been broadly discussed in this context of a “Big Vs Small logic”, and it is seen as a threat for the small states and vice versa (Keukeleire 2001; Crowe 2003; Wivel 2005). No guesswork is required to see that there is a discrepancy of power between the big and the small states and that this entails risks for the ESDP itself and for the member states. After all this was the reason for the majority of the small states being reluctant, if not hostile, towards further security and defence integration, initially. This is also why the majority of the small states insisted on their positions for an intergovernmental CFSP, opposed forms of enhanced cooperation and supported a flexible and open form of cooperation based on an equal footing, whereas the right of veto in the ESDP area is a sine qua non. Equally the factors of power and size have always played their role within the EU. Despite their differences in terms of security culture, geography, power and economic strength, the majority of the small states has followed a common pattern of thinking. Although they initially responded to further integration in the areas of security and defence with hesitation, they overcame their reluctance later, when small states sought to harness developments in the ESDP. After all, small states have learnt to survive circumstances of formal equality and informal inequality in institutions and alliances across the years (Neumann and Gstöhl 2006). Their initial approach is not a surprise. In a series of historical periods, military cooperation had the disadvantage “of small states often having to ‘buy’ their security with a deficit of participation in decision-making” (Goetschel 2000, p. 12). The EU’s role for the majority of the small states was not that of an active security provider at a world level, beyond that already provided by the membership in the Union. For that reason and due to its failures in previous efforts in the security area, the EU seemed to lack the ability to implement such an ambitious policy and safeguard their immediate interests in the security area. In addition, the potential of an EU as an autonomous security actor was perceived as a challenge to small states’ security traditions and their links with the UN and NATO (Fiott 2015). Past experiences, security traditions, relationships with the major powers within the EU and also with the USA as well as with Russia for the CEE states, lack of capabilities and different priorities have shaped their initial hesitant position towards further cooperation. In this sense, the ESDP came as a surprise if not as a predicament to them. It has been a process that has posed a series of challenges to the Union itself—to all the member states and especially the small ones. However, due to a series of developments inside and outside the EU and the development of the ESDP itself, the reservations of the small states diminished, and small states were gradually seeing the ESDP as an opportunity. As such it was supposed to increase their security against a new set of common threats. But most

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importantly it could give them the opportunity to improve their capabilities, gain experience in military and civilian missions and the chance to play a role in their vicinity and in the global arena. It was assumed that ESDP offers the potential to achieve goals that they could not pursue alone (i.e. confront a series of nonconventional threats, stabilize the region, pursue their interests in other regions, diffuse their norms), to punch above their weight. In this sense, although small states did not set the agenda, they made efforts to take advantage of it; at times they also try to make the rules, as in the case of Sweden and the incorporation of conflict prevention in the EU’s agenda (Björkdahl 2008). To this background, small states have also actively participated in missions and operations, albeit with symbolic contributions usually and with a focus on their vicinity or on areas where they hold a competitive advantage, an expertise (Archer 2010). Therefore, the small states are inclined to see the ESDP as providing further space for action in order to preserve their interests.

4 Different Small Member States Have Different Approaches to the ESDP In this process, different states have paid attention to different priorities and followed different strategies: the Neutral and Non-Allied (NNA) states, for instance, although were perceived as a challenge to the ESDP because of their status of neutrality and non-alignment (Sangiovanni 2003)—and for the same reason had themselves seen further integration with suspicion (Breitegger 2005; Campell and Tonra 2005; Borg and Herolf 2005)—finally proved themselves “good Europeans”, eager to participate and support the development of the ESDP. This can be explained if we see it through the prism of their membership in the EU. Apart from Ireland which had joined the EU earlier, the rest of the NNA member states joined the EU seeking for security but most importantly for a place and a role in the international system after the end of the Cold War. Equally, strengthening the UN and achieving effective multilateralism was among their priorities. Thus, a policy such as the ESDP, which aspires to give the Union a global role in a multilateral international system and is also close to their strategic cultures, has been perceived to be in their interest. Therefore, they developed both cooperative and autonomous actions in order to influence its development, turn it to their benefit and ensure that such a process will be compatible with their interests and their principles (McBean 2005; Björkdahl 2008; Romsloe 2004; Jakobsen 2009). The tendency to seize the opportunities of the ESDP is evident also in established NATO member states, such as Portugal and Greece, albeit to a different degree and in a different way from the NNA states. Both have adopted a more parochial approach to it, and they seek to get involved mainly when areas of their immediate interests are at stake. The missions of the ESDP in the Balkans and Africa have been seen as providing Greece and Portugal, respectively, with room to play a role in their

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vicinity and punch above their weight, in a sense. That said Greece and Portugal constitute different cases (Calleya 2005; Ferreira-Pereira 2007). The latter tended to be more pro-Atlanticist than the former, and they also confront different kinds of threats in their region, as Greece’s behaviour is heavily conditioned by Turkey’s assertiveness in the region. The case of Denmark has been a paradoxical one, as Denmark holds an opt-out in defence cooperation (Miles 2005). In addition, in Copenhagen it is believed that NATO is the legitimate security provider in Europe and globally. In the new security environment, after the end of the Cold War, NATO was expected to take a more political and less military character, based on a broader conceptualization of security and on a multilateral and multinational framework (Tonra 2000). According to Mouritzen (2006, p. 506), the Danish view is that “. . .security of smaller countries is better safeguarded by a North Atlantic superpower than by the fragile and changing balance of power between Germany, France and Great Britain”. Thus, NATO would become an appropriate framework for Denmark to pursue the goals of its foreign policy. However, nonparticipation has been a puzzling situation for Denmark, and it is coming to be perceived as a mistaken choice. It deprives Copenhagen from playing a role in the ESDP and advancing its interests in the EU and the international arena. Thus, the Danish have gradually started to see the ESDP as a default-set platform which they should use if they are to enhance their international role. The response of Central Eastern European (CEE) states to further integration in the area of security and defence was more reluctant, as they were still passing through a period of “existential politics” and adjustment (Galbreath 2006). Nonetheless, they used to hold a pro-Atlanticist view regarding security and defence (Valášek 2005; Molis 2006; Kasekamp 2005; Fawn 2005; Khol 2004; Kajnc 2005). To this background, the ESDP was not among their immediate priorities. Thus, they tended to be reactive. However, the shift from a negative approach to the ESDP’s evolution towards a less reluctant attitude is also discernible as far as the process of their integration is developing and as long as the ESDP is increasing its actions in their area (Molis 2006; Kajnc 2005). The CEE small states have adopted the ESDP’s discourse, and they seek to see how they could make use of the policy itself, following the example of their Nordic partners that suggested that participation matters (Palosaari and Raik 2004). A sense of appropriateness is also involved, as the words of the then Hungarian Prime Minister reveal. Talking about Hungary’s participation in international operations, Gyurcsány (2005) noted that: Actually, the same European and American states demand our participation in international missions with which we would like to cooperate to the closest degree possible in other areas as well. We cannot tell our German friends, for instance, that although we do not wish to contribute to peace in Afghanistan, we definitely request their support in some issue of EU agricultural policy which is important for us. Gyurcsany words reflect the temptation of small states to contribute to international operations and missions in order to raise their status and make gains in other areas (Græger 2015). Therefore, CEE member states saw the ESDP as providing a

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platform which has the potential to serve their interests in their vicinity and offering an alternative form of security complementary to that of NATO and moreover a way to show that they are loyal and useful partners. In all the states under consideration in this study, the EU is seen as being a pillar of the broader international security structure comprising NATO, the OSCE and the UN. In this context the EU can have a remarkable contribution because of its distinct approach to security and the variety of its means. It is a shared view among all the member states that the ESDP’s development does not mean the militarization of the EU, but it is a step towards the further strengthening of its status and effectiveness as a distinct civilian and normative power (Fiott 2015).

5 Developments in the Areas of Security and Defence and the New Challenges for Small States Since the publication of the EUGS in 2016, the EU has made unprecedented progress in the areas of defence and security integration (EEAS 2017, 2018, 2019). The formation of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the Coordinated Annual Review of Defense (CARD), the European Defense Industrial Development Programme, the Commission’s European Defense Action Plan (EDAP) and the European Defense Fund (EDF) prove that the EU aspires to build economies of scale and institutions to support them in the areas of security and defence. Moreover, the EUR 13 billion with which the EDF is endowed to “finance collaborative research projects and co-fund capability development”, the EUR 10.5 billion for European Peace Facility to support the CSDP’s missions and operations and the Parliament’s and Council’s consensus upon a EUR 500 million European Defense Industrial Development Programme to “support competitiveness and [the] innovative capacity of the EU’s defense industry” (EEAS 2018) reveal the EU’s willingness to further proceed with security and defence integration this time and enhance its strategic autonomy, as the latter constitutes one of the main pillars of the EUGS. In addition, during the Juncker Commission, the EU took remarkable action to counter hybrid threats (EEAS 2018). All in all, rising threats in the EU’s periphery and hybrid threats, Trump’s ambivalence towards NATO and the UK’s neutralization due to BREXIT, provided EU security and defence integration with a new impetus; now it is expected that through further integration in the areas of security and defence, the EU is going to make both strategic and economic gains. To this background, small EU member states face challenges and opportunities similar to those that they were confronting in the early 2000s. Further integration in the areas of security and defence was among the priorities of the Juncker Commission (Bassot and Hiller 2019), but it was Germany’s and France’s resolve and support—as they were expressed in an open letter by their Ministers of Foreign Affairs in the summer of 2016—that galvanized the Europeans into action, encouraged PESCO, defence capabilities development, defence funding institutions, etc.

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(Ayrault and Steinmeier 2016). Therefore, small member states face once more the “abandonment or entrapment” dilemma (Wivel 2005). Their participation in PESCO (see Table 1) shows that they choose to engage with further integration, as first they do not risk to be left behind and be seen as less appropriate partners and, second, they aspire to extract benefits from the projects in which they are involved. The example of Cyprus is illustrative. According to Efstathiou (2019, p. 4), “Cyprus considers that the inclusive approach implemented gives an opportunity for all participating Member States to develop their defense capabilities and create synergies, potentially giving rise to economies of scale, and thus to the lowering of costs”. Equally “Greece, and in particular the MoD, underline how the initiative would offer opportunities to develop the domestic defense industry and exploit the economies of scale that large productions yield when procuring military equipment. Given that the participation of SMEs in the process is encouraged and incentivized, the government aims to create opportunities for them so they can benefit from any funding available” (Efstathiou 2018, p. 3). Even Danish leaders consider a referendum to revise the country’s opt-out from the CSDP, given the developments in the areas of security and defence integration and the potential benefits for the country (Dikov 2019). A look at Table 1 also reconfirms that small states tend to focus on areas where they have a particular interest or expertise, i.e. Greece and maritime surveillance and Estonia and cybersecurity, and they also pick where to devote their limited resources, as the cases of Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania show. Moreover, the ESDP’s activity in the area of hybrid threats enables small states to download policies and responses that they would be unable to plan alone. Action at the EU level provides small states with a safety net, but it is up to each and every state to follow the EU’s recommendations and apply those policies. Moreover, the transatlantic dilemma is also real and age-old. EU’s eagerness for strategic autonomy and further integration in the areas of security and defence has alarmed the USA which has warned against competition between the EU and the US defence industries and also suggests that duplication in the EU-NATO context should be avoided. In this sense the USA echoes the fears and insecurities that many small states had during the development of the ESDP. However, their motives are different. On the one hand, small member states did not want to distance themselves from NATO and the USA, as they believed that when it comes to security and defence matters, the USA is a credible ally and NATO is who would come in their support, whereas the EU was supposed to be a civilian power (Fiott 2015). On the other hand, the USA does not want to lose the European defence market and its own defence industry to be excluded from the PESCO projects; despite the fact that if we compare US access to European defence market and European access into the US market, respectively, the USA is in a privileged position, and in addition the improvement of EU’s capabilities is in the US interest too (Emmot 2019; Fiott 2019). What is more, due to BREXIT the UK has been notably absent from developments in the area of security and defence integration. Therefore, member states that tended to be more sceptical about further integration in security and defence, mainly pro-Atlanticist small member states but also the NNA states, have lost a valuable partner (Wivel and Thorhallsson 2018).

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Table 1 PESCO projects overview: project title and participating member states—Adapted from (European Council—Council of the European Union 2019) PESCO project European Union Training Mission Competence Centre (EU TMCC) European Training Certification Centre for European Armies Helicopter Hot and High Training (H3 Training) Joint EU Intelligence School EU Test and Evaluation Centres Deployable Military Disaster Relief Capability Package Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle/Amphibious Assault Vehicle/Light Armored Vehicle Indirect Fire Support (EuroArtillery) EUFOR Crisis Response Operation Core (EUFOR CROC) Integrated Unmanned Ground System (UGS) EU Beyond Line Of Sight (BLOS) Land Battlefield Missile Systems Maritime (semi-) Autonomous Systems for Mine Countermeasures (MAS MCM) Harbor & Maritime Surveillance and Protection (HARMSPRO) Upgrade of Maritime Surveillance Deployable Modular Underwater Intervention Capability Package (DIVEPACK) European Medium Altitude Long Endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems—MALE RPAS (Eurodrone) European Attack Helicopters TIGER Mark III Counter Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) European Secure Software-defined Radio (ESSOR) Cyber Threats and Incident Response Information Sharing Platform Strategic Command and Control (C2) System for CSDP Missions and Operations Cyber Rapid Response Teams and Mutual Assistance in Cyber Security European High Atmosphere Airship Platform (EHAAP)—Persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Capability

Participating member states Germany, Belgium, Czechia, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Romania, Sweden Italy, Greece Greece, Italy, Romania Greece, Cyprus France, Sweden, Spain, Slovakia Italy, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Austria Italy, Greece, Slovakia Slovakia, Italy Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus Estonia, Belgium, Czechia, Spain, France, Latvia, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Finland France, Belgium, Cyprus Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania Italy, Greece, Poland, Portugal Greece, Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, Czechia, Spain, France, Italy

France, Germany, Spain Italy, Czechia France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Finland Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Austria, Portugal Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal Lithuania, Estonia, Spain, France, Croatia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Finland Italy, France

(continued)

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Table 1 (continued) PESCO project One Deployable Special Operations Forces (SOF) Tactical Command and Control (C2) Command Post (CP) for Small Joint Operations (SJO)—(SOCC) for SJO Electronic Warfare Capability and Interoperability Programme for Future Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (JISR) Cooperation European Medical Command Network of logistic Hubs in Europe and support to Operations Military Mobility

Energy Operational Function (EOF) Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Surveillance as a Service (CBRN SaaS) Co-basing Geo-meteorological and Oceanographic (GeoMETOC) Support Coordination Element (GMSCE) EU Radio Navigation Solution (EURAS) European Military Space Surveillance Awareness Network (EU-SSA-N)

Participating member states Greece, Cyprus

Czechia, Germany

Germany, Czechia, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden France, Belgium, Spain, Italy Austria, France, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia

France, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Netherlands Germany, Greece, France, Romania

France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy Italy, France

6 Conclusion In this chapter I have explored the challenges and opportunities that small member states face as a result of further integration in the areas of security and defence under the Juncker Commission. I suggest that small states find themselves in front of similar dilemmas with those that they confronted when the ESDP was established. The fear of abandonment or entrapment, a sense of appropriateness and also their temptation to benefit from further integration have encouraged their engagement with PESCO. At the same time, the relationship between the EU and NATO and the future of the transatlantic ties remain central to their strategies, as small states that are NATO members too think of both NATO and the EU not only as equal contributors to their security and prosperity but also as parts of their identity. Although the pace of the integration in the areas of security and defence has been unprecedentedly

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good, PESCO, EDF and CARD have a long way to go, and their development will be a test of small member states’ wills and skills. Questions at the moment far exceed the answers. It remains to be seen whether their defence bureaucracies and also the private sector in each country will manage to follow the developments in order for small states to benefit from economies of scale, new technology and defence funding. Moreover, small states have to strike a balance between the EU’s aspiration for strategic autonomy and their ties with the USA. All in all, as in the past, in order to succeed, they have to follow a “small but smart state” strategy (Wivel 2010) or a “small and entrepreneurial state” strategy, as Pedi and Sarri (2019) have put it.

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Part II

EU Operations: From the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to the European External Action Service (EEAS)

EU Peace Operations in a Changing World: A Multilayer Evaluation George Voskopoulos

Abstract EU peace operations constitute a positive stabilization input of paramount importance to regional and global security. The outcomes reflect the EU’s ability to provide an alternative to traditional single actor involvement and its role as a soft power and peace provider. They reflect the EU’s long tradition of multilateral action, a choice that underpins and explains full support of the established UN world order. This chapter provides the insights of the EU’s operational mode, the cooperation framework with the UN and the logic behind it, its ability to institutionally formalize multilateralism, nominal evaluation criteria and a multicausal assessment based on complementarity with the UN and the EU’s actual capabilities.

1 Introduction The EU constitutes a multi-cultural environment acknowledged by European Treaties across European integration history. This was a sine qua non in an effort to institutionally unite an ever-expanding forum of states disposing of distinctive organizational, structural and cultural elements as well as divergent cognitive views towards otherness. These refer to the efforts of politically autonomous units to operate in a compact way and make their collective presence an alternative to a state-centric world. The institutional evolution of the European integration (Marhold 2009)1 process has allowed the EU to form a spirit of multilevel synergies among member states, setting at the same time common goals to be materialized through joint actions. The spirit of common action was based, among other things, on the character of the EU as a soft power, a normative power (Treaty of Lisbon 2007) operating on commonly

1

On the historiography of the process.

G. Voskopoulos (*) International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_5

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agreed criteria under the more general framework of Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). “The evolution of CSDF reflects a shared desire to develop and project a coherent global political identity” (Smith 2017). EU peace operations have a special multilayered meaning and reflect particular semantics in terms of interstate relations for many reasons. First, they externalize a common set of values shared by different states on an operational ground. Second, they acquire their operational form under the impact of intergovernmentalism (Hooghe and Marks 2019),2 a framework of cooperation among politically autonomous units. The ability to operate in common in the presence of a bundle of national interests should not be underestimated. It reflects the political will of member states to internationally advance a norm of cooperation and the rejection of military conflict as a means of “resolving” interstate, intercommunal, interreligious conflicts. In effect the EU’s presence in the world and its leading peace operations has been a successful herculean task going beyond the traditional theoretical approaches of interstate cooperation. Intergovernmentality implies a voluntaristic, consensual policy on the part of EU member states. Still major steps (Bildt and Leonard 2019)3 externalized the willingness of European partners to move ahead of heterogeneity, bringing forward an alternative security paradigm based on, inter alia, “sustainable peace beyond its borders”. There has been no commonly agreed approach as far as the kind of international actor the EU constitutes or “the nature of its international role” (Manners and Whitman 1998). In the past these evaluations were formulated on the basis of Europe’s institutional standing at the time. Still, its role is linked to its actor status. Under this spectrum it was suggested that “the international role of the EU is a function of the type of actor that the EU represents” (Manners and Whitman 1998, p. 2). In effect, actorness parameters define its role but cannot depict the complexity of its organizational structure. As noted, “the concept of actorness does not accommodate an assessment of the EU’s international significance before compliance to actor prerequisites” (Manners and Whitman 1998, p. 6). The EU is an international actor with distinctive institutional and organizational features but also inherent, functional drawbacks, since it does not constitute a unitary actor (state) (Moravcsik 1998, p. 22). This clearly refers first to the absence of one, single “national interest” and second to the effort to formulate common preferences. This has been the outcome of bargaining among member states that seek a lowest common denominator on which to build and expand cooperation in the form of joint actions.

2

On the relation among intergovernmentalism, regional integration and balance of power. See, for instance, the 2016 EU Global Strategy and its particular focus on multilateralism, a rulesbased global order. Of equal importance are PESCO, the Coordinated Annual Review on Defense and the European Defense Fund. 3

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The EU’s wide range foreign policy activities may be evaluated and scrutinized on the basis of three defining qualitative criteria, namely (Voskopoulos 2007, pp. 21–22): • International role. • International presence. • International significance. The above should not be applied on a separate basis but as a set of intermingled, interconnected criteria that define a thin line between success and failure. At the same time, they simply point to the actual limitations of the EU’s role as a global peacebuilding international actor initializing crucial civilian missions. These may be categorized as: • Strengthening missions. • Monitoring missions. • Executive missions (Tardy 2018). The EU’s long efforts in providing conflict prevention mechanisms and peacebuilding have faced four main challenges, namely (Juncos and Blockmans 2018): • Bridging the early warning-response gap. • Improving cooperation with other international partners in conflict prevention and peacebuilding (European External Action Service 2017). • Enhancing civil-military coordination (European External Action Service 2018c).4 • Ensuring local ownership (Christie et al. 2018, p. 8).5

As Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to the UN in Geneva plausibly suggested, “the relationship between the humanitarian and the military community is neither the most natural, nor always the easiest one. Due to the different roles, mandates and objectives of the humanitarian and the military actors, actions may be un-synchronized, diverging or worst even disrupting one to another. At the same time, both humanitarian and military actors need to interact with each other, in many -if not most- cases they share the same terrain. . .This shows how important civil-military coordination is and this also explains why the most fundamental principle of humanitarian civil-military coordination is to establish a dialogue between the two sides”. 5 As suggested, “encapsulated in a range of notions including ‘local participatory models’, ‘local capacity building’, ‘localization’ and ‘local ownership’ (to name just a few), international actors such as the EU and the UN have sought to restructure their peace initiatives to provide mechanisms for the effective integration of civil society and local communities into peacebuilding”. 4

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2 Soft Power as the Foundation of EU Involvement in the World The pioneer concept of soft power was introduced by Joseph Nye (Nye 2004, 1990, pp. 153–171) in his work Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. The actual aim was to organizationally and cognitively challenge the traditional concept of power associated with the disposal of military means and thus hard power (a political realism perspective). Soft and hard powers refer to alternative, contending means, strategies and motives of involvement. Force of persuasion is a focal issue when approaching the concept of soft power. The assumption is that state behaviour can be altered in a way that produces no-zero sum games and thus change the international behaviour of states. The way the EU interacts with other actors is defined, inter alia, by its status/ character as an international actor (Van Criekinge 2011) and its institutional evolution. As a consequence, the actorness issue is of paramount importance because it defines the actual ability of the EU to advance normative goals in a world arena dominated by states and national interests (Voskopoulos 2007). In effect the EU operates as a normative power (Sjursen 2006),6 advancing norms of state interaction falling outside the traditional tools of states. Since the European Political Cooperation of the 1970s, the EU has come a long institutional and organizational way through important stages (CFSP, ESDP). These have changed not only its internal structure but also its international role as a distinctive actor. As plausibly suggested, “the EU’s role as an international actor goes beyond merely the CFSP and the ESDP, it also includes policy areas such as development, environment, and trade” (Van Criekinge 2011). In its turn this has affected the ability of the EU to implement a CFSP or a Common Defense and Security Policy due to its conceptualization of issues related to international order and the role of state actors in defining the conflict-cooperation ratio in a state-centric world dominated by state interests (Fig. 1). The analysis of EU peace operations almost by default poses theoretical, organizational and practical problems (Tsagourias 2007).7 Theory provides organizational tools to look into the reality of multiplayer-acting under specific conditions. Organizational issues reflect the capability-expectation ratio, while practical issues refer to the applied policy choices under the impact of the EU’s international responsibility (Delgado Casteleiro 2016). The EU’s involvement in the world builds upon multifaceted axes. As plausibly suggested, “in 1999, few people would have predicted that the EU would send ships to Somalia, police to Afghanistan, judges to Kosovo and soldiers to Chad” (Keohane 2011). The use of two-dimensional means (military and nonmilitary) demands

6 The approaches to the EU as a normative power are often identified as biased because they pay little attention to hard power issues. 7 For the theoretical, political and legal aspects of EU peacekeeping.

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Fig. 1 EEAS (2019, pp. 2–3)

coordination mechanisms, while missions take place within a comprehensive approach framework. The variety of operations falling within the spectrum of CSDP sets multilevel challenges stemming, inter alia, from (Keohane 2011): • Resource shortages • Limited political support from member states • Lack of coordination among EU actors The above illustrate the complexity of intertwined problems to overcome but at the same time give added value to the achievements of a non-unitary actor as the EU. Scrutinizing the problems the EU has faced in its wider spectrum of peace operations requires avoiding mono-causal approaches, yet, without undermining the importance and stabilizing potential of its involvement. Overall success “points to two fundamental factors. First, a comprehensive approach that brings together the different actors deployed in the field. Second, the resilience of the political and material commitment of crisis management actors, possibly over many years. Both these factors pose important questions for the future of EU peace operations” (Keohane 2011).

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Fig. 2 Eurobarometer (2016), cited in Zamfir and Dobreva (2019, p. 4)

3 EU Peace Operations as an Expression of Multilateralism “Multilateralism can be defined as the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions” (Keohane 1990). The challenge to a multilateral approach to international relations (Caporaso 1992)8 comes from the expectation to bring about functional and peaceful changes outside the war framework. As pointed out, “the principal mechanism of change throughout history has been war, or what we shall call hegemonic war” (Gilpin 1981). One of the EU’s distinctive features is its ability to structurally and institutionally formalize multilateralism (Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations 2019) among politically autonomous units (Dworkin and Gowan 2019). This (Keohane 1990) has allowed it to move forward (Bossong 2013) and take everexpanding initiatives across the world (Pietz 2013). In effect it has led the EU to acquire a culture of multilateralism (Attiná 2008) using tandem operational tools, civilian and military in order to bring about desired outcomes. This has led to the enhancement of its relations and operational cooperation with the UN. In September 2018 the EU Council adopted the “conclusions endorsing the priorities of the UN-EU Strategic Partnership on peace operations and crisis management for the period 2019–2021. The Council recognized the mutually beneficial nature of the longstanding UN-EU cooperation on peacekeeping and civilian, police and military crisis management. It welcomed the efforts to enhance conflict prevention in the context of peace operations and crisis management operations”. This was

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For a theoretical approach.

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Fig. 3 EPRS (2019), cited in Zamfir and Dobreva (2019, p. 9)

a major decision in supporting a multilateral world order of normative nature during a transitional phase of uncertainty. The Council stressed that “the EU provides the UN with political support as well as expertise, financial backing and political leverage to deliver on UN mandates. Close cooperation helps UN and EU missions and operations act more coherently and effectively to address various security challenges and ensure a positive and sustainable impact on the ground (Delattre 2019). Partnering with the UN contributes to the EU playing its role as a global peace and security actor in support of effective multilateralism” (Council of the European Union 2018). The EU and the UN cooperated on complementarity, covering acknowledged drawbacks and gradually expanded their past synergies. Yet, the emergence of multipolarity pressure in the global system does not assist the formulation of multilateral attitudes (Dworkin and Gowan 2019). Contending national interests, even within the EU, risk undermining the long efforts of acting together. Under the current institutional and operational setting of the EU, multilateralism (Martin 1992) is the only way forward. At the same time, it may provide fertile ground for internal divisions and out-of-EU interference (Dworkin and Gowan

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Fig. 4 INFORM (2016), cited in Immenkamp (2017)

2019). The last decade has illustrated the dangers of parceling the EU’s efforts to create a value-based international order. Eventually international politics has illustrated that this is a painstaking task questioned by the very existence of a state-centric world.

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Fig. 5 SIRPI (2017), cited in Lazarou (2018, p. 64)

The EU gradually evolved as a central strategic partner of the UN (Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations 2019).9Originally this was achieved through a number of cooperation schemes, namely (Pietz 2013): • The 2003 “Joint Declaration on UN-EU Cooperation in Crisis Management”. • The 2007 “Joint Statement on UN-EU Cooperation in Crisis Management”. • The 2011 “Actions to Enhance EU CSDP Support to UN Peacekeeping” (European Council 2011). In effect this partnership was unavoidable for reasons related to their common goals and their support for a value-based multipolar world. Sharing the same organizational vision provided powerful incentives for cooperation (EEAS 2018d).10 As pointed out, “the European commitment to multilateralism is the fruit of a history in which the European Union and the United Nations both have their roots and their raison d’être. EU and UN share the same commitment to multilateralism”. 10 “The two organizations will step up their joint work along eight priority areas, including: (1) Women, Peace and Security; (2) cooperation between missions and operations in the field; (3) Planning and execution of transitions; (4) Facilitate EU Member States contributions to UN peace operations; (5) Support to conflict prevention and political solutions; (6) Policing, rule of law and Security Sector Reform; (7) Cooperation with African-led peace operations; (8) Training and capacity-building. The UN and the EU will continue seeking further complementarity and synergies between UN and EU missions and operations, as well as with other regional and international organizations, in order to act more effectively and ensure impact on the ground. These priorities form part of the broader EU—UN partnership where we will continue to engage together in promoting multilateralism and a rules-based order as the most effective way for addressing pressing global challenges”. 9

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Fig. 6 EEAS (2018a). Source: New European Peace Facility to boost EU action on security and defence (European Union External Action 2018)

The geographic expansion of these complex activities has become a challenge to the expectation-capabilities ratio as well as the ability of peace operations to terminally end situations related to a number of defining parameters. Peace operations are related, among other things, to the need to be part of a healing process as defined by the theoretical framework of conflict management and resolution. Three suggested determinant factors have shaped the EU’s international role and its influence as a global actor in peace and security (Van Langenhove and Maes 2005):

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Fig. 7 EEAS (2018a)

• Capacity (institutional, material, human and operational, financial) to undertake missions. • Willingness to devote resources to security and defence purposes, mainly driven by member states’ priorities. • Internal and external acceptance of the EU as a leading actor in peace and security.

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4 Hindrances to the EU Peace Operations As rightly underpinned, “our security is not for free” (EEAS 2018a). The statement implies investing (EEAS 2018e)11 in a wide range of activities that enhance security and sustainable peace. This forces the EU to reevaluate goals and redistribute means to be used (The North Africa Post 2019) to adapt to new or transformed challenges in a transitional international environment (Snyder 2012).12 Peacebuilding and peacekeeping have at the centre of the EU efforts the tasks of terminating conflict and providing the ground for sustainable peace. The aim is not an easy one, since in many cases history plays a catalytic role in establishing and maintaining peace. Political decisions may not find fertile ground for operational application due to the unwillingness of former belligerents to accept terms of peaceful engagement (Usanmaz 2018). In these cases, the expectations-applicability ratio reflects the difficulty of turning a political decision into applied foreign policy (Kirchner 2013). Another issue affecting directly or indirectly the EU’s intervention ability is the divergent views of EU member states on acting. This explains a policy of selective

Fig. 8 EEAS (2018b)

11 12

EU member states spend approximately 200 billion Euro annually on defense. On the challenges to Liberal Order.

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Fig. 9 EPRS (2019), cited in Zamfir and Dobreva (2019, p. 3)

engagement (Attiná 2008) and their institutional ability to make this choice. To institutionally further enhance multilateralism (Mogherini 2019)13 would demand changes related to the EU’s status as an actor.

5 Epilogue The EU’s peace operations have offered international order an alternative. Yet, its success depends on a number of criteria related to the EU’s strategic autonomy (Dworkin and Gowan 2019): • Which of the EU’s vital interests are at stake in current multilateral contests? • What can EU members do to protect the elements of the multilateral system that serve these interests? • What are the implications of these challenges—and of the overall degradation of international relations—for internal EU coordination mechanisms over multilateral affairs? The question M. Leonard set in his July 2019 article was whether the EU can become a global player (Leonard 2019). The ontology of the question, along with a number of interrelated issues, refers to Europe’s strategic sovereignty. Divisive issues within the EU reinforce centrifugal forces and at times lead to a “unilateral mentality” (Jansen 2000).14 Although finding the lowest common denominator has been a long goal in the EU, current challenges might demand further steps ahead. 13 14

On the vision of Europe laid out on the premises of multilateralism. On unilateralism.

Fig. 10 SIPRI (2018), cited in Smit (2018)

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That is moving from a minimalist to a much wider evolutionary approach. In this way one could steadily advance the issue of EU security “actorness” (Tardy 2015). The future of Europe as an international actor depends on its ability to achieve strategic sovereignty (Leonard and Shapiro 2019). It is also linked to its ability “to plug the capability–expectations gap and develop an effective, comprehensive and conflict sensitive crisis-response capability” (Rieker and Blockmans 2019). To these one should add the aim for coordination of European institutions that need to be part of an evaluation/assessment process of the CSDP missions and operations (Troszczyńska-Van Genderen 2012, pp. 84–85) (Fig. 2).15 Support for EU peace operations is steady with minor fluctuations related, among other things, to domestic politics. According to Eurobarometer “promotion of democracy and peace in the world is a policy area where there is an expectation gap between current and desired EU involvement. Its magnitude has remained the same, since the improvement in evaluation of EU action is balanced by the increased expectations for even more EU action on promotion of democracy and peace in the world” (Zamfir and Dobreva 2019, p. 4) (Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10).

References Attiná, F. (2008). Multilateralism and the emergence of ‘Minilateralism’ in EU peace operations. Romanian Journal of European Affairs, 8(2):5–24. Accessed October 7, 2019, from https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/45601612_ MULTILATERALISM_AND_THE_ EMER GENCE_OF_'MINILATERALISM'_IN_EU_PEACE_OPERATIONS. Bildt, C., & Leonard, M. (2019). From plaything to player: How Europe can stand up for itself in the next five years [online]. Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sofia, Warsaw, Published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Accessed November 19, 2019, from https://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/From_plaything_to_player_ECFR.pdf. Bossong, R. (2013). EU civilian crisis management and organizational learning. European Security, 22(1), 94–112. Caporaso, J. A. (1992). International relations theory and multilateralism: The search for foundations. International Organization, 46(3), 599–632. Christie, R., Algar-Faria, G., Juncos, A. E., Đokić, K., Ignjatijević, M., Habbida, N., Abdi, K., Simons, S., & Gillett E. (2018). DL 6.3 preventing and responding to conflict [online]. Bristol: EU-CIVCAP global insecurities Centre university of Bristol. Accessed November 19, 2019, from https://eucivcap.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/eu-civcap_deliverable_6-3.pdf. Council of the European Union. (2018). Multilateralism: The council endorses the UN-EU strategic partnership on peace operations and crisis management priorities for 2019–2021 [online]. Accessed October 7, 2019, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/ 2018/09/18/multilateralism-the-council-endorses-the-un-eu-strategic-partnership-on-peaceoperations-and-crisis-management-priorities-for-2019-2021/.

As suggested, “considering the still limited channels for parliamentary scrutiny of CFSP and CSDP, the key issue of concern for MEPs has been how to obtain the relevant data for assessing CSDP missions and operations as well as how to ensure access to reliable and representative information about the activities carried under the CSDP banner more generally”.

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European Participation in International Military Operations: National Decision-Making and the Role of EU Institutions Kjell Engelbrekt

Abstract The EU’s international role is defined, inter alia, by its participation in international military operations. The task has been challenging under the impact of a number of hindrances. This chapter looks into covertly or overtly interlinked issues that affect the EU’s efficiency when using the tools disposed by its institutional framework. European defence and the way it has/has not progressed has affected the functioning of EEAS, whereas PESCO is providing the basis for more orchestrated action. The best use of each member state’s capabilities and the way these will form a compact instrument of action will define the EU’s international role. The focal point that will determine outcomes lies in the way decisions about military deployment abroad are taken domestically and the way EU institutions and national parliaments will facilitate political and institutional processes in the sphere of defense.

1 Challenges to the EU European politics illustrate that the wider project of European integration is being questioned on political grounds.1 Some say the introduction of the euro was a bridge too far. It would certainly be a fateful twist of irony if the common currency, established to bring societies and economies closer together, will ultimately have contributed to the failure of this unique project; the smaller-scale project of establishing an effective foreign, security and defence policy within the EU (and/or the European pillar of NATO) is only receiving limited support. There is apparently some renewed impetus behind such a project at present, associated with concerns of ‘transatlantic drift’ following the election of a new American president.

1 On these challenges see Tamas Szemler, ‘Challenges to European Integration’, Politics in Central Europe, vol. 14, N.1, pp. 77–91.

K. Engelbrekt (*) Political Science, Swedish Defense University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_6

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But there is also considerable reluctance and scepticism on the other side; the conceptual, legal and organizational difficulties of bringing together the three Ds—diplomacy, development and defence—into a comprehensive approach or framework are considerable. In combination with the previous two challenges, it will certainly not be easy to make progress in this area. Τhere are three particularly good reasons to renew efforts in this direction. The first relates to the problems confronting the European security policy area that are not going away anytime soon. The second is linked to the fact that non-Europeans appear less interested in doing heavy lifting on our part than in the past. Finally, the third refers to the reality that the EU is already quite an important player in two of these dimensions, namely, diplomacy (Smith et al. 2016) and development. Yet, the missing link is defence, (Coelmont 2019). It is defence as: • An autonomous capability at the disposal of EU countries but also as • An integrated component of a ‘strategic gaze’ onto areas in Europe’s vicinity and vis-à-vis the world at large

2 Institutions and the Challenge to Defence In a research project devoted to the EU as an emerging strategic actor and led from the Swedish Defense University 10 years ago, it was argued that the Union’s policy-making after the end of the world war did have certain strategic qualities (Engelbrekt and Hallenberg 2008). The truth is that few governments have the appropriate focusing capacity to engage in ambitious strategy-making. Individual governments have to consider electoral cycles every 4 years or so; temporary domestic coalitions of interests fluctuate and thwart long-term planning; and they rarely have time and resources to spend on forging full-fledged strategies and see them through. But the EU, by painstakingly negotiating ambitious policies towards the entire regions and groups of neighbours, demonstrated in the eastward enlargement policy and the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) (Casier 2012) that it could engage in long-term milieu-shaping that individual governments rarely are able to accomplish. At the same time, in two important respects, the Union was a decade ago not able to muster appropriate resources required for preparing and executing strategy, namely, in intelligence-gathering and assessment and in defence policy proper. In these two areas, the performance of the EU was at best that of a ‘composite actor’, constantly relying on individual member states volunteering assets and resources for the good of the Union. Notably, the intelligence and assessment function of the EU has through institution-building within the European External Action Service (EEAS) improved considerably since then (Spence and Bátora 2015). Member states now share more low- and mid-grade intelligence than ever before, and the analytical capacity of the EEAS appears to be far beyond that of EU institutions of the past. As this capacity is

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beginning to inform the policy analysis and planning of EU networks, a strategic outlook that extends beyond individual member states is under formation. The adoption of an EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy in 2016 is one expression of this but also one where growing aspiration are being matched by serious conceptual work and follow-up plans for implementation. Conversely, however, almost nothing has occurred in the defence policy area proper. Even though we have a Political and Security Committee, an EU Military Committee and an EU Military Staff assisting the EEAS, the actual decision-making relies on capitals weighing their options within the context of domestic politics, foreign policy considerations and ties to military allies and economic partners. The military component of the comprehensive approach is typically subordinated to a wide array of logics that precede operational needs, predisposing governments to be reluctant about committing troops and valuable equipment to EU operations. It is not inconceivable that the current turmoil in transatlantic relations will produce fresh, sustainable impetus towards closer defence cooperation among European NATO allies and their EU partners. The European Defense Fund established in late 2016 is one indication of reinvigoration. But such developments could significantly alter the ‘composite actor’—character of EU defence efforts. It could, therefore, be argued that pragmatic collaboration should be primarily advanced in accordance with actual alignments on issues and availability of useful, deployable resources. The pragmatism is in part related to precisely allocated assets and resources, often created within NATO but in recent years oftentimes placed at the disposal for EU use as well. As far as assets that can serve national and regional purposes by virtue of their location are concerned, they are bolstered by military contingents rotating in for shorter or longer periods. The five operational headquarters spread out over the continent illustrate the potential for building on the already existing infrastructure of a European military command-and-control system, a logistical supply network and basing system for rotating forces that could be further consolidated. A sixth OHQ in the Baltic Sea area, perhaps hosted by Poland, could be a natural extension into a region where geopolitical tension is on the rise. But pragmatism should also be understood to derive from political opportunity, starting with the security interests and sensibilities of member states towards sets of issues and geostrategic considerations that come naturally to them. If reflective of such preferences, one can imagine a series of mid- to long-term alignments of governments that cooperate more deeply on some security challenges than others, but where the aggregate policies and programmes over time will amount to a comprehensive ‘strategic gaze’ covering all major problems and a wide range of minor ones. The most promising framework for this type of pragmatic collaboration is no doubt PESCO (Efstathiou 2019)—the Permanent Structured Cooperation—provided for by the Lisbon Treaty. PESCO can either be part of a top-down approach whereby a subset of EU member states decided on one or several strategic objectives and then set aside resources aimed at gradually realizing those objectives. But many believe a bottom-up approach is equally or more feasible (Biscop 2017). In that case

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a subset of countries would start by elaborating a Capability Development Plan, work through national authorities as well as the European Defense Agency (Mai’a and Cross 2015 towards creating those capabilities and then deploy them with a view of achieving a multiplied military effect. Still, for any of these approaches to be credible, the military component must have solid political backing. Moving towards a more expeditionary-style outlook in terms of an overlapping set of strategic cultures among EU member states should be seriously considered. Of course not all EU countries have to be prepared to put boots on the ground on short notice, but EU member states that take part in PESCO (Wolfstädter and Kreilinger 2017) or some other collaborative mechanism that enhances European military effectiveness should earmark and genuinely prepare at least part of their armed forces for joint military operations. And they should think through to which type of contingencies those forces can make substantial contributions in ways in which its citizens are likely to be supportive. According to another project at the Swedish Defense University, this time devoted to the half-dozen or so most consequential armed forces in Europe (Britz 2016), it could be argued that the critical weakness in the current setup is the extraordinary variation that exists as to how decisions about military deployment abroad are adopted at the national level. The possibility of fully harmonizing our decision-making procedures is highly unrealistic. But if national decision-making procedures could be engaged under a PESCO framework so as to map security priorities and a range of options that include military deployment, this could help integrate the military tool within a comprehensive approach and also facilitate robust action by the core executive—be it the cabinet or a commander-in-chief—on short notice. Ideally, it would be beneficial to see a careful preparatory procedure involving EU institutions as well as national parliaments and core executives of the affected member states. Germany or Sweden, where deployment decisions are vetted carefully by parliamentary committees, might provide a basic model. Once that initial process has been completed, however, the core executive should be able to rely on military and diplomatic expertise when deciding to utilize some part of the armed forces for the options that received parliamentary approval. In this context I would argue that Israel or Greece can serve as models for optimal organization level of fastpaced crisis management, insulated from the domestic policy coalitions that otherwise may undermine robust action, with authority vested in a subset of the cabinet. For swift and robust action is a sine qua non if European participation in international military operations is to benefit member states and contribute to the stability and security of the Union. Our joint action must send clear messages to our adversaries, our citizens and our allies and partners. By combining our capabilities and different types of assets and resources, the EU surely has the potential to exert considerable influence over areas in its vicinity and deter its adversaries.

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Fig. 1 ‘Peace and Security’ (EPRS 2018 cited in Lazarou et al. 2018, p. 57)

3 The EU at a Crossroad Tzvetan Todorov, a great European intellectual from southeastern Europe with intimate knowledge of classical and modern Greece, passed away a few weeks ago. In his last book, Todorov (2012) cautioned us of ‘hubris’ with regard to European integration and the nearly 2500-year-old democratic project that it embodies. In a previous book inspired by Constantine P. Cavafy famous poem from the former turn of the century, called ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, he similarly asked us not to succumb to our own anxieties in the face of terrorism and immigration (Todorov 2008). When it comes to security and defence, finally, Todorov insisted that Europe should steer clear of neocolonialism and seek to exert a tempering, mitigating influence in the world. He used the French term La puissance tranquille (The Tranquil Power) to describe this approach. For historical reasons but also in order to be effective and shape a neighbourhood where Europeans are respected rather than feared, Todorov’s image of a dignified tranquility associated with Europeans’ use of power can probably serve our continent well.

References Biscop, S. (2017). Differentiated integration in defense: A Plea for PESCO. In EU60: Re-founding Europe. The responsibility to propose. Rome: Instituto Affari Internazionali. Britz, M. (Ed.). (2016). European participation in international military operations. The role of strategic culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Casier, T. (2012). The European neighborhood policy: Living up to regional ambitions? In F. Bindi & I. Angelescu (Eds.), The foreign policy of the European Union. Assessing Europe’s role in the world (pp. 99–117). Washington, DC: Brookings Press. Coelmont, J. (2019). European strategic autonomy: Which military level of ambition? Institute Security Policy Brief: Egmont. Efstathiou, Y. (2019). Keeping the momentum in European defense collaboration: An early assessment of PESCO implementation, [Blog]. Accessed September 1, 2019, from https:// www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2019/05/pesco. Engelbrekt, K., & Hallenberg, J. (2008). The European Union and strategy: An emerging actor. London: Routledge. Lazarou, E., Dobreva, A., Friede, A., Immenkamp, B., Perchoc, P., Pichon E., & Zamfir, I. (2018). Peace and Security in 2018: Overview of EU action and outlook for the future exploring (p. 57, figure). Brussels: European Union. Accessed September 1, 2019, from http://www.europarl. europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2018/620207/EPRS_STU(2018)620207_EN.pdf. Mai’a, K., & Cross, D. (2015). The European defense agency and the member states: Public and hidden transcripts. European Foreign Affairs Review, 20(2/1), 83–102. Smith, M., Keukeleire, S., & Vanhoonacker, S. (2016). The diplomatic system of the European Union: Evolution, change and challenges. London: Routledge. Spence, D., & Bátora, J. (Eds.). (2015). The European external action service: European diplomacy post-Westphalia. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Todorov, T. (2008). La peur des barbares: Au-delà du choc des civilisations. Paris: Robert Laffont. Todorov, T. (2012). Les ennemis intimes de la démocratie. Paris: Robert Laffont. Wolfstädter, L., Kreilinger, V. (2017). European integration via flexibility tools: The cases of EPPO and PESCO. Jacques Delors Institut, Policy Paper 209, 1–20. [online]. Accessed September 1, 2019, from https://institutdelors.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ europeanintegrationviaflexibilitytools-kreilingerwolfstdter-nov17.pdf.

The European External Action Service: An Encompassing and Adaptive Agency at the Service of the EU Global Security Strategy? Fotini Bellou

Abstract The evolving security challenges that the European Union (EU) has encountered in recent decades have set the stage for a consequent institutional adaptation. Previous oscillations by EU member states (MS) to develop and strengthen the Common Foreign and Security Policy were reflected in the weak institutional framework that was gradually formed to its service especially in the 2000s. However, the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) reflects the very vision of the EU member states to depart from previous inconsistencies and to empower the EU’s multi-layered external action by establishing a uniquely compound institution destined to serve and to upgrade the EU into an effective global security actor. The EEAS has wrestled to encompass all forms of policies having a foreign and security policy impact, while trying to entertain all contestations and turf wars around the scope and effectiveness of its actions. The article argues that EEAS hosts a ‘dynamic hybridity logic’, which favours the formation of niche co-operation schemes that could better serve or improve the implementation of the EU external action by involving different services and assets from other policy sectors of the EU.

1 Introduction Since its establishment, the EEAS has evolved into a profoundly unique body (structure) implementing the EU external action. It has managed, in a relatively short period of time, to build reasonable, yet not always uncontested, organizational frameworks of cooperation that seem to serve the purpose of its establishment. It combines democratization, developmental and security-oriented schemes of action An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 2016 ISA 57th Annual Convention in Atlanta F. Bellou (*) Department of International and European Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_7

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in the implementation of the EU foreign and security policy while it is adjusting those policies to the logic of the growing importance of being prepared to effectively respond to the inevitable nexus of internal and external security concerns. A mounting literature already highlights the unprecedented institutional nature of the EEAS (Blockmans and Laatsit 2011; Balfour et al. 2015). However, considerable segments of this discussion primarily focus on the controversial, often lukewarm and incomprehensible fashion with which those organizational/bureaucratic schemes operate in their struggle to produce concrete policies (Furness 2013). Extensive analysis has also developed on the particularities of the prevalent organizational scheme of the EEAS, which challenge effectiveness in policy implementation (Duke 2012). Instead of looking at a specific policy area, this analysis aims to shed light on the generic question of whether the EEAS provides the institutional and policy framework relevant to meet the strategic objectives the EU has publicly assumed, namely ‘to play a positive and transformative role in its external relations as a global actor’ (Council of the EU 2014a, c). This article argues that precisely because the EEAS comprises a mixed institutional framework while at the same time it has not ceased from expanding its thematic policies, instruments and co-operational schemes to encompass a quite extensive definition of security, it has established the institutional framework dynamic enough to promote effective global security agency and thus effectively perform its tasks and attain its objectives (Article 1 (2) EEAS Decision, Council 2010). Yet, the apparent prevalence of its intergovernmental profile seems to have rendered EEAS’s effective global security agency dependent on the will of the EU member states (MS) to fully meet its very composite role. As Michael Leigh (2016) rightly points out, in light of diverse interests and an unwillingness of MS ‘to delegate responsibility for issues touching on war, peace and vital national interests to the EU’, there is a propensity towards compromise language and the formation of coalitions of the willing which nevertheless cannot paper over ‘divisions of interests’. This reality had been compounded by an inherent generic national introspection (Coelmont 2015a, b) by MS reinforced by economic recession, the rise of populism and/or radicalization and a troubled neighbourhood that often directs certain state responses away from EU policy frameworks, even if ultimately these are incorporated into the EU policies. This is indicative of the realization that the currently emerging security challenges cannot be tackled by one state alone or even by a handful of regional powers. Thus, there is a growing conviction, at least on paper, amongst MS that common or collective responses are needed to address current security issues, and to this effect, the EEAS provides the very institutional framework to assume those responses. Current literature has focused primarily on whether the EEAS can effectively function within the logic of the EU integration or whether its bureaucracy and organizational structures are good enough or autonomous enough (Henökl and Trondal 2015) to render the Service a reliable supranational agent for EU security integration. Only a limited amount of scholarly work (Shepherd 2015) gives emphasis on whether the EEAS produces modes of cooperative action by capitalizing on its very hybrid institutional structure in order to respond effectively, through common,

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shared or collective policies, against the current evolving ‘multiplex’ security agenda (Missiroli 2015). In addition, scholarly discussion is underdeveloped as regards the general assessment of the way in which this security agenda is practically addressed by the EEAS at a time when states remain loath to abdicate from (inter)governmental logics on issues related to defence, security and other issues they consider paramount to their sovereignty. Accordingly, a previous mounting introspection by EU governments encouraged an emphasis on intergovernmental policy prescriptions, thus leaving unanswered profound questions about the role of the EEAS within the EU policy framework. In particular, can the EEAS function as an effective global security agent at the service of the EUs interests and values? Is its policy agenda being served by its strategic design, its organizational structure and decision-making process? This analysis advocates that to assess effective global security agency of the EEAS one has to investigate its ability to merge under its hybrid structures and operational logic, the policies and strategic priorities that can tackle the emerging security threats and challenges that the EU currently faces. It argues that precisely because of its multiple dynamic hybridities, the EEAS serves this objective. Institutional efforts of the last decade, which were accelerated in the aftermath of the launch of the EU Global Strategy (EUGC) in June 2016 (EEAS 2016a, b), to establish “niche cooperative sche-mes” aiming at forging policy outcomes destined to address the multiplicity of certain security issues are a case in point. The implementation and operationalization of an integrated approach to external conflicts and crises was welcomed in the Council Conclusions of January 2018, indicating the importance of incorporating to the multidimensional and multilayered dimensions of challenges an equal composite response of policies and agents reflecting the very dynamic hybridity logic embedded in the EEAS (Council Conclusions, 22 Jan 2018. Annex). Its Crisis Response System (CRS), which has been established within the EEAS, incorporates all previous efforts to fashion “niche cooperative schemes” involving different departments and responsibilities of EU bodies as well as enabling facilities from member states and third parties. Through its divisions, in practice it may involve not only its own services (the Crisis Platform, the EU Situation Room and the Crisis Management Board) but also, through the latter, other related services (and capacities) from the European Commission. At the same time, it can collaborate with the EU Integrated Political Crisis Response of the General Secretariat of the Council fostering the need for a multidimensional and composite character of EU responses to its current security challenges. Based on the rationale depicted in the work of Wallace (1977) that emphasis shall be placed on policy-making rather than polity-building to evaluate EU integration, this analysis is theoretically affiliated to the perspective promoted by Birkerton et al. (2015a, b) that integration is promoted even in the absence, or at the alleged expense, of supranationalism, and the EEAS is a profound example. To these theoretical departures, some assumptions from neo-classical realism are also added. It is argued that the evolving security policy agenda as well as the co-operation schemes it constructs – and reconstructs – manifest a policy-making orientation driven by the need for flexibility and adjustment that acknowledges, and at times facilitates, the

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coexistence of supranational and intergovernmental perspectives, especially if such a novelty produces common or shared security policy results. This analysis is agnostic as to which perspective is prevalent as long as both realities are considered as two parts of the same hybrid structure wherein each perspective may prevail at the expense of the other depending on the issue at hand. Analysis begins with a brief discussion of the new intergovernmentalism to be followed by a discussion on the advantages offered by hybridity, borrowed from public administration theorizing, to the logic of EEAS’s theorizing. It continues with an analysis on the evolving security challenges to which the EU has wrestled to respond and have been delineated in a number of official EU documents qua strategies as well as in EU working documents by both the Commission and the Council and have been ultimately incorporated into the European Global Strategy. Discussion continues with an examination of the evolution of the EEAS’ organizational structures that aimed at effectively meeting its compound security assignments which are understood to have been constructed and reconstructed to adjust to the logic of a comprehensive approach to security as this has been evolved into the integrated approach to conflicts and crises. This analysis aims to show that the EEAS is institutionally established, and evolves, in such a manner as to be able to effectively implement a comprehensive approach to its assignment as a security agent, less of international rather than of global magnitude. It will also show that although the political ambition of its MS is not always visible enough to make the EEAS assume its full potential, the current institutional progress of the Service is indicative of its uniqueness in keeping a multifold balance amongst the need to formulate a wide range of policies, the need to meet MS’s differing concerns while progressing between supranational aspirations and inter-governmental qualifications and yet further promote security integration.

2 Theorizing Dynamic Hybridities of the EEAS Based on theorizing about the new intergovernmentalism (Birkerton et al. 2015a, b), this analysis empowers the third hypothesis of this theoretical model by employing hybrid theory in order to explain the evolving preference of the EU, especially related to its security policies, to form or employ multiple and compound structures destined to serve a certain purpose. This process takes place at a time when the quest of more integration is visible while MS remain agnostic to immediate responses as to whether certain structures serve supranationalism or a stubborn intergovernmentalism. Instead, as new intergovernmentalism theorizing advocates, policy coordination results from the deliberative and consensual quality of EU decision-making. While this process was meant to denote a behavioural method affiliated to supranationalism, in which deliberation and consensus-seeking were its defining elements, after Maastricht, this behavioural method continues to restrain national actors by regulating their responses. Thus, even when conflict is visible, ‘participants

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seek solutions from within the process and less through vetoes or exits’ (Birkerton et al. 2015a, p. 704). For instance, before Brexit, the wisdom of which is still debated within the United Kingdom and beyond, the United Kingdom had opted out from implementing certain policies related to justice and home affairs or Denmark has opted out from Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) but they have not excluded themselves from negotiations on those areas. Importantly, when there is the need to delegate assignments and thus authority to an innovative structure in order to perform a mutually agreed purpose, there is a clear preference for de novo bodies rather than to ascribe to them supranational characteristics. Examples of such de novo bodies include the EEAS, the ECB, the ESM and ‘a large number of regulatory and executive agents’ (Birkerton et al. 2015a, p. 705). The authors have established six hypotheses to substantiate their theoretical discussion from which, for the purpose of this analysis, at least the third is of certain value. According to the third hypothesis, ‘[w]here delegation occurs, governments and traditional supranational actors support the creation and empowerment of de novo bodies’ (Birkerton et al. 2015a, p. 713). This hypothesis is invoked in order to describe the hesitancy of MS to delegate authority to supranational institutions on issues they consider important to their sovereignty or on issues that are difficult to attract support and legitimacy from their national constituencies. Yet, cooperation and coordination are considered important at the EU level on those issues and for this reason cooperation within the EU is sought. Complementary to this theoretical underpinning, this analysis employs hybridity theorizing to look at the composite character of function and policy formation EEAS produces. In the case of the EEAS, its function cannot but serve EU values and interests in performing CFSP as these have been defined and constantly enhanced by its MS, in order to address evolving security challenges facing the EU. Hybridity, mainly borrowed from public administration discourse, helps us understand that in the face of being called to form policies to tackle complex and multiple realities on the ground, the need for flexibility and adjustment point to the construction of structural or organizational innovations whereas deliberation and consensus continue to delineate their margins. From an institutional point of view, the EEAS has developed a multidimensional and compound organizational framework in producing and implementing policies that run the entire spectrum of its envisioned objectives, as these were ultimately formulated by the Lisbon Treaty (Monar 2000). In addition, its multifaceted and compound approach through which it materializes the conduct of its foreign policy indicates its rigor to fashion organizational corrective changes to empower its preparedness to maximize EU resilience against the emerging new security threats. The unique institutional and organizational multiplicity as producing a hybrid organization within the European Union has already been described by a number of scholars (Smith 2012; Onestini 2015; Spence 2015). Even the European Parliament, at the time of EEAS’s Mid-Term Review, described the Service as ‘a new body of hybrid nature’ (European Parliament 2013, p. 4). Yet, although hybridity advocacy has been used to describe the EEAS (Skelcher and Smith 2015), in practice research seems to have downgraded two key issues in this hybridity discussion. The

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first regards the acknowledgment that the EEAS functions under multiple hybridities and second that these hybridities sustain a dynamic character to keep the Service adaptive. Those two issues seem to offer the EEAS its unique prerogative destined to meet its purpose, namely to become an effective global security agent. Following this logic, it is fair to argue that the EEAS combines, on the one hand, the supranational perspective and the intergovernmental decision making, thus addressing the long-ingrained hesitation of member states to forfeit their sovereign rights on security and defence issues. On the other hand, as regards the scope and character of the policies it implements or coordinates, the EEAS is able to institutionally foster, interoperability amongst a wide range of policies including defence, security, democratization, diplomacy, development, rule of law, humanitarian assistance, state stabilization and reconstruction by fashioning comprehensive responses to its foreign relations. The crucial issue for this analysis concerns the emphasis that is placed by EEAS on efforts to fashion comprehensive responses to security through the establishment of respective organizational cooperation schemes serving this purpose while questions as to whether such schemes have resulted from a supranational or an intergovernmental process are of secondary importance. For this reason, this analysis employs hybridity theorizing in order to grasp theoretically the purposeful and adaptive character of the EEAS. Hybridity as a term is widely used in public administration studies or management studies to explain the establishment of multifold public services or products that result in response to multiple public needs. As Christensen and Lægreid (2011) admit, ‘public administrations are becoming increasingly complex and hybrid as they try to attend to numerous and sometimes conflicting ideas, considerations, demands, structures and cultural elements at the same time.’ Although the notion of hybrid originates from biology ‘to describe cross-overs between species’ (Jäger and Schröer 2014, p. 1285), the term is widely used to denote the augmentation of a multifold compound ‘product’, or ‘cluster of services’, that make use of the characteristics and prerogatives of its different constituent parts. Hybridity is used in organizational theory to describe a composition of identities, establishing an organization of multiple characters and functions (Jäger and Schröer 2014). In the literature of public administration, as Grohs (2014, p. 1428) points out, ‘governance hybridity denotes the instruments by which organizational fields are governed. As with the types of organization, governance instruments include more or less state-centred approasches (command and control), market-oriented approaches (contracts and competition), and community-centered modes (trust and cooperation)’. In such a context, the organization sustains certain attributes of the different pure types from which it was composed (Billis 2010; Evers 2005 cited in Grohs 2014). In light of the above, one can describe a ‘hybrid organization’ as the agent that is characterized by a synthetic composition of different sub-agents as well as their different operative logics, which are called to function in a mutually reinforcing fashion in order to serve a unified purpose. Important to this analysis is the acknowledgement of the dynamic character of this hybridity. Thus, it accepts that in a “hybrid organization” a constant upgrading

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of some of its constitutive characteristics usually occurs to enable, at certain times, effective responsiveness and adaptation according to particular policy demands (Belloni 2012). Indeed, for a number of Public Administration scholars (Rhodes and Donnely-Cox 2014, p. 1630; Mullins et al. 2012), ‘hybridity is considered more analytically valuable as a dynamic process rather than a static description’. In effect, as long as the notion of hybridity is widely employed in the analysis of the EEAS, its dynamic character should not be avoided. In fact, this dynamic hybridity has proved its major prerogative. Thus, one shall not feel stranger to the reality that on occasions intergovernmental modes of action will prevail over supranational ones and vice versa depending on the occasion. Equally, it might not be surprising that in order to empower early warning capabilities and information sharing amongst the EU structures and MS in light of seeking to clarify uncertain aspects of security, the EEAS can mobilize and coordinate unique structures of cooperation as it was the case with the efforts to ‘strengthen Ties between CSDP and FSJ road map implementation’ (Council of the European Union 2014b). The EEAS reflects this very multiplicity in both structure and scope of policy delivery. The literature on EEAS as a hybrid organization is mounting (Smith 2012; Spence 2015; and Onestini 2015). A discussion has focused either on organizational or qualitative measurements in order to vindicate its hybridity or on an examination of particular policies that indicate their ‘double’ character (Smith 2012). In fact, Michael Smith has advocated that EU’s external relations is of a hybrid nature as its components were conceptualized in the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s if not before. For Smith (2012, p. 700) a hybrid structure denotes ‘a political, institutional and legal structure derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruent kinds’. This analysis invokes hybridity discussion to advocate that this very process of multifold adaptation within the EEAS appears as its most important prerogative for it enables the Service to deal with the particularly demanding and compound security agenda as it gradually evolves. Importantly, the EEAS’s strong advantage rests on its very dynamic hybridities, which in practice seem to temporarily transcend questions regarding the definition of its status within the EU structure as to focus on establishing the cooperation schemes that would facilitate policy delivery. This trend is primarily expressed through the ascending emphasis of the EU to fashion and thus work under the logic of effectively implementing a comprehensive approach in dealing with its mounting security concerns. The EEAS comprises personnel from the European Commission, primarily related to External Relations, the General Secretariat that was implementing up until then CFSP/CSDP and representatives from MS Ministries of Foreign Affairs. This can be considered as the first hybridity of the EEAS reflecting the need to include all actors, and inevitably logics, involved in policy formation and implementation of the EU global security policy. The second hybridity of the EEAS revolves around its leader. The position of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy merges the duties not only of the Principal authority of the EEAS but also those of the President of the Council of Foreign Affairs and those of one of the Vice Presidents of the

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European Commission and the duties of the primer of the European Defense Agency. This bunch of duties poses an immense burden to the leader of the EEAS whose skills and approach can certainly have a strong impact on the function of the EEAS, especially during its formative years, but at the same time it facilitates coordination. The reason that this position regards a separate hybridity is based on the assumption, in line with the neoclassical realist perspective, that differentiated characteristics and the particular mindset of the decision maker do make a difference in foreign policy formation and policy predilections (Kitchen 2010). In effect, such a hybrid decision-making position, destined to merge four duties of different characters and logics, can drive policy outputs to completely different directions dependent on the incumbent’s subjective criteria relating to the above plurality of logics. In such cases, that very hybridity can lead the policy experiment to an utterly different endgame. In particular, the first HR/VP, Catherine Ashton was certainly a strong figure preferring to promote low-profile diplomacy in the midst of strong bureaucratic contestations within the Service which also had to be managed. By the time Catherine Ashton presented the EEAS mid-term Review in 2013, some lessons had been learned and a number of organizational discrepancies were to be ironed out. However, it was the time when serious security issues had emerged in EU’s neighbourhood, in the context of the Arab uprisings in the MENA region, and once again, the EU was caught by surprise. This was to be compounded by events in Eastern Europe after the aggressive acts of Russia against the Ukraine in early 2014 which necessitated revisiting assumptions about defence and fears amongst a number of EU member states that challenges against their territorial integrity were no longer theoretical.

3 Multifaceted Security Challenges Drive the Form of Policy Formation by the EEAS This section discusses the evolution of security challenges facing the EU as these are depicted in recent EU documents, thus providing the composite strategic context against which the EU is called to respond in a comprehensive fashion. Indeed, the strategic international context, in which the EU had assumed its security agency, as this was presented in the European Security Strategy-ESS in 2003, has dramatically changed. At the time, the ESS mentioned the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), terrorism, regional conflicts, state failure, organised crime as the challenges that the EU would face and to which maritime piracy was also an additional, yet rather distant, concern to be taken into consideration (Council of the EU 2003, p. 2). In the report that followed in 2008 to elaborate on the implementation of ESS, more threats were added to involve energy security, environmental change and cybersecurity while the possibility of the EU having to deal with the combination of all those

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challenges was also highlighted. Maritime security and the smuggling of small and light weapons were also included as aspects of organized crime (Council of the EU 2008, p. 2–3). While all those threats were considered to have an external dimension to drive EU foreign policy and external action, both documents asserted that external and internal security could not be considered as separate. Indeed, it would have been utterly unreasonable to insist that terrorism, the proliferation of WMD or even organized crime, remains border oriented. The elaboration on external security threats was further enhanced by the document setting the EU’s Internal Security Strategy. In 2010 the Council of the EU adopted the European Internal Security Strategy (ISS), which explains the nature of threats observed internally and against which the EU and MS shall formulate respective policies. These involved: serious and organized crime; terrorism, cybercrime; cross-border crime; natural and man-made disasters; violence itself and road traffic accidents (Council of the EU 2010a, b). Informed by the logic of ESS, the ISS further enhanced its security agenda by admitting that to deal with those security issues the EU and MS have to take into account that internal and external elements of security are interconnected. Importantly, the ISS document defined the European Security Model as becoming operational through the employment of a comprehensive approach. In particular, it was mentioned that this Security Model (Council of the EU 2010a, b, p. 4) is thought to consist of common tools and a commitment to a mutually reinforced relationship between security, freedom and privacy; cooperation and solidarity between member states; involvement of all the EU’s institutions; addressing the causes of insecurity, not just the effects; enhancing prevention and anticipation; involvement, as far as they are concerned, of all sectors which have a role to play in protection – political, economic and social; and a greater interdependence between internal and external security. In reality, even if vaguely put, it calls for joint action by all EU structures and MS to implement policies aiming at addressing a wide range of issues related to those threats and their origins by employing different policy mechanisms. This is consistent with what in the document is described as the comprehensive approach that demands a synergy between a horizontal and a vertical mobilization of stakeholders and policies in order to materialize a common purpose. Accordingly, it suggests that ‘to reach an adequate level of internal security in a complex global environment requires the involvement of law enforcement and border management authorities, with the support of judicial cooperation, civil protection agencies and also of the political, economic, financial, social and private sectors, including non-governmental organization’ (Council of the EU 2010a, b, p. 11). At the same time it admits that at the vertical dimension all stakeholders related to the different policies can be taken into account and be employed to contribute to the common purpose even if its materialization require wider ‘international cooperation’ or the support from EU-level security policies and initiatives, regional cooperation between MS and MS’s own national or local policies (Council of the EU 2010a, b, p. 11). Another important element in ISS was that it highlighted the ‘crucial importance’ of the external dimension of internal security as a separate but indispensable

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ingredient of internal security which complements external security strategy (Council of the EU 2010a, b, p. 17). Consistent with the logic presented in the Strategy on the External Dimension of the Area of Freedom Security and Justice, communicated by the Commission in 2005, the ISS depicted that ‘to combat transnational crime outside the EU as well and to build up respect for the rule of law’ in the context of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) should be promoted as a EU practice (Council of the EU 2005). Thus, internal security policies were also encouraged to promote cooperation at all stages of civilian crisis management missions abroad (Council of the EU 2010a, b, p. 17). As for the policies to be pursued, five strategic objectives have been identified in the context of internal security, according to the Commission’s Communication (2010) on the EU Internal Security Strategy in Action: five Steps towards a more secure Europe. “The five strategic objectives are: the disruption of international criminal networks, the prevention of terrorism and addressing radicalization and recruitment, raising levels of security for citizens and businesses in cyberspace, strengthening security through border management and increasing Europe’s resilience to crises and disasters (European Commission 2010). By the time the ISS was adopted in 2010, the EU was already performing multiple roles as an international security agent. These were implemented either at the supranational level in the form of external relations conducted by the European Commission through its various General Directorates or at the intergovernmental level in the form of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Although the quest for a comprehensive approach in performing security policy was clearly stated in the ISS and was certainly quietly admitted as a preferable mode of action from several officials in Brussels,1 the Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council and MS were all promoting their own distinct competences. By the time the Commission issued its communication for the implementation of ISS in November 2010, the establishment of the EEAS had already been agreed few months earlier in conformity with the lines of the Treaty of Lisbon. It was not accidental therefore that the EEAS was considered by the Commission as the body that could ensure consistency with the wider European Security Strategy and could exploit synergies between external and internal policies including risk and threat assessments (European Commission 2010, p. 35). Indeed, the EEAS was considered as the body that could coordinate EU wider security policy, and through its bureaucratic hybridity, its first hybridity, it would help bridge previous turf wars between the Commission and the General Secretariat of the Council. The EEAS was established in order to merge the three policy logics but also their distinctive decision-making process of the three agents of EU security, internal and external, policy, the Commission, the Council and the member states of the EU.

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Personal Interview with former senior Commission officer who wishes to remain anonymous, Brussels, 25 November 2015.

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The neighbourhood of the EU and its immediate wider regions are currently exposed to serious multifaceted security challenges, which continue to deteriorate while the eastern neighbourhood has evolved into a terrain in which one could also observe Russia ‘to be engaged in a zero sum game and [to be] willing to use force to create an exclusive sphere of influence’ (Biscop 2015, p. 170). In addition, substantive terrorist attacks within the EU territory, connected not only to domestic Islamic radicals but also to individuals acting as foreign fighters that were monitored to be amongst the irregular migration/refugee waves recently being directed from conflict areas in the Middle East to the streets of European capitals, loom as an additional and perplexed security concern that transcend boundaries and internal or external definitions of security (Funk and Parkes 2016). These are developments that have provided additional layers of insecurity concerns to European governments but also to European citizens. To such a complex security environment, the American pivot to Asia announced in 2011 simply pointed to a gradual detachment of the United States in crisis management, especially in cases which are considered to be manageable from properly prepared Europeans (Clinton 2011; Rachman 2012; Coelmont and de Langlois 2013, p. 2). Moreover, as explained in other parts of this volume, the financial crisis facing the EU has apparently diminished previous influential stances towards its neighbourhood and has also reduced EU member states’ propensity to spend for their defence. The latter two strategic developments have arguably fostered the conviction amongst the MS of the EU, as admitted in the European Council of December 2013, that deeper defence cooperation and the fostering of synergies is paramount if the EU and its MS ‘want to contribute to maintaining peace and security through CSDP together with key partners such as the United Nations and NATO (European Council 2013, p. 2). The idea that a maximization of effort within the EU to deal with the complexity of the evolving security issues can be attained through a comprehensive approach that brings together various EU policy mechanisms ‘to achieve the desired end state’ (Lintern 2014, p. 52) had been gaining much ground. However, scepticism by a number of MS to implement in practice such a logic was also present (Tercovic and Koops 2013). Nevertheless, the particularly demanding security agenda that has evolved in recent years has made the EU as well as MS enlarge the policy objectives that should be pursued as it was becoming evident that internal security concerns were mounting while their connectedness to external security was undisputed. In December 2014 the European Council considered that the Commission should take into account the Council’s identification of the main common threats and challenges for the coming years in light of forming the renewed ISS. For the Council, those threats involved serious and organized crime in all its forms: terrorism, radicalization, recruitment and financing related to terrorism. This time a particular attention was placed ‘on foreign fighters and returnees and lone actors who pose a very serious, direct and unprecedented threat to the EU’s security as well as to the detection of various channels used for the financing of terrorism’ (Council of the EU, 4 December 2014 2014a, c, p. 4).

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Moreover, cybercrime consisting in ‘new and emerging threats’ which stem from the use of new technologies by organized crime groups, the need for cybersecurity which requires intelligence-led approaches and natural or man-made disasters were once more included in the Council’s definition of threat. In such a challenging strategic context, it was evident that new modes of action were required that were destined to empower cooperation or integration practices in areas that not only intergovernmental perspectives prevailed but importantly cooperation as such was avoided. Access, availability and exchange of information were considered as priority concepts in such context calling the EU and MS to adjust to the new realities (Cross 2013). The role of the Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI) was highlighted as the body to coordinate European practices, but the quest for further cooperation on information collection and management was also clear as was the role of the EEAS in acknowledging and developing the interconnectedness between external and internal security perspectives. This understanding was also highlighted in the Council of the EU of June 2015 at the time when the Renewed EU internal Security Strategy 2015–2020 was adopted. (9798/15, 10 June). In that document the current priorities involve • Tackling and preventing terrorism, radicalization to terrorism and recruitment as well as financing related to terrorism, with special attention to the issue of foreign terrorist fighters, reinforced border security through systematic and coordinated checks against the relevant databases based on risk assessment as well as integrating the internal and external aspects of the fight against terrorism • Preventing and fighting serious and organized crime, on the basis of the EU policy cycle • Preventing and fighting cybercrime, as well as enhancing cybersecurity Perhaps in such a demanding security agenda, and despite the fourth hybridity of the EEAS in merging the implementation and delivery of a large number of policies, new modes of action were paramount (European Commission 2017). This fourth hybridity of the EEAS which concerns the implementation of a comprehensive approach, namely its ability to orchestrate an integrated outcome out of different policies and capacities by different EU structures and machineries, irrespective of their bureaucratic or organizational character, that could involve developmental, military, civilian or judicial capacities is the Agency’s unique prerogative (Personal Inteview 2015). Although this fourth hybridity is still in progress, it is important at this stage to depict, the ‘niche cooperational schemes’, promoted or instrumentally facilitated by the EEAS, aiming at augmenting and substantially improving interoperability amongst its key structures and actors wrestling to produce effective policy results contributing also to the security and protection of the EU citizens (Coelmont 2015a, b). This was precisely one of the three objectives of the EUGS of 2016 which elaborated not only the importance of connecting the internal and external security policies of the EU but also acknowledged the importance of the integrated approach to external conflicts and crises. By acknowledging the attainment of resilience as the objective for states within and outside the EU in order to better protect the EU

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citizens and also bolster the EU’s reliability as a global security provider, it was imperative to further empower the effectiveness of its inclusive composite character of policy responses against conflicts, crises and emergencies (Joint Communication on Resilience of 7 June 2017).

4 Cooperation Hybridity to Serve Interoperability: Joint-Up Coordination to Forming Comprehensive Responses Since 2013 the need for a comprehensive approach to crises was also acknowledged by the European Council (Council conclusions, Dec. 2013), while the EEAS was considered the most appropriate structure to implement it (HR of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2013, p. 7–8). In 2015 the HR/VP Federica Mogherini while presenting the Action Plan for implementing a comprehensive approach, she underlined that the materialization of such a multiple and complex endeavour remains ‘a joint responsibility for the EEAS and Commission services and the member states, in capitals and on the ground – all EU actors should contribute to taking the Action Plan forward’ (HR/VP, taking forward the EU’s comprehensive approach to external conflict and crises Action Plan 2015, p. 3). Even before the EUGS in 2016, it had become paramount for the EEAS not only to foster collaboration but also to streamline the speed and effectiveness of decision-making process, the positioning and reporting lines amongst the Agency’s departments as well as relations with other parts of the EEAS, (HR/VP Head of the Agency Report ahead of the June 2015 EC’, 2015). In cases when collaboration is missing while an immediate policy result is sought, then a ‘niche cooperational scheme’ is more likely to be orchestrated. In any case, from a theoretical point of view, such schemes appear to vindicate the logic put forward by Birkerton et al. (2015a, p. 713) about de novo agencies in the context of new intergovernmentalism, yet in this context, as this analysis advocates novelty regards ‘niche cooperational schemes’ per set that are taking place within the EEAS aiming to produce comprehensive policy outputs not otherwise attainable. This logic has been incorporated in the EEAS Crisis Response Mechanism (CRM) (Serrano 2017). As officially depicted in early 2018, the CRM ‘streamlines the response to external crises and emergencies, involving the EEAS, the Commission services and delegations (Council Conclusions 22 Jan. 2018). The EEAS Crisis Response and Operational Coordination Department is responsible for the activation of the EEAS Crisis Response System. It consists of the Crisis Platform, the EU Situation Room and the Crisis Management Board. These bodies are permanent structures playing a central role in fostering an effective collaboration and coordination amongst actors, instruments and mechanisms across the EU system and ensure the necessary coherence of policies to be implemented at the different stages of a conflict. The CRS focuses on crises ‘which may affect EU security and interests

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occurring outside the EU, including those affecting the EU delegations or any other asset or person in a third country’ (EEAS, Crisis Response System 2019). The three Divisions comprising the CRS, namely the Crisis Response Planning and Operations, the EU Situation Room and the Consular Crisis Management, are responsible for coordinating action, providing situation awareness of the certain event, but also orchestrating the different EU responses according to a given crisis. Pointing to the need to improve inter-institutional effectiveness and rationalize inter-agency coordination in order to better implement the integrated approach to crises, the EEAS constructed the Directorate Integrated Approach for Security and Peace (Dir.ISP). Thus, the new post of managing editor, as rightly advocated by Debuyser and Blockmans (2019), 22) who presides over the Security and Defence Policy as well as the planning pillars, in practice is expected to facilitate better coordination with EEAS and relevant Commission DGs while monitoring the entire cycle of crisis management. In reality, it brings the expertise of the different EEAS services, the different competence of the European Commission as well as the determination or decision-making facilitation from the Council, if necessary. It combines all aspects of policies, civilian, military, developmental, humanitarian or even environmental and aims to provide different responses at the different phases of a conflict. This is certainly an inter-institutional improvement of the EEAS from its previous deficiencies (Smith 2013). In such a context, EU bodies outside the EEAS competence can also collaborate, since the Council and the Commission is also involved during the planning of the EU response. It is not accidental therefore that the Crisis Response Mechanism of the EEAS participates as a distinct institution in various exercises conducted by EU services in order to improve cohesion, in contingencies that the EU may be asked to encounter such as trans-boundary crises in the form of hybrid threats, terrorism and criminal activity, public health, energy security, etc. (Fiott 2019). Even if the CRM may not be energized as such, when member states are facing certain challenges, it is important to highlight that even in the context of the EU Integrated Political Crisis Response, which is a similar coordination framework under the Secretariat of the Council, instruments within the EEAS competence are of profound importance, as it is the case with the IntCen (Fägersten 2016), or the EEAS Situation Room. As Davis Cross rightly argues (2015) ‘the IntCent (Intelligence Analysis Centre) it is the only actor that deals with the EU’s priority areas of defence, counter-terrorism and crisis management at the same time.’ The opposite may also take place, namely bodies under the authority of the Commission sharing their expertise or information within a certain CRS context as it is the case with Europol and its increasing involvement in CSDP policies (Rozée et al. 2013; Trauner 2016). Despite the embedded organizational and institutional hybridity of the EEAS, some member states continue to remain hesitant to channel elements that they consider inextricably linked to their sovereign rights under the control or visibility of the EEAS structures. However, it is difficult to deny the reality that the EEAS in recent years has built an unprecedented institutional framework to host coordinated action between the Commission and the Council and third actors in a variety of issues that altogether have made a unique difference from an organizational point of view.

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5 Conclusion This article has shown that in contrast to the body of literature that aims to assess the level of supranationalism or intergovernmentalism that can define the structural character of the EEAS, perhaps it is far more important to assess effective global security agency of the EEAS by examining its ability to merge under its hybrid structures and operational logic, the policies and strategic priorities that can tackle the emerging security threats and mounting challenges that the EU currently faces. This paper argues that precisely because of its multiple dynamic hybridities, the EEAS serves this objective. The EEAS cannot be reduced to an effective ‘diplomatic weapon’ (Bátora 2013), as long as it forges policy practices that are disbursed through a quite extensive definition of security. The EEAS has generated ‘niche cooperational schemes’ amongst the EU bodies and the MS. Occasionally, it has taken initiatives to encourage the establishment of even deeper cooperation on policy aspects serving defence priorities of the EU and its MS such as multifaceted crisis management goals, mounting and complex elements related to migration and border control, developmental and good governance policies through EU external action. It has also been fostering rule of law at the international level and works on the prevention of radicalization through training and education. In addition, it supports the coordination of a number of EU-led missions and operations abroad as well as in the EU borders. Those tasks could not be effectively performed if the EEAS was not developed based on the logic of a hybrid structure destined to serve the purpose for which it was established and precisely because its diverse composition could not escape from fashioning adaptation and innovation in order to remain flexible and relevant. Such a practice, as this analysis has aimed to show, can hardly escape from hybridity theorizing which also serves and further elaborates the new intergovernmentalism theorizing regarding current European integration.

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The Evolving Role of FRONTEX in Implementing an EU Comprehensive Approach on Security Georgios Vourekas

Abstract FRONTEX has been a main axis of the EU’s multilayer policy towards enhancing the comprehensive European framework on security. Its evolving role was a sine qua non in the EU’s effort to deal with newly emerging threats in its periphery and the way they have affected its actual ability to respond. Its operating has faced multiple challenges stemming from differentiated sources. This very fact makes coordination an indispensable tool for the application of a policy that brings the desired outcome.

1 Introduction FRONTEX is a European organization mandated, from the very beginning, to manage the operations and establish co-operation at the external borders of the EU (Frontex 2018; Coman-Kund 2018, pp. 164–166) in an international environment characterized by multiple crises requiring increased funding of humanitarian response as shown in Fig. 1. Its role has been complemented by services associated with the European border guard and coastguard agency (Perkowski 2019, p. 1192). FRONTEX is not just dealing with its initial primary aim of fighting illegal migration but also with any kind of criminal activity taking place at the external border of the EU (Baldwin-Edwards 2008).1 These include observation issues related to administrative regulations such as fisheries, control, environmental protection, customs, drug smuggling and other serious dangers associated with major organized crime (Iljina 2019). It is also worth noting here the important role of Frontex in the process of making the external dimension of Justice and Home Affairs more operational through certain projects and related programs (Wolff 2017, p. 374).

1

For an overall approach.

G. Vourekas (*) FRONTEX, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Voskopoulos (ed.), European Union Security and Defence, Contributions to Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48893-2_8

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120 Fig. 1 Humanitarian Response Plans 2016, UN OCHA Financial Tracking Service (2016) cited in European Parliamentary Research Service Blog (2016)

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Muslims

Non-Muslims 390,000

90,000

80,000 30,000

mid-2010 to 2013

2014 to mid-2016

2 The Operational Map A reference to past and on-going operations will provide a thorough insight of the established operational framework. They are based on the fact that we invite all member states to contribute with assets and personnel. These human recourses and assets offered by member states come under our control; they become the backbone of our planned operations for our activities on land, at sea and in the air (including airports). Particular focus should be given to sea operations, where we face serious setbacks. It is evident that the major problem for Europe comes from the sea. In the Aegean Sea and in the western and eastern Mediterranean, the EU is facing problems with migration, illegal fishing, drug trafficking, arms and tobacco smuggling. In central Mediterranean, the big issues are illegal fishing, drug smuggling and migration problems, while in Spain drug, cigarette smuggling and migration issues top our priorities. The phenomenon has developed quite significantly, in specific geographical areas. The major issue is massive illegal migration which has topped the Commission’s agenda in the last few years. There is ample evidence that Illegal migration is facilitated by criminal organizations that can best be described as organized crime. There is adequate proof for such an evaluation. We have been conducting interviews with migrants arriving in Europe and we take their accounts into serious consideration. They claim that they pay traffickers in order to reach their final destination. These criminal networks have not only been operating in third countries, but also on European soil. And these criminal organizations have not been recruiting Europeans, but they are most widespread in areas such as Syria, Africa and Palestine, making their dismantling very difficult for the authorities. In Europe, there are approximately 3000 criminal organizations involved in trafficking people. Their market analysis approach is based on a simple equation: high profit–low risk. They know which border crossing poses the lowest risk at any given time in

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Syria (3RP+HRP) (52%) South Sudan (9%) Somalia (6%) Iraq (6%)

0.32 0.35 0.39

DRC (5%) Palestine (4%)

0.57

Chad (4%) Afghanistan (3%)

0.57

Mali (2%) 7.73

0.69

Niger (2%) Cameroon (2%) Nigeria (2%)

0.86

Myanmar (1%) Libya (1%) Burkina Faso (1%) 0.89

Mauritania (1%) Senegal (