The EU, Strategy and Security Policy ─ Regional and Strategic Challenges

This book investigates the areas where the EU has established actorness in the security and defence field and offers a contemporary assessment of the challenges and possibilities for reviving the CSDP.

Despite a special European Council summit in December 2013 on defence, it is generally acknowledged that the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has yet to acquire a clear sense of purpose. The piecemeal nature of the summit conclusions showed the lack of an over-arching strategy, and the sense that the CSDP is, if not in crisis, at best in a state of stasis. This feeling of a project which has lost its way makes this book, which investigates where the pieces of EU security strategy might fit together in future, a timely undertaking.

It considers the regions where the EU has been active as a security actor, the strategic challenges that it has identified alongside the strategic opportunities and barriers posed by a multiplicity of actors, interests and priorities identified by both member states and EU actors. In order to bring together academic and policy perspectives, the authors are from a range of think tank and academic backgrounds.

It is divided into three substantive but complementary sections covering regional challenges, strategic challenges, and strategic barriers and opportunities. Taking a critical view, the volume aims to map the EU’s strategic vision(s) across key regions, identified strategic priorities and cross-cutting challenges in order to assess the extent to which these add up to anything more than a series of disjointed actions. By doing this, it demonstrates where gaps in strategic thinking lie, where the EU has been unable to achieve its aims, and offer recommendations concerning the EU’s future strategic direction.

This book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU policy, strategic studies and IR in general.