Benjamin Zyla

European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation?

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in crisis management and stabilization in places near and far, this Special Issue examines whether European security behaviour is evidence of an actual strategic culture. Contrary to prevailing scholarship on the subject, this volume demonstrates that strategic culture, as an analytical tool and force on European strategic goals and conduct, is far from conclusive. Ostensibly, the development of a security culture was a major lever by which the European Unions principal planning document, the European Security Strategy of 2003, tried to guide the European Unions role in international security. This volume revisits the trajectory of the concept of strategic culture and examines its application in a variety of circumstances, especially operations in Africa and the Balkans, including joint operations with NATO and the United Nations. The contributors to this Special Issue find that strategic culture is a useful tool to understand EUs operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a uniquely European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Classical notions of strategic culture must be adapted to highlight the specific evolution of Europes strategic culture. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defense missions have promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors in this Special Issue reveal a growing sense that a strategic culture is critical for European ambition as a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its ambitions and the normative framework that underpins it will unravel.

Overlap or Opposition? EU and NATO's Strategic (Sub-)Culture

This paper discusses the inter-organizational relationship of the two leading security organizations in Europe: the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rather than discussing the two organizations’ material overlaps, the paper discusses their quest for organizational identity and role in the domain of foreign and defence policy, as well as the ideational structures that affect both institutions’ social behaviour and their behaviour toward each other. It aims first to tease out how structures of meaning in the form of norms, values, and beliefs have affected the two organizations’ behaviour toward each other; and second to introduce explanatory arguments about their subcultural relationship that can help explain their attitudinal divergences. The article makes two arguments: First, there is a significant normative overlap between the two institutions, especially with regards to future challenges and threats and the role of third parties and international organizations. Second, I introduce a preliminary argument by holding that the best way to make sense of the ideational divergences between the two organizations is to conceptualize NATOs strategic culture as a subculture of the European Unions strategic culture.

Explaining Canada’s practices of burden-sharing in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) through its norm of “external responsibility”

While Canadian burden-sharing practices within NATO in the 1990s are well documented, the data in the literature raise two central questions: (1) was the practice of Canadian burden-sharing a one-time event, or was it part of a larger pattern of practices? and (2) what factors motivated Canada to shoulder the burden to the extent that it did? This article studies the extent of Canada’s burden-sharing practices in the context of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. The article makes two arguments: first, Canada’s commitment to NATO continued to be strong post-9/11; second, Canada’s practices of sharing Atlantic burdens can be explained by its adherence to the norm of “external responsibility,” which guided its foreign policy by appealing to Canada’s humanitarian responsibilities to contribute at an extraordinary level to the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security.

Who is free-riding in NATO’s peace operations in the 1990s?

ABSTRACT It is commonly accepted that peace operations produce public goods. Informed by theories of collective action, the article tests the claim that middle powers were free-riders in NATO’s peace operations in the Balkans (IFOR, SFOR, KFOR) from 1995–2001. In so doing, we charge that calculating the level of defence spending as a share of a country’s GDP, which has become the standard index in the literature, is limiting. We suggest that the active military-duty force share index is a better index to use, and find that middle powers did not free-ride in NATO’s peace operations in the 1990s. Quite to the contrary: they contributed more to NATO’s public good of peacekeeping than countries like France or Germany, and more than expected based on their economic abilities measured in GDP. The article then asks what could be inferred from this analysis, and offers theoretical and methodological points of critique before suggesting new avenues for future research in this vibrant research programme.

Untying the Knot? Assessing the compatibility of the American and European strategic culture under President Obama

This article analyses the similarities and differences of the latest American and European security strategies under President Obama in order to make inferences about the degree of compatibility of their deep-seated and shared norms, beliefs and ideas regarding the means and ends of national security, and to better understand the normative continuity/discontinuity of those norms of the Obama vs. Bush administration. Building upon constructivist work on strategic cultures, the article concentrates on a qualitative analysis of elite security discourses and disaggregates them into their normative and ideational components. By studying strategic cultures empirically and comparatively, the study fills a known void in the literature on strategic cultures. It finds that American and European norms, beliefs and ideas about the means and ends of national security policy are compatible with regards to challenges and threats as well as preferred modes of international cooperation; they are incompatible with regards to commonly held beliefs about the international system and how to address threats, which is worry some politically. Moreover, the article finds that there is a continuity in the US security strategies from President Bush to Obama.

The AfPak Campaign and the Limits of Canadian Diplomacy

Initially, recognition of the vital role played by regional diplomacy did not accompany NATO’s substantial commitment to economic and political development in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Pakistan in particular had a major influence on the conduct of reconstruction efforts and NATO’s efforts to lay the institutional foundations in Afghanistan. Canada, an early and committed participant in the International Security Assistance Force, would by 2005 come to recognise the vital importance of the role of Pakistan in the outcome of the mission. However, regional limits to the influence of the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and Canada made comprehensive efforts unattainable.

Years of Free-Riding? Canada, the New NATO, and Collective Crisis Management in Europe, 1989–2001

Most discussions about the impact of Afghanistan on the future of NATO focus on transatlantic relations between the United States and the European Union. But for Canada, which is one of the few NATO allies that voluntarily deployed into the south, facing heavy resistance and fighting from Taliban insurgents, the Afghanistan operations have become the most salient dimension of its continued involvement in the Atlantic Alliance. While this may seem surprising, given the cutbacks in Canadian defense spending in the 1990s and the withdrawal of Canadas standing forces from Germany, it should not. For during that so-called dark decade, Canada continued to make major contributions to NATO and European security. This essay argues that Ottawas multi-faceted military and political support of the “new” NATO of the post–Cold War era continued when the alliance undertook its involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed, in its efforts in support of NATOs mission in Afghanistan, Canada has demonstrated a dedication to the alliance that seems stronger than NATOs collective commitment to itself.