Jolyon M Howorth

The governance of European security

This article seeks to develop a concept of ‘security governance’ in the context of post-Cold War Europe. The validity of a governance approach lies in its ability to locate some of the distinctive ways in which European security has been coordinated, managed and regulated. Based on an examination of the way governance is utilised in other political fields of political analysis, the article identifies the concept of security governance as involving the coordinated management and regulation of issues by multiple and separate authorities, the interventions of both public and private actors (depending upon the issue), formal and informal arrangements, in turn structured by discourse and norms, and purposefully directed toward particular policy outcomes. Three issues are examined to demonstrate the utility of the concept of security governance for understanding security in post-Cold War Europe: the transformation of NATO, the Europeanisation of security accomplished through EU-led initiatives and, finally, the resultant dynamic relationship between forms of exclusion and inclusion in governance.

European Defence and the Changing Politics of the European Union: Hanging Together or Hanging Separately?

This article assesses the implications of the common European security and defence policy (CESDP) for shifts in both the politics and the policy-making procedures of the European Union. It analyses the emerging dynamics of the new institutional structures of CESDP launched in 2000 (COPS, EUMC, EUMS, HR-CFSP) and in particular the tensions between national capitals and the process of ‘Brusselization’ in the definition and formulation of European foreign and security policy. It argues that, in the field of crisis management, the requirements of rapid decision-making and efficient implementation will increasingly favour Brussels as the locus of policy formulation. This process will be enhanced by the growing role in CESDP of military officials and of defence ministries, which will take primary responsibility for the shape and remit of the nascent European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF). The article also assesses the problems facing EU governments in selling CESDP to their publics. This involves the construction of a discourse which, both cognitively and normatively, can persuade electorates coming from very different security cultures of the necessity and appropriateness of the project. It also requires governments, sooner or later, to make the case for increased defence spending.

The EU as a Global Actor: Grand Strategy for a Global Grand Bargain?

Like it or not, the European Union, in the wake of Lisbon, has become an international actor. It now faces two major external challenges. The first is to develop a strategic vision for a potentially tumultuous emerging multi-polar world. The European Councils December 2008 ‘Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy’ recognized that, over the last five years, the threats facing the EU had become ‘increasingly complex’, that ‘we must be ready to shape events [by] becoming more strategic in our thinking’. The second challenge is to help nudge the other major actors towards a multilateral global grand bargain. Such a bargain will be the necessary outcome of the transition from a US-dominated post-1945 liberal world order, towards a new 21st-century order accommodating the rising powers and sensitive to the needs of the global south. Without such a comprehensive and co-operative bargain, the emerging multi-polar world will be rife with tensions and highly conflict-prone.

Discourse, Ideas, and Epistemic Communities in European Security and Defence Policy

politics and international relations comparable in significance to those of 1789–95, 1917–19 and 1945–49. The major difference with those previous turning points was the absence of war and violence as midwife. Ideas, as well as ‘reality’, were able to come fully into play. For the first time in two centuries, history offered international actors a relatively blank sheet of paper on which to write the outlines of a new world order. It also seemed to offer a reasonable breathing space during which to draft that blueprint. And yet, as a recent collected volume has demonstrated (Niblett and Wallace 2001), most European governments initially responded neither rationally (as some insist they do) nor constructively (as others suggest they can). Instead, the picture was, at least until 1997, at best one of ‘disjointed incrementalism’ (Wallace 2001: 286), at worst one of dithering, drift and perceived impotence. Sir Michael Howard (1990), pondering the 30-yearlong stranglehold of Cold War ideas, noted in his Alastair Buchan lecture to IISS in March 1990: ‘We became so accustomed to the prison that history had built for us that, like recidivists or long-term hospital patients, we became almost incapable of visualising any other kind of existence. No other world, it seemed, could exist.’ Yet this was the first major shift in the geology of international relations since the establishment of the discipline itself. Research institutes and think-tanks existed in all European countries. Ideas abounded, and policy papers tumbled off the printers in a neverending stream. New thinking and new ideas eventually played a vital role in the shift towards new policy preferences and even a new policy paradigm. The role of legitimating discourse is more complex. In some countries it worked, in others it did not. This article will attempt to explain why. Stuart Croft (2000) analysed the clash of ideas involved in four ‘security narratives’ that competed with each other in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. He suggested a variety of largely politico-ideational reasons for Discourse, Ideas, and Epistemic Communities in European Security and Defence Policy

Britain, France and the European Defence Initiative

Since late 1998, a Franco-British engine has driven remarkable progress in European defence. Continued progress, however, will depend on a basic agreement on ultimate goals between the leading partners. Are the French and the British really on the same wavelength? Are their visions for ESDP equally compatible with a strengthened and re-balanced Alliance? While London and Paris have successfully married their policies for the short-term, it is unclear whether, in the longer term, their strategic ambitions can be reconciled. France wants to promote a European project (ESDP) by using an Atlanticist instrument (NATO). The UK aims first and foremost to preserve the cohesion of the Alliance, by using a European instrument (ESDP). The compatibility of these aims in the long term will depend on the evolution of the Alliance itself. Without genuine mutual understanding and a clear common purpose - particularly between London and Paris - the Alliance could begin to unravel.

Still Not Pushing Back Why the European Union Is Not Balancing the United States

A recent wave of scholarly literature has argued forcibly that the European Union’s European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) represents an attempt on the part of the EU to “balance” against the United States. According to such analyses, the EU is reacting to American global preeminence by building up its military capacities to enhance its own ability to play a significant, autonomous role in international affairs. This article takes issue with such claims. It points, first, to significant theoretical and methodological shortcomings inherent in the work of the “soft balancers.” Second, and more fundamentally, it subjects this work to careful empirical scrutiny and illustrates how the soft balancers have fundamentally misunderstood ESDP. Finally, it illustrates how such misinterpretations result from a failure to appreciate the profound impact that institutional structures wield over substantive outcomes in international security affairs.

Decision-making in security and defence policy: towards supranational intergovernmentalism?

For scholars and practitioners of European politics alike, the distinction between supranationalism and inter-governmentalism has always been fundamental. This distinction has underpinned the various schools of European integration theory, just as it has remained crucial for European governments keen to demonstrate that the Member States remain in charge of key policy areas. Nowhere is this considered to be more central than in the area of foreign and security policy, which has consciously been set within the rigid intergovernmental framework of Pillar Two of the Maastricht Treaty and, under the Lisbon Treaty, remains subject to the unanimity rule. However, scholarship on the major decision-making agencies of the foreign and security policy of the EU suggests that the distinction is not only blurred but increasingly meaningless. This article demonstrates that, in virtually every case, decisions are shaped and even taken by small groups of relatively well-socialized officials in the key committees acting in a mode which is as close to supranational as it is to intergovernmental.

The Political and Security Committee: A Case Study in 'Supranational Inter-Governmentalism'

The distinctive profile of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) as it has emerged to date is complex and far-ranging. It involves the mobilisation – in the cause of international crisis management, regional stabilisation, nation-building and post-conflict reconstruction – of a vast range of policy instruments: from sophisticated weaponry and robust policing capacity, to gender mainstreaming techniques and cultural assistance; from rapid-reaction battle-groups and strategic transport aircraft, to judges, penitentiary officers and human rights experts; from state capacity-building resources to frontier-control expertise. The role, in this gestation, of the key policy-shaping instrument which has underpinned ESDP – the Political and Security Committee (PSC) – has been noted by several scholars. The principal substantive argument of this study, the first comprehensive analysis of the workings of this committee, is that the normative socialisation processes which inform the work of the PSC have succeeded to an appreciable extent in allowing a trans-European strategic culture to begin to stamp its imprint on one of the EU’s principal foreign policy projects. A supranational culture is emerging from an intergovernmental process. The PSC has emerged, to a significant degree, as script-writer for ESDP.

NATO's Triple Challenge

NATOs future is again the subject of speculation and debate despite its having fought a recent and apparently successful war in Kosovo. This article proposes that there are three aspects to this challenge. First, NATO is facing a series of dilemmas in its relations with non-members: how should it manage relations with Russia, and with the applicants for membership? The authors argue that NATO should seek to develop a consolidationist posture. The second challenge is that of developing an EU–NATO partnership in the light of the Helsinki Headline Goals. This, it is proposed, can be developed through a division of labour. The third task, that of military restructuring, is overshadowed by the complexities of processing a working European military structure. In conclusion, the authors suggest that a strategy for the alliance, a key component of the Cold War, but subsequently lost, can be refashioned from the above elements.

The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy

Our title, Defending Europe, was chosen because its double meaning reflects the central themes of this book. All of the chapters that follow deal with issues related to the profound transformation of policy for the defense of Europe and the assurance of its security, as formulated within both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, all of the chapters address the issue of how new institutional arrangements may be viewed, in part, as devices for defending Europe’s interests or enhancing its influence vis-a-vis an increasingly hegemonic United States within the Atlantic Alliance. “Not since Rome has a single power enjoyed such superiority,” as Timothy Garton Ash noted recently—“but the Roman colossus only bestrode one part of the world.”1 As figure 1.1 illustrates, the U.S. defense budget is now five times that of Russia and is larger than the combined defense budgets of the next nine states on the top ten list.