This book presents an up-to-date, scholarly analysis of European crisis management during the 1990s and is one of the first books to summarize European experiences in the field of peacekeeping and crisis management. With the help of eight case studies, the authors explore how European governments have responded to international crises. The book also contains in-depth studies on key concepts like humanitarian intervention, military doctrine and Petersberg tasks. The book describes Europe's increasing responsibility for the proper functioning of international society. It points to a pronounced move to collective action and highlights Europe's political and military adaptation to the post-Cold War strategic environment. The authors detect an ever stronger belief in the use of military power and thereby the contours of an emerging common European identity within the field of crisis management. The book establishes an agenda for future research on European crisis management and out-of-area operations. It will be of prime interest to students of international relations, European studies, foreign policy analysis, international organization, crisis management and conflict resolution, and will also be essential reading for all those who need a practical survey of the latest developments in the field of international crisis management.

A state-of-the-art consideration of the European Union's crisis response mechanisms based on comparative fieldwork in a number of cases.

This book explores European Union crisis management and draws implications for its role as an international security actor. The success of EU crisis management has varied greatly and this book aims to identify the key factors that explain the differing degrees of coherence through a comparative analysis of its multidimensional crisis responses in Africa. The empirical focus lies on three prominent EU crisis management cases, namely Libya in 2011, Somalia in 2011-2012, and the Sahel in 2012-2013. It analyses the activities and interaction of EU institutional actors and member states, with a focus on France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The book argues that the EU represents a rather unpredictable security actor, whose multi-level coherence is contingent on the congruence of domestic economic and electoral interests, as well as national threat perceptions, and the extent to which EU-level coherence norms resonate with national norms on the use of force and modes of multilateral cooperation. In sum, this book offers systematic insight into EU crisis management and clarifies the conceptual and empirical boundaries of the comprehensive approach. Finally, the study of the micro-foundations of coherence allows for policy-relevant suggestions on the EU’s future role as a security actor. This book will be of much interest to students of EU policy, European Security, Peace and Conflict Studies, African Politics and IR in general.

Over the past fifty years, crisis management has become essential to achieving and maintaining national security. This book offers a comparative analysis of the preconditions and constraints nine European states place on their participation in international crisis management operations and the important consequences of such decisions, and provides a theoretical framework to help the reader understand this complex decision-making process.

With her research, Svenja Post offers an in-depth analysis of the implementation of the Comprehensive Approach in international crisis management both on EU and on member state national level. The author demonstrates in detail which steps have been taken on conceptual and on structural level by the EU and its member states Great Britain, Germany and Sweden to organize and realize crisis management coherence. In addition to identifying challenges involved actors are confronted with, Svenja Post also points out a set of recommendations for future efforts to close the gap between aspiration and reality of comprehensive European crisis management.

This innovative and timely consideration of the European Union’s crisis response mechanisms brings together scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to examine how and why the EU responds to crises on its borders and further afield. The work is based on extensive fieldwork in – among other places – Afghanistan, Libya, Mali and Iraq. The book considers the construction of crises and how some issues are deemed crises and others not. A major finding from this comparative study is that EU crisis response interventions have been placing increasing emphasis on security and stabilisation and less emphasis on human rights and democratisation. This changes – quite fundamentally – the EU’s stance as an international actor and leads to questions about the nature of the European Union and how it perceives itself and is perceived by others.

This book explores the drivers of the EU’s recent forays into peace- and state-building operations. Since the Union’s European (now Common) Security and Defence Policy (ESDP/CSDP) became operational in 2003, the EU has conducted more than 20 civilian and military operations that broadly served to either deter aggression in host countries, and/or to build or strengthen the rule of law. This sudden burst of EU activity in the realm of external security is interesting from both a scholarly and a policy perspective. On one hand, institutionalised cooperation in the field of foreign, security and defence policy challenges the mainstream in IR theory which holds that in such sovereignty-sensitive areas cooperation would necessarily be limited. On the other hand, the sheer quantity of operations suggests that the ESDP may represent a potentially significant feature of global governance. In order to understand the drivers behind CSDP, EU Foreign Policy and Crisis Management Operations analyses the policy output in this area, including the operations conducted in the CSDP framework. Up until now, many studies inferred the logic behind CSDP from express intentions, institutional developments and (the potential of) pooled capabilities. By mining the rich data that CSDP operations represent in terms of the motives and ambitions of EU governments for the CSDP, this book advances our understanding of the framework at large. This book will be of much interest to students of European Security, EU policy, peacebuilding, statebuilding, and IR.