European Defense Policy and International Relations Theory

Introduction :

The European security and defense policy (ESDP) is one of those topics that makes you wonder whether too many academics are studying too few actors who have too little money. After all, we are talking of 200-odd EU officials who manage no more than a few hundred million euros. Compared to NATO or the German army, the numbers are rather small. On the face of it, Andrew Moravcsik may have been right when he wrote that ESDP was but a "pipe dream."

Or is it ? When one includes the multibillion euro defense firms that now deal with the European Defense Agency on a regular basis and the hundreds of military officers who plan EU exercises in their respective defense ministries, one begins to see the importance of ESDP. In less than 10 years, the EU has conducted almost 20 crisis management operations, some small like the border assistance mission in Palestine, others big like the 7,000-strong peacekeeping force in Bosnia. The European Force deployed to Chad last February saw a first soldier, Sergeant Polin, die for the Union.

To carry out these operations, the EU has created a host of political-military bodies : the Political and Security Committee (COPS), where decision-making takes place ; the EU Military Committee, which gathers chiefs of defense ; and an ever expanding EU Military Staff. The European Defense Agency, which aims at streamlining procurement in what remains an extremely fragmented defense market, is ruled by a board of defense ministers that uses the ultimate sovereignty taboo : qualified majority voting. Despite the many shortcomings of ESDP, no other regional organization has gone so far in building its own military arm, and European defense is hugely popular, often more so than the EU itself. The symbolic dimension of European defense was not lost on Nicolas Sarkozy, who declared it to be one of the priorities of the French presidency in 2008.

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