Solving the Rubik's Cube of European Security Strategy - Strategic Culture in the European External Action Service

Abstract

A rapidly changing, increasingly complex and contentious global security environment has led to the European Union re-assessing its role as a strategic actor through the drafting of 2016’s new security strategy: the European Global Strategy. The new strategy has furthermore been followed by a number of initiatives to strengthen the military dimension of the EU. In the midst of this are the High Representative of Foreign and Security Policy and the diplomatic service of the EU – the European External Action Service – supporting the High Representative in her task to bring consistency to the foreign and security policy of the EU.

These new developments entail new empirical material, which warrants for new systematic inquiry into the EU as a strategic actor. The present thesis engages in that endeavour through the theoretical framework of strategic culture, applying it on the European External Action Service. In its coordinative role to overbridge the three-dimensional foreign and security policy institutional structures – a bureaucratic Rubik’s cube – the EEAS may prove an important piece in the puzzle of the EU’s strategic culture.

The present study argues that the EU strategic community now is at a critical juncture, at which it is susceptible to alterations in its strategic culture. Consequently, elements of a distinctive shared strategic culture are emerging within the EEAS, characterised mainly by a three-dimensional – Rubik’s cube-like – integrated approach to conflicts and crises that takes into consideration time, geography and the thematic issue at stake. This integrated approach is considered distinctive to the EU, as the EU can draw on a unique range of capacities at its disposal. Finally, this thesis offers the conceptualisation of the EEAS as a physically embodied epistemic community, which due to its expertise on security and defence and control over knowledge and information is well-positioned to be the engine room of European strategic culture.