Since its launching in 1999, the European Union's Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP)—an extension into the security realm of the antecedent Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)—has held the promise of being the vehicle through which the community could assert itself on the world stage with less inhibition and fewer means than in the past. Officials and observers have both been keenly aware that the ability of the EU to become substantive and meaningful could determine if Europe is simply an economic entity or also a valid actor in high politics. Is it an autonomous force in the latter sphere or simply a loose component of the nebulous entity call the West? Does it have its own political persona, purposes, and capabilities, or is it fated to be an auxiliary of American power and policy? Providing answers that are persuasive—to publics as well as political elites—is the sine qua non for meeting Europe's obligation to itself and to the rest of the world.
One of the great virtues of Michael Merlingen's rigorous and insightful study is its awareness of the full meaning of CSDP. In a systematic analysis that displays mastery of his multifaceted subject, he sets clear measures by which to gauge the project's trajectory and to evaluate the concrete initiatives that have been taken. Focused case material is examined with its broader significance and meaning explicated throughout. In this respect, it is a model blending of the conceptual to the empirical. We, as the students of the phenomena, are the beneficiaries who owe a debt to the author.
Merlingen begins by laying out four reasons why the CSDP matters—to the EU, to the world, and to those devoted to assaying the ramifications. First, there is the noteworthy milestone that CDSP represents in Europe's evolution. As he says, “the EU has graduated from security receiver to security provider.” That is evinced in the “more than twenty civilian and military peace, stabilization and reconstruction operations fielded so far.”
Second, the “EU's role in international security management is bound to grow as international security interdependence rises” with the end of the Cold War. This certainly is true; witness the European role in dealing with the diverse challenges engendered by the Arab Spring.
Third, there is the growth of the EU's military power, which will “hasten the end of the US unipolar period in international security affairs.” This last contention is open to debate, as Merlingen acknowledges. Military power in and of itself does not ensure greater activism on hard security problems. There is a crucial element of political will that translates potential into actual influence. One of the Europeans' key liabilities is the absence of a unity of analysis and a unity of will that is difficult to achieve among 27 sovereign decision centers. This is very much on the author's mind as he proceeds to the case studies and in those chapters where he looks soberly at what the record indicates for the longer term—especially for the modalities of the transatlantic partnership.
The fourth reason offered points to the world of scholarship. As the author rightly argues, “students of international politics cannot afford to ignore the CSDP as a real world laboratory in which academic theories can be tested.” He might have added, following his own logic, that it behooves policymakers as well (above all in Washington) to enlighten themselves to what Europe has been doing and what it may well be doing in the future. The disparagement in the United States of the EU as a world actor outside the economic sphere is a noteworthy feature of dealings between America and Europe that should be corrected in the interests of all parties.
On this last issue, the author provides a succinct and pointed analysis of the divergent Atlanticist and Europeanist perspectives on the CSDP. While recognizing that the line between the two camps has become blurred, there do remain underlying differences as to the two sides' terms of engagement. They will surface whenever an issue arises that is deemed consequential by most governments and where there is a lack of unanimity as to how to proceed. To the extent that Merlingen's forecast of a more active and more willful EU comes to pass, those occasions are likely to be more frequent and the resulting reconciliation more difficult. This holds true even if the American view that “the United States' policy toward Europe is no longer about Europe…. [I]t's about the rest of the world” is correct. After all, the most fraught moments have been associated with Iraq, Libya, and, sotto voce, Bahrain.
The American preference for compartmentalizing the CSDP geographically (except where it is seen as a vehicle for mobilizing European support for ventures conceived and led by the United States) is on a collision course with the Europeans' preference for globalizing its external policies. How the resulting tensions work themselves out will be a function of broader trends on both sides of the Atlantic that reflect facing up to, or trying to ignore, historic shifts in the international system. As Merlingen notes, a more self-assured Europe could contribute to a transition in strategic thinking in Washington that accords with the logic of the times. At the same time, a new strategic realism on the part of American leaders necessarily would entail giving Europe a bigger, more important role on the international scene. The chapter on the CSDP and Russia is informed by an understanding that relations with powers made cogent by propinquity and interdependence also have this inescapably wider dimension.
For 60 years, Europe could afford to be strategically parochial, or so it thought—so long as America tended to matters elsewhere around the globe, even if its manner of doing so did not always elicit praise. That dominant/subordinate relationship has continued to inflect their interaction and impinges as well on the Europeans' sense of self, along with their aptitude for autonomous behavior. Such a long hiatus in exercising normal powers of sovereignty, set in the broader context of overweening American cultural and intellectual influence, has inescapably created a culture of inequality. The ascent of the CSDF is concrete evidence that this psychology is shifting. If successful, it will liberate Europe while making it more capable of advancing its interests. There is no better guide to this ongoing process than Merlingen's book.
