European Union’s Crisis Response Potential and Military-Technical Cooperation of the EU member-states

Abstract

The article analyzes the origins and current trends in the development of the crisis response structures and mechanisms within the European Union. The reasons for the failures of the EU in the implementation of the plans of previous decades to create EU Armed Forces separate from NATO are being considered. Thirty-four military, police, border and consultative operations and EU missions in conflict regions are being typologized in the article. It is concluded that the most in-demand operations were EU police and numerous "training" or "consultative" missions aimed at creating modern and professional state security forces in unstable regions. Although formally the European Union is only a subregional international organization, in practice the EU does not consider it necessary to legitimize its own interventions into conflicts through UN mechanisms. Operations and missions are conducted on the basis of the European Council's own policy decisions. However, the EU does not conduct openly coercive military-political missions on its own, leaving decisions on them to the UN Security Council. The article analyzes the structure, types, purposes of several dozen programs of military-technical and military-political cooperation implemented by the European Union within the framework of the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation Program (PESCO). The author structurally subdivides PESCO programs into groups: structures and means of joint crisis response, military-infrastructure programs, naval initiatives, programs in information and communication and cyber-spheres, logistics and military-medical programs, military-training programs. The content of each group's programs is reviewed in detail. The article substantiates the conclusion that the implementation of the currently announced PESCO programs will strengthen mostly the EU's marginal (background) capabilities in operations and missions under the Common Security and Defense Policy. PESCO does not actually include programs directly aimed at any drastic improvement of capability for missions and operations in crisis and conflict regions outside the EU.