Prosocial power Europe? The European Union as a military actor

Abstract

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the rapid development of the new European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) that also included a military dimension and thus embodied the emergence of the European Union (EU) as a military actor on the international scene. This phenomenon had a major impact on the literature concerned with understanding the international role of the EU. For some authors, the birth of the EU as a military actor looked like the beginning of the end for both ‘civilian power Europe’ and ‘normative power Europe’. For others, the emergence of the EU as a military actor meant the birth of the EU as ‘real power Europe’ on the international scene. Using a different perspective, this thesis shows that the existing interpretations of the international implications of the EU’s rise as a military actor missed the most significant aspect of this phenomenon because of their focus on means and the underlying assumption that means determine ends. This thesis uses the social scientific perspective developed by Alexander Wendt in the context of his social theory of international politics to argue that the rapid development of the EU as a military actor in the first decade of the twenty first century supported the transition of the international system from a Lockean security culture to a Kantian security culture. In contrast to a Lockean system, where military actors do not completely exclude the use of violence in the settlement of their disputes, in a Kantian system, military actors do not only exclude settling disputes by violence (the principle of non violence), but they also help each other in the event of an attack on any one by a third party (the principle of mutual assistance). The Wendtian perspective focuses on actors as the drivers of cultural continuity and change in the international system and sees the Kantian transition as the main challenge for the contemporary international system. The Kantian transition in turn depends on prosocial actors that act as friends in relation to the Other with respect to the use of violence. Accordingly, studying the emergence of the EU as a military actor in the light of the Wendtian perspective involves testing the EU against the model of the Wendtian prosocial actor. The analysis performed in this thesis shows that in its first ten years as an emerging military actor the EU behaved primarily as a prosocial actor and thus supported the Kantian transition in the international system.