Rise and Decline of EU Security and Defense Policy

Abstract

The European Union and Military Force: Governance and Strategy. By Per M. Norheim-Martinsen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 230 pp., £57 (hardcover) (ISBN 978-1-107-02890-6). The EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) got off to a promising start at the turn of the century but has turned out to be a disappointment. Per M. Norheim-Martinsen's (PMNM) new book on the CSDP is a welcome contribution to the debate over why this happened. PMNM is not a CSDP pessimist, to the contrary. Early on, he launches a criticism of scholars who harbor doubts about the viability of common European foreign/security/defense policy considering Europe's fragmentation. Their argument really “obscures” the complex reality of European security governance, PMNM argues, and the emergence of a limited but still real “strategic actor” capacity within the European Union (2013:8–30). PMNM thus aligns with the “governance turn” and analysts who argue that political authority today emerges out of multiple centers of power—ranging from the state to a multitude of public and private actors—and the capacity for collective action that shared ideas provide (Kirchner 2006; Kirchner and Sperling 2007; Webber 2007). At heart, therefore, a shared set of ideas makes possible the CSDP. These ideas are today captured by the EU's “comprehensive …