Secrecy and the making of CFSP

Abstract

How can we understand the role of secrecy in the making of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)? This article analyses the nature of secrecy and questions some of the main assumptions surrounding the concept. In this respect, it argues that secrecy may be of functional necessity for policy-makers and actually compatible with good governance. Moreover, we must not put too much stock in transparency alone in that the relationship between secrecy and transparency is not zero-sum ‒ historically, transparency has sometimes been an instrument of control and domination. The article considers the case of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to shed light on what kind of secrecy exists in the foreign policy area, and argues that this is mainly a combination of functional and compound secrecy.