What kind of power is the EU? The EU’s policies toward North Korea’s WMD programs and the debate about the EU’s role in the security arena

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to critically examine the EU’s policies toward North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. By analyzing the EU’s approach to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, this article contributes to the debate about what kind of an actor the EU really is—i.e., whether it is a military power, a civilian power, or a normative power—in the security arena of world politics. As an autocratic regime with fundamental problems in relation to the proliferation of WMD and human rights, North Korea presents a good test case for considering the contested concept of EU’s international identity. The central thesis explored in the present article is that the EU is, strictly speaking, neither a military, nor a civilian, nor a normative power. That said, the EU’s international identity is closest to the concept of a global civilian power.