European Geostrategy | 5:32, 19 July 2010

By Sven Biscop

For a long time, strategic studies and European studies appeared to mutually ignore if not disdain each other. In the context of the Cold War, strategic studies concentrated on the exercise of hard power as an instrument of foreign policy. Its natural focus was the military strategy of the United States and the Soviet Union. Ignoring the European Economic Community, which except for the informal consultation mechanism of European Political Cooperation did not venture into the realm of foreign policy, let alone security and defence policy, came equally naturally. European studies, for the most part, did not look at the European Community as an actor in the field of security and defence either, turning instead to conceptualisations of the Community as a ‘civilian power’ or, more recently, a ‘normative power’.

Even when the European Union came into existence alongside the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), to be followed by the European, now Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), many scholars focused their efforts on trying to explain how these developments did not detract from Europe’s status as a civilian or normative power. Others, who thought these developments did just that, offered recommendations to put things right, as if somehow it would be wrong for the European Union to venture onto another path and become a fully-fledged actor in the field of security and defence. Strategic studies scholars meanwhile, if they could be convinced at all to allow themselves to be distracted for a moment and take a look at the European Union, did not take the tentative steps of the CFSP and CSDP very seriously.

The cause of this dichotomy is that both strategic studies and European studies scholars for the most part have a very narrow interpretation of the notion of strategy. Too often, strategy is understood as pertaining only to the use of military force to achieve political ends. If analysed through this lens, the European Union obviously is less well developed than other, unitary actors. Many scholars of European Union politics rightfully reject such an exclusively military-oriented approach for ideological reasons or because, less obviously, strategic studies is associated with an exclusively realist approach to foreign policy. Many strategic studies scholars on the other hand feel that the European Union is too insignificant an actor in the field of security and defence to merit their attention – although every classic author about strategy actually warns again underestimating the enemy.

However, military force, even coercive instruments in the broader sense, are but one of a much broader range of instruments at the disposal of a foreign policy actor. Admittedly the most dramatic tool, force, is also the instrument of last resort – an actor that had no other available instruments, would not last very long. As on the international scene, the European Union, a state-like actor, is much more than a military actor – like any other actor for that matter – no useful analysis of it can be limited to military strategy.

Even during the Cold War, the ‘traditional’ strategic studies perspective was too reductionist. A broader understanding of strategy is needed if the strategic lens is to be valuable in analysing and interpreting today’s world. If the notion of strategy has its origin in the study of the use of force as a tool of policy, today its application is much broader. Even without including the private sector, a logical application is found throughout all policy areas addressed by public authorities. Inspired by the tradition of public management or policy science, strategy can therefore be defined as a policy-making tool which, on the basis of the values and interests of the actor in question, outlines the long-term overall policy objectives to be achieved and the basic categories of instruments to be applied to that end.

Applying this definition to the European Union as an international actor, strategy refers to a comprehensive foreign policy strategy, covering all dimensions of external action, from aid and trade to diplomacy and the military. In other words: a grand strategy. A military strategy thus is no more – and no less – than a sub-strategy to the overall foreign policy strategy. The latter serves as a referential framework for day-to-day policy-making in a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex international environment, and guides the definition of the means – in case the civilian and military capabilities – that need to be developed.

Clearly, this updated definition of strategy can no longer be exclusively tied to the Realist school. Not that that ever made sense: a strategy inspired by a realist world view is just one option out of many that any international actor can follow. The 2003 European Security Strategy, with its focus on a preventive, holistic and multilateral approach, proves as much. As strategy concerns foreign policy in its entirety, civilian or normative power should not be seen as being in contradiction with the development of military power by the European Union, but as complementary dimensions of a single grand strategy. Furthermore, every theoretical school captures only part of the European Union. The strategic perspective by contrast offers a methodology rather than a theory, which can be applied regardless of the different International Relations schools and their proselytes, and which immediately yields policy-relevant results.

Thus, this modernised, broader definition of strategy allows for the useful application of the strategic perspective to the European Union, which has become an actor in its own right in all fields of foreign and security policy. It can no longer be ignored by strategists.

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