Institutional imperatives of system change

Abstract

Cold War: the Union, NATO, the WEU and (to a lesser extent) the OSCE. It examines their development and analyses their interrelationship: what we have learned to call the European 'security architecture'. The final section of the chapter deals with the issue of the Union's role in world politics post-Cold War. European foreign and security policy This section presents a detailed analysis of European foreign and security policy as it has emerged after nearly fifty years of efforts by the EC/EU, dating back to the early 1950s with the European Defence Community (EDC) saga, and bringing us up to the Amsterdam and Nice reforms of October 1997 and February 2001, respectively. Attention is given not only to the CFSP itself, but also to its predecessor, EPC, which spanned nearly a quarter of a century (1970-93) before it was replaced by the CFSP with the coming into force of the TEU. One needs to stress a fundamental difference in the efforts at foreign and security policy cooperation before and after the Cold War, as the latter offered (Western) Europe two fundamentally different scenarios, one prior to, and one after, its demise. The dominant view from 1947 until 1989 was one favouring integration in an effort to protect the free Western side of Europe from succumbing to the communist threat of the Soviet empire (accompanied by similar economic and social efforts against the internal threat of communism, especially in France and Italy). This created a 'West versus East' divide that coloured all integration efforts in 'high politics' areas prior to 1989. After 1989, the security challenge has become one of integrating the East into the existing foreign and security structures of the West and, of course, of adapting them to this new international environment. Whereas the first phase was one of 'exclusion' , the second, and current, phase is one of 'inclusion'. The implications are enormous for integration theory and practice as they address totally different requirements. Pre-1989, defence meant that integration efforts were geographically limited to Western Europe and best served in practice by NATO thanks to American leadership and capabilities. Post-1989, we are facing the prospect of a Continent-wide security and defence system that may or may not include the US. That is to say, the European security agenda is now one of creating an overarching architecture that would include all European states and all the many institutions on the Continent dealing with international affairs (the Union, WEU, NATO, OSCE, and the Council of Europe). In practical terms, this means that the future of the CFSP/ESDP is clearly linked to the institutional reforms required to render the Union more efficient as it enlarges. This became visible in recent treaty reforms, where future changes to the number of Commissioners have been made dependent on a reweighting of votes in the Council. Amsterdam, in particular, also extended the scope of QMV in the CFSP, making it clear that treaty reforms would take into consideration not only the 'old' ar...

Dream of European Army: Is It a Feasible Objective or Not?

“…The WEU's existence reflected the efforts of Western European countries to enhance their collective security and defense cooperation. Its dissolution marked a further integration of defense policies within the framework of the EU and the strengthening of the CSDP (Chryssochoou et al, 2018).…”