Impediments to the development of European Union's common security and defence policy

Abstract

The global geopolitical rift has presented challenges as Russia's revisionism policy, a spread of Islamic extremism and terrorism, instability in Eastern and Southern neighbourhood causing migration crisis, the rise of ultranationalist populism igniting Euro-scepticism. The situation requires a coherent and comprehensive approach from the European Union, however, we observe the lack of motivation and sufficient instruments to react. The European security initiatives finally resulted into Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), however, Europeans inability to deliver an effective response to existing challenges is encapsulated into impediments derived from differences of views and goals of leading EU members. Therefore this work is designed to explore European security and defence initiative focusing on problem why CSDP failed to expand and develop deeper, and respond to the research question what are such a wide differences of views on CSDP of leading European countries such as the UK, France and Germany? Our tasks in the dissertation are at first to identify major strategic divergences of leading EU member states such as the UK, France, and Germany and secondly to identify and describe key factors that have contributed to those strategic divergences. To respond stated research tasks within dissertation has been used case study method exploring three EU state to see differences in their motivations and goals and trace the process in order to identify key ruptures which facilitated impediments to European security initiative. During research, we identified stumbling blocks which have been generalised into conclusion. It emphasises major problem of post-World War II European order inherited in modernity where the USA holds hegemonic power and plays the decisive role in foreign and security affairs of Europe preventing the emergence of European power core. The nature of EU and its internal settings are also causing for the imperfection of system which cannot overcome obstruction and develop the common defence. In addition, some states perceive European integration in foreign and security area as a threat to own sovereignty inducing them to act it in opposition.