Beyond Actorness in EU Crisis Management: Internal Functions of External Peacekeeping

Abstract

What do European crisis management operations in remote places reveal about the EU’s political ambitions and about the present state of European integration? Against a traditional reading in terms of actorness and effectiveness, this article applies the functionality thesis to CSDP operations, and argues that the latter perform three internal functions: a substitute for national strategies in international crisis management; a way for EU foreign policy actors to compete against each other for political power; and an opportunity to reflect upon the nature and identity of the EU. Through a case study of the military intervention EUFOR Chad/CAR, the article demonstrates that an approach in terms of functionality is more accurate empirically than one in terms of effectiveness. Theoretically, it also usefully bridges the traditional rationalist/constructivist divide in the literature on CSDP, and provides challenging avenues for future research on EU peacekeeping in a middle-ground and sociological perspective.

Keywords:

• Common Security and Defence Policy
• military interventions
• EUFOR Chad/CAR
• effectiveness
• functionality
• usages of Europe

Notes

1. For the sake of clarity, I will use the post-Lisbon ‘CSDP’ denomination throughout this article, even when referring to pre-2009 official documents and publications.

2. Hereafter referred to as EUFOR, unless disambiguation with other EU military interventions is needed.

3. 2008 and 2009 country reports for Chad and the CAR available on the UNHCR website (http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a02d7fd6.html).

4. In particular, Irish soldiers were caught in a fight between government forces and rebels in June 2008 and succeeded in remaining neutral, thus earning the local population’s acceptation (interviews with Irish members from the Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin, January 2011).

5. 2012 country report for Chad available on the UNHCR website (see http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e45c226.html)

6. The following is drawn from a consultation of these declarations and press releases from 2003 to 2009, available through online search on the website of the Council of the EU (http://register.consilium.europa.eu/servlet/driver?typ=&page=Simple&lang=EN&cmsid=638).

7. Interviews with Irish members from the Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin, January 2011.

8. Apart from France and Ireland (1,800 and 450 troops, respectively), the most significant contributors were Poland (420 troops), Austria (170), Spain (110) and Italy (100). Complete overview available in the SIPRI multilateral peace operations database (http://www.sipri.org/databases/pko).

9. Interview with Irish military advisor, January 2011.

10. Interview with officer from the EUFOR headquarters, February 2012.

11. For Zielonka, the dynamic results from the non-Westphalian nature of the EU and the lack of central authority; for Chandler, western democracies promote multilateralism and humanitarian interventions out of an inability to forge consensus on strategic and political objectives.