The Common Security and Defence Policy in a State of Flux? The Case of Libya in 2011

Abstract

This article focuses on the European Union's reaction to the Libyan crisis in 2011 as a case study. It seeks to demonstrate the limitations of the ‘strategic culture approach’ in observing and explaining the EU's lack of a common response, which would have involved the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and to demonstrate that the ‘domestic level approach’ has greater explanatory power. It lays emphasis on France, Britain, Italy and Germany as a sample of the EU/27. The empirical material includes several interviews.

Key Words:

• CSDP
• strategic culture approach
• domestic level approach
• crisis management
• Libya
• Britain
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• foreign policy analysis

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this work was presented at the PSA Annual Conference in Cardiff, 25–27 March 2013, within the specialist group on Security and Intelligence. The author is particularly grateful to the two anonymous PEPS peer-reviewers for their constructive comments.

Notes on contributor

Dr. Ludovica Marchi Balossi-Restelli holds a PhD and has been teaching assistant to the course New Europe: People, Places and Politics, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. Her publications include peer-reviewed articles in the European Security journal and Modern Italy, and the books Italy and EPC (2003) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, An EU Innovative External Action? (ed.) (2011) Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Italy's Foreign Policy in the 21st Century: A Contested Nature? (2014) (co-edited with Richard Whitman and Geoffrey Edwards) Routledge. Her current research interests concern the Common Security and Defence Policy. and Myanmar.

Notes

1 There is no space for further references still relevant, such as the accounts of strategic culture by Johnston (1995, 1999) and Gray (1999), and other contributions: Rynning (2003) investigated the ‘likelihood’ that EU member states develop a strategic culture embracing ‘common interests and views of the world’. Hyde-Price (2004) warned about the risk that the European strategic culture reproduces old scenarios and inhibits the development of new European security strategies relevant to our time. Matlary (2006) discussed the concept of human security as the possible foundation for a new type of European strategic culture.

2 On 14 March, France and Britain were working on a draft resolution, supporting a NFZ, with Cameron hinting that ‘he might consider action without a UN mandate’.

3 The Operational Headquarters were in Rome and an Italian rear admiral was nominated as the EU Operational Commander.

4 Meyer (2004, p. 20) concedes that ‘convergence is not an inevitable phenomenon’.

5 See Marchi (2011); Biava (2011).

6 See Gowan and Brantner (2011).

7 The EU was present only in terms of training and reorganising the Malian armed forces (EUTM Mali).