Beyond Strategic Culture? Grand Strategy, the European Union and Security Cooperation

This paper will consider the extent to which European Union (EU) foreign policy is driven by humanitarian and/or geopolitical considerations. The paper will also analyse the extent to which the EU’s external actions have a sense of cohesion and shared culture that enables the Union to develop joined-up thinking on security questions. What can this also tell us about EU power and Grand Strategy in the world and the extent to which Europe is in relative decline as is often posited in the literature on global governance? The paper will do this by focusing on case studies which facilitate an analysis of the extent to which the EU has developed a strategic culture in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The key case here is the Libya operation of 2011 as this was a test for EU actorness as well as the prospects for a European strategic culture. This case will be juxtaposed with European involvement in the Atlantic Alliance in the Afghanistan case to test the extent to which EU external action is coherent and the extent to which such actions are guided by a coherent strategy that we may term Grand Strategy