Military Co-(operation) of the EU Member States - A case study of Sweden, France, United Kingdom and Germany and their motivations for the use of force in the name of European Union

The thesis contributes to the debate of an emerging European strategic culture on the use of force. This is highly relevant in order to understand the future development of the military operations within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In order to be able to analyse the motivations of the following operations: Concordia, EUFOR DR Congo and Atalanta, the research builds on the constructivist theoretical framework and applies two types of norms as analytical tools. Those are the goals for the use of force and conditionality for the use of force. It is further believed that to better grasp the European strategic culture, the analytical tools should be complemented with an overview of the selected member states’ security identity. By analysing the strategic norms with the constructivist approach and complementing this with the theory of Europeanization, the study argues that there is both a convergence and divergence of the member states’ motivation for the use of force. The case study, which has been conducted on the official governmental documents, illustrates that the member states are converging by emphasizing the need of developing the CSDP, as well as diverging as the UK is taking on both an Atlanticist and European approach of when to launch an EU military operation