Проблема восприятия угрозы в Европейском союзе: проблема общей политики безопасности и обороны

In the recent years, new security threats and challenges arise within the European Union.2 Many European countries have faced new security challenges and have felt somehow threatened by the events that occurred, like terrorism, immigration, organized crime, cyber- attacks. After the end of World War II, Europe tried to find a way for a lasting peace between countries. On march 25, 1957, the six founding countries signed the Treaty of Rome, one of the main milestone for the foundation of the European Union. However, it was only with the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force in 2009, that the EU acquired modern institutions and new methods. The treaty of Lisbon, introduced specific provisions on the common foreign and security policy, introducing the notion of European Capabilities and armament policy, but mostly introducing the Common Security and Defence policy with the actual provisions.3
After many centuries of periodic wars between the European countries, Europe knew peace and collaboration between countries that have always been enemies throughout history. For many years, wars were in distant countries and it seemed like nothing could shake that perfect harmony that the founders of the EU created. Due to the prosperity of peace and the presence of NATO, the European member state started to invest less and less of their GDP in the security and defense field. This resulted in lack of instruments and investments for their national security, and thus also for counter new security threats and challenges that arise in the early 2000s. The 9/11 attack represents one of the main chapters that changed forever the concepts of security and defense. This terror attacks had an impact also on the European Foreign and Security policy4 and it also showed the differences between the European countries strategic cultures. It quickly became evident that new threats and new challenges came out, and that the EU single countries as well as the EU couldn’t avoid it. Although, the European Parliament had the task to enforce and develop a stronger CSDP, It is known that defense was neglected for quite a long period of time. In fact, during the Cold War European’s security was
mainly granted by NATO and the United States played a crucial role in the European integration and security.5
However, the CSDP has represented a tool for some countries to pursue national interests outside Europe. If this is true at a national level, it is also true at a European level. The efforts for the development of a much stronger CSDP have been futile. Over the past ten years the notion of European defense cooperation has been misused as a political device, but the European Council started to have a frank debate on defense issues only in 2013. In this sense, something has changed in the last few years and the state of emergency has been slowly recognized but in some ways it’s already too late to fix the problem of lack of investments, and even the former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the European countries for their lack of investments in the field of security and defense.6
In a nutshell, the EU has neglected defense for quite a long time and now this comes back again, in fact security threats after going further away geographically for 20-30 years, they are now coming closer to the EU borders and are becoming bigger in size as well, an example of that are the civil war in Syria or the war in Libya. This made institutions and countries realize that they lack the toolkits to deal with these new threats. The EU has a specific way to address challenges and threats, which are usually official written in their defence policies and official strategies, however it is also true that the EU doesn’t own an army. For all of these reasons, some scholars believe that the EU cannot even be considered a security actor, in fact it spends less than the US for military research, innovation and new equipment.
On the other hand, the new security challenges in Africa pushed the EU member states to invested money for the deployment of some mission and in some cases never stopped to finance them. In fact, the EU started to deploy CSDP missions since 2003 and even though some argue that the results have been mediocre, some other argued that the CSDP moved forward, increasing its professionality.7 An example was when Catherine Ashton used to be the EU High Representative and the situation in the Sahel region was already alarming. In fact, Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was already controlling some parts of the regions,
especially in Mali, where the government was weak and couldn’t counter terrorism. As a consequence, some issues arose like organized crime networks and weak security capabilities of the State. In this regard, Ashton argued that “threats to security transgress national borders and the only possible and effective response is a regional and a comprehensive one. We need to make the ongoing European engagement in the Sahel more coherent, coordinated and more effective”.8 Furthermore, in 2004, Joe Borg during the European Policy Summit on EU Enlargement described as common challenges for Europe “illegal immigration and the threat of terrorism”.9
However one could ask to what extend the CSDP has evolved throughout the years. First, it should be mentioned that CSDP actual provisions emerged only in 2009 with the Treaty of Lisbon, that established reforms aimed to strength the policy. Therefore this policy is relatively young and the EU is also a relatively young international security actor, if compared with international superpowers like the United States and Russia. Nowadays, scholars focus their studies on the so called “second wave of CSDP theorizing”,10 however many other think over how and if CSDP has created a path-dependency constraining the behavior of Member States.11
The goal of this research is to find if and how threat perceptions within the EU change or influence the path of CSDP. The importance of this research is due to some factors. First, threats in the last at least twenty years changed a lot, and the problem with nowadays threats is that they are interlinked with each other, posing an additional issue. For instance, migration is closely interrelated with smuggling and illegal trafficking, hence with forms of organized crime.12 Second, also the European security environment has changed a lot in the recent past13 and it is curious to see how the discourse changed quickly throughout the years, how institutions within the EU started to speak again about defense and security. But it also to observe how some Member States have started to be vocal about a stronger European defence, this is the
8 European Parliament, Catherine Ashton speech “The Sahel Region”, Speech/11/33, Strasbourg, 19 January 2011 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_11_33
9 European Union, “Speech by Joe Borg: Enlargement and the European Neighborhood Policy”, Brussels, 13 May 2004 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_04_247
10 Kurowska, X and Breuer, F. (eds), “Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy”, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan (2012)
11 Giovanni Faleg, “The EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy: learning Communities in International Organizations”, Springer, (2016)
12 L-E. Lundin, “The EU and security, a handbook for practictioners”, Snterus, 2015 13 Ian Anthony, “Reducing Military Risk in Europe”, Sipri policy paper no. 51, 2019
6

case of France.14 Finally, the CSDP has gained new strategic importance, being not only useful for crisis management but it also became a tool that European states and EU itself used to pursue its own interests and priorities in the continent. In particular, the research doesn’t look at structural changes in the CSDP, rather it focuses on which are the concrete results of threat perceptions. CSDP has always been considered weak but in reality many operations were established, and some missions even evolved as threats changed. In this sense, threat perceptions result also in this policy, and in EU policies that establish operations under the CSDP .
In order to reach the goal, the research will be divided into three main chapters, and a collective conclusion that will answer the research question. The first chapter provides a theoretical framework, two main theories will be used: social constructivism and new institutionalism, with a particular analysis on how these theories bring novelty in the study of the CSDP. The second chapter, analyzes the threats that have been mostly cited by the EU official security strategies since 2003, searching for definitions and reasons why they are perceived in that way. Finally, the third chapter looks for results of these threats using the case of the CSDP, describing results and missions. In particular, three CSDP missions are taken into account: EUNAVFOR MED Operation SOPHIA, EUCAP Sahel Niger, EUCAP Sahel Mali with a brief reference to Sahel EUTM Mali.
The threats that will be analyzed are related both with internal security issues and external security issues but somehow they all connect with CSDP. It would be impossible to mention all the security threats since 2003, the one that used to be more discussed by governments and EU documents were: immigration, terrorism and cyber security threats15. First of all, immigration is a potential security issue, not only for the internal security of receiving EU member states but also because of the problems connected with that, and it can be seen as a chain. In fact, immigration is linked with smuggling, smuggling is connected with international organized crime, and a confirm to that comes also from the United Nation stated that “Transnational organized criminal groups are generally involved in the smuggling of
migrants from West Africa to Europe.”16 Moreover, terrorism is related with CSDP operations, in fact article 43 of TEU states that “All these tasks may contribute to the fight against terrorism, including by supporting third countries in combating terrorism in their territories.”17 Finally, cyber security was described as a challenge in 2003 in the European Security Strategy, but it slowly became perceived as a threats in surveys. Also, the EU developed its own cyber defence policy and capabilities related with the CSDP. The choice of these three specific threats comes from a conscious decision, the EU has been through different security challenges for instance the Ukrainian crisis and the Baltics have long felt threatened by Russia. However, these three threats have been concretely taken into account by the EU for a long period of time, but mostly
In order to come to some conclusion and give an answer to the research question, it is important to study which is the perception of the threat, therefore presuming even that some threats may not be real threats. Raymond Cohen, who studied the threat perception during International Crises argues that when a threat is not perceived, even if it is evident or clear, there may be no mobilization of defensive resources or response whatsoever.18 Having this concept in mind, it is easier to come to a conclusion and to find out if the EU is dealing with some threats and giving an institutional response, with the tools of the CSDP. Some of the research papers analyzed in this thesis were made in collaboration between departments of International Relations, Political Science and Psychology. The latter is useful in fact to have a sociological and psychological explanation of the “perception”.
This research is focused mainly on primary sources, as speeches and official policies and strategies were essential to understand which words were used and which were and are the official positions of the EU and its policymakers and politicians. In this sense a discourse analysis was also needed, and the threat cited in the research have a background in past speeches and EU strategies. First things first, European Security Strategy of 2003 “A Secure Europe in a Better World” directly addressed some of these threats: terrorism and organized crime. In fact, it was stated that terrorism “poses a growing strategic threat to the whole of Europe” while “Europe is a prime target for organized crime. This internal threat to our security has an important external dimension: cross-border trafficking in drugs, women, illegal migrants and
16 United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime, “The role of organized crime: in the smuggling of migrants from West Africa to the European Union”, United Nation, 2011
17 The Treaty on European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:2bf140bf-a3f8-4ab2- b506-fd71826e6da6.0023.02/DOC_1&format=PDF
18 Raymond Cohen, threat perception in International Crisis
8

weapons accounts for a large part of the activities of criminal gangs. It can have links with terrorism.”19
The European Agenda on Security of 2015 shed a light on the security concerns of the EU by giving a EU official standpoint on many challenges and threats. In particular, it analyzes the evolution of threats, defining them “cross-border threats”.20 Also, it provides a list of recommendations and set the future framework for official security measures, it advances proposals for dialogues on security aimed to discuss priorities “against transnational organized crime and terrorism, smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings”21 . Moreover, the Cybersecurity Strategy of the EU “An Open, Safe and Secure Cyberspace” described the context of cybersecurity, analyzing the problem that cyberspace poses and impact our society. In particular, it establishes the principles for cybersecurity, addressing the agencies that have the responsibility in order to achieve cyber resilience and the development of capabilities related with the CSDP.22 As for the, European Agenda of Migration of 2015, it describes the phenomena of migrations, establishing the path for the immediate actions, including the possibility for CSDP operations as a tool for shattering smuggling.23 Furthermore, the EU Cyber Defence Policy Framework adopted in 2018, which is an evolution of the cybersecurity strategy of 2013. The scope of the policy was to further develop and update the existing cyber defence policy, in particular it clarified the priorities and the role of European actors. Specifically, it stated that “Cyber security is a priority within the Global Strategy on the EU Foreign and Security Policy and within the EU Level of Ambition.24 Finally, the EU Counter-terrorism strategy adopted in 2005, declared that terrorism posed a threat to all Member States and to the European society, but it mainly established the four pillars of the EU’ counter-terrorism strategy.25