The Challenges and Limits of NATO-ESDP Synergy

Abstract

The complicated relationship between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is not due to the fact that two affiliated organizations are both trying to provide security policies in the same Euro-Atlantic area. Rather, the most revealing difficulties in their relationship derive from the fact that ESDP is part of a larger quest by European elites to create a more unified and single political identity for Europe. This chapter will examine three areas of ESDP’s development, with special emphasis on how the dynamics of European identity play a key role. In the first place, we will look at European political unification as a sub-theme of the development of the European Union (EU). After World War II, Europe was divided into three identities. Ever since, elites have tried to narrow these gaps over time by bringing the Eastern half of the continent into the European Union and by reducing the North Atlantic influence in Europe’s security and defence. A second perspective examines ESDP as a single case of common policy development that began very incrementally in the 1970s and developed into defence policy only recently. The third vantage point in explaining ESDP focuses mainly on the EU’s attempts to form a geopolitical dimension by combining its external economic, political and security identity outside of Europe.