This article examines the European Union’s crisis management missions and operations as sites for competition, overlap and change of European Union strategic culture(s). With over 40 civilian and military missions and operations mandated since the early 2000s, crisis management has reached a mature age as operationalisation of the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy. As such, it has been scrutinised as key evidence or lack thereof of gradually strengthening European Union strategic culture. Challenging the expectation of linearity in European Union strategic culture evolution, this article draws on the notion of strategic subcultures to better understand the nature and change in the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy agency.
This article argues that the European Union’s agency in security and defence is shaped by competition between diverse European Union strategic subcultures, the dominance of which varies over time and across issues. Empirically, this article examines new data covering all European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy missions and operations since 2003. Through systematically mapping and tracing strategic cultural attributes of European Union identity, values, norms and strategic environment perceptions, the analysis points to three distinctive Common Security and Defence Policy agencies: the European Union as a peacemaker, security provider and standard-setting partner. These are simultaneously present yet vary in dominance, particularly in response to external shocks.
