This book ​addresses one of the most profound transformations in international governance: the proliferation of regime complexity. Regime complexes can be found wherever state interests clash. Thus, even in one of the most constitutionalized of institutional environments, the European Union (EU), regime complexity features prominently - especially in European defence cooperation, where states have created competing institutions overlapping in their mandates to organize armaments cooperation or defence planning. The tense relationship between the institutions of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and those of NATO is well-known. Yet inter-institutional conflict is not limited to this dichotomy. It extends to institutions beyond these two frameworks, such as those of the former Western European Union and regional defence cooperation frameworks such as the Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO), or OCCAR - a minilateral armaments agency. All these institutions have partially overlapping membership structures and mandates and therefore rival authority claims in the field of European defence.

This book aims to critically examine the European Union's peacebuilding approach, focusing on integrated conflict analysis, suggesting a new model for conflict analysis within the EU Common Security and Defence Policy. It explores recent interventions while also addressing the need for improved conflict sensitivity. It argues that greater self-reflexivity, and deeper reflection on motivations for intervention plays a critical role within multilateral efforts to address implementation gaps, encourage greater analytical capacity, suggest categories of partnership interaction with other actors and give centrality to the EUs integrated approach, reorienting away from the growing emphasis on securitisation. It is aimed at policy makers and practitioners, asking questions of contemporary analysis frameworks which validate causal pathways and currently provide the basis of the international peace architecture.

This strongly interdisciplinary book provides a first tentative evaluation of the role that geopolitics plays in shaping the genesis and functioning of the law of EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It introduces the reader to the geopolitical context of the EU and of its main neighbours, as well as to the legal architecture of CFSP. The book then presents selected cases of the Union's action (or inaction) in CFSP since 2009. These show the key argument of the book: the law of CFSP is not entirely fit for purposes as it does not reflect the geopolitical reality of the continent. The book reflects on such geopolitical reality as it results, in particular, from the 2004 EU enlargement, and comments upon three key issues of the CFSP legal framework: issues of coherence, accountability, and effectiveness.

This open access book delves into the responses of EU actors, such as member states, institutions, and political groups in the European Parliament, to the fragmentation of the liberal international order (LIO). The analytical framework adopted in this volume explores the diverse interpretations of this phenomenon and the various political initiatives associated with them. Among these interpretations is the concept of strategic autonomy, which has emerged as a key feature of debates surrounding the EU's adaptation to a fragmented LIO. The contributors examine these dynamics across different issue areas and dimensions of EU foreign policy, encompassing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), external relations, and the externalization of internal policies. They use the term fragmentation to refer to a bundle of processes affecting the LIO that range from challenges to the universality of human rights to the crisis of global governance instruments, from the bifurcation of tech to protectionist tendencies in trade policies.

This book explores the EU's approach to peacebuilding and questions the EU global role as crisis manager and capacity builder. It highlights the significant contributions of the EU to civilian peacebuilding and also critically evaluates the activities of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) within their rule of law and human rights peacebuilding missions. It draws on the author's twenty years of experience working on CSDP and EU defence matters including his research on EU police missions in Africa and Middle East. It exposes emergent tension between peacebuilding in its neighbourhood and security issues. It examines the practice of EU peacebuilding including performance of its missions and how deployed personnel can professionalise their diplomatic (mediation, negotiation and dialogue facilitation) capacity to fully realise the potential of missions and exploit opportunities for expanding the vision of peace.

This volume addresses developments in European space policy and its significance for European integration, using discourse theory as a framework. It seeks to address the developments in European space policy by examining several sensitive security questions linked in general with space activities, on the one hand, and the interplay between space policy and security policy in the European Union (EU) on the other. The book argues that defence and security matters should be studied for a better understanding of space projects in their historical, political, economic, legal and social context.

Exploring the ebb and flow of European security from the end of the Second World War to the present day, Richard Rose examines why security cannot be taken for granted today and what this means for the future of security in Europe. Since 1949 military security from the Black Sea to Washington's Potomac River has been guaranteed by NATO with the White House in command. He reminds us that masses of Europeans enjoyed unprecedented economic security as the European Union has replaced competition in armaments with competition in a single European market. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union restructured the map of Europe and encouraged the United States to turn toward China. However, Vladimir Putin's attempt to revive a Soviet-style version of security by invading Ukraine has stimulated aid to Ukraine as it fights a proxy war to protect the security of Europe.

This book analyses the origins, experiences, and challenges of total defence in Europe and comprises a broad spectrum of national case studies as well as one international organisation - NATO. The topic of total defence has been brought to the fore by deglobalisation, augmented international tension, the US pivot to Asia, grey‑zone threats, Covid‑19, and not least by the increased Russian threat during the 2010s, which culminated in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The analysis here is based on an in‑depth analysis of the four major Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Poland, Ukraine, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, as well as a perspective from NATO itself. This volume argues that although the activity that we describe as total defence has many labels and various expressions, which follow from each country's own history, geopolitical setting, and strategic culture, some aspects of it are to be found in most countries.

The European Union (EU) has chosen to react to violence and aggression in states outside the block through the imposition of restrictive measures, both autonomous and mandated by the Security Council of the United Nations. In recent years, it has furthermore chosen to react to malicious activities that do not necessarily unfold within the territory of a specific state. To date, the EU has done so in thirty-seven instances, following more than eighty EU legal instruments. This book is the first to thoroughly investigate the origins, nature, and implications of the whole range of sanctions regimes set by the EU. Breaching international peace and security, violent repression and political stalemate, serious violation of human rights, terrorism, malicious cyber activities and proliferation and use of chemical weapons have urged the EU to adopt restrictive measures.

Explore the complex realm of international law and organisations through this in-depth examination of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Besides establishing the principle of collective self-defence in Article 5, the North Atlantic Treaty is exceptionally unspecific in defining NATO as an international organisation. Moreover, although the North Atlantic Treaty has never been amended in 75 years, NATO has progressively expanded its membership and mandate: it now counts 32 members, conducts out-of-area operations and decides on issues of cyber and terrorism. How has this evolution unfolded? From the ambiguity of consensus decision-making and NATO’s expanding powers to the complexities of membership admission, the book dissects every aspect of NATO's legal landscape.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has since its foundation in 1949 been the principal body of the Western security order, and remains as important in the 2020s as it was in the 1950s. This Handbook offers the most extensive treatment of the Alliance published in the last two decades, providing detailed coverage of NATO allies, policies, and organizational structures. It brings together internationally renowned scholars who interrogate NATO's actions from historical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives.

Space security is a complex assemblage of societal risks and benefits that result from space-based capabilities and is currently in a period of transformation as innovative processes are rapidly changing the underlying assumptions about stability in the space domain. New space-based technologies are emerging at an accelerating rate, and both established and emerging states are actively and openly pursuing weapons to negate other states' space capabilities. Many states have set up dedicated military space units in order to preemptively counter such threats. In addition, a number of major private companies with a transnational presence are also investing heavily in extraterrestrially-based technology. The Oxford Handbook of Space Security focuses on the interaction between space technology and international and national security processes from an international relations (IR) theory perspective.

This book provides new and established researchers with innovative methodologies and research strategies to explore European security integration from a different perspective, challenging traditional theoretical interpretations. It takes a step back from well-established theoretical approaches to the European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to ask more fundamental questions about the core assumptions underpinning research on European security integration. It supports methodological innovations with an analysis of the most significant empirical problems of European security governance, including the war in Ukraine or the role of Russia in European security. In the last chapter, the author offers ideas for new pedagogical approaches to teaching European Studies.

The SIPRI Yearbook is an authoritative and independent source of data and analysis on armaments, disarmament and international security. It provides an overview of developments in international security, weapons and technology, military expenditure, arms production and the arms trade, and armed conflicts and conflict management, as well as efforts to control conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The IISS Strategic Dossier Turbulence in the Eastern Mediterranean: Geopolitical, Security and Energy Dynamics surveys the geopolitical landscape, defence dynamics and energy prospects of the region that spans Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkiye. It assesses the security outlook for the region, considering potential flashpoints for intra- and inter-state conflict and evaluating whether newly developed defence ties could evolve into formal alliances. Energy discoveries made in the region in recent years have spurred states' ambitions to become energy hubs. The dossier evaluates whether such aspirations could lay the foundations for deeper regional cooperation or, conversely, increase the risk of confrontation.