Differentiation in security and defence policy

This paper first assesses the salience of academic theories in the realm of security and defense policy, from the fields of both International Relations and European Studies. Theory is of relatively little assistance in understanding the phenomenon of a strictly—or even autonomously—European Union foreign and defence policy—in part precisely because of what I call negative differentiation. The second part homes in on the empirical reality of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In this particular policy area, differentiation has always been the norm, or the negative starting point—rather than a developing trend or a potential solution. The third part evaluates the current (post-2016) “re-launch” of CSDP and the widely discussed dynamic behind the EU’s quest for “strategic autonomy”. This section analyses the depth and sustainability behind what is widely seen as a new attempt either to break away from or to positively embrace differentiation and to engineer an unprecedented marshalling of the collective security and defense resources of the European Union.