The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union's common security and defence policy : a comparative study

Abstract

4th April 1949. VE-Day is less than four years behind. All European states are busy trying to recover from a devastating war, the second one wreaking havoc on the continent in merely thirty years. There is very little left to celebrate about, even in the triumphant UK , which has only just relinquished India and is in financial dire straits. Less than five years from the creation of a "United Nations" organisation, a deep rift has grown between the victorious allies. Three years ago, Winston Churchill spoke of an "iron curtain" which has descended across Europe between East and West. The latest manifestation of this "iron curtain" is the blockade which West Berlin is currently enduring. The city has already been literally under siege for almost a year now. The Russians have cut all lines of communications to West Berlin, bar a very narrow air corridor, where American and British planes are 'flying the gauntlet' to keep the city from starving. Where do we go from here? 4th April 2010. The 61st anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation- NATO. It has already been practically two decades since the USSR faded into history along with the "Iron Curtain". What was known in 1949 as Eastern Europe is now Central Europe - and united with Western Europe through two unique International Organisations - NATO and the European Union (EU). The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is an intergovernmental alliance of twenty-eight countries from North America and Europe. It came into being with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4th April 1949 in that tense atmosphere at the beginning of the "Cold War" period. The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is on the other hand a policy area of the European Union. It marks the extension of the EU onto the political issues of Security and Defence. CSDP was not however simply another Policy Area as in the Common Agricultural Policy or the European Neighbourhood Policy for example. New bureaucracies within the EU setup were specifically created, and older ones were inherited from another European security actor which never quite managed to occupy the limelight during the Cold War, leaving the centre stage to NATO. This was the now-defunct Western European Union (WEU). As a European Security actor nevertheless, WEU will also be briefly analysed in the course of this dissertation. CSDP in the meantime remains to this day the last Intergovernmental area in the EU, where all other policy areas have adopted some form of the supranational characteristic of the EU. In Plate I, it can be noticed that Denmark, which is a fully fledged EU Member Sate, has not been included in the CSDP1 list. Denmark has in fact opted out from EU matters of Security and Defence. This, coupled with the specific administrative and policy organs set up within the EU framework, and the different rules that apply for CSDP decision making in the highest EU bodies, make CSDP, not simply another policy area of the EU, but truly an institution within a greater institution!