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Vic2-05_Vic01 10/03/2011 11:21 Page 123 Chapter 5 The radicalisation of foreign and defence policy in the 1980s The early 1980s saw a radicalisation of foreign and defence policy in Britain with the end of détente and an intensification of the Cold War. The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher moved to the right at a time when the Labour Party was moving ideologically to the left, while the newly established Social Democratic Party (SDP) offered a middleground alternative to Labour. This combination meant that foreign and defence policy became a political
brings to ESDP and thus its ability to enhance the EU’s role in international security. First, the chapter turns to the key foreign and security policies of the NMS. Policies and priorities of the new member states The accession of ten new states to the EU clearly widens the range of foreign, security and defence policies that the EU must try to co-ordinate. A common basis
This book reviews a variety of approaches to the study of the European Union's foreign policy. Much analysis of EU foreign policy contains theoretical assumptions about the nature of the EU and its member states, their inter-relationships, the international system in which they operate and the nature of European integration. The book outlines the possibilities for the use of discourse analysis in the study of European foreign policy. It sets out to explore the research problem using a political-cultural approach and seeks to illuminate the cognitive mind-maps with which policy-makers interpret their political 'realities'. The book provides an overview and analysis of some of the non-realist approaches to international relations and foreign policy, and proposes an analytical framework with which to explore the complex interplay of factors affecting European foreign policy. The book suggests one way of seeking theoretical parsimony without sacrificing the most defining empirical knowledge which has been generated about Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) over the years. It argues that while the sui generis nature of CFSP presents an acute problem for international relations theory, it is less pronounced with regard to traditional integration theory. The book discusses the dimensions of European foreign policy-making with reference to the case of arms export controls. Situated at the interface between European studies and international relations, it outlines how the EU relates to the rest of the world, explaining its effort towards creating a credible, effective and principled foreign, security and defence policy.
looks like a difficult decade. The big military powers are making the running as never before, and trends in world politics mean that warfare, defence and national security are being burdened with new demands and meanings that make the concept of a distinct and tangible ‘defence policy’ difficult to grasp – even inside governments, where different policy areas are supposed to be clear. Not only that, but defence policy carries a big emotional burden in most countries; the collective anxiety of a nation to be kept
This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia since the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it explains the EU’s contribution to post-conflict stabilisation and conflict resolution in Bosnia. The book demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and that institutional legacies and unintended consequences have shaped CFSP impact over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way.
9 Security, defence and neutrality The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the interaction of the four narratives when faced with the medium-term foreign policy issue of reconciling Irish security and defence policy with the post-Cold War development of Europe’s security architecture. This chapter will again open with an overview of the general lines of the debate and will focus upon the representations of this foreign policy issue offered by the four narratives. The chapter will then go on to consider the ‘discursive play’ between the four narratives as they
over defence policy and nuclear weapons. Whereas the party had been fairly acquiescent over Britain’s nuclear policy during the 1964–70 Wilson governments, once Labour lost power, its attitude changed. Resolutions passed at the 1972 and 1973 annual conferences advocated the dissolution of NATO, the closure of nuclear bases, and the rejection of a British defence policy based on the threat of the use of nuclear weapons. Over Vietnam – the issue that had caused so much division in the 1960s – the party was pretty much united. The Conservative manifesto made no mention
disarmament within the Labour Party. In the second half of the Cold War, CND would become a vocal critic of not only the government’s nuclear weapons programme but of their civil defence measures too.1 Many anti-nuclear campaigners doubted that civil defence could realistically have any humanitarian functions, but the real objection came in the form of civil defence as an adjunct to an overall defence policy based on the use of nuclear weapons. Civil defence therefore became a legitimate target for CND based, as it was viewed, ‘upon an attempt to create an atmosphere of
D EFENCE policy analysts learn to be cautious. Any country’s defence policy, at any time in its history, seems to be at a ‘crossroads’ when viewed by its contemporaries. All choices look difficult before they are made, and Britain obviously faces some challenging questions about its security and defence policy for the 2020s. Its operational history, as described in Chapter 4 , has gone from Cold War military stalemate, to active expeditionary warfare – first to preserve a status quo, then
of threatening the security or territorial integrity of any EU member, the EU has retained the aspiration of creating an EU defence identity. The gradual emergence of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) reflected two sets of concerns, one internal and the other external. The external concerns pushing the EU towards greater defence and security cooperation, conventionally understood