The Drivers of Conflict Management by the European Union: A Theoretical Analysis

The European Union has deployed military operations to manage conflicts in Europe and in Africa, contributing to the stabilization of those continents in cooperation with the United Nations and with regional partners. What has driven the deployment of those operations? In the literature, we find realist, liberal, historical materialist, constructivist, and eclecticist analyses of military cooperation in the European Union, but none seems to offer a comprehensive answer to that question. This dissertation addresses such lacuna by developing a midrange realist theory about the general drivers of conflict management and applying it to the European Union’s case. It explains the deployment of military operations, suggesting that they are driven by a combination of power distribution and exposure. Firstly, power distribution determines the propensity of poles to manage foreign conflicts. The most powerful states tend to build stable hegemonic spheres of influence where they monopolise violence, establishing institutions that legitimize the deployment of military operations of conflict management. Higher levels of power concentration on the hands of fewer states stimulates hegemony, leading to a propensity for intervention in a wider range of countries. Secondly, exposure determines the potential security externalities. Following the initial structural incentive, poles tend to prioritise conflicts to which they are more exposed due to societal, economic, and tactical vulnerabilities in conjunction with violence intensity. Higher levels of exposure incentivize the deployment of operations due to the potential security costs that they generate. To be specific, in interstate systems where power is concentrated and exposure is elevated, the number of military operations of conflict management tends to be higher, the deployments occur in conflicts that involve a wide structural imbalance and threatening levels of exposure, and the most committed conflict managers are the most powerful and exposed. In the case of the European Union, empirical evidence from 12 operations launched between 2003 to 2018 indicates that the combination of limited structural advantages and relevant exposure of France, the United Kingdom, and Germany drove the deployment of military operations in a relatively small but increasing number of European and, especially, African conflicts involving weak states, with a more committed participation from France, the most powerful and exposed member state. In terms of power, those three European countries were not the most powerful actors in the international system but became preponderant in neighbouring areas that were not a priority for the United States. Moreover, there was a significant exposure to various of those conflicts, resulting especially from their close location, the existence of relevant energy resources, the involvement of terrorist networks, and very intense violence.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Magalhaes, Nuno

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Edwards, Geoffrey

• Conflict management
• International Relations theory
• Realism
• European Union

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/59f1daa2-65a1-4e3b-b06b-64203e41191a/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.75011

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/327558