Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture

8 Nature, Emergence, and Limitations of an EU Strategic Culture¹

Christoph O. Meyer

DOI: 10.4324/9781003010302-10

Introduction

The discussion over whether and what kind of strategic culture the European Union (EU) has or needs arose after the decision of the 1999 Cologne Summit to create a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP, or CSDP post-2009). Already then, Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards² argued that a functioning European defense and security policy needed to be underpinned by a common strategic culture. They defined such a culture at the time as “the institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force as part of the accepted range of legitimate and effective policy instruments, together with general recognition ...