I am interested in investigating the Libyan and Malian wars with a look on the EU’s security and defense policies and U.S.-NATO-EU cooperation. The experience of disunity and immobility in the EU, combined with a self-limitation to late and non-combative support, and a conversely strong Franco-British combat engagement and commitment to cooperation, the two crises leave us with serious doubts on the further development of common foreign, security, and defense policies of the Union, or at least suggest that they will follow a more modest political logic than in the past.
This paper makes two arguments: first, it contends that the two wars give testimony of a new modus operandi of European security and defense cooperation, which is more opportunistic and output-oriented on the one hand, and less unionized and identity-driven on the other; second, I argue that for these reasons, transatlantic security cooperation has changed its scope and character from a focus on EU-NATO cooperation to getting the job done in flexible institutional or non-institutional settings. This development also reflects new U.S. policies such as the pivot to Asia and the lead-from-behind approach, which actually revived transatlantic cooperation. Put differently: though EU actorness is severely harmed, the European and transatlantic ones aren’t necessarily so. In the formation of the argument, issues about the persistence and relevance of national perspectives and the influence of US hegemony on the European security architecture will be addressed. The paper will mainly deal with U.S.-American, British, French, and German positions – while reaching out to other actors such as Poland, too – as they could be observed during the Libyan and Malian wars.
