Resilience in EU crisis interventions in Ukraine: a complexity perspective

The resilience approach emerged as one of the key organizing principles of the EU foreign policy in the context of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. This paper argues that the emergence of resilience in EU foreign policy builds upon the complexity thinking characterizing the EU practices already in place. The empirical case of EU peace-building interventions in the crisis in Ukraine undertaken in the framework of the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP) provides the background to assess the emergent complexity features of non-linearity and self-organizing localization. The assessment focuses on the emerging networks of connections between addressed needs, means and actors involved in EU post-crisis interventions in Ukraine. It concludes that features characteristic of the resilience approach co-exist with policy features associated to other approaches to peacebuilding in line with the complexity evolutionary perspective.