Exploring the EU Relationships in Conflict Early Warning and Response: Cooperation, Autonomy, and Hierarchies

Based on the assumption that Europeans are affected by widespread crisis and challenges, in the past decades the European Union has become even more active as a global security actor. It includes both being involved into conflict early warning and response, as well as building relations with other actors in this field, including international organizations. In this regard, the EU position continues to evolve around both the principle of strategic autonomy and the norm of cooperation. Cooperation among actors is certainly a big part of the dominant order visions. However, the recent tumultuous transitions strip the inter-organizational relationships of its rhetorical formalities pointing - more than ever - to the prevalence of the so-called “rational choices”, as well as the existing hierarchies that underlie these choices. Due to their material and social capital, Western international organizations, including the EU, are perceived and present themselves as the most rational and effective actors. Such positions lead to dismissing the importance of other (regional) organizations, in dealing with global crises, diminishing them to the role of information-providers and support-receivers. Identifying roles that the EU plays vis-à-vis its partners in the field of conflict early warning and response thus helps see wider structures and processes of the global peace and security architecture. This work partakes in reimagining the studies of peace and security, as well as IOs, through the sociological and constructivist lens, including the recent accounts on the hierarchies in world politics. It does so by focusing on the processes taking place in the sphere of the conflict early warning and response, while considering their relational and inter-subjective aspects. For this purpose, I analyse documents originating from the EU and other international organizations in the time period of 1992 to 2024, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with the organizations representatives and policy experts engaged in conflict early warning and response.