CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Popescu, Nicu |
|---|---|
| Title | Stealth Intervention: The EU and Post-Soviet Conflicts |
| Summary | This dissertation addresses EU policy towards the conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh in the post-Cold War period. It examines the dynamics of EU interventions in conflicts, asking: Why and under what conditions does the EU decide to get involved in conflict resolution? In a conflict-prone world and competing security priorities, what determines EU involvement in particular conflicts? Do supranational institutions, such as the European Commission and the EU Council Secretariat, matter in initiating, shaping and implementing EU policies on conflict resolution? To answer these questions, I use institutionalist and intergovernmentalist theories to assess their relative explanatory power in accounting for the patterns of EU interventions in conflict. I find that these approaches are broadly complementary: institutionalism explains EU interventions in the low-politics areas of conflict resolution, while intergovernmentalism explains EU behaviour in the high-politics areas of intervention. When it comes to intervention in conflicts, EU foreign policy is like a light airplane: it can fly without being caught on radar as long as it flies ‘low’. By flying low (and slow), such an airplane can advance quite far into ‘enemy’ territory. However, if it increases its altitude above a certain threshold, it risks being detected by radars, and actions may be taken to halt the aircraft. The same holds true for EU interventions in conflicts. To avoid challenging EU member states, EU institutions often employ stealth intervention, operating predominantly in uncontroversial and depoliticised aspects of conflict resolution. By “flying low,” they are thus able to gradually extend their mandate from low-politics areas of conflict resolution to the high politics realm of overt intervention. Using a strategy I call “dosage”, EU institutions engage in a series of low-cost actions, which, over a longer period of time, can yield significant cumulated policy impact. However, if their involvement becomes suddenly controversial, as when EU institutions enter suddenly into the realm of high-politics, EU member states may move to limit their autonomy. The dissertation traces the politics of stealth intervention by EU institutions using unpublished empirical data related to the EU decision-making process as well as interactions between the EU institutions, EU member states, and Russia in the conflict zones in question. |
| Supervisor | Erin Jenne |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/iphpon01.pdf |
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