The Security Discourses of the European Union: a Functional Critique

As it enters the next millennium, the European Union (EU) is increasingly dealing with matters relating to international security. Besides the transformation of European security as a result of the end of the Cold War, the inclusion in the Maastricht Treaty of the Common Foreign and Security Policy as a second pillar of the Union as well as an enhanced relationship with the European defence organization, the Western European Union, marked a new phase in the European Union’s security policy. However, all is not well, apparently. While the EU appears to be grappling with security policy in earnest for the first time in its history, the results have been decidedly mixed. War in the former Yugoslavia served to heighten the sense of urgency to giving a security profile to the EU as conflict in the Balkans has dispersed refugees across the continent of Europe and for a time threatened to spread into the wider Balkans area. Yet common wisdom regarding EU involvement in the crisis in Bosnia has been that it was a major policy failure.2