EU's Comprehensive Approach to Crisis Management

The new dynamic security environment of the 21st century has required a paradigm shift when it comes to dealing with international crises. Civil-military coordination and cooperation have become critical success factors in complex peace operations, where new threats call for flexible and multi-faceted responses. The EU tries to apply a comprehensive approach to crisis management that is supposed to ensure that the various components systematically address the whole spectrum of a crisis by profiting from synergy effects. Offering an in-depth analysis of the EU's comprehensive approach, this dissertation provides an important contribution to understanding the EU as a distinct security actor. The book identifies the characteristics of the EU's approach and it elaborates how these are historically rooted in the process of European integration, tracing key conceptual and structural developments. Based on an empirical study of the EU's civil-military crisis management engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2003 to 2009, the author discovers a substantial gap between EU policy and practice. Dissertation. (Series: Democracy, Security, Peace / Demokratie, Sicherheit, Frieden - Vol. 204).