The European Union as a Masculine Military Power: European Union Security and Defence Policy in ‘Times of Crisis’
| Author | Marijn Hoijtink,Hanna L Muehlenhoff |
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919884876 |
| Published By | Sage Publications, Inc. |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919884876
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(3) 362 –377
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1478929919884876
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
The European Union as a
Masculine Military Power:
European Union Security
and Defence Policy in
‘Times of Crisis’
Marijn Hoijtink1 and Hanna L Muehlenhoff2
Abstract
Against the background of a sense of crisis in the European Union and in international politics,
European Union Member States have since 2016 increased their cooperation within the
Common Security and Defence Policy, for example, establishing the European Defence Fund.
Scholars have long pointed out that the European Union lacks the necessary ‘hard’ military
power to influence international politics, subscribing to and constituting an image of the
European Union as not masculine enough. We are critical of these accounts and develop a
different argument. First, building on insights from feminist security and critical military studies,
we argue that the European Union is a military power constituted by multiple masculinities.
We consider the European Union to be a masculine military power, not only because it uses
and aims to develop military instruments, but also because of how militarism and military
masculinities permeate discourses, practices and policies within Common Security and Defence
Policy and the European Union more broadly. We argue, second, that the crisis narrative allows
the European Union to strengthen Common Security and Defence Policy and exhibit more
aggressive military masculinities based on combat, which exist alongside entrepreneurial and
protector masculinities. These developments do not indicate a clear militarisation of Common
Security and Defence Policy, but, rather, an advancement and normalisation of militarism and
the militarised masculinities associated with it.
Keywords
critical military studies, militarism, feminist security studies, Europe, crisis, Common Security and
Defence Policy
Accepted: 7 October 2019
1Department of Political Science and Public Administration, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Marijn Hoijtink, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, VU Amsterdam, De Boelelaan
1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: m.hoijtink@vu.nl
884876PSW0010.1177/1478929919884876Political Studies ReviewHoijtink and Muehlenhoff
research-article2019
Special Issue Article
Hoijtink and Muehlenhoff 363
Introduction
In her foreword to the 2016 Global Strategy for the European Union, High Representative
of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European
Commission (HRVSP), Federica Mogherini, proclaimed that the European Union’s (EU)
‘wider region has become more unstable and more insecure’ (EU, 2016: 3). Developments
in and around Europe, such as US President Donald Trump’s critique of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), the so-called migration crisis at Europe’s Southern borders,
a supposedly resurgent Russia in the East, and questions about the EU’s military capabili-
ties after Brexit, have all created a sense of crisis that seems to challenge the EU’s role as
an international actor. At the same time, these ‘times of crisis’ have prompted a variety of
new policy instruments in EU security and defence, among them the establishment of a
European Defence Fund (EDF) (European Commission, 2019) and the launch of the pro-
cess of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) (European External Action Service
(EEAS), 2018a). European leaders have also expressed increased support for a more asser-
tive EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for a ‘real’ EU army.
Some scholars have been quick to emphasise that these developments will not change
the intergovernmental approach of CSDP (cf. Heisbourg, 2016). Others consider them
evidence of a significant relaunch of the EU’s security and defence project (cf. Howorth,
2017). Many EU studies scholars have welcomed the EU’s latest efforts in defence, as
these suggest that the EU is stepping up its role in international affairs at last. For exam-
ple, in his foreword to a paper on PESCO, former Director of the European Union Institute
for Security Studies (EUISS) Antonio Missiroli (2017: 5) pointed out that:
the speed and determination with which the EU and its member states have (re)engaged on
defence cooperation – well beyond the Common Security and Defence Policy proper – prove
that Europeans are now becoming well aware of what it at stake in a rapidly mutating security
environment.
Missiroli writes that ‘for someone who has been in this business for 20 years [. . .], all this
is no minor source of relief – even rejoicing’. Sven Biscop (2016: 431) stresses that
against the background of mounting security challenges, the EU Global Strategy ‘does
not come a moment too soon’. Similarly, Hylke Dijkstra (2016: 369) finds that ‘encircled
by security crises, it is difficult to think of something more important than collective
action with the aim of weathering the storm’. The Global Strategy ‘gets the diagnosis
right’ (Dijkstra, 2016: 371).
As Christopher Bickerton (2010: 214) points out, the study of CSDP has been charac-
terised by a prescriptive concern with the EU’s ability to act in the world. Underpinning
much of CSDP research is the question of why the EU fails to realise its potential in inter-
national affairs and how it can become a more effective or ‘serious’ (meaning, military)
actor (cf. Allen and Smith, 1990; Hill, 1993). This prescriptive concern has influenced
well-known debates in EU studies about the EU’s ability to act in the absence of common
military capabilities. As part of these debates, some scholars have openly critiqued, or
even ridiculed, the EU’s lack of ‘hard’ military power and its ability to influence interna-
tional politics (Kagan, 2002), whereas others have emphasised the specific character of
the EU as an international actor, and put forward that even without an army the EU makes
a difference by means of its market power (Damro, 2012), its normative ability to ‘lead
by example’ (Manners, 2002; Sjursen, 2006), or a combination of both (Holland, 1995).
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