Finding the European Union’s Grand Strategy: Understanding the Commission’s role in formulating grand strategy

Complexity is a crucial barrier to our understanding of how actors behave in the international arena. Market power, normative power, regulatory power, global power, civilian power, are all concepts which have been utilised to describe the EU international actorness. However, the interaction between these concepts, and how the EU employs these comprehensively has been less debated. In an effort to contribute to the literature on EU’s strategic behaviour, this thesis engages in a critical discourse analysis throughout numerous strategic documents from the Commission. Through the analysis, a grand strategic framework, established by the Commission, was identified. Such framework appeared divided into two phases; the first being an inward-looking effort to “rebuild Europe”, and the second being an outward-looking approach towards providing security in the neighbourhood. This work manages to move past the theoretical debate on the EU’s engagement with grand strategy, which has...Show moreComplexity is a crucial barrier to our understanding of how actors behave in the international arena. Market power, normative power, regulatory power, global power, civilian power, are all concepts which have been utilised to describe the EU international actorness. However, the interaction between these concepts, and how the EU employs these comprehensively has been less debated. In an effort to contribute to the literature on EU’s strategic behaviour, this thesis engages in a critical discourse analysis throughout numerous strategic documents from the Commission. Through the analysis, a grand strategic framework, established by the Commission, was identified. Such framework appeared divided into two phases; the first being an inward-looking effort to “rebuild Europe”, and the second being an outward-looking approach towards providing security in the neighbourhood. This work manages to move past the theoretical debate on the EU’s engagement with grand strategy, which has characterised European academia and engages in a practical discussion of grand strategy and the EU. While the contributions of this work are essential for different fields in European studies, such as Europeanization, it also contributes to grand strategy academia by putting forward a theory on how international organisations interact with grand strategy.Show less

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Finding the European Union’s Grand Strategy: Understanding the Commission’s role in formulating grand strategy