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European Security
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The EU as a global counter-terrorism actor in the making
Erik Brattberg
a& Mark Rhinard
aa
Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Box 27035, SE-10251, Stockholm, Sweden
Version of record first published: 20 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Erik Brattberg & Mark Rhinard (2012): The EU as a global counter-terrorism actor in the making, European Security, 21:4, 557-577
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2012.688809
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The EU as a global counter-terrorism actor in the making
Erik Brattberg* and Mark Rhinard
Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Box 27035, SE-10251, Stockholm, Sweden (Received 11 March 2012; final version received 24 April 2012)
After the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, the European Union (EU) staked its claim as an important international player in the fight against global terrorism.
The EU encouraged new initiatives at the United Nations and devoted newfound attention to aid and assistance programs to third states. The EU’s ambitions and heightened activity prompts a number of questions about rhetoric versus action and offers a useful test case for assessing the quality of the EU’s ‘actorness’. This article applies the actorness concept to shed light on the EU’s behaviour in global counter-terrorism activities. It draws together existing insights on actorness into an analytical framework containing four sets of variables context, coherence, capability and consistency and applies the framework to evidence gathered on the EU’s international and third country role in countering terrorism. Our results show that the actorness approach sheds considerable light on the EU’s international behaviour in global counter-terrorism and suggests the EU has some way to go before becoming a full actor in this area.
Keywords: terrorism; EU; actorness; international cooperation; intelligence
Introduction: EU actorness in global counter-terrorism
Soon after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States (US), with the broad support of European Union (EU), declared a ‘global war on terror’. European and other states may have contested the rhetoric used by the US (and hotly contested the subsequent invasion of Iraq), but the broad outlines of a common global strategy against terrorism were progressively agreed. The EU signed up to the United Nation’s initiative to develop ‘a sustained, comprehensive approach . . . to combat the scourge of international terrorism’ (United Nations 2001) and agreed on bilateral agreements with the US to jointly ‘diminish the underlying conditions of terrorism by promoting democracy, development, good governance, justice, and increased trade’ (Council of the European Union 2004b). Responding to its own terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), the EU pledged to assist third countries with ‘the necessary mechanisms to disrupt terrorism’ and to address ‘root causes’ (Council of the European Union 2005a). With the Lisbon Treaty adopted in December 2009, the EU has further heightened its foreign policy ambitions more generally.
The EU’s ambition to play a major role in global counter-terrorism prompts a variety of questions about rhetoric versus action, and offers a useful test case for assessing the quality of the EU’s ‘actorness’.
1The actorness concept was developed to assess ‘the capacity to behave actively and deliberately in relation to other actors
*Corresponding author. Email: erik.brattberg@ui.se Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2012, 557577
ISSN 0966-2839 print/ISSN 1746-1545 online
#2012 Taylor & Francis
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