1
Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Law and Governance
King’s College London
Working Paper Series
Working Paper No. 2011-01
Paper presented at the JMCE Research Student Workshop, 'The European
Union: Finding its Role in a Changing World’, King’s College London, 30
September 2011
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Burden-Sharing in CSDP Military Operations:
A Theoretical Analysis
Niklas I. Nováky
University of Aberdeen
Introduction
Since 2003, European Union (EU) Member States have exhibited unprecedented
collective activism in the field of military crisis management by conducting six
military operations in the framework of the Union’s nascent Common Security
and Defence Policy (CSDP)1. This is a remarkable development considering that
all aspects of security and defence cooperation were kept firmly outside the
remit of the EU’s decision-making structures from the French National
Assembly’s rejection of the European Defence Community (EDC) proposal in
1954 until the 1998 Franco-British St Malo Declaration. Due to these
developments, many scholars have taken a keen interest in explaining the
emergence and institutionalization of the CSDP (Howorth 2007; Jones 2007;
Mérand 2008; Peters 2010; Toje 2010), whereas others have focused on specific
CSDP operations. As a result, there is an emerging literature on Operation
Concordia in FYROM (Mace 2004; Gross 2009b), Operation Artemis in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace 2004; Gegout 2005,
2009; Homan 2007; Martinelli 2008; Helly 2009a), EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (Bertin 2008; Friesendorf and Penska 2008; Keohane 2009),
EUFOR RD Congo also in the DRC (Gross 2009a; Major 2008, 2009; Martinelli
2008), EUFOR Tchad/RCA in Chad and the Central African Republic (Seibert
2007; Helly 2008, 2009b; Mattelaer 2008; Dijkstra 2010; Toje 2010), and
EUNAVFOR Atalanta at the coast of Somalia (Germond and Smith 2009; Helly
2009c; Homan and Kamerling 2010).
The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) was renamed CSDP in the 2009 Lisbon
Treaty. For reasons of consistency, this paper will use the term CSDP throughout the policy’s
existence.
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Despite of the ever-expanding literature on the CSDP, there have been almost no
attempts to form theoretical explanations of why EU Member States actually
participate in CSDP military operations. Most publications that touch this
question have done so only indirectly in a short paragraph or a footnote without
making references to established theoretical frameworks or schools of thought.
As a result, the conventional wisdom on why EU Member States participate in
CSDP military operations and how they determine the resources they commit to
them is composed of observations that are scattered around the pages of various
books and journals. This means previous research has identified a set of factors
that are likely to influence EU Member States’ decision on whether or not to
participate in a specific operation, but not a framework that would explain how
these factors relate to each other. Thus, the absence of a theoretically-informed
model that would explain ‘burden-sharing’ in CSDP military operations has left a
large hole in our understanding of how EU Member States share the costs of
collective action in “out-of-area” military operations.
This paper lays out some foundations for a theoretical model that could be used
to analyse burden-sharing in CSDP military operations. Its hopes that building
such a model would provide the academic community with better tools to
answer two important but hitherto neglected research questions: first, why do
EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations; and second, how do
they determine what resources to commit to them. Because CSDP military
operations are ‘collective actions’ that require economic, military and political
resources from the participating states, they constitute a burden that needs to be
shared between the participating states. Therefore, it is important to know what
factors influence EU Member States to share some of this burden when they
launch a new operation. This is especially case if we accept the often stated
argument that the majority of EU Member States have not been threatened by
the target countries of CSDP military operations and they have not had any clear
interests at stake in them. Thus, a theoretical model that aims to explain why
national decision-makers in EU Member States make a decision to participate in
a specific CSDP military operation has to consider both material and immaterial
variables from multiple levels of analysis. Furthermore, because the main focus
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of such a model is on decision-making and the process leading to a decision, it
should be rooted in the framework of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA).
Burden-Sharing and International Security
Burden-sharing2 studies have a long tradition and a distinguished pedigree in
American International Relations (IR) scholarship. Their origins trace back to the
Cold War debates between the US and its European Allies on who should
contribute what and how much to the maintenance of the Atlantic Alliance.
Because the Allies believed that deterring the Soviet Union dependent on having
a qualitative and quantitative superiority in military capabilities over the
Warsaw Pact, many of the early studies on military burden-sharing focused on
determining how fairly the economic burden of investing in military capabilities
was spread across the Allies. Some of the most notable scholars who did this type
of work include Olson and Zeckhauser (1966) and Sandler (1977). One the one
hand, Olson and Zeckhauser argued that the largest NATO Members States overcontributed to the production of deterrence because they received a larger share
of benefits from it than the smaller member3 (1966:278). They arrived to this
conclusion by looking at the correlation between the size of each NATO
members’ national income and the percentage of its national incomes spent on
defence. On the other hand, Sandler (1977) argued that the production costs of
deterrence were spread more equally across the Allies than what Olson and
Zeckhauser suggested. This was because he saw that alliance members are more
likely to invest in defence goods that are private within the alliance but public
within the state that produces them, such as armed forces (Sandler 1977, p. 453).
Towards the end of the 1980s, the attention of burden-sharing studies started to
shift from alliance politics to why states participated in out-of-area military
operations and with what capabilities. As the Cold War confrontation between
Burden-sharing can be defined as ‘the distribution of costs and risks among members of a group
in the process of accomplishing a common goal.’ The risks may be economic, political, military or
other (Forster and Cimbala 2005:1).
3 Olson and Zeckhauser used the size of country’s national income as a measure of its size and the
percentage of a country’s defence budget from its national income as a measure of how much it
contributed to deterrence.
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the US and the Soviet Union was coming to an end and states were no longer
constrained by the world’s bipolar division, the number of international military
operations began to rise dramatically. This phenomenon inspired many
academics to study why states participate in out-of-area military operations and
how they determine the resources they contribute to them. Scholars who
conducted this type of studies include Kupchan (1988); Bennet, Lepgold, and
Unger (1994); and Forster and Cimbala (2005) among others. Kupchan (1988),
for example, studied NATO’s efforts to tackle security problems in the Persian
Gulf in the 1980s and argued that the main reason why NATO decided to act in
this region was due to US pressure on other Allies. In a similar way, Bennet,
Lepgod, and Unger (1994) examined burden-sharing between the participating
states in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in the early 1990s. They found that
external pressures explained the participants’ incentives to contribute, but
internal constraints accounted better ‘for their ability to contribute and the form
contributions take’ (1994:40). These are only two examples of how burdensharing has been studied in out-of-area military operations.
Although burden-sharing has been a widely studied subject in the field of IR,
there have been extremely few attempts to study it in the context of CSDP
military operations (Dorussen, Kirchner, and Sperling 2009). This is surprising
because the six military operations that the EU has launched since 2003 provide
excellent case studies for exploring the factors that influence states to participate
in out-of-area military operations as well as theory development. Many scholars
have argued that CSDP military operations are qualitatively very different from
NATO operations for example, because they have taken place in relatively lowintensity environments and the target countries have not posed a clear threat to
any of the EU Member State. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that most
Member States that participate in these operations do not have any clear
interests at stake in the target regions or countries, which suggests that their
participation cannot be explained by looking at threat perceptions and interests
alone. Thus, by studying why EU Member States participate in CSDP military
operations, it would be possible to learn a great deal about factors that influence
states to participate in out-of-area military operations.
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Conventional Wisdom
Although there are no studies that would have explicitly addressed burdensharing in CSDP military operations, it is still possible to discern a conventional
wisdom from the available literature. It holds that EU Member States have
participated in CSDP military operations due to a variety of interests and
pressures. In order to better understand these reasons, we can divide them into
two categories by using a positive/negative dichotomy (Appendix 1). Positive
reasons refer to contributions that are made in order to realise something as an
outcome of that contribution, whereas negative reasons refer to contributions
that are made against one’s initial preferences.
Positive Reasons
The literature highlights a number of interests that drive EU Member States into
committing resources to CSDP military operations. The first is a desire to
enhance the general standing of one’s country in the EU. Matlary (2009:128)
argues that the main reason why EU Member States contribute to CSDP military
operations is that they ‘need to participate in order to shape decisions and
institutions and in order to gain international standing’. She sees that
contributions to CSDP military operations provide the Member States with
influence in shaping the future development of EU security policies as well as
standing in the EU more broadly. Furthermore, Gegout (2005:437) sees that
France succeeded in demonstrating its defence capabilities and gained
recognition as an effective military actor by initiating and being the main
contributor to Operation Artemis in 2003. According to this view, Member States
can use CSDP military operations as an opportunity to “showcase” their military
strength and gain international recognition for their crisis management
capabilities.
The second one is the perceived desire of some Member States to legitimize their
engagement in former colonies ‘by replacing the tricolore and the Union Jack by
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the EU flag’ (Mérand 2008:125). Charbonneau (2008:552), for example, views
the “Europeanization” of French security policy as ‘a clear attempt at reauthorizing French military presence and influence in the African continent’. He
sees that the former colonial powers in Europe have become sensitive towards
accusations of harbouring neo-colonial ambitions in their relations with their
former African colonies. Thus, the literature suggests that some Member States
have become to prefer interventions under the CSDP umbrella because the EU’s
multilateralism allows them to mute those accusations and maintain a presence
in Africa. In the case of Operation Artemis, for example, Piccolino (2010:126)
notes that France insisted on conducting the operation under the EU flag because
it wanted to avoid any misunderstandings that a national French operation
might flare up due to its failed Opération Turguoise in Rwanda. In other words,
the literature suggests that the “CSDP umbrella” can sometimes serve as a
convenient cover to those Member States who seek to re-legitimise their
presence in Africa.
The third interest is a desire to stabilize the regions in the European periphery,
especially the Balkans. A number of scholars (Howorth 2007; Aybet 2008; Bertin
2008) have argued that a major rationale behind CSDP activism in the Balkans4
has been a desire to promote the EU’s Stabilisation and Accession Process that is
designed to support the countries in the region on their way to political and
economic stability and, eventually, EU membership. Bertin (2008:61), for
example, notes that EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina ‘works to entrench
peace and assist the people and their government on their road to EU
membership’. Thus, these scholars believe that EU Member States’ willingness to
launch and participate in CSDP operations in the Balkans is liked to a broader
interest in stabilizing the region before countries such as Macedonia, Serbia, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina are admitted to the EU (Howorth 2007; Aybet 2008;
Bertin 2008). In this respect, the literature suggests that there has been a clear
geopolitical rationale behind EU Member States’ decisions to participate in
Operation Concordia and EUFOR Althea in the Balkans.
Since 2003, the EU has conducted two military operations and four civilians missions in the
Balkans. These are EUPM and EUFOR Althea in BiH; Operation Concordia, EUPOL Proxima and
EUPAT in FYROM; and EULEX Kosovo in the Republic of Kosovo.
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The fourth interest relates to EU Member States desire to protect their external
trade. Some scholars (Germond and Smith 2009; Helly 2009) have argued that
the Member States launched EUNAVFOR Atalanta in 2008 to protect their
commercial interests. Germond and Smith (2009:576), for example, argue that
Atalanta is the first CSDP operation that directly serves EU Member States’
interests by protecting their maritime trade. They see that Somali pirates
present a clear and present danger to European economic interests because a
large percentage of European energy and commodity supplies as well as exports
ship through the Gulf of Aden every year and risk being hijacked by Somali
pirates (Helly 2009c:393-4). Therefore, Germond and Smith (2009) as well as
Helly (2009c) see that EU Member States participate in EUNAVFOR Atalanta
because they have a clear economic interest in securing international shipping
lanes and protecting their trade vessels against Somali pirates. Although
Atalanta’s primary objective is to protect the World Food Programme’s (WFP)
aid shipments to Somalia, the argument that the main rationale behind the
operation is the protection of European trade seems plausible considering that
WFP escorts represent less than 10 per cent of Atalanta’s total tasks (Helly
2009c:397).
The fifth ones is a desire to overcome intra-European conflicts. Some scholars
(Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace 2004; Gegout 2005, Mérand 2008, Piccolino 2010)
have suggested that one reason why EU Member States have launched and
contributed resources to CSDP military operations has been their desire to show
unity at times when Europe has been divided. Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace
(2004:512-3), for example, think that at least part of the reason why France,
Germany and other Member States supported the launch of Operation of Artemis
in 2003 was because they wanted to show European unity in the aftermath of the
transatlantic rift over the US-led invasion of Iraq. Thus, they believe that EU
Member States’ contributions to Artemis were at least partially motivated by a
shared hope that a show of European unity in the form of conducting an
autonomous CSDP operation in the DRC without the use of NATO assets would
heal some of the bitter wounds caused by transatlantic tensions over Iraq.
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However, it should be noted all scholars who support this argument have done
so by using Operation Artemis and the transatlantic rift over Iraq as their case
study, which suggest that we are dealing with a special case rather than a
widespread practice.
The sixth one is a desire to support the EU’s development as an international
actor (Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace 2004; Gegout 2005, 2009; Homan 2007;
Howorth 2007; Jones 2007; Germond and Smith 2009; Gross 2009ab; Helly
2009a; Piccolino 2010; Simon 2010). This argument appears in almost every
work on CSDP and CSDP military operations that have been published since the
EU started conducting military operation in 2003 and also one that transcends
theoretical boundaries from realism (Gegout 2005, 2009; Jones 2007) to
constructivism (Gross 2009ab). Howorth (2007:232), for example, notes that the
primary value of the 2003 Operation Concordia5 in FYROM was that ‘it allowed
the EU to test its recently agreed procedures covering every aspect of the
mounting of a military operation’6. In a similar tone, Jones (2007:214) sees that a
major reason why France has supported CSDP military operations has been that
‘it was critical to begin developing the EU as a major international actor.’ Thus,
the literature views the development the EU as an international actor as a goal in
it self which motivates EU Member States into contributing resources to CSDP
military operations.7
The seventh interest relates to the desire of some EU Member States to protect
human rights (Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace 2004; Martin 2007; Helly 2009b).
Martin (2009:65), for example, argues that CSDP operations promote ‘human
security’ because European crisis management operations in Africa take
Concordia was the EU’s first-ever CSDP military operation and also the first to take use of the
Berlin Plus framework that allows the Union to use NATO planning assets and capabilities to
conduct military operations.
6 Many academics and policy commentators share the believe that the main purpose of Operation
Concordia was to test the EU’s recently agreed crisis management procedures and especially the
Berlin Plus framework.
7 This argument is often accompanied by an observation that most CSDP military operations have
taken place in distant theatres that impact EU Member States’ national security only marginally.
This has created a feeling among academics and policy commentators that the Union has hitherto
chosen to intervene only in low-risk and low-intensity conflicts because they have proven to be
excellent ‘laboratories’ for testing and developing CSDP structures (Piccolino 2010:127).
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‘seriously the well being of individuals and their communities’. Furthermore,
Ulriksen, Gourlay, and Mace (2004:513) note that part of the reason why the UK
supported and contributed to Operation Artemis in 2003 was because it wanted
to prevent further genocide from happening in Africa. Thus, the literature
suggests that EU Member States’ contributions to CSDP military operations are
also related to a desire to promote values such as respect for human rights.
However, it should be noted that this is clearly a minority view in the literature
and even the scholars cited in this paragraph use it as an additional factor that
motivate EU Member States to commit resources rather then the main
explanatory variable. Thus, no studies have yet been published that would have
analysed the explanatory power of this variable independently from other
variables.
Negative Reasons
Negative reasons refer to contributions that are made against one’s initial
preferences, which is normally due to either direct or indirect pressure.
References to direct pressure are relatively common in the literature. A number
scholars (Howorth 2007:238; Gross 2009a:120; Major 2008:24; Major 2009:315;
Piccolino 2010:133-4) see that EU Member States may sometimes commit
resources to CSDP military operations because they are pressured to do so by
their peers. In the case of EUFOR RD Congo, for example, Major (2009:315) notes
that Germany was highly reluctant to participate in the operation but eventually
accepted to do so due to heavy peer pressure from other EU Member States8.
Piccolino (2010:133-4) goes even further by suggesting that the Germans felt
that ‘they had been somewhat forced to lead’ EUFOR RD Congo by other EU
Member States. Thus, the literature seems to agree that Germany’s contributions
to EUFOR RD Congo in 2006 cannot be explained without taking into account the
pressure it received from other Member States, especially France. However, it
should be noted that all examples of direct pressure that can be found from the
literature relate to the pressure that Germany received from other EU Member
Germany participated in EUFOR RD Congo in 2006 by providing the Operational Headquarters
in Potsdam, the Operation Commander, and around 745 troops.
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States in the run-up to EUFOR RD Congo. Therefore, it is unclear whether direct
peer pressure on EU Member States is common when a new CSDP military
operation is being launched.
Unlike direct pressure, indirect pressure is implicit and comes from a subjective
recognition of the existence of a risk that one will not be able to realise his/her
interests in related issue areas if one does not contribute resources to CSDP
military operations. This is argued forcefully by Matlary (2009:91-2), who thinks
that those EU Member States ‘that remain passive and opt not to contribute
remain outside the EU core’. According to her, states that do not contribute to
out-of-are military operations do not count in either NATO or the EU because
being active and contributing forces is the only way to increase one’s standing in
these organizations (Matlary 2009:88-9). Gaining political standing and
influence in the EU and NATO is considered to be of high interest to EU Member
States because it allows them to be part if the core group of states that are in
charge of the development and direction of CSDP. Thus, Matlary sees that
participating in CSDP military operations is a free choice, ‘but the parameters are
set by France and Britain’, the most capable military actors in Europe (Matlary
2009:91-2). This seems to indicate the presence of a ‘structural pressure’ in
CSDP, which derives from a socially constructed perception that one can only be
influential in the formulation of EU security policies if one is an active participant
in CSDP military operations.
Material and Political Constraints
In order to acquire the broadest possible picture of the factors that affect
burden-sharing in CSDP military operations, knowing why some Member States
do not contribute is as important as knowing why others do. This is because
there have been some EU Member States that have decided to stay out in all
CSDP military operations that have been launched since 2003. Thus, we cannot
answer the contribution preferences of all Member States by focusing exclusively
on the question why some of them do contribute; we also need to know why they
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do not contribute. The conventional wisdom on why some EU Member States do
not contribute to CSDP military operations is that they are unable to do so due to
a number of constraints. These constraints can be categorized by using a
dichotomy that distinguishes between resource constraints and political
constraints (Appendix 2). Resource constraints refer to shortages in material
capabilities, whereas political constraints refer to immaterial factors that inhibit
EU Member States from committing resources to CSDP operations.
The most obvious resource constraint is a lack of deployable capabilities. The
literature notes occasionally (Howorth 2007; Toje 2010) that since the beginning
of the Cold War in 1945, Western Europe’s military forces were configured to
fight against a massive Soviet land invasion, which left them very little incentives
for investing in military capabilities that could be used for out-of-area
operations. This created severe shortages in certain niche capabilities, such as
strategic airlift and lightly armed units suitable for low-intensity crisis
management operations, which became critical soon after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 19919. The overhaul of the Cold War security landscape in the
early 1990s meant that the vast majority of existing European military
capabilities were redundant for combating the “new” security threats of the postCold War era, such as failed states and intra-state conflicts in distant theatres.
Only two European states, France and Britain, had maintained extensive forces
that could be used for out-of-are military operations throughout the Cold War
due to their colonial backgrounds and overseas military involvements. Thus,
very few European states had the capabilities that would have allowed them to
play an active role in out-of-area crisis management operations in the 1990s.
This is often perceived as a reason for why some EU Member States are unable to
contribute meaningful forces to CSDP military operations.
The second material reason is military overstretch. A number of scholars
(Howorth 2007; Martinelli 2007; Mattelaer 2008; Gross 2009a; Simon 2010)
have suggested that some EU Member States have been unable to participate in
EU Member States are still suffering from a sever lack of strategic airlift capabilities. They are
hoping to fix this shortage when the new Airbus A400M arrives into service.
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CSDP military operations because they have already had military commitments
abroad that were draining their military resources. Thus, they were reluctant to
increase the weight of this burden by committing forces to yet another military
deployment. In a paper on EUFOR Tchad/RCA, for example, Mattelaer (2008:24)
notes that Britain and Germany were reluctant contribute anything apart from
staff officers to EUFOR’s Operational Headquarters in Paris due to their existing
commitments in Afghanistan. Howorth (2007:238), Martinelli (2008:122), Gross
(2009a:58), and Simon (2010:33) also note that the UK did not participate in
EUFOR RD Congo in 2006 largely due to a military overstretch caused by its
heavy presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, the literature seems to give broad
support for the argument that EU member states do not participate in CSDP
military operation if they are already carrying a heavy military burden caused by
their existing out-of-area deployments. However, the explanatory value of this
variable is decreased by the fact that the outcome it is expected to produce can
easily be caused by to other variables, such as a general lack of political will.
The literature identifies a number of political constraints that are considered to
inhibit EU Member States from participating in CSDP military operations from
time to time. The first one is a lack of political will to participate. A number of
scholars (Mattelaer 2008; Piccolino 2010) have noted that the force generation
process that precedes each CSDP military operation has often been far from
smooth because very few Member States have been interested in sending forces
to far away theatres that have – at best – only marginal relevance to their
national security. In the case of EUFOR Tchad/RCA, for example, Mattelaer
(2008:32) notes that it took up to six force generation conferences to obtain
sufficient contributions to what was a relatively small operation in a lowintensity environment. Piccolino (2010:134) makes a similar point by arguing
that the problems that characterized EUFOR RD Congo’s force generation
process in 2006 ‘revealed how difficult it could be to organize an EU military
mission if no state is willing to bear the main responsibility’10. Thus, the
As already noted, no a single Member State expressed willingness to accept a leadership role in
EUFOR RD Congo at the beginning of the force generation process, but eventually Germany gave
into heavy peer pressure from other EU Member States, especially France.
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literature sees that a general lack of political will has constrained EU Member
States’ willingness to contribute to CSDP military operations.
The second political constraint is domestic pressure against military
deployments. This constraint stems mainly from EU Member States’ different
constitutional divisions of power between the executive and the legislative
branches of government in the area of out-of-area military deployments. Britain
and especially France have traditionally had a very strong executive vis-à-vis
their legislature, which allows the heads of state and government of both
countries to decide on a military deployment without seeking parliamentary
approval prior to the actual deployment. This is in sharp contrast to the situation
in
Germany,
where
the
country’s
constitution
prevented
out-of-area
deployments of German soldiers until the late 1990s. Even though Germany has
gradually increased its participation in crisis management operations in various
frameworks since NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, its government is still
severely handicapped when it comes to participating in out-of-area military
operations due to a constitutionally required parliamentary approval prior to
any deployment of German forces combined with a pacifist culture against the
use of the military instrument in general. As a result of this, the literature on
CSDP and CSDP military operation sees that the German government has been
constrained to a much greater extent by domestic opposition in times when it
has proposed deploying military forces outside its territory compared to its
British and French counterparts (Gross 2009a; Matlary 2009). Gross (2009a:58),
for example, notes that Germany’s initial reluctance to participate in EUFOR RD
Congo in 2006 was due to domestic pressures against deploying German forces
to sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, domestic reservations against the use of the military
instrument are generally considered a powerful explanatory variable for why
some EU Member States, and especially Germany, have not participated in all
CSDP military operations.
The third political constraint relates to EU Member States’ exclusion from CSDP
military operations, which can be either self- or third party inflicted. Some
Member States have intentionally excluded themselves from military CSDP,
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whereas others have been forced to stay out of specific operations by a thirdparty. Thus far, the only EU Member State that has excluded itself from all
aspects of military CSDP is Denmark, which negotiated an opt-out for from this
policy area following the Danish people’s initial rejection of the Maastricht
Treaty in a 1992 referendum (Bertin 2008:65; Keohane 2009:215). This explains
why Denmark has not participated or contributed resources to any CSDP
military operation since the policy became operational in 2003. However, there
have also been cases in which some EU Member States have been forced to stay
outside a specific operation due to third-party insistence. An often cited example
of this is the exclusion of Cyprus and Malta from Operation Althea, the EU’s third
military operation and second that was conducted in the Berlin Plus framework
with the assistance of NATO assets. According to Bertin (2008:65) and Keohane
(2009:215), Cyprus and Malta were excluded from Operation Althea because
they are not part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme 11, which has been
a prerequisite for participating in all Berlin Plus operations. Thus, it is important
to control for the Danish opt-out as well as the possibility that some Member
States might be excluded by a third-party when analysing burden-sharing in
CSDP military operations.
The fourth political constraint is their prioritisation of NATO and US-led military
operations. This is due to the fact that multilateral military deployments in
dangerous and logistically challenging theatres such as Afghanistan or the DRC
are costly endeavours and EU Member States often use the same resource pool
for both NATO and CSDP operations. Due to the fact that the deployable military
capabilities of most EU Member States are limited, they have to prioritise
between their NATO and CSDP commitments. Toje (2010:65), for example, notes
that some EU Member States are afraid that if they pledge certain resources, such
as helicopters, to a CSDP operation ‘they will immediately be questioned in
NATO as to why these resources are not already deployed in Afghanistan’. This
means that European NATO members that are also members of the EU have to
balance their commitments to both organizations, which inevitably leads to
Malta first joined the Partnership for Peace in 1995 but suspended its participation in 1996.
The country reactivated its PfP membership in April 2008 (NATO).
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compromise solutions and prioritization of certain commitments over others.
Howorth (2007:238), Martinelli (2008:122), Gross (2009a:58), and Simon
(2010), for example, see that the main reason why the UK decided to stay out of
EUFOR RD Congo in 2006 was due to its commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. It
is therefore possible that some Member States will not be able to contribute
resources to CSDP military operations due to their prioritization of NATO or USled crisis management operations.
Working Towards a Theoretical Model
Requirements
Problems with the Conventional Wisdom
As already mentioned, the conventional wisdom on why EU Member States
participate in CSDP military operations is handicapped by a number of problems.
The first one is that it is highly empirical. The conventional wisdom is based on
observations about factors from multiple levels of analysis that scholars consider
to influence Member States’ decision to participate in CSDP military operations.
Yet there is no framework or theory available that could be applied to the
context of military CSDP and used to explain how these factors relate to each
other and whether there is a hierarchy between them. By ‘hierarchy’, it is meant
that it is not known whether EU Member States are influenced by some of the
factors that were discussed above more than others in the run up to CSDP
military operations. For example, what factors are considered first when the
political decision to participate is being made? Is a Member State’s desire to
increase its influence in shaping EU security policies as influential as its desire to
protect human rights? In order to answers these questions, we need to construct
a new theoretical framework and apply it to burden sharing in CSDP military
operations. By doing this, we should be able to understand how EU Member
States prioritise different influences and which ones are more important than
others.
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The second problem is that the conventional wisdom is based almost exclusively
on studies of France, Germany and the UK. Although there are obviously many
important differences between these countries, they also share a number of
similarities that set them apart from most other Member States. Firstly, they
have a much greater level of economic and military resources compared to other
EU countries. In 2007, for example, their combined defence expenditure
amounted to 55 per cent of the combined defence expenditure of all EU Member
States (SIPRI). On the same year, they also possessed 38 per cent of all active
military personnel in the EU (IISS Military Balance). Secondly, they are all
members of the Atlantic Alliance12. This means that they have much greater
experience from international cooperation in military and defence issues than
those Member States that remain outside NATO. Thus, it is possible that this
experience gives them a higher readiness and willingness to participate in CSDP
military operations compared to non-NATO EU Member States. These
similarities are problematic if these three countries are used as case studies to
generalise why all EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations.
Because the factors that influence French, German and British contributions are
likely to be somewhat different from those that influence most other EU Member
States, there is a real risk of creating an unrepresentative image of why EU
Member States participate in CSDP military operations.
The third problem with the conventional wisdom is that it gives an impression
that the reasons why EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations
are not shaped in any way by the level in which they choose to participate. This
means that it does not consider the possibility that the reasons for why a
Member State contributes a hypothetical contingent of 5,000 ground troops
would be different from the reasons why another Member State contributes a
single staff officer to the Operational Headquarters. However, it is well known
that this is hardly the case in reality; low-level commitments in crisis
management operations, such as staff officers, require much less effort than
12 At the moment, 21 Member States of the EU27 are also members of the Atlantic Alliance. The
six Member States that remain outside the Alliance have either a history of non-alignment
(Austria, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Sweden) or on-going disputes with an existing NATO member
(Cyprus).
18
high-level commitments. Thus, it is much easier for any country to send staff
officers to the Operational or Force Headquarters than it is to deploy a large
contingent of ground troops to a hostile environment in which the risk of
casualties is high. Thus, this paper does not accept that all levels of commitment
would be subject to similar participation reasons. Instead, it accepts that the
higher the level of EU Member States’ commitments is in CSDP military
operations, the more reasons they will need to participate. Conversely, the lower
the level of their commitment, the less reasons they will require to make that
commitment. This is clearly something that needs to be improved.
Additional Requirements
The conventional wisdom suggested that there are a number of ‘positive’ and
‘negative’ reasons for why EU Member states have participated in CSDP military
operations. On top of this, they showed that Member States have to deal with a
set of material and political constraints whenever there are plans to participate
in a crisis management operation. By knowing this, it is possible to start
identifying independent variables that are likely to have either a positive or
negative impact on the dependent variable, i.e. making a positive decision to
contribute to a CSDP military operation. The best way to do this is to create a
table by applying two different dichotomies: one that distinguishes between
material and immaterial factors, and another that distinguishes between
endogenous and exogenous factors. This is because the conventional wisdom
clearly showed that the factors affecting EU Member States’ decision to
participate in a CSDP military operation are both material and immaterial in
nature. Factors such as the size of a country’s armed forces and the number of
troops that it can deploy out of area are rooted in the material domain, whereas
other factors such as public opinion and the government’s threat perception are
rooted in the ideational domain. Furthermore, they can also be either
endogenous or exogenous. It is clear that factors such as the size of a country’s
armed forces or its political will to deploy troops out-of-area are endogenous to
EU Member States, whereas others such as a UN mandate for the operation and
19
transatlantic relations are exogenous. Thus, by creating a table using these two
dichotomies, it is possible to organise the variables into four different categories:
endogenous material and immaterial factors, as well as exogenous material and
immaterial factors. The table and the results of the categorisation can be seen in
Appendix 3.
The categorisation shows that a burden-sharing model that could be applied to
CSDP military operations would have to fulfil at least two additional
requirements on top of the ones that were identified above: first, it needs to
explain how variables from different levels of analysis are linked to each other;
and second, it needs to explain the relative importance of ideational factors vis-àvis material factors whenever EU Member States make a decision to participate
in a CSDP military operation. Firstly, the categorisation of the variables shows
that they come from multiple levels of analysis. Variables such as a UN mandate
for an operation or transatlantic relations are something that is studies at the
international-level, whereas public opinion and the government’s threat
perception belong to the domestic-level. This means that a model that aims to
explain why EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations cannot
provide sufficient answers to this question by focusing on only one level of
analysis, as some traditional IR theories tend to do. Structural IR theories, for
example, seems to be an insufficient starting point for such a model due to their
narrow focus on the level of the international system. However, this is not to say
that structural factors do not influence decision-makers in EU Member States
when they consider whether or not to participate in an out-of-area crisis
management operation; structural factors are important, but they are placed in
only one of several levels of analysis. Otherwise we would run the risk of
oversimplifying the specific context in which decision-makers in EU Member
States have to work when they are asked to commit resources to a new military
operation. Thus, in order to eliminate such a risk, a model that aims to explain
why EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations needs to be able
to link variables from at least five levels of analysis: the international, regional,
domestic, government, and public level.
20
Secondly, the model needs to explain the relative significance of immaterial or
‘ideational’ variables vis-à-vis material variables. The categorisation shows that
there are a significant amount of both material and ideational variables that need
to be taken into account by a theoretical model that aims to explain why EU
Member States participate in CSDP military operations. When looking at the
material domain, it is common sense that factors such as the size of a country’s
defence budget, its armed forces and the number of troops it can deploy out of
area all play a role when the government decides on whether or not to
participate in an international crisis management operation. However, it is less
clear what the relative significance of these factors is vis-à-vis ideational factors
such as political will and a country’s general support for the EU’s CFSP/CSDP,
especially because the target countries of those CSDP military operations that
have been launched so far have not posed an existential threat to any EU
Member State. In a situation in which the target of the operation poses only an
indirect threat or no threat at all to the majority of the participating Member
States, it is likely that their decision to participate will be based on factors other
than military threat perception or a desire to protect national interests. Thus, it
is likely that variables such as how much the Member State in question supports
the EU’s CFSP/CSDP ambitions or how much experience it has from the target
region will play a more important role than military threat perception in the
process leading to a decision to participate in CSDP military operation.
Laying Down the Foundations
Levels of Commitment
As already mentioned, it is likely that EU Member States’ willingness to
contribute, or what can be described as their ‘contribution threshold’, varies
according to the ‘level of commitment’ that they choose to make to a specific
CSDP military operation. It is well known that it is politically much more feasible
for a country to participate in a low-risk crisis management operation that
requires them to commit only limited economic and military resources than it is
to a high-intensity operation that requires a much larger amount of resources.
21
This is especially the case if the target country/region of the proposed operation
poses no direct threat to the contributing state, or if the contributing state has no
direct economic or political interests at stake in the target country. For most EU
Member states, this has been the case in the majority of CSDP military operations
that have been launched since 2003; the operations have taken place in distant
theatres that have posed no direct threat to their national security. As a result,
we can expect that high-level commitments to CSDP military operations will
require greater incentives than low-level commitments, especially if the
operation takes place in a country that does not pose a direct threat to the
participating states and if they do not have any interests at stake in that country.
Thus, we can assume that it is easier for the participating EU Member States to
make contributions that require a low level of commitment, such as sending a
staff officer to the Operation HQ, than contributions that require a much higher
level of commitment, such as deploying troops or Special Forces on the ground.
Another issue that is related to the levels of commitment is the utility of each
Member States’ contribution to the operation as a whole. When building a model
that aims to explain why EU Member States decide to participate in CSDP
military operations, it is important to bear in mind that not all contributions
have the same ‘utility value’ for the operation in question. The term ‘utility value’
is defined here as the relative importance of a state’s contribution to the ability
of an international crisis management operation to carry out its objectives and
fulfil its mandate. It is ‘relative’ because the importance of each state’s
contribution to an international crisis management operations will always
depend on what other countries contribute and how much. It is also linked to
operation’s ability to carry out its objectives and fulfil its mandate because the
profile of the operation will always determine what type of contributions it
requires from the participating states. Thus, if the operation has the objective to
maintain a no-fly zone over a country, a state that would provide 1,000
peacekeepers on the ground would contribute less to the operation’ ability to
fulfil its objectives than a state that would contribute a single fighter aircraft.
22
In order to estimate the utility values of the participating states’ contributions in
an out-of-area crisis management operation, several factors need to be
accounted for. Firstly, size is not the only thing that matters On the one hand
some states may contribute large contingents of forces, whereas others might
provide niche-capabilities such as tactical airlift and medical facilities. The
contributions of the sates that provide ground forces would be difficult to
replace, but so might be the contributions of those states that provided the airlift
and medical faculties. Thus, even though the states that provided ground forces
contributed more quantitatively than states that provided the niche capabilities,
all their contributions would be difficult to replace and they are crucial for an
out-of-area crisis management operation. On the other hand, states may also
provide a small contingent of forces or even just a staff officer to the Operational
HQ. It is quite common in CSDP military operations, for example, that some EU
Member States contribute one or two staff officers to the Operational HQ even
though they would not contribute any other capabilities. Although these staff
officers undoubtedly carry out import tasks during their service at the OHQ, it is
unlikely that officers from other Member States could not replace them or that
the operation would significantly depend on them. Secondly, the utility of some
contributions may be decreased by the presence of national caveats. Even though
a state would provide a large force contingent, the utility of its contribution may
be significantly decreased if it is subject to caveats. It is possible that the utility
value of a smaller force contingent may sometimes be higher than that of a larger
one if the larger contingent is subject to caveats and the smaller one is not. This
means that, from a military perspective, there are likely to be significant
differences in the relative utility values of EU Member States’ contributions to
CSDP military operations. Whereas some Member States’ contributions may be
crucial or even vital to the operation’s ability to carry out its objectives, others
may simple be supportive or purely symbolic. The implication of this for
analysing burden-sharing between EU Member States in CSDP military
operations is that it is simply not enough know who contributions what and how
much; it is also necessary to know what is the relative significance of each
participating Member State’s contribution to the operation and how much the
operation’s ability to carry out its objectives depends on it.
23
By assigning a specific utility value to each participating Member State’s
contribution, it would be possible to estimate how much the operation depends
on that contribution. This in turn would make it possible to classify EU Member
States’ contributions by dividing them into three functional categories: enabling
contributions, supportive contributions, and symbolic contributions. First,
enabling contributions are those that are absolutely vital to an operation’s ability
to carry out its objectives and ones that have to be present before it could be
launched in the first place. These contributions have a high utility value because
of their importance to the operation as a whole, and they are likely to consist of
either a large contingent of forces or specific niche capabilities that are vital to a
specific operation. Second, supportive contributions are not vital to an operation
individually, but they clearly enhance the operation’s ability to carry out its
objectives. These contributions have a moderate utility value and they are likely
to consist of small or medium-sized force contingents. However, although the
utility value of an individual supportive contribution is likely to be limited, it is
possible that the ‘collective utility value’ of supportive contributions made by a
number of EU Member States could reach the level of an enabling contribution.
This is due to the simple fact that if the utility value of an enabling contribution
made by state A is 5, then collective utility value of the supportive contributions
made by stats B, C, D, E and F, which all have the individual utility value of 1, will
also be 5. Thus, although an individual supportive contribution may not be vital
for the operation in question, it is nevertheless possible that collective impact of
these types of contributions may reach the level of an enabling contribution.
Third, symbolic contributions are those that do not significantly enhance the
operation’s ability to carry out its objectives either individually or collectively.
These contributions have a low utility value and they are likely to consist of
either extremely small force contingents or staff officers that are assigned to the
strategic-level Operational HQ or the tactical-level Force HQ. The main value of
symbolic contributions lies in their ability to demonstrate an individual Member
State’s political support for the operation in question or the EU’s CFSP/CSDP
ambitions more broadly. Furthermore, the collective utility value of multiple
symbolic contributions will never reach the level of an enabling contribution, as
24
was the case with supportive contributions, but is nevertheless possible that
their collective utility value reach the level of a supportive contribution.
Conclusion
This paper has laid out the foundations for building a theoretical model that
could be used to analyse burden-sharing between EU Member States in CSDP
military operations. It began with short discussion about the history of burdensharing in IR and showed that these studies have a long tradition and
distinguished pedigree especially in American IR scholarship. Afterwards it
noted that there have been extremely few attempts to study burden-sharing
between EU Member States in CSDP military operations, despite the fact that the
Union has conducted a total of six military operations since 2003. However, it
was still possible to discern a conventional wisdom on why EU Member States
participate in CSDP military operations through a careful analysis of the
available literature on CSDP and CSDP military operations. This conventional
wisdom showed that EU Member States have participated in these operations
due to a number of positive and negative reasons, but also that they have
sometimes been unable to do so due to a number of material and political
constraints. By knowing these reasons and constraints, it was possible to identify
the specific independent variables that the available literature considers to have
either a positive or negative impact on the dependent variable, i.e. EU’s Member
States decision to participate in a CSDP military operations. As was shown above,
these variables belonged to at least five different levels of analysis, and they
were also both material and immaterial in nature. Thus, a model that aims to
explain why EU Member States participate in CSDP military operations needs to
be able to fulfil several different tasks: First, it needs to explain how variables
from different levels of analysis are linked to each other; second, it needs to
explain what the relative significance of ideational factors is vis-à-vis material
factors; and third, it needs to explain how participation incentives vary across
different commitment levels. Furthermore, because the point of analysis will be
25
decision-making at the national-level, it seems that the model should be
embedded in the framework of FPA.
List of Appendixes
Appendix 1:
Reasons for Contributing to CSDP Military Operations
Positive Reasons
Negative Reasons
Furthering national interests:

Increasing general standing in the EU/world

Legitimising engagement in former colonies
Furthering collective European interests:

Stabilizing the European periphery

Protecting European trade

Overcoming intra-European conflicts

Constructing the EU as a capable actor in
security and defence policy
Direct pressure:

Pressure from fellow EU member states
Indirect pressure:

Subjective fear of being left outside an EU core if
one does not contribute
Furthering cosmopolitan interests:

Protecting human rights
Appendix 2:
Reasons for Not Contributing to CSDP Military Operations
Resource Constraints
Political Constraints
Lack of deployable resources
Lack of political will
Military overstretch
Domestic pressure against out-of-area deployments
Self/third-party-inflicted exclusion
Prioritisation of NATO/US-led operations
Appendix 3:
Independent Variables Affecting Burden-Sharing
Endogenous
Exogenous
Material
Immaterial
Economic resources:

Size of defence budget

Size of defence expenditure
Public-level:

Public opinion

Visibility of conflict (“CNN effect”)
Military resources:

Number of deployable forces

Professional
forces/conscription

Existing deployments
Government-level:

Threat perception

Parliamentary approval

Political will

Support for CFSP/CSDP

Solidarity towards other EU states
Regional-level:

Language of target country

Previous experience from target region
Resources required for operation:

Profile of operations

Intensity of conflict
Relations with target:

Economic relations
International-level:

UN mandate

Political relations with target

Relations with NATO/US
26

Pressure from other EU Member States
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