Frederic Merand and Antoine Vandemoortele_Introduction_volume3_issue2 Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 3 issue 2/2007 © RERA 2007 all rights reserved 1 ……………………………………… Introduction Frédéric Mérand1 and Antoine Vandemoortele2 1 Frédéric Mérand is assistant professor of Political Science at the Université of Montréal. 2 Antoine Vandemoortele is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute. Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 3 issue 2/2007 © RERA 2007 all rights reserved 2 This special issue on European Union - Canada relations and the new foreign policy challenges seeks to provide grounds for discussions on key aspects of the transatlantic link and of new elements of the foreign policies of both the EU and Canada. All articles in this issue present original and well-thought analysis on a specific aspect of this question; the governance of security within the EU, the use of sanctions by the EU, the EU strategy toward the Middle East, the development of hybrid peace operations and, finally, the promotion of security sector reform in post-conflict situation. These five articles were first presented and discussed by promising young scholars during the Young Researchers Network (YRN) Transatlantic conference held at the European University Institute in April 2007. The authors then agreed to revise their papers and submit themselves to the process of peer-review to present in the end what we hope, and what we definitely think, are texts of excellent quality that reflect the efforts of the authors and are deem worthy of what in our discipline we call scientific publications. The five articles in this special issue address important issues related to the transformation of both the nature of Canadian and European efforts to deal with new security threats and the evolution of the transatlantic security community. More precisely, one of the broader concerns of the authors is the question of how Canada and the EU deal with the different set of transatlantic security institutions and the way they design and develop their own capabilities to achieve better security governance. Another important element that several authors focused on was the new approaches used by Canada and the EU in addressing new threats such as terrorism and failed states and in developing new approaches toward sanctions, peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction. These debates, related to the new foreign policy challenges faced by Canada and the EU, also reflect the broader issue on the international agenda on finding ways to construct a better, more peaceful world. With the increasing role of the EU as an international actor and the Canadian tradition of honest broker on the international scene, the questions asked by these scholars and the analysis made of key security issues leads us to a reflection on the changing role of international security relations which is bound to remain both intellectually challenging and policy-relevant. The first article by Chantal Lavallée attempts, with great success, to provide a map of the field of security governance within the EU. By clearly setting the development of the ESDP outside the traditional framework of security, the author seeks to understand the logic that shapes the interactions between the many public and private actors involved in the ESDP process. Her objective is to explain both how this European security governance is constructed, not in term of a hierarchical dimension but alongside several spheres of interactions, and how this impact the way Canada sees the EU as a partner in security related issues. She draws a detailed picture of who are these actors and how they interact. This attention to detail and the use of several interviews is particularly strong in her discussion of private actors, most notably think tanks. Although she positions her analysis in the theoretical domain of critical security studies, the author does not solely argue on the theoretical level and provides us with many examples that reflect the strong empirical value of her work. The second part of this article deals with a more policy-relevant aspect and should be of interest to policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic, but especially for Canadian decision Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 3 issue 2/2007 © RERA 2007 all rights reserved 3 makers. By pointing out the possibilities for Canada to get involved in the renewal of the transatlantic link, Chantal Lavallée sets the tone for a discussion on the ways Canada could be more dynamic in its security relation with the EU. Moving from the internal dimension of the EU foreign policy-making, the next two articles analyse key elements of the EU as an international actor in different contexts. The article by Ruth Hanau-Santini frames the debates and actions of the EU toward the Middle East since the European Security Strategy in 2003. Her main hypothesis is that while the EU has shifted its security discourse to address new security threats, the actions of the EU remain largely inconsistent due to the balance of influence between the EU and the member states. In order to substantiate this claim, the author first uses the discourses of the EU Council presidency conclusions and the European Security strategy (ESS) document to discuss the way the EU understands security. Concerning the ESS, the author presents a compelling argument of the way the ESS is leaning towards a human security understanding of threats and security issues. Once the nature of EU discourses on threats in the Middle East is done, Ruth Hanau Santini proceeds to demonstrate the lack of coherence between words and deeds in terms of its institutional, horizontal and vertical dimensions. She raises an important point in discussing the horizontal dimension of the EU coherence, highlighting the domains of failed states, terrorism, non-proliferation and regional conflicts by showing that there remains important limits in linking these different security aspects in a comprehensive strategy. This section is also representative of the article in which the author uses a vast amount of empirical information to add to her argument. In her conclusion, she returns to the difficult balancing between the EU institutions and the individual member states. “The inconsistencies are more between European institutions and single member states foreign policy interests and legacies, than between the security discourse and the policies on the ground.” (Hanau Santini, this issue, p. 17) Echoing some of the issues highlighted by Hanau-Santini, Clara Portela addresses in the third article the development of EU sanctions policies toward the ACP countries. The objective of this article is to analyze the effectiveness of EU sanctions as policy tools. This is done by focusing on the use of the article 96 that allows the suspension of development aid toward a number of African Caribbean and Pacific countries when violations of human rights and democratic principles have occurred. The first part of Portela’s article focuses on linking the issue of development aid cut-offs to the general sanctions theory and then setting the framework for analyzing the effectiveness of these policy tools. By clarifying the difference, in EU terminology, between sanctions and aid suspensions, the author addresses an important conceptual element that sheds light on the process of the use of article 96. However, the central aspect of this article is a detailed, empirically focused and impressive analysis of all seven cases where the article 96 was invoked by the EU. This compelling evidence leads the author to conclude that the use of aid suspensions was largely successful, in five cases out of seven. She then proceeds to discuss the merits and limits of these policy tools by arguing that this tool has only been used in cases where success was, in large part, foreseeable. This means that these measures can be effective, but only if the context is right. These policy advices that are visible throughout the text also add another important dimension to this article. Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 3 issue 2/2007 © RERA 2007 all rights reserved 4 The final two articles move away from a European centred debate to an understanding of different elements related to peacekeeping and peacebuilding. They both share the idea that the debates related to these issues cannot be framed solely in terms of EU or Canadian foreign policy challenges and need to be embedded in discussions of the roles of international organizations such as the UN, NATO or the OSCE. The fourth article by Kristine St-Pierre then rightfully frames the notion of hybrid peace operations as a triangle between the UN, regional organizations and contributing countries. Four types are hybrid missions are covered in this paper, depending on the relationship between the UN and the regional organizations involved. The objective of this paper is to clarify the roles of hybrid missions in UN peace operations and to elaborate on the implications this has on the UN, regional organizations and peacekeeping more generally. By discussing the role and contributions of the EU and Canada in hybrid missions, the author provides ample empirical evidence to support her findings. After a thorough and well executed analysis of the history and objectives of hybrid missions, Kristine St-Pierre proceeds to discuss the contributions of the EU and Canada and highlights key elements and differences in their approaches. On the one hand, the EU is a recent actor in peace missions and still mainly focuses its attention to civilian or civilian-based crisis management. With this in mind, the EU needs to address its capabilities issues, especially the military part, and the notion of policy relevance and operations control in order to increase its cooperation and effectiveness with the UN. On the other hand, the Canada has a longstanding tradition of peacekeeping and has been involved in almost every mission in the last 50 years. However, unlike the EU, Canada has started to decrease its participation in UN-led operations since the mid-90s and has moved toward closer cooperation with NATO. While Canada has maintained ties in UN peacekeeping, its participation in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan clearly shows the kind of commitments Canada prefers. In the end, the author concludes by discussing how the EU and Canada contributions, as well as Canada-EU relations in crisis management, will likely shape hybrid missions and improve the effectiveness of peace missions by providing the UN with more capabilities. Finally, the article by Antoine Vandemoortele moves the timeline of peace operations further by analysing the issue of post-conflict reconstruction and the importance of security sector reform. The paper seeks to explore the relationship between national and regional contributions toward security sector reform (Canada and the EU) and the role of international organizations involved in this process (the OSCE and NATO). More specifically, this article analyzes the role of the EU and Canada in the promotion of security sector reform (SSR) within the OSCE and NATO. The first part of this article then traces the development of the concept of security sector reform since the mid-90s and its use both at the international level and on the ground, in peace operations. The main focus of this article is then to explain the absence of an overall framework for SSR within the OSCE and NATO despite the role of the EU and Canada and to explain the differences between these two organizations. The main finding of the author is that NATO has focused its role on defence reform and has developed a robust, but specific agenda and conceptual framework toward SSR while the OSCE rules, including the consensus element, has forced the organization to be active on the ground through its long term missions, but has limited the debates on the adoption of a conceptual tool similar to the old Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 3 issue 2/2007 © RERA 2007 all rights reserved 5 OSCE Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security of 1994. In the end, the author proposes some policy recommendations to provide both organizations with more effective ways to deal with SSR and post-conflict reconstruction, but also to help Canada and the EU to remain at the front of the development of SSR policies. With this summary of the articles in this special issue in mind, it is easier to gain a broader picture of some important aspects of the EU-Canada relationship and some of the key foreign policy challenges that they both face. We strongly believe that taken collectively, these articles provide us with compelling analysis and answers on these issues and that the authors’ advices fully merit our attention. Bonne lecture!