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. NovákyUniversity 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).

1 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 over-

contributed 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

2 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 burden-

sharing 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 low-

intensity 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 burden-

sharing 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 re-

authorizing 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 Balkans 4

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.

4 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

5 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

8 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 post-

Cold 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

9 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 low-

intensity 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

10 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 third-

party. 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 programme11, 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

11 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 US-

led 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).

17

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

18

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-à-

vis 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.

19

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.

20

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.

21

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.

22

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

23

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 burden-

sharing 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 decision-

24

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 ReasonsFurthering 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

Furthering cosmopolitan interests: Protecting human rights

Direct pressure: Pressure from fellow EU member states

Indirect pressure: Subjective fear of being left outside an EU core if

one does not contribute

Appendix 2:Reasons for Not Contributing to CSDP Military Operations

Resource Constraints Political ConstraintsLack of deployable resources

Military overstretch

Lack of political will

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

Material ImmaterialEndogenous

Economic resources: Size of defence budget Size of defence expenditure

Military resources: Number of deployable forces Professional

forces/conscription Existing deployments

Public-level: Public opinion Visibility of conflict (“CNN effect”)

Government-level: Threat perception Parliamentary approval Political will Support for CFSP/CSDP Solidarity towards other EU states

Exogenous Resources required for operation: Profile of operations Intensity of conflict

Relations with target: Economic relations

Regional-level: Language of target country Previous experience from target region

International-level: UN mandate Political relations with target Relations with NATO/US Pressure from other EU Member States

25

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