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Introduction The European Union is quietly emerging as a signi‹cant security actor. It is perhaps a little-known fact that the EU has thousands of troops deployed around the world under its blue-and-gold-starred ›ag. In the past decade, it has engaged in 24 civilian and military operations in unstable and con›ict-ridden regions.1 Member states altogether spend nearly €200 billion annually on defense in support of around 1.7 million active service members.2 More often than not, the EU speaks and acts with one voice in the international community. Such instances include imposing international sanctions, condemning external actions that violate the rule of law, and offering high levels of development assistance. But these activities are just the beginning. Security is a broader concept than it once was. Traditional aspects of security such as national defense spending, sanctions, and boots on the ground are no longer necessarily central to power in the international security realm. New threats arise from nonstate actors, the integrity of borders is more vulnerable to transnational ›ows, and attacks are increasingly perpetrated from within states. The EU is addressing these new challenges through common approaches to police protection, border defense, intelligence sharing, legal guidelines, and so on. It has even created agencies in these ‹elds, thereby assuring coordination , integration, and follow-through. In many ways, the EU is uniquely able to adapt to these developments as an evolving actor in its own right. But at the same time, such successful and rapid adaptation has been highly unexpected. After all, integration in the security realm affects the very core of traditional state sovereignty. The EU comprises 27 member states, all with strong claims to national sovereignty, especially with regard to security and defense. Nonetheless, the EU has adapted and continues to do so in ways that re›ect a strong un- derstanding of the new complexities in today’s globalized world. European member state militaries are being reformed, transformed, and streamlined so that they are more amenable to engaging in crisis response abroad rather than simply in conventional defense on European soil. They are also becoming interoperable vis-à-vis each other, a process that is gradually leading to increasing common capacity. Over the past few years, in›uential EU of‹cials have realized that integration across and within various security sectors means that member states can maintain or even decrease defense spending while still augmenting common capabilities. To support this effort , member states have established the European Defence Agency and are willingly abiding by the norms it sets forth, including a common program of security research and development. The EU continues to ‹nd ways to take advantage of economies of scale in its increasingly integrated approach to security. A similar process is unfolding on the internal security front. Since the EU is largely internally borderless, member states tackle protection of the European “homeland” in common; for the most part, this is a highly integrated area of security policy. Member states have harmonized their approaches to police, intelligence, and border protection—everything from European evidence and arrest warrants to common procedures on immigration and asylum. Collectively, they deal with nonconventional weapons threats in the form of chemical, biological, and radiological attacks and address environmental, food, and energy security concerns alongside crime, drugs, and human traf‹cking. The line between internal and external security is virtually nonexistent; the EU’s remarkable progress in both dimensions thus contributes to its power as a global security actor. Because the EU operates and acts according to an expansive de‹nition of security, it is quite distinctive from the other major security actor in the region, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In contrast to the EU, NATO still applies a relatively narrow de‹nition of security and tends to re›ect vestiges of the Cold War approach to con›ict. NATO is also heavily reliant on the United States and its military resources. While the EU constitutes an important pillar of NATO—only six EU member states are not part of NATO—the EU increasingly encompasses much more. It reaches into the daily lives of its citizens through internal security protections and exercises various forms of external power. Civilian power has been quite evident , but military power is on the rise. Compared to nation-states, the EU is an actor in ›ux; it is continuously de‹ning and rede‹ning what it can do 2 security integration in europe [3.144.12.205] Project MUSE (2024...

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