Resilience as the EU Global Strategy’s new leitmotif: pragmatic, problematic or promising?

ABSTRACT

A striking difference between the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy and its 2003 predecessor is the ubiquity of resilience as a new leitmotif, understood as the ability of states and societies to reform, thus withstanding and recovering from internal and external crisis. Resilience provides a middle ground between over-ambitious liberal peace-building and under-ambitious stability, (re)directs attention to local resources and practices, and is ambiguous enough to be acceptable to everyone. The Global Strategy’s leitmotif is an example of the rise and spread of resilience in international discourses about crisis management and humanitarian emergencies. Although there are risks inherent to the way in which resilience reframes risks and crises, its added value lies in its power as convening concept, opening up international organizations to new ways of thinking and working, and providing a common ground for engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• European Union
• Strategy
• Security
• Emergencies
• Development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Wolfgang Wagner is Professor of International Security and director of the programme ‘Law and Politics of International Security’ at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He holds an M.A. in Political Science and German Literature from the University of Tübingen and a doctorate from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. His main research interests are the foreign policies of liberal democracies, the manifold links between domestic politics and international conflict and the European Union’s Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy. His work has appeared, amongst others, in Journal of European Public Policy, International Studies Quarterly, Armed Forces and Society, European Political Science Review, Parliamentary Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, and European Security.

Rosanne Anholt is researcher at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds an M.Sc. in Management, Policy Analysis and Entrepreneurship from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her main research interests are power, discourse, policy, and action within the international humanitarian system, and human rights of conflict-affected populations, in particular of women.

ORCiD

Wolfgang Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5191-2470

Rosanne Anholt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3596-9861

Notes

1. Between April and July 2016, we had a total of 22 background talks with civil servants from the European External Action Service, the European Commission, the European Parliament, diplomats from the German Foreign Office, representatives from various international governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental organizations with programmes focused on resilience. Most of our interviewees preferred to remain anonymous.

2. Ian Manners, ‘Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2002), pp.235–58.

3. High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy ‘Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe. A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy’, Brussels 2016, https://europa.eu/globalstrategy/en/file/441/download?token=KVSh5tDI, p.23 (accessed July 2016).

4. European Council, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World’, Brussels 2003, p.10.

5. High Representative, ‘Shared Vision, Common Action’ (note 3), p. 24.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., p.23.

8. Ibid., p.25.

9. Ibid., p.26.

10. Ibid., p.24.

11. Ibid., p.11.

12. Ibid., p.25.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. European Commission/High Representative for the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy 2015: Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Review of the European Neighbourhood Policy, Brussels, 18 November 2015 JOIN(2015) 50 final.

16. European Council, ‘A Security Europe’ (note 4), p.8.

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19. European Commission, ‘Action Plan for Resilience in Crisis Prone Countries 2013–2020’, Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2013) 227 final, Brussels, 19 June 2013.

20. European Commission, ‘Resilience Marker: General Guidance (November 2014)’, Ref. Ares(2014)3883617—21 November 2014.

21. At the heart of Max Weber’s theory of the state is a rational bureaucracy that stands above society and operates independently of it. Liberal peace-building has been criticized for underestimating the difficulties of building such a bureaucracy in a non-Western context (David Chandler, ‘International Statebuilding and the Ideology of Resilience’, Politics, Vol. 33, No. 4 [2013], pp.276–86).

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52. Jon Coaffee and Pete Fussey, ‘Constructing Resilience Through Security and Surveillance: The Politics, Practices and Tensions of Security-driven Resilience’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 46, No. 1 (2015), pp.86–105.

53. High Representative, ‘Shared Vision, Common Action’ (note 3), p.4.

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56. Chandler and Reid, The Neoliberal Subject (note 40).

57. Jon Coaffee and Pete Fussey, ‘Constructing Resilience Through Security and Surveillance: The Politics, Practices and Tensions of Security-driven Resilience’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 46, No. 1 (2015), pp.86–105, p.87.

58. Mareile Kaufmann, ‘Emergent Self-organisation in Emergencies: Resilience Rationales in Interconnected Societies’, Resilience, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2013), pp.53–68.

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Additional information

Funding

“This work was supported by the Institute for Societal Resilience at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.”