This book examines how the European Union can pursue a grand strategy and become a distinct global actor in a world of emerging great powers.

At the grand strategic level, its sheer economic size makes the EU a global power. However, the EU needs to take into account that many international actors continue to measure power mostly by assessing military capability. To preserve its status as an economic power, therefore, the EU has to become a power across the board, which requires a grand strategy, and the means and the will to proactively pursue one. The authors of this book aim to...

This new Handbook brings together key experts on European security from the academic and policy worlds to examine the European Union (EU) as an international security actor.

In the two decades since the end of the Cold War, the EU has gradually emerged as an autonomous actor in the field of security, aiming to safeguard European security by improving global security. However, the EU s development as a security actor has certainly not remained uncontested, either by academics or by policy-makers, some of whom see the rise of the EU as a threat to their national and/or transatlantic...