ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS), adopted by the Council of the European Union in October 2016. The chapter addresses the question: To what extent is a second-generation human security approach to violent conflicts, as elaborated in the contributions to this volume, made possible by the adoption of the EUGS? It proceeds from the premise that the document does not represent what Mogherini, the EU or member states think but that it constitutes an important part of the symbolic negotiation of the world. The analysis in this chapter highlights both the promise and challenges of the EUGS as a basis for a second-generation human security approach to conflict. A look at the textual level shows how the adoption of the EUGS constitutes an important discursive moment that brings the language of human security into EU security discourse and into the reinvention of the EU through its security strategy. Examining the level of meanings and the world that the document of the EUGS brings out, the chapter finds that the world of the EUGS is an intriguing and variegated one, which not only differs in many respects from the world of the 2003 European Security Strategy but also creates important openings for a second-generation human security approach to violent conflicts. Especially the contextualised nature of conflicts, the existence of ‘rooted civil society’ as a significant political actor and the necessity for grounding engagements in a diversity of knowledges make possible a second-generation human security approach that acknowledges the complexity of contemporary violent conflicts as historically situated social conditions. And yet, at the same time, there are tensions in the world of the EUGS that may impose obstacles for the implementation of second-generation human security. These include a conventional preoccupation with stabilisation, manifested in an implicit linear view of conflict and the exclusion of justice mechanisms, as well as a geopolitical outlook on EU external engagements that is constitutive of EU action. These tensions run counter to the normative basis of second-generation human security and may compromise its pursuit in practice.
