ABSTRACT
Since the end of the Cold War and the change in the context of existence and action of the European Community first and the European Union then, European elites have been talking about the need to provide the Union with a common foreign, security, and defense policy. This urge has been gushing from the realization that Europe cannot escape its responsibilities and that, divided, Europeans are “powerless” (ESS). Essentially an events-driven reflection, of which the Iraq crisis and enlargement are only the latest examples, the definition of a grand strategy for Europe is one of the most ambitious discursive enterprise of the EU leadership, because it has direct implications on the affirmation – internally but also and especially externally – of the political identity and the international subjectivity of the Union.
