ABSTRACT
In order to identify and examine the conditions under which EU military conflict management is successful, one must first determine whether the five operations conducted to date have been successful. That is what this first empirical part of the book sets out to do. Success will be evaluated according to the definition developed in Chapter two, which contends that an operation of this nature is successful if its purpose has been achieved and appropriately implemented from both an internal actor-specific and an external target-specific perspective. The evaluation of success will be structured around the four corresponding success criteria developed above: internal goal attainment, internal appropriateness, external goal attainment and external appropriateness. Internal goal attainment evaluates the achievements of each operation from the EU perspective—that is, according to the key objectives explicitly articulated in each mission mandate. Internal appropriateness assesses the implementation of each operation with regard to the timeliness, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the deployment. The external goal attainment criterion assesses the contribution that each operation made to the management of the violent conflict it sought to address—that is, in preventing continuation, diffusion, escalation and intensification of violence. Finally, the external appropriateness criterion evaluates each operation according to the two Just War principles governing the legitimate use of force; namely, discrimination and proportionality. In this way, the success of all five operations will be evaluated from both an EU and a conflict management perspective. This chapter begins by introducing each operation and then evaluating its internal goal attainment and internal appropriateness. Finally, it compares the internal success of all five operations and synthesizes the central findings regarding the overall internal success of EU military conflict management to date.
