Book Review: European Union Security Dynamics: In the New National Interest (original) (raw)

2010, Journal of Global Analysis

The notion of security has changed significantly in the post-Cold war era. Security is not anymore understood in the traditional sense as state-centric and military-oriented. In fact, the concept of security now encompasses different sectors such as economy, society and environment, different actors such as soldiers, terrorist groups, non-governmental organizations and pirates, and wide range of issues such as terrorism, organized crime, disarmament, peacekeeping operations and piracy. Security concerns defined by the bipolar system gave way to the re-nationalization of defence and security policies in the post-Cold war era. As this has been probably the general trend in world politics for the last twenty years, in the course of the development of European security architecture we have witnessed ‘de-territorialization’ and ‘de-nationalization’ of security policies of European states (Matlary 2009:23). Janne Haaland Matlary, in her book ‘European Union Security Dynamics: In the New National Interest’ explores the development of the security and defence policy in the European Union starting with the assumption that “the national state model of defence in Europe is disappearing” (p.16), because European states no more need mass armies and conventional military power that solely provide territorial defence. Addressing the non-existential threats and wide-ranging risks has become the main priority of European states. Notwithstanding the author’s post-Westphalian understanding of nation-state, her perspective by and large corresponds to the liberal intergovernmentalism approach in European studies. First of all, the unit of her analysis is member states