Defence and security

Private Force and the Making of States, c. 1100-1500

This chapter shows how the distinction between the public and the private emerges with respect to the use of force in conjunction with the long rise of the state in Europe. In drawing a historical conceptual analysis of the changing organization of military power in the making of states, I show why we need to take an empirical rather than an ideological approach to the distinction between different types of force, as only then can we hope to understand why and for what purposed power was organized in specific ways, and the consequences of that organization. The chapter takes as its starting point the late eleventh century, a period when public authorities had been decimated throughout Christendom and where kings no longer held the aura of public authority, but were (private) contestants for public authority on equal footing with their competitors. Both public and private force was private, so to speak. I proceed in five sections. The first addresses the relationship between war-making and state-making, a relationship which is central to much of the literature on state formation and to our further discussion. The next three sections address the chronology of changes in the organization of force, and move from warfare as a knightly (largely) private enterprise to the wars of mercenaries, culminating in the early attempts at holding standing permanent armies around the late fifteenth century. The claim is not that this process was linear or inevitable, and, as demonstrated in the last section, the centralization of the legitimate means of warfare in the hands of public authorities did not mean the end of private enterprise in a world of states. Rather, private enterprise continued alongside public force, albeit in a different character.

Private force and the emergence of the international system

This chapter deals with the importance of private force to the early emergence and spread of the international system. It discusses how varieties of non-traditional forms of force helped maintain what was in many ways an international system of empires. The chapter focuses on the rules, norms and values of the system and shows how the gradual abolishment of private force has helped foster ideational cohesion in the international system. It also focuses on modes of interaction, and on how an unintended consequence of the use of private force has been a functionalist push for a tighter integrated system. The chapter also deals with mercenarism, privateering and piracy, the most important forms of private force for the emergence of the international system. It concludes that private force should be understood as one of the central productive forces in the gradual emergence of the modern international system.

Conclusion: The EU, Energy, and Global Power Shifts

This edited collection focuses on the impact of the changing global distribution of power on the EU's energy policy and ability to project its approach to energy-related issues abroad. The authors map the EU's energy governance, its changing global position and the impact of various factors on its capacity to pursue its interests in the field of energy. They also provide insights into the internal and external energy policy of the EU, and explores how various EU institutions shape energy policy. They examine, moreover, the state of the EU's relations with its external energy suppliers, such as Russia, and with other global energy actors, such as China, the main global consumer of energy; the USA, which is going through a technologically-driven energy revolution; and Brazil, which may become a key global energy player.

EU performance as a Regional Security actor: Comparing ENP south to NATO’s MENA policy

DDR and SSR Chalenges in Mali