Ton van Osch’s scientific contributions

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Publications (1)


From EU battlegroups to Rapid Deployment Capacity: learning the right lessons?
  • Article
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January 2024

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112 Reads

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4 Citations

International Affairs

Christoph O Meyer

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Ton van Osch

The article uses the case of the development of the European Union Battlegroups to the Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) to better understand the changing learning capacity of the EU in its military Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The article develops a theoretical framework to capture the most significant factors affecting learning by drawing on insights from the literatures on organizational learning and policy failure, with a specific focus on military organizations and CSDP. This framework is then used to study to what degree the EU has learnt the right lessons from the creeping failure of the Battlegroups, which factors affected learning, and to what degree the EU suffers from specific learning pathologies. The article draws on elite interviews, secondary and grey literature, and the high-level practitioner experience of one author. It finds that the EU has improved its learning capacities and correctly identified most of the military-operational root causes of the failure, yet struggled to correctly identify or address the political–strategic ones. This article offers insights to practitioners on where to best target efforts to improve learning. The theoretical framework could help to illuminate the challenges of political–military learning in multi-national regional organizations under difficult epistemic conditions.

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Citations (1)


... The enhancement of the EU-NATO cooperation on European security, including its distinct dimensions (such as cyber and hybrid security), as well as the revitalized EU-UK security link within and beyond NATO (as recently relaunched within the UK's new Labour government's 'broad-ranging UK-EU Security Pact' initiative, see : King 2024), are cases in point. The EU's own growing 'hard power' and capacity to act militarily (Meyer et al. 2024), with a promise of further defence integration (if not the establishment of a European Defence Union yet), will be vital for credible defence and deterrence posture while forging a new European security architecture without and against Russia. It will, furthermore, be of utmost importance to manage the transitional phase as Ukraine, Moldova but also South Caucasus states move 'out of the grey'-that is, furthest-away from Russian postcolonial embrace and ever-closer to the European Union membership-not least as, this time around, the EU might need to take greater responsibility for ensuring peace and security of the process given that NATO (and the 'NATO membership first' option) might simply be unavailable. ...

Reference:

Post-war, past Russia: Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, regional unpeace and the imperatives of post-war European security (re)ordering
From EU battlegroups to Rapid Deployment Capacity: learning the right lessons?

International Affairs