NATO and EU Strategic Security Environment

This chapter begins by exploring how the latest NATO and EU strategic documents assessed the strategic security environment. Following this, these documents examine how roles and responsibilities have been defined for better governance of the European security. To find answers to these questions, the historical evolution of both organizations’ security documents is analyzed. This is followed by discussing of how NATO and the EU have defined regional threats and risks in their latest strategic documents, especially in a period transformed by Russian threat. Lastly, strategic security documents are examined under three themes: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. As a result, it is argued that the Russian threat is a fact for both organizations and that NATO is the entity responsible for collective defense. In contrast, the EU is more inclined to assume roles necessitating medium-sized military operations, especially concerning crisis management but also on counter-terrorism and migration-related issues. Because they counter a common security threat, the increased clarity in the latest NATO and EU documents regarding the division of labor for providing security in their areas of responsibility is discussed.