The Dutch Parliamentary Debate on European Defense and NATO in the Decade after the Maastricht Treaty: an Analysis of Three Junctures

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2021-07-26

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en

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This thesis analyzes three important junctures in the political debate regarding the European defense policy in the decade after the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union. Throughout this period notions of European defense have shifted from a separate European defense identity to a European defense identity as part of NATO, and back. This thesis analyzes how the political debates in the Dutch House of Representatives shifted accordingly. In three chapters this thesis respectively deals with three junctures in this debate: 1. The initial construction of the post-Maastricht European defense identity, 2. The testing of European defense capacity during the war in Bosnia, and 3. The renewed debates about the European defense identity in the late 1990s. This thesis finds that throughout the 1990s, Europe has not been able to fully construct a European defense identity outside of NATO, which leaves challenges to fulfill these aspirations in the twenty-first century. Keywords: European defense identity; NATO; CFSP; CSDP; ESDI; Treaty of Maastricht; Dayton Agreement; Brussels Summit; Saint-Malo; Cologne Council; Washington Summit; Helsinki Headline Goal; ERRF; Yugoslav Wars; Dutch parliamentary debate

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