The efforts by the EU to effectively implement the Global Security Strategy’ its consequent Strategic Compass in order to strengthen its global posture but also provide security on its territory has taken a very demanding posture in light of the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Consequently, Eastern Europe as well as the Western Balkans, as key regions in the EU’s neighbourhood, have also unveiled their vulnerabilities in light of different regional revisionisms and competition. In addition, EU’s relations with China and India have to be reconsidered through the prism of international peace and security, both receiving serious contestations. At the same time, more immediate security issues such as, foreign intervention, disinformation, or even state aggression are bewildering the EU which has to revisit them under the prism of fatal military aggression and revisionism stemming from Russia. Is the EU prepared to face its immediate and wider security issues? Is the Strategic Compass a sufficient enough strategic document to direct a galvanized build up of EU’s readiness to provide security and defence for its peoples, its member states and to its wider neighbourhood? The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has rendered international law a strongly contested area, threatened to be reduced to a mere piece of paper. Is this going to seriously challenge normative Europe or it is going to calibrate EU’s normative standing with a geopolitical calibre favouring defence and deterrence politics? Russia’s aggression has also been acting as a high-efficiency filter through which most issues related to EU’s objective to augment its international posture have to be revisited especially taking into consideration the current NATO rejuvenation and its thorough defensive posture overhaul. Is the EU ready to formulate policies of deterrence? 

The book proposal is based on material provided by a number of conferences taking place in the context of a specific Jean Monnet Project discussing different issues of European Security, covering a time frame of almost two years. All contributions revolve around strategic, institutional and operational issues that affect European Security with an eye on the efforts of the EU to empower its posture as a global actor in an international context that is under flux. At the time of writing this proposal Russian invasion of Ukraine was launched producing a number of watershed changes in the context of European security considerations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underscored the salience of the ongoing debate on how to strengthen the European Union’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) but also its general strategic standing in a global context in which state’s aggression, revisionisms and radicalization imperil the fundamentals of the current world order.