ABSTRACT
At the heart of a realist analysis of the EU as an international security actor is the argument that if its member states are serious about the Union becoming an effective and coherent vehicle for collective endeavours to safeguard and enhance common European security interests in an uncertain world, they must shed some of their lingering illusions about the virtue and efficacy of an EU security strategy based primarily on ‘soft power’ and moral suasion, and develop the political will and military capacity to back up EU diplomacy with coercive instruments when necessary. In his remarkable treatise on political realism, The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli argued that ‘princes’ (i.e., strategic actors) needed to learn how to act like Chiron the centaur, ‘half beast and half man’. Unless they knew ‘how to act according to the nature of both’, they would be vulnerable to predators and ineffective as political actors.
