Partners in capacity building

Both the EU and NATO moved away from their traditional comfort zones towards
a crisis management middle ground starting from the late 1990s onwards. This has
subsequently led to speculation about inter-organisational rivalry and competition.1
The ongoing political impasse between Turkey and Cyprus over Cypriot sovereignty
has been a major obstacle to EU-NATO relations evolving towards more concerted and
comprehensive inter-organisational cooperation.
However, two separate but related trends have led to renewed efforts at improving
relations at the inter-organisational level. The first is the changing security environment
which frames the EU-NATO relationship. This evolving strategic environment is
today characterised by unprecedented challenges emanating from the south and east
of EU and NATO member state territory. The second trend stems from the fact that
there is little appetite among Western nations for engaging in long, costly and complicated
missions of the kind many have been involved in since 2001 and, in some cases,
even before then. These two factors combined have resulted in EU and NATO member
states turning to preventative approaches instead of protracted military operations
in response to crises. This is where the concept of capacity building demonstrates its
relevance.
This chapter looks specifically at capacity building as one of the key objectives for
enhanced EU-NATO cooperation. The first part takes stock of how capacity building fits
into larger EU and NATO understandings of security motivations as well as highlighting
key areas of achievement since the 2016 Joint Declaration was signed. The second
section examines key challenges to enhanced cooperation and, in particular, collaboration.
Finally, the chapter offers some thoughts on ways forward.