| Summary: | Aspiring to become a “global security actor,” the EU has, throughout the last decade, increasingly made use of its versatile toolbox in crisis management missions far beyond its own soil. Crisis management missions are particularly challenging when security is threatened on various levels at once, as is the case in Mali. There, addressing the conflict means combining military assistance with development aid, state-building efforts, and security sector reforms. Ambitious to apply a truly comprehensive approach, meaning an approach that bridges military and civilian efforts, the EU has launched two missions in Mali; yet it has refrained from providing a full-scale military operation. This case study aims to foster an understanding of European security actorness by accounting for the challenges of EU crisis management in general and in Mali in particular from a theoretical perspective that integrates realist, institutionalist, and constructivist understandings. Finally, this thesis contributes to the academic debate on the concept of strategic culture by analyzing to what extent the concept proves helpful for understanding the challenges inherent in European crisis management.
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