NATO's Strategy and EU's Common Defense: Their Impacts on China

“Adjustment of the NATO’s Strategy and the EU’s Common Defense：Their Impacts on China’s Security Environment”, a CASS Key Research Project chaired by Professor Zhao Junjie, was concluded in June 2010.

The project is aimed at studying the adjustment of the NATO’s strategy and the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and analyzes their potential influences on the evolution of the international pattern and on China’s security environment. Based on the research, it tries to put forward some countermeasures that China should take.

The project focuses on the following issues: the effects of the NATO’s New Strategy from the perspective of the various strategic changes in the NATO after the Cold War; the diplomatic and security dimensions of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) , the backgrounds and intentions, functions and mechanisms, as well as the problems of CFSP and ESDP; a comparative study on the adjustment of the NATO’s strategy and ESDP, especially on their relations, which represent not only the adjustments of the US-Europe Relations and Europe-Russia Relations after the Cold War, but also the differences in their views towards national security and common interests; their potential influences on China’s security environment and some constructive countermeasures to be suggested.

The study pays much attention to integrate theory and practice. It tries to adopt some new methods of international relations studies, such as putting forward hypotheses (EU Governance Model, Decision-Making Mechanism in the EU Common Security and Defense Policy), using hermeneutics to manipulate concepts (the relevance and discrepancy between ESDP or CSDP, CFSP, EID and ESDI), case study (the Conflicts between Russia and Georgia, the Iraq War, and etc.) and variable-controlling.