Recently, the EU strengthened cooperation between its members in the area of defense and security as 2016 Global Strategy pointed out. The main goals were to ensure development of a more secure Europe, sustain stability on its foreign and security policy and provide resilience of its South and East borders. Although the EU has been a more active player in acting with regard to those aims in global security and foreign policy, it has still some important problems about building a proper-working common security and defense policy. CSDP still moves limitedly such as taking slow actions towards many international crises such as Libya and Ukraine and does not seem to be serious about creating a common sense of security. However, if the EU desires to be a global actor, it needs to pay attention to a further comprehensive security and defense policies while no single country can act alone towards new threats and challenges in today’s world. Therefore, this research dissertation aims to elucidate to the reason why the EU is not successful enough to leap over the cradle of CSDP threshold and to find the answer of whether it will act as a global actor or remain as a soft power. For this purpose, the  will start with providing a brief historical overview of CSDP started with the Treaty of Lisbon, and examine its main developments and objectives. Then, the research will look at recent challenges of CSDP by examining the EU institutions that are concerned with CSDP and its foreign policy implementation. In this case, this research dissertation aims to study Libya conflict and Ukraine crisis as case studies to define the obstacles of building and maintaining a common foreign and defense policy and question whether development of a common security is desirable. Within that regard, the research will examine the impacts of two influential states, namely Germany and the UK and their role on future of CSDP. In addition, the research will question whether they make a contribution to the achievement of an intensive CSDP, and a more effective EU foreign policy depend on their actions. As a conclusion, this research dissertation will argue that the EU will leap over the cradle of CSDP threshold and act as a global actor.

• eu external relations
• eu security policy
• european politics
• international relations

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