EU Missions and Operations: Practices of Learning Lessons in the CSDP

Beginning with the first mission and operation in 2003, the chapter details the development of the organisational structure of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), which later turned into CSDP with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. According to the author, the complexity and political nature of the organisational landscape impacts the lessons learned process in multiple ways. Processes remain flexible to allow staff working on CSDP to manoeuvre the landscape without the risk of political disagreements or encroaching on another institution's territory.

Writing in 2022, the author sees no widely recognised process to learn lessons which disseminates learnings beyond the group that has established them. Even though there has been a long history of formalising informal learning after a lack of any procedure in the very beginning, its success still highly depends on the cooperation and commitment of individuals. With military and civilian CSDP actors subsequently developing multiple procedures, actors in the field are now attempting to standardise, but even with new processes and mandates for learning lessons in place, recording lessons remains difficult.

In CSDP, learning lessons includes the collection of lessons, exchanging knowledge, and subsequent adaptation of training. Once learned, lessons are archived in a database. However, there is an overemphasis of learning from successes rather than trying to learn from failures as well. And to avoid political contestation, lessons focus on what is easy to achieve and what can possibly lead to practical outputs. Oftentimes, knowledge gaps were pointed out that could be addressed with training. Strategic lessons or reflections on missions are often not shared.

Reference: Bremberg, N. (2022). EU missions and operations: practices of learning lessons in the CSDP. The Everyday Making of EU Foreign and Security Policy (pp. 131-148).