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What do European crisis management operations in remote places reveal about the EU’s political ambitions and about the present state of European integration? Against a traditional reading in terms of actorness and effectiveness, this article applies the functionality thesis to CSDP operations, and argues that the latter perform three internal functions: a substitute for national strategies in international crisis management; a way for EU foreign policy actors to compete against each other for political power; and an opportunity to reflect upon the nature and identity of the EU. Through a case study of the military intervention EUFOR Chad/CAR, the article demonstrates that an approach in terms of functionality is more accurate empirically than one in terms of effectiveness. Theoretically, it also usefully bridges the traditional rationalist/constructivist divide in the literature on CSDP, and provides challenging avenues for future research on EU peacekeeping in a middle-ground and sociological perspective.
