The sobering experiences with Western engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali in general and respective EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions in particular, suggest that EU efforts toward conflict resolution and state-building are systematically undermined by a lack of political settlement on the strategic level. This renders political stabilization via promoting good governance on the ground mostly futile. Moreover, the lack of local ownership in partner countries and coherent policies between the EU institutions and the EU Members States limit CSDP missions’ effectiveness and impact. The added value of this synoptic analysis rests with its combination of three analytical perspectives: 1) a systematic evaluation of missions’ impact effectiveness; 2) the inference of general and case-specific factors constraining and enabling EU crisis response effectiveness, and 3) the suggestion of avenues for theorizing on EU crisis response missions’ effectiveness. Moreover, this analysis draws on primary EU sources, and expert literature and incorporates additional data springing from interviews in Brussels as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali.