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Security and Defence

Selected e-articles

Abstract by the author: Existing insights into recent defence integration, including against the backdrop of Russia’s war, largely stem from EU governance studies. Although these studies might not explicitly delve into the EU’s politico-strategic role, when combined with the broader framework of International Relations (IR), they imply the EU’s effective progression, at least relatively, as a defence actor. However, a closer analysis of certain key developments and transatlantic dynamics suggests a persistent lack in the political and strategic dimensions of EU defence policy. This disparity arises when IR concepts are tailored to fit the EU context in integration studies.

Abstract by the  author: In the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Germany was not the only one to undergo “Zeitenwende” in Europe. The European Union (EU), as a whole, also witnessed an unprecedented surge in its determination to bolster its security and defence efforts. Using collective funds, EU countries, for instance, have been providing lethal arms to Ukraine and have committed to joint procurement of ammunition and missiles to assist Kyiv. Furthermore, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market has pro-actively carried to the European capitals the message about the need for the “war economy mode.” To what extent does recent progress in EU defence policy represent a fundamental shift in the EU’s self-perception and its approach to external policy? More concretely, can we realistically describe a stronger and more robust EU defence policy as being firmly rooted in a shared political and strategic vision? The paper examines relevant transformations, including recent developments, and argues that they are closely intertwined with the economic rationale, which is empirically distinct from a politico-strategic vision. This has implications for EU-NATO cooperation.

Abstract by the author:  The paper debates the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the relationship between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It argues that the invasion has changed dramatically Europe’s security landscape, carrying major implications for both organizations and their relationship. After its withdrawal from Afghanistan and deepening frictions between the US and its European allies about burden-sharing, the war instilled a new sense of purpose into NATO, placing renewed emphasis on its core functions of territorial defense and deterrence. However, the war was also a reality check for the EU, raising important questions about the future of the European security architecture, the Union’s role within it, and its relationship with NATO (hereafter also referred to as the Alliance). The aim of this article is to try to answer some of these questions, by providing an initial assessment of the impact of the war on the relationship between NATO and the CSDP, and to sketch out potential avenues for strengthening the EU’s role in transatlantic security. More specifically, the paper will try to answer the following questions: what are the implications of the conflict on the Alliance? How did the war impact on the CSDP and the Union’s aspiration to strategic autonomy? Where is EU-NATO cooperation heading as a result of the war? Will the conflict ramp up cooperation between the two organizations or will European defence efforts be channelled mostly through NATO? Will EU leaders grab the momentum created by the war to further institutional integration also in security and defence and or will the war turn into another missed opportunity to promote a more effective burden-sharing in transatlantic security?

Abstract by the author: This article studies the EU's failure to develop battlegroups and its capacity to learn from its ongoing inability to fulfil this goal. The findings show that the EU has correctly identified military—operational causes, but deeper political and strategic issues remain undiagnosed or unaddressed. Abstract The article uses the case of the development of the European Union Battlegroups to the Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) to better understand the changing learning capacity of the EU in its military Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The article develops a theoretical framework to capture the most significant factors affecting learning by drawing on insights from the literatures on organizational learning and policy failure, with a specific focus on military organizations and CSDP. This framework is then used to study to what degree the EU has learnt the right lessons from the creeping failure of the Battlegroups, which factors affected learning, and to what degree the EU suffers from specific learning pathologies. The article draws on elite interviews, secondary and grey literature, and the high-level practitioner experience of one author. It finds that the EU has improved its learning capacities and correctly identified most of the military-operational root causes of the failure, yet struggled to correctly identify or address the political–strategic ones. This article offers insights to practitioners on where to best target efforts to improve learning. The theoretical framework could help to illuminate the challenges of political–military learning in multi-national regional organizations under difficult epistemic conditions.

Abstract by the author: This article provides a novel conceptualization of bricolage as a strategy for incremental supranational self‐empowerment. It argues that the cumulative effects of different bricolage tools employed by the Commission have been central for progressively strengthening its role in EU security and defence, which culminated in the establishment of the European Defence Fund (EDF) and the Commission's Directorate‐General Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS). Building communication upon communication, the Commission used discursive bricolage to set the conditions for employing existing EU financial and organizational resources to advance its interests. Specifically, with its incremental bricolage approach, the Commission has managed to mitigate sovereignty concerns of member states, progressively nudging them towards deeper integration. Overall, our article shows how the Commission has strengthened its influence through the cumulative bricolage tools even in the intergovernmental domains of security and defence.

Publisher's note: In their January 2023 Joint Declaration, the European Union (EU) and NATO have agreed to deepen cooperation on Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs). Although the recent conflicts in Libya, Syria and Ukraine indicate that emerging technologies have not revolutionised warfare, few dispute that the ability to master technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, robotics or quantum computing could provide strategic and operational advantages in future warfare. 

Publisher's note: The article discusses Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union and the principle of mutual defence in general in the EU. Most EU member states base their defence policy around NATO, and thus, there has historically been little appetite to create new overlapping structures for mutual defence. However, during recent years, interest in the further operationalisation and clarification of Article 42(7) has arisen, with the European Parliament and member states such as Finland and France at the forefront of these demands. While the EU’s mutual defence is not going to replace or overtake NATO as the cornerstone of Europe’s security order, further developing the Common Security and Defence Policy and the EU’s mutual defence policy would be beneficial for Europe as a whole.

Abstract by the author: How does the EU adapt its policies in response to current global changes? Extant scholarship has shed light on the EU’s geopolitical turn by analysing it as either a shift away from neoliberalism or a reshuffling of EU–US relations. This article makes the case for studying how these two dynamics interact. To do so, I draw on the economic patriotism framework, which focuses on the links between types and spaces of economic interventionism. Economic patriotism instruments can take various forms depending on their type (liberal/protectionist instruments) and space of reference (national/EU/transatlantic/international). From this perspective, the EU has responded to global changes by shifting from liberal to protectionist instruments of economic patriotism. However, the design of these policy instruments reflects compromises between the preferences of policymakers who adopt liberal/protectionist and Europeanist/Atlanticist positions. As policy instruments can create room for compromise because they allow various positions to converge, EU protectionist economic instruments cater to Atlanticist and liberal preferences too. This article illustrates this argument by means of EU armament policy. Using official documents and interviews, I analyse changes in EU economic patriotism by looking at the two major policy instruments: the 2009 Defence Procurement Directive and the 2021 European Defence Fund. Whereas the 2009 Directive reflected liberal economic patriotism anchored in the transatlantic space, the European Defence Fund illustrates tensions between types and spaces of economic interventionism in the EU’s geopolitical turn: Some clauses protect the EU from foreign interference, but its political-economic space of reference remains strongly transatlantic.

Abstract by the authors: This article examines the strategic choices of countries regarding their acquisition of defense equipment, given the strategic and economic constraints that they have faced since the end of the Cold War. As Augustine’s laws make it increasingly complicated to develop and produce all the necessary weapons for a single country, countries must balance the wishful thinking of preserving industrial strategic autonomy and the cost of doing so under the constraint of meeting the needs of their armed forces. We discuss a trilemma of the European countries between independence, manageable costs, and economic spinoff. We analyze several procurement alternatives, including national production, European cooperative production, licensed production, off-the-shelf purchase, leasing, and capacity abandonment. Maximizing both strategic and economic advantages, is a myth. There is no “silver bullet” in terms of acquisition choice, and the returns on investment depend on countries’ preferences, goals, and markets.

Publisher's note: The EU's Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy found its way into the Treaty 30 years ago, but it is still confronted with ‘specific rules and procedures’ that seem to stand in the way of its effectiveness. Against the background of the Conference on the Future of Europe, this contribution aims to identify ways to improve the CFSP's functionality, on the basis of both existing scholarly work and an empirical assessment of the last 10 years of the Union's foreign policy. By focusing on legal rather than political solutions, it aims to contribute to ongoing debates on the effectiveness of CFSP. Making use of the gradually accepted “normalisation” of CFSP, we have identified a number of legal tools that could be used to improve CFSP and to allow it to meet its Treaty brief to ‘cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security’.

Abstract by the author: For two decades, there has been an ongoing debate in the European Union (EU) on how to link space programmes with its security and defence policy and how to translate words into action. This article examines the approaches proposed by two interesting contributions to this debate. The first has been put forward by the EUISS and proposes a top-down institutional approach taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the EU's “Strategic Compass” process on security and defence. Thus, the case of a dedicated “EU Space and Defence Strategy” to be established is proposed. The second approach has been put forward by the French ARES Group and argues that a bottom-up approach can enhance a common strategic view better than top-down declarations

Publisher's note: Both the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) have significant incentives for close collaboration in foreign, security and defence policies, given their shared strategic interests, the clear potential for efficiency savings in working together, and the intensity of prior working relations. That the recently negotiated EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement contains no provisions in this area is thus puzzling for followers of European security, who predicted prompt agreement, and for theories of international cooperation, which emphasise the importance of shared threats, absolute gains and prior interaction. We argue the failure to reach such an agreement stemmed from the politics of the withdrawal process itself, which resulted in acute problems of institutional selectivity, negotiating dynamics that polarised the relationship, institutional change that made an agreement less likely, and distributional scrabbling to supplant the UK. Our findings show that the dynamics of moving away from existing forms of cooperation are highly distinct from those motivating cooperation in normal times.

Abstract by the author: This article analyses how and when institutional actors can shape overlap with other international organisations. Growing overlap either poses the threat of marginalisation to the incumbent organisation or offers opportunities for cooperation. Institutional actors should therefore be expected to try shape the relations with the overlapping organisation to protect their own. The article theorises that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient institutional capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional actors embrace or resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the domain expansion of the other international organisation. Relying on 20 interviews with senior officials, the article probes the argument against the case of the growing overlap between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union resulting from the latter’s recent security and defence initiatives. Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization actors played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with the European Union.

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