‘The state among states, it is often said, conducts its affairs in the brooding shadow of violence. Because some states may at any time use force, all states must be prepared to do so – or live at the mercy of their militarily more vigorous neighbours. Among states, the state of nature is a state of war. This is meant not in the sense that war constantly occurs but in the sense that, with each state deciding for itself whether or not to use force, war may at any time break out’ (Kenneth Waltz)[1].
Europe in an ‘Age of Permacrisis’
For a decade or more, the European Union has been rocked by cascading waves of crises: the Eurozone crisis of 2008, Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, the 2015 immigration crisis, Brexit, Trump45, the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, growing Chinese assertiveness, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now Trump47. The EU, it seems, is facing an “age of permacrisis” (WHO, 2022).
The most significant crisis that the EU has faced is Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In her State of the Union Address in 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that ‘Never before has this Parliament debated the State of our Union with war raging on European soil’. Europeans, she noted, have been ‘shaken by the resurgent and ruthless face of evil’, and ‘haunted by the sounds of sirens and the sheer brutality of war. … This is not only a war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine. This is a war on our energy, a war on our economy, a war on our values and a war on our future’.[2]
Russia’s war has posed an existential threat to European security, and as Josep Borrell (the EU High Representative/Vice President) noted, ‘the consequences of the war will be long-lasting, and … will be shaping European policies for the years and for decades to come’;
‘The post-Cold War has ended with the Ukrainian war, with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. And we are certainly living also a “moment of creation” of a new world. Because this war is changing a lot of things, and certainly it is changing the European Union. This war will create a different European Union, from different perspectives’ (Josep Borrell).[3]
These crises are not simply discrete and disconnected events; rather, they reflect a more profound and far-reaching shift in global order. The post-cold war Liberal International Order is facing challenges from within and without as the international system experiences a far-reaching process of power transition. Already in October 2015, the then German Foreign Minister, Walter Steinmeier, argued that,
‘The concentration of crises in the present day, the flood of dreadful images on the news every evening – this concentration is no coincidence. It is a conflagration caused by the erosion of the existing order, the scrambling for influence, and the fight for prestige and domination. The world’s tectonic plates are being shifted out of their accustomed places. And rifts are opening up …’.[4]
Europeans are now living in what the poet W.H.Auden termed an ‘Age of Anxiety’. This anxiety is fed by a growing awareness of the increasingly competitive and hostile environment which confronts Europe. The EU is facing a ‘competitive world where everything is being weaponised. Everything is a weapon: energy, investments, information, migration flows, data, etc. There is a global fight about access to some strategic domains: cyber, maritime, or outer space’ (Josep Borrell).[5] Russia presents the most immediate and threatening threat to the European security order, but China is an emerging superpower which straddles global trade and supply chains, and which has with the potential over time to reshape global order. Not only are Russia and China linked in a strategic partnership, but a new ‘axis of autocrats’ is emerging between what is known in the British intelligence community as the CRINK (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea).[6]
‘Europe will be forged in crises’
Faced with these multiple crises and the shifting tectonic plates of global order, the EU is rethinking its grand strategy and its approach to global security. The ‘brooding shadow of war’ compels the Union to rethink its security and defence policies and recalibrate its institutional competencies. Already in 2015, the EU’s Directorate-General for External Policies recognised that ‘the EU post-Westphalian narrative built around economic strength, soft power and multilateral institutions is colliding with an international environment marked by the return of geopolitics and hard power.’[7] Ursula Von Der Leyen spoke of her first Commission in September 2019 as a ‘geopolitical commission’ and Josep Borrell has argued that the EU ‘must learn the language of power’; ’We are too much Kantians and not enough Hobbesians, as the philosopher says. Let’s try to understand the world the way it is and bring the voice of Europe’ (Borrell, 10 Oct 2022).[8]
The 2022 Strategic Compass promised ‘a quantum leap forward to develop a stronger and more capable European Union that acts as a security provider’. It sketched out a new ‘guide to action’ on defence and security cooperation to 2030 and insisted that this was ‘not a luxury, but highly necessary’. ‘The EU’, it stated, ‘needs to become a stronger and more capable actor in security and defence: both to protect the security of its citizens and to act in crisis situations that affect the EU’s values and interests’. This, it argued, was ‘all the more important at a time when war has returned to Europe, following the unjustified and unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine, as well as of major geopolitical shifts.’[9]
Jean Monnet once wrote in his memoirs that ‘Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of solutions adopted for those crises’.[10] Crises and war have compelled the EU to move beyond its former identity as a ‘civilian’ or ‘normative’ actor, and develop new capabilities for contributing to the security and defence of Europe. In its Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 of 27 June 2024, the European Council set out ‘the EU’s priorities and its strategic orientations’ which will ‘guide the work of the EU institutions’.[11] These include taking ‘bold steps to strengthen the Union’s defence readiness and capacity’, ‘increased defence spending and investment’ as well as ‘cooperation with transatlantic partners and NATO’.
The EU’s aspiration to become a more effective geopolitical actor and to ‘learn the language of power’ is a welcome and long overdue development, but it raises some important questions about its place in Europe’s security architecture. In particular: what role can it play in strengthening European security and defence, and how can it strengthen the transatlantic partnership and complement – not compete with – NATO?
The EU’s role in Europe’s security architecture
As it seeks to contribute to European security and defence, the EU needs to play to its strengths, not its weaknesses. There is a kernel of truth in the quip that the EU is an ‘economic superpower, political dwarf and military minnow’. The primary strength of the EU is as a vehicle for economic integration, and this is one area where it can make a substantial contribution: strengthening the industrial and technological foundations of European defence by creating a more integrated European defence market and facilitating joint procurement. In addition, the EU play an important role in enhancing societal resilience, civil preparedness and crisis response capabilities, as well as promoting military mobility in Europe.
However, it must be clearly recognised that the EU is not – and never will be – a significant military actor. It is time to recognise that the CSDP has delivered limited results and that PESCO has had a negligible impact on national defence planning. EU Battlegroups have never been deployed and now seem to have been put on ice, and the planned EU Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) of 5,000 is embarrassingly modest. NATO is now the only game in town, and is a proven institution for defence planning, military integration and interoperability. Faced with the imminent prospect of a second Trump administration, Europeans must take on more responsibility for their own security and defence, and NATO must become more ‘European’. NATO’S New Force Model and the Regional Defence Plans already rely primarily on European troops and equipment.
Europeans thus need to focus on building up national military capabilities witihin the framework of the European pillar of NATO, both as a long overdue contribution to burden-sharing and as an insurance against the US reducing its commitment to European defence. Most importantly, this process should be driven by the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP), not the EU Capabilities Defence Plan (CDP). NATO is the key body for establishing targets for capabilities and military spending levels, and the EU should not seek to set rival targets. As Sven Bischop has proposed, procurement priorities identified by NATO could then be part of PESCO and funded by the EDF.[12] The EU should also prioritise a new Security and Defence Treaty with the UK – one of Europe’s most potent military powers – and not try to link this to other issues such as youth mobility or fishing.
What the EU should not do is seek to duplicate what NATO already does and does well. Lingering Gaullist fantasies of a European army commanded by an EU headquarters staff need to be discarded. In a refreshingly frank interview with the Financial Times[13], the outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the EU’s commitment to bolster defence spending but warned against trying to duplicate NATO. ‘I welcome more EU efforts on defence as long as they are done in a way that doesn’t duplicate or compete,’ he said. ‘What the EU should not do is start to build alternative defence structures, for instance the intervention force. I don’t understand why there is a need for a different, competing intervention force,’ he said.
Secretary-General Stoltenberg also questioned plans to expand the EU’s Military Staff. Given that ‘we struggle a bit to man all the positions’ in NATO’s command structure’, he argued, ‘it would be a bit strange if the same countries were not able to send as many officers as they should to instead build an alternative structure’. Finally, he criticised the EU’s ambition to create its own list of military standards for EU armies — in a bid to streamline procurement and increase interoperability — instead of using Nato’s lists, which have existed for decades. ‘Countries can only have one set of capability targets, they can’t have two. That’s Nato’s responsibility. One set of standards, one set of capability targets, one command structure. And that’s Nato,’ Stoltenberg said.
‘Catastrophes’, Victor Hugo remarked, ‘have a sombre way of sorting things out’. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has forced the EU to ‘learn the language of power’ and aspire to become a more effective security provider. The most effective way it can do so is by playing to its strengths complementing and ensuring that the EU-NATO strategic partnership is based on ‘complementary, coherent and mutually-reinforcing roles’.[14]
