All or nothing? The EU Global Strategy and defence policy after the Brexit

ABSTRACT

The public expects European governments and the European Union (EU) to deal with the security challenges in and around Europe. So does the US, whose strategic focus has pivoted to the Pacific. Washington, DC has made it clear that it will not, and cannot, solve all of Europe’s problems. The call for ‘strategic autonomy’ in the new EU Global Strategy of June 2016 does not come a moment too soon. But should the aim be EU strategic autonomy, without the UK, or can the aspiration still be European strategic autonomy, with the UK? Can nothing be achieved unless all are fully involved? Or are intermediate solutions possible? How EU Member States and the UK answer these questions will determine which degree of strategic autonomy the EU can achieve. With which degree of British involvement. And whether the UK itself will be left with any measure of strategic autonomy.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Strategy
• Defence
• Brexit
• NATO

Acknowledgements

The author most warmly thanks Brigadier-General (Ret.) Jo Coelmont for his input, as well as all the colleagues in the EU and NATO institutions who took the time to discuss this project with him and provided their views on a draft of this article. A more policy-oriented version was previously published as ‘All or Nothing? European and British Strategic Autonomy after the Brexit’, Egmont Paper No. 87 (Brussels: Egmont Institute, September 2016).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop is the Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont—Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, and Professor at Ghent University. He also teaches at the College of Europe in Bruges and at LUISS in Rome. As a member of the Executive Academic Board of the EU’s European Security and Defence College (ESDC), he regularly lectures in its courses, as well as in various European staff colleges, and at the People’s University in Beijing, where he is a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for European Studies. In 2015, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Sven Biscop was made an Honorary Fellow of the ESDC.

Notes

1. Barry Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

2. European Union, ‘Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe: A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy’ (June 2016), https://europa.eu/globalstrategy/sites/globalstrategy/files/eugs_review_web.pdf (accessed 15 September 2016).

3. As a military officer put it to the author: ‘The current CSDP deployment of less than 3000 is hardly a comprehensive endorsement from Member States of the military role of the EU.’

4. Sarah Kreps, ‘When Does the Mission Determine the Coalition? The Logic of Multilateral Intervention and the Case of Afghanistan’, Security Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2008) and Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions After the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Patricia A. Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions Of Interstate Violence (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Stephen M. Saideman, ‘The Ambivalent Coalition: Doing the Least One Can Do Against the Islamic State’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2016), pp. 289–305.

5. Sven Biscop, Peace without Money, War without Americans. Can European Strategy Cope? (Abingdon: Asghate, 2015).

6. On the EU Global Strategy and the neighbourhood, see Michael E. Smith, ‘Implementing the Global Strategy Where It Matters Most: The EU’s Credibility Deficit and the European Neighbourhood’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2016), this issue.

7. Margriet Drent and Dick Zandee, ‘After the EUGS: Mainstreaming the “New” CSDP’, Issue Alert No. 34 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, 2016).

8. All figures calculated from the relevant edition of The Military Balance (IISS).

9. It is not impossible that if the economic consequences of the Brexit are too negative, it will have an impact on British defence expenditure, and planned capabilities will have to be downsized. This could potentially greatly reduce the British contribution to European expeditionary operations even if satisfactory arrangements are found for close coordination between the EU, NATO and all of their European members.

10. Denmark has an opt-out for the CSDP, but for the EU-26 the figures still are 1.33 million and €196 billion.

11. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, ‘Deutsche Vorsicht und Französische Entschlossenheit’, Der Spiegel Online, 22 August 2016.

12. Hybrid tactics are, and always have been, part and parcel of warfare too, and hence included in both collective defence and expeditionary operations.

13. Belgian-Dutch naval cooperation is an example, at a smaller scale, of how this works in practice: both countries contribute frigates and minehunters sailing under their own flag with their own crew, but there is only one binational headquarters and one operational school (pooling), while the Netherlands is in charge of training, logistics and maintenance for the frigates and Belgium for the minehunters (specialization).

14. Diego A. Ruiz Palmer, ‘The Framework Nations Concept and NATO: Game-Changer for a New Strategic Era or Missed Opportunity?’, Research Paper No. 132 (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016).