Papers on european and transatlantic security presented at EISS conferences and workshops, newest first. 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z https://eiss-europa.com/feeds/themes/european-and-transatlantic-security.xml European Initiative for Security Studies https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-bosnia-and-herzegovina-on-the-edge-of-european-stability 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Prof. Kenan Hodžić Prof. Jasmin Ahić

Bosnia and Herzegovina occupies a critical position in the security architecture of the Western Balkans, serving as a nexus of domestic vulnerabilities, regional dynamics, and broader European security concerns. This paper employs the multi-level security framework (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998) to examine the intersection of internal political fragmentation, institutional capacity, and external influences, including the European Union, NATO, and neighboring states. By integrating traditional state-centric security analysis with transnational and human-security dimensions, the study highlights the ways in which BiH’s structural complexities shape its resilience to both conventional and non-conventional threats. Methodologically, the study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with senior management within BiH’s intelligence, security, and military institutions. These interviews provide nuanced insights into threat perception, operational challenges, and the interplay between domestic capabilities and foreign influence. The paper further situates BiH’s security landscape within the wider Western Balkan region, exploring how regional interdependencies, EU policies, and strategic external actors influence national and sub-regional security outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of coordinated security approaches and highlight the potential for EU engagement to foster strategic stability, while preserving national sovereignty. This analysis contributes to the recent discourse by offering a case study of a post-conflict, geopolitically sensitive environment, illustrating the complexities of aligning domestic security policies with regional and European strategic frameworks. Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Western Balkans, European Security, Multi-Level Security

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-eu-s-ontological-security-and-geopolitical-enlargement 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Nikolaos Tzifakis

As Manners illustrated two decades ago, the EU’s identity is constructed around shared norms and principles. These norms and the corresponding self-narratives have provided legitimacy, consistency, and unity of purpose among EU members, and have informed the EU's view of the world. The EU has found meaning in its global role as a norm entrepreneur, promoting, with civilian means, the spread of the liberal international order. However, contemporary global power politics have generated multiple challenges to the EU’s fundamental assumptions and narratives about itself, presenting a major ontological security crisis. The EU’s constitutive ideas and its self-perception as a civilian great power are widely contested not only by non-Western authoritarian powers (e.g., Russia and its military revisionism) but also within the Western normative community, by US President Trump’s policies. The paper will argue that while the EU strives to come to terms with the imperative to adjust its self-image and corresponding role to the new geopolitical realities, its enlargement can play a critical role in alleviating anxiety. It provides a space where the EU can maintain a sense of continuity of purpose as a normative power, and an area where its self-image as an influential geopolitical actor relying exclusively on civilian power can be preserved.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-filling-the-eu-s-identity-void-from-without-and-within-forging-a-geopolitics-of 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Kurt Bassuener

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared her ambition to lead a “geopolitical Commission” upon taking office in 2019, at a time when debate over EU “strategic autonomy” was intensifying. Promoted most visibly by French President Emmanuel Macron during Donald Trump’s first presidency, marked by open doubts about NATO, this debate was driven by growing concern over Russian and Chinese influence in the EU’s neighbourhood, particularly in the Western Balkans (WB6). These concerns spanned the information space and critical infrastructure, extending even to EU member states participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Yet despite heightened rhetoric, the EU’s geopolitical development lagged behind its ambitions and remained largely reactive. This gap became evident during China’s Covid-19 “mask and vaccine diplomacy” and, more decisively, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These exogenous shocks prompted renewed EU engagement with enlargement. The accession process in the Western Balkans was revived after being stalled in 2019, and pathways were opened for Eastern Partnership countries, notably Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Nevertheless, despite multiple reforms and initiatives, including the 2024 Growth Plan, the EU’s underlying approach toward long-standing Balkan candidates has remained largely unchanged. The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 has further unsettled the international order. US strategic documents now envision a world structured around competing hegemons, the United States, China, and Russia, with Europe relegated to a subordinate role rather than recognized as an autonomous geopolitical actor. The downgrading of democratic values as a policy objective, alongside actions such as the January 2026 US intervention in Venezuela, illustrates this shift. Europe has yet to articulate a coherent response, although divergent visions emerged in 2026 from leaders in Canada, France, and Ukraine. The proposed paper, drawing on data collected within the Geo-Power-EU project, argues that an EU geopolitics grounded in democratic values has a clear demand base among eastern candidates and potentially the Western Balkans. This normative distinction from hegemonic powers represents a strategic asset that should underpin the EU’s approach to enlargement and collective defence.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-normalisation-to-strategic-stabilisation-geopolitisation-of-the-pristina-be 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Filip Ejdus Alexandra Prodromidou Faye Ververidou Sonja Stojanovic Gajic

This paper applies a geopolitisation lens to the Pristina–Belgrade Dialogue, examining how geopolitics have affected the normalisation of the dialogue and to what extent the deterioration of the geopolitical situation in the world opens the space for an alteration in related measures within the broader transformation of the EU enlargement process. Initially framed as a technocratic and depoliticised process aimed at functional normalisation and rule-based convergence, the dialogue has increasingly been reframed as a strategic instrument in the EU’s response to contemporary security challenges. The paper argues that this transformation is driven by the re-emergence of hard geopolitics in Europe, particularly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has recast the Western Balkans as a zone of strategic vulnerability, as well as the latest shift in US foreign policy and security priorities and its subsequent rift with its traditional allies, including the EU. As a result, EU conditionality in the dialogue has evolved from a primarily normative mechanism into a tool of geopolitical stabilisation, prioritising containment of external influence, regional security, and alignment over legal clarity and democratic consolidation. The paper highlights the importance for the Union to balance between short-term stability and entrenching status ambiguity, undermining the EU’s normative credibility. The paper uses data collected from in-depth interviews from officials in Kosovo, Serbia and EU institutions inside the framework of the GEO-POWER-EU project.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-platforms-to-networks-the-political-hurdles-of-transitioning-to-data-centri 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mr Dumitru-Catalin Vasile

Modern military strategy is undergoing a paradigm shift, moving away from a "platform-centric" model defined by the capabilities of individual assets such as tanks, fighter jets, and carriers toward a "network-centric" model prioritizing connectivity, data fusion, and multi-domain integration. While the operational necessity of this transition is widely accepted, this paper argues that the primary obstacles to achieving actual data-centric warfare are not technological, but profoundly political and institutional. This study analyzes the "politics of transformation" by identifying three distinct sources of friction that hinder the shift from hardware to software-defined defense. First, it examines the political economy of defense procurement, arguing that existing industrial bases and legislative funding models are path-dependent, favoring high-visibility legacy platforms over less tangible network architectures. Second, it addresses inter-service bureaucratic politics, highlighting how data-centric warfare requires a level of interoperability that threatens the budget autonomy and cultural identity of individual military branches. Finally, it explores the sovereignty paradox, where the necessity of allied data-sharing conflicts with national political imperatives to maintain strict control over sovereign information infrastructure. By viewing military transformation through the lens of organizational politics and civil-military relations, this paper demonstrates that "networking" a military is a governance challenge as much as a technical one. It concludes that without significant reform in how political actors value, fund, and oversee defense acquisitions, Western militaries risk possessing advanced sensors that cannot communicate with one another, rendering them structurally unprepared for high-intensity, data-driven conflict.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-rogue-states-to-russia-how-threat-perceptions-drove-congressional-support-f 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Frank Kuhn

In 2020, the United States deployed the W76 2 low-yield nuclear warhead on its ballistic missile submarines, marking a pivotal shift in a contentious, three decade Congressional debate over the role of low-yield nuclear weapons in U.S. nuclear policy. Congress first banned research and development on such weapons in 1993, partially repealed that prohibition in 2004, and then authorized an operational capability in 2018. Drawing on the Congressional record, policy documents, and contemporaneous media reporting as samples of elite discourse, this article examines why legislative approval emerged only in 2018, despite sustained interest in low-yield nuclear weapons within the U.S. defense establishment. The analysis shows that changing threat perceptions were decisive: When U.S. national security discourse emphasized rogue states and terrorism, legislators viewed the strategic rationale for low-yield nuclear weapons as unconvincing and their potential employment against non nuclear adversaries as reckless. As great power competition reasserted itself—especially concerns regarding limited Russian nuclear first use—the defense establishment could successfully reframe low-yield capabilities as necessary for credible nuclear deterrence, enabling Congressional authorization. The article concludes that as long as strategic competition with other major nuclear powers structures U.S. nuclear weapons policy, political support for expanding nuclear response options is likely to endure.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-geopoliticisation-of-eu-enlargement-in-the-western-balkans-and-eastern-partnersh 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Marko Kovačević Milan Varda Dr Tijana Rečević Krstić

The EU’s recently proclaimed geopolitical turn, that we see as an instance of “transitional order” (Beasley, Oppermann, and Kaarbo 2026), has reshaped its enlargement policy, transforming it from a predominantly socialising process into an explicit instrument of geopolitical positioning (cf. Privitera et al. 2024). The rapid upgrading of the Eastern Partnership countries into an “Associated Trio” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine formalised the narrative framing the EU as a geopolitical power (Anghel 2025). Whereas classical accession conditionality in Central and Southeast Europe assumed primarily gradual normative socialisation, the revival of enlargement in a geopolitical disguise exhibits a growing element of geopolitical “altercasting” (Oppermann 2024), characterised by more explicit expectations (and possible status rewards) regarding strategic alignment and positioning. While this turn was expected to produce stronger patterns of (re)alignment among candidate countries, the geopoliticisation of enlargement also appears to generate increasingly transactional (or somewhat ambiguous) modes of engagement. This paper, therefore, examines how EU candidates position themselves at the EU integration stage within the transitional international order. Have they gotten fully on board with the Geopolitical Power EU, or do they consider pursuing hedging due to the uncertainties of the “merit-based approach”? The study uses the original quantitative and qualitative data from the Geo-Power-EU project, including the country-based Interdependence Database containing the entries on political, security, economic, and social spheres before and during the geopolitical turn. We also leverage the original qualitative data from interviews by local experts, journalists, and politicians from 9 countries to assess their perception of the consequences of the geopolitical turn. By using the concepts from foreign policy role theory, we flesh out the processes related to role adaptation and contestation in the times of international order transition at the global level and its momentous implications for Europe and its states.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-nato-as-an-innovation-hub-how-emerging-and-disruptive-technologies-are-reshaping 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Vasiliki Plessia Aravani

The literature on military diffusion has traditionally treated alliances as transmission paths through which nationally developed military technologies are disseminated among allies. In this view, NATO is exclusively portrayed as a forum for standardization and doctrinal coordination rather than also a site of military innovation. This paper revisits this understanding by examining organizational and governance changes within NATO following the adoption of its post-2021 Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) strategy. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), the paper explores how the technological characteristics of EDTs, namely their dual-use nature and reliance on distributed, largely privatized innovation ecosystems, are reshaping how military innovation is organized and strategically coordinated through NATO. The analysis traces this shift through interpretive qualitative analysis of program architectures and research outputs of NATO’s Innovation Initiatives, including the post-2021 NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) Collaborative Programme of Work (CPoW) and the launch of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Challenge Programmes. The study shows that EDT-driven interdependencies in scientific expertise and innovation ecosystems are altering transatlantic innovation dynamics, encouraging NATO to institutionalize new forms of engagement with civilian scientists and private-sector actors. These changes have also supported the extension of NATO’s innovation initiatives into structured cooperation with the Alliance’s Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) partners. The paper contributes to a better understanding of how the contemporary changes in the character of innovation are driving institutional change within NATO, positioning the Alliance not merely as a diffusion mechanism for national capabilities, but as a hub through which transnational military innovation linkages are shaping patterns of military capability development.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-vectorial-analysis-of-hybrid-warfare-directionality-interaction-and-systemic-eff 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Fabio Duarte

The concepts of 'hybrid warfare' and 'hybrid threats' have expanded into a wide, heterogeneous set of typologies, primarily centred on instruments and actors. As the range of activities labelled “hybrid” continues to grow, existing approaches increasingly struggle to explain how diverse hybrid actions combine, interact, and generate systemic effects below the threshold of direct armed conflict. This article introduces a vectorial analytical framework for the study of hybrid warfare, conceptualising hybrid actions as directed coercive vectors operating across one or multiple domains and targeting specific institutional subsystems. Building on existing hybrid-threat taxonomies, the framework models each activity according to its direction, magnitude, temporal profile, and degree of coordination with other vectors. This vectorial approach enables systematic differentiation between unidirectional, bidirectional, and multidirectional forms of hybrid pressure and provides a structured means of analysing their cumulative and non-linear effects. Rather than proposing a new definition of hybrid warfare, the article advances a meso-level analytical model that bridges descriptive typologies with decision-oriented analysis. The framework is illustrated through empirical vignettes drawn from contemporary and prospective hybrid-threat target arenas, demonstrating its utility for comparative analysis, simulation and scenario development, and the structured assessment of institutional resilience.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-belgium-s-defence-policy-after-the-invasion-of-ukraine-a-free-rider-s-business-a 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Michelle Haas Tim Haesebrouck

Belgium is widely known as one of NATO’s most persistent free riders, deprioritizing military investments for decades. Successive budget cuts have left its armed forces weakened and ill-prepared for major geopolitical shifts. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine significantly disrupted the European security order, raising the question: to what extent did this external shock lead to a substantive shift in Belgium’s defence policy? While Belgium swiftly condemned the invasion and aligned with NATO and EU-led initiatives structural constraints - underinvestment, a fragmented political system, and a political elite largely disengaged from defence matters - prevented a substantial policy shift. This paper argues that, despite the external geopolitical shock, policy responses remained largely confined to a traditional reliance on multilateralism and minimal military spending. Although the war prompted minor adjustments, such as a stronger focus on NATO’s Eastern flank over its previous attention to the Sahel, these changes were not transformative. Initial plans to reach the NATO norm of 2% GDP in defence spending by 2035 remained in place, with acceleration to 2029 occurring only after a new federal government took office in 2025. Geographic security and longstanding political inertia continue to limit meaningful adaptation to a shifting security landscape. By examining this case as an example of entrenched free riding, this paper contributes to broader debates on military burden sharing, the ability of smaller states to adapt to shifting geopolitical realities, and the resulting challenges for intra-European defence cooperation.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-can-european-defence-cooperation-build-european-deterrence 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Fotini Bellou

Is the European Union capable of developing a credible European deterrence? This question is more pressing than ever, particularly in light of the second Trump administration and its inclination toward unilateralism. As the war in Ukraine approaches its third year, the EU’s efforts in defence cooperation have intensified—but have they been effective in meeting the evolving security demands? The return of high-intensity, technologically advanced conventional warfare to the European continent has underscored the urgency of collective defence preparedness. Even before February 2022, EU member states had embarked on efforts to deepen interstate defence cooperation and, to some extent, defence integration. However, these initiatives have been cautiously readjusted to address the new strategic realities. Russia’s war against Ukraine has not only tested European security but has also brought direct threats to neighboring EU states. In response, EU member states have acknowledged—at least on paper—the necessity of multi-domain defence capabilities, culminating in a commitment in November 2023 to enhance their collective military readiness. Yet, has this shift translated into tangible progress toward European deterrence? Have EU states adequately responded to both the new defence imperatives and Ukraine’s calls for support? This paper assesses the EU’s progress by examining shifts in its strategic culture, actual responses to the war in Ukraine, and changes in defence priorities and military spending. It suggests that while EU member states have taken steps to enhance defence cooperation and provide moderate military assistance to Ukraine, these efforts have yet to translate into a more ambitious strategy with a meaningful deterrent impact. There's a need for a fundamental transformation in European defence thinking and capability-building—one that extends beyond the current trajectory. If deterrence is the ultimate goal, merely strengthening cooperation will not suffice; a more profound shift in strategic culture and operational readiness is essential.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-reassessing-european-security-the-drivers-of-nato-s-response-to-hybrid-threats-s 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Laura Lisboa

Russia’s actions against Ukraine in 2014 led to a reassessment of the European security environment by the West. NATO reinforced its military presence in Eastern Europe and developed measures to counter hybrid threats, which were strengthened after 2022. Although hybrid threats are not new per se, their use over the past decade has posed new strategic challenges to the West. This paper aims to identify the structural and normative drivers behind NATO's approach to hybrid threats through policy analysis and International Relations theory. We first map early European responses to hybrid threats and trace NATO's evolving approach. The term 'hybrid threats' often refers to activities that undermine stability without escalating to direct military conflict. Its widespread use, however, tells us little about the underlying drivers of these responses, which remain underexplored. From a structural standpoint, we assess whether changes in the balance of power and the unexpected use of hybrid threats to achieve political goals made them more central to European security concerns. Drawing on liberal and realist perspectives, we also explore how growing interdependence changes international conflict, increases vulnerability to hybrid threats, and reveals the limits of traditional military responses. From a normative perspective, we analyze how the evolution of domestic and international norms drove responses to hybrid threats. Addressing conventional and hybrid threats in European states requires enhanced multinational coordination and society-wide security efforts. Hybrid threats, in particular, challenge the logic of proportionality in direct responses and deterrence strategies and prompt a reevaluation of norms such as non-interference or the balance between sovereignty and collective security. Finally, we examine how the erosion of democratic norms within European states has made them more susceptible to hybrid threats, and how NATO’s strategies have evolved to prevent adversaries from exploiting internal divisions and undermining democratic processes without triggering direct military confrontation.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-eu-s-collective-defence-framework-a-law-in-context-analysis-of-article-42-7 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Federica Fazio

Since the onset of the war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the European Union (EU) has acted with unity and cohesion, taking unprecedented steps, particularly in defence. Although the illegal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has re-emphasised the importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the backbone of Europe's territorial defence, a legal basis exists for the EU to play a role in collective defence. In 2007, the Lisbon Treaty introduced into the EU's constitutional framework a collective defence obligation similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT). Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) commits EU Member States to assist one another in the event of armed aggression. Additionally, a solidarity obligation codified in Article 222 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) requires the EU and its Member States to support any Member State in the event of terrorist attacks. These norms have seemingly attracted little attention from legal scholars. With the war in Ukraine intensifying, concerns over Trump undermining NATO’s mutual security guarantee and the increasing likelihood of military attacks on Europe, understanding how credible the EU’s mutual defence commitment is, how it would be operationalised and how it interplays with the EU’s solidarity commitment, as well as with NATO’s own mutual defence commitment, is of the utmost importance. This paper conducts a law-in-context analysis of the EU’s mutual assistance clause, drawing insights from European security scholarship and paying special attention to the historical, geopolitical, and strategic context in which the clause was adopted and has come to operate. To this end, the 1948 Brussels Treaty, 1954 Modified Brussels Treaty, 2004 Draft Constitutional Treaty, and 2007 Lisbon Treaty will be analysed. EU security strategies and EU-NATO Joint Declarations will also be examined.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-total-defence-and-transformations-in-the-making-of-european-security 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Joakim Berndtsson Andreas Kruck Moritz Weiss

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has become abundantly clear that territorial aggression and large-scale international war are back in Europe. The conventional narrative in research on European security policymaking holds that this provides an impetus for the (re-)building of centralized coercive capacities within “positive” security states. With the return of territorial aggression, the idea of the state as *the* key provider of national security seems to be back. At the same time, European states – first of all Nordic and Baltic vanguards, but also Continental European countries – have reinvigorated “Total Defence” (TD) or “comprehensive security” concepts. TD reflects a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” concept of security policymaking that aims at extensive cross-sectoral collaboration. Against the backdrop of these seemingly contradictory trends, we ask: How do evolving threats shape European ways of organizing national security and how do the resulting organizing concepts impact on the authority foundations and policy instruments of European security states? Bringing together research on TD and types of security states, we argue that contemporary territorial and hybrid threats drive the (re-)emergence of TD as an organizing concept for the making of security in Europe. TD in turn entails decentralized and pluralist notions of epistemic authority and regulation-based policy instruments to orchestrate diverse public and private experts. Thus, contemporary security threats and ensuing TD concepts contribute to regulatory security statehood and network-based security governance. Our key contributions are to specify the links between 1) types of security threats and the (re-)emergence of TD and 2) between TD and the evolving authority foundations and policy instruments of European security states. We thereby challenge the conventional narrative of centralized state capacity-building in a reshuffled European security landscape on theoretical grounds and by referring to ample illustrative evidence from the Nordic, Baltic and Continental European countries.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-european-defence-policy-changes-in-response-to-russia-s-2022-invasion-of-ukraine 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Michelle Haas

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would be expected to constitute an external shock sufficient to cause a dramatic transformation of the defence policies of European countries. Political leaders have frequently referred to this critical event as a ‘wake-up call for Europe’. Yet, defence policy experts generally suggest that this perceived sense of urgency has not yet translated into a transformative development of European defence integration. Research indicates that defence policy remains primarily a matter of national importance. However, a comprehensive overview of the changes in the EU member states’ and European NATO allies’ national defence policies after February 2022 has not yet been compiled. This article aims to address this gap in empirical knowledge by triangulating the results of expert interviews with document analysis to assess changes in European defence policies on three dimensions: (1) European defence budgets and equipment investments, (2) the objectives of European defence policies and (3) defence cooperation among European states. Subsequently, it builds on literature on Foreign Policy Change and NATO burden-sharing to develop a theoretical framework aimed at explaining the (varying) impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on European defence policies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-engine-or-brake-the-franco-german-couple-and-the-future-of-the-european-defence 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Antonio Calcara

The future of Europe's defense industry hinges on greater cooperation between France and Germany. France and Germany agree on the need to integrate the European defense market to effectively compete with the US and other external powers. However, they have different preferences on how to organize the European defense market. Why? We argue that the distinction between the two faces of market size - the first exclusively related to defense, the second including the broader commercial-industrial base - is key to understanding convergence and divergence in Franco-German approaches to defense-industrial cooperation. France and Germany share a general interest in European defense market integration. However, because each country has a relative advantage in one of the faces of market size, we expect them to feature different - even opposing - views towards defense industrial cooperation. Germany is less competitive than France in the first face of the market size (defense) but more competitive in the second (commercial). It will therefore seek to inject efficiency into EU-level initiatives aimed to integrate the European defense market because it calculates that it can benefit more than France over the long-term, thanks to its commercial-industrial edge. At the same time, Germany would protect its less competitive defense industry from France by championing autonomy in the context of ad-hoc arms programs. In turn, France would prefer to leverage its first-face advantage by injecting efficiency into arms programs to take the lion’s share of the project. Conversely, we expect France to protect its autonomy in the context of EU initiatives that could bring about defense integration and benefit the more competitive German commercial-industrial base. To test our argument, we examine French and German preferences towards two important EU initiatives in recent years: the European Defense Fund and the Future Combat Air System.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-european-approaches-to-chinese-foreign-policy-a-text-as-data-approach 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Jordan Becker Andreea Budeanu Haemin Jee Maxwell Love

As Sino-American competition becomes a key factor in structuring 21st century international relations, researchers and policymakers are interested in how third states align in relation to China and the US. So far, research on this topic has been qualitative – scholars have speculated as to the alignment of various actors vis-à-vis China and the United States, but no analysis has systematically arranged and compared a group of states or offered a consistent set of measurements for alignment. This limitation impedes replicability and generalizability of analyses. We introduce a dataset that uses text as data to systematize discursive alignment of up to 34 European states for as many as 50 years, using two different automated content analysis techniques. In more recent years (since 2014), we focus on alignment specifically regarding China’s “Belt and Road Initiative.” We discuss the main features of this data in the paper, and the replication files will enable other scholars to build on our work in the future. In addition to automating the extraction of quantitative sentiments from key documents, we make our library of documents available for other researchers to analyze along other dimensions of interest to them. We illustrate the utility of the dataset by describing differences across countries and over time. By focusing on European states, we shed light on Europe’s relationship with both China and the United States, as well as the concept of European strategic autonomy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-parliamentary-acceptance-of-eu-military-operations-in-member-states-beyond-rubbe 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Eva Michaels Robert Kissack Oscar Fernandez

Presented at EISS 2023. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-politics-of-sympathy-among-nato-member-states 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Simon Koschut

This paper deals with the politics of sympathy in alliance relations: who owes whom sympathy, expectations for displaying sympathy, and the policing of those who do not show sufficient sympathy. Employing the case of NATO, I argue that sympathy displays disaggregate obligations, entitlements, and hierarchies of feeling among its member states. Precisely, I show how in their use of sympathy NATO members communicate a central part of their view of relationships: they impart their sense of suffering, their naturalness of caring for those members who suffer from attack, and their feeling that authority consists, above all, in the ability to nurture and protect deserving members from harm. Sympathy displays emphasize need, care, and solidarity among members of the transatlantic alliance. It activates a script that creates an emotional link between the suffering of a member and the protection and care for that member. My notion of sympathy exchange extends existing approaches to alliance politics, which view mutual interests, common threats, and social communication as a fundamental mechanism for alliance development, towards including emotional sympathy transactions. As NATO members give and get sympathy, they create and recreate emotional bonds. This institutionalized sympathy give-and-take arguably contributes to stabilizing intra-alliance relations.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-role-of-national-secondments-for-intelligence-support-to-eu-foreign-policyma 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Daniel Neumann

Existing scholarship on intelligence cooperation is largely informed by Anglo-American experiences at the strategic level. However, this paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of intelligence cooperation by examining member state intelligence support to foreign policymaking in the European Union. Increasingly, policymakers in the European Union take important foreign policy decisions for European nations. Although the European Union has various sense-making systems, these intelligence consumers require support from the national intelligence communities. Therefore, several member states are seconding intelligence officers to the European Union Intelligence and Situation Centre to share expertise and to facilitate this cooperation. These experts with diverse backgrounds, identities, cultures, attitudes, and interests are tasked with working in conjunction to improve policymaking. Their home organisations have varying selection procedures and retain different relationships to them. Given this diversity, this intelligence cooperation does not occur without friction, impacting its performance. In studying diplomatic secondment and cooperation, especially on building a European ‘esprit de corps’, the European Studies have addressed similar issues at the organisational level. Leveraging this literature and drawing on elite interviews with European intelligence practitioners, this paper seeks to understand the impact of national seconding practices on intelligence support to foreign policymaking in the European Union.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-an-indian-perspective-on-security-and-the-use-of-force-the-case-of-the-responsib 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Raphaëlle Khan

The global discussion around the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), which proposes to reframe the norm of sovereignty, has represented one of the decade’s most controversial debates in the field of international security. The concept was applied most famously in the case of Libya in 2011. Its nature as an emerging norm and implications have been contested and remain debated in the international community. In that context, India’s nuanced reaction has been characterised as a kind of a puzzle by the media and numerous analysts in Europe and the United States. It was assumed that a democracy would embrace an initiative aiming at protecting human rights, yet India proved reticent to endorse R2P and its human rights promotion. From a different perspective, at a time when India has greatly increased its capabilities and become a recognised emerging power internationally, it could be supposed that its relation to sovereignty would evolve. Taking these paradoxes as a starting point, this paper will explore India’s relation to R2P as a lens to reflect on its current view on sovereignty, the use of force, and the United Nations. It will examine what this says about India’s larger understanding of the international order and its role in it. Finally, this paper will conclude by highlighting the implications of India’s position for the diplomacy of European states and the United States today.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-analyzing-small-states-use-of-military-power-from-ends-ways-means-to-objectives 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Jan Werner Mathiasen

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-arms-without-influence-defense-industrial-policy-and-burden-sharing-in-the-trans 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Jordan Becker

The allocation of resources and the sharing of defense burdens among members of the transatlantic security community is central to the defense of the liberal international order. It is also a fundamental component of that order in itself. While economists have shed light on variation in burden-sharing behavior among states and measured as top-line defense spending, only qualitative work in the security studies field has addressed the nature of contributions to shared priorities. Neither field has explicitly addressed spending on modernizing defense capabilities, which is of primary interest to policy-makers aiming to mitigate burden-shifting tendencies in alliances. I find the larger the weight of arms production is in its national economy, the more a state spends on shared transatlantic priorities. This finding suggests that the strategic effects of defense industrial policy, and particularly the distribution of defense industries across Europe, extend beyond the production of defense articles and into the politics of burden sharing. The finding is robust to multiple statistical modeling choices. It also finds support from primary source archival evidence and participant interviews.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-building-the-best-tank-institutions-and-the-choice-to-embrace-radical-change 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Marc DeVore

Military innovation matters more today than at any point in the last thirty years, yet innovation studies have reached an impasse: the military-innovation literature remains rich in hypotheses but poor in definitive findings about which actors — political leaders, military officers, technologists or firms — drive the process, while political economists agree that institutions shape how firms innovate but cannot demonstrate how. Combining actor- and institution-centred approaches through a focused comparison of three states' post-Cold War tank projects — France's Leclerc, Russia's T-14 Armata and the United Kingdom's Challenger 2 — this paper argues that a state's procurement institutions, distinct from its overarching economic institutions, determine both the level of innovation it attempts and the technical risks it runs. Procurement institutions do so by setting the relative authority of different actors and structuring how they interact: technologists consistently champion novel technologies, while military officers generally prefer reliable, proven weapons, a preference that is malleable through interaction with technologists. When uniformed services formulate requirements without technologists' input the outcome is conservative (the Challenger 2); radical innovation results when institutions empower technologists to shape projects from the outset (the Leclerc and the T-14). The paper finds, counterintuitively, that competitive procurement produced the least innovative tank, and that these institutions are neither immutable nor inferable from regime type or ‘varieties of capitalism’.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-crisis-management-and-partnership-peacekeeping-coordination-between-the-eu-au-an 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Maline Meiske

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-india-s-new-security-approach-to-the-european-union 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Constantino Xavier

For more than fifty years the European Union and India have steadily expanded their engagement, from trade to areas such as education, climate change and connectivity, but the last few years have added a surprising new dimension focused on defence and security cooperation that had hitherto been absent. Officials now discuss collaboration on maritime security, intelligence and counter-terrorism, and defence industries; new dialogues have been set up, including on cybersecurity; and the EU Naval Force and the Indian Navy conducted their first-ever joint manoeuvre in the Indian Ocean. What factors drive this new convergence, and why, given India's traditional reluctance to go beyond bilateral security cooperation with France or the United Kingdom, is Delhi warming to the idea of engaging the EU as a global security actor? Drawing on historical and official documents and interviews with Indian diplomatic, military and other officials, this paper shows that a changing Indian understanding of security — now more focused on cyber, technology, climate and other non-traditional domains — has paradoxically increased the EU's salience in Delhi's geostrategic perspective, with structural uncertainty marked by rising tensions with China, decreasing reliance on the United States, and the United Kingdom's Brexit further incentivising India to engage the EU as a global security actor.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-opening-the-black-box-of-defence-procurement-and-planning-processes-what-drives 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Nicolas Blarel

How does India identify and select its partners for security cooperation? Why does India develop defense partnerships in specialized areas with certain countries and not others? Which national institutions actually make those choices and then enact cooperation policies? The extant scholarship has looked at different explanations. Some studies concentrate on defense planning priorities such as the need to balance against China and Pakistan, and have mostly noted how the present Indian defence procurement process has led to sub-optimal outcomes in light of these strategic goals and in spite of growing financial means of a rising power like India. Other scholars have looked at how India’s strategic autonomy has led it to develop a robust indigenous defense industry but highlighted how the country remains has remained heavily reliant on defence imports, in spite of a strong political willingness supporting indigenization. Building on this, this paper looks more specifically at the role of sub-state organizations (SSOs) which are part of the official government machinery but have arguably developed some degree of agency to devise and implement defense partnerships over specific platforms with international partners. For the purposes of this study, this paper concentrates on the role of SSOs in three cases of defense procurement and/or joint ventures: the Rafale multi-role fighter jet (France), the BrahMos missiles (Russia), and the Barak AMD systems (Israel).

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-peacock-in-a-coal-mine-european-understanding-of-environmental-loss-in-india 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Damien Carrière

The environmental crisis is now rightly understood as a security and stability issue. A common approach in Europe tends to see environmental degradation as the source of resource-based violence, and a potential challenge for the state. Europe tends to look at environmental issues with an avowed fear of prospective climate refugees. Neo-Malthusian theories linking population growth with environmental degradation are still widely spread. This approach obscures the fact that the source of environmental loss and displacement can lay in an economic system that uses violence to implement the interests of ruling groups while disfranchising others. Appealing only to state and international negotiations to protect the environment is therefore problematic. India is a case in point: environmental degradation and the destabilization of local communities that cause their displacement often result from a resources mismanagement by the state, enforced with violence on local communities. The state here is not problem-solving but its development is at the source of conflicts. State decisions on building dams, sand mining, and coal extraction are taken without consultations and implemented by force against locals. The state often engages police/paramilitary forces against environmental movements. Unsurprisingly, then, despite the recognition of the urgency of the environmental crisis by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, no major policy has yet been implemented to mitigate the various environmental hazard that that India is facing, neither the smog nor climate change. Rather, efforts are put into fostering further disfranchisement that correspond to an ethnic and economic agenda. European plans of actions and understanding of the environmental crisis is sorely lacking an understanding of the systemic dynamics that are at the roots of the crisis. This paper contributes to this understanding by comparing Indian and European paths to environmental protection and points out at the limits of an international relations approach of the matter.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-slowly-moving-towards-a-european-defense-the-feasible-compromise-between-france 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Alberto Cunha

The main objective of this paper is to provide a fresh perspective upon the vast literature on the (slow) evolution of the EU Common Defence and Security Policy, namely its capabilities and institutions, since the turn of the century. My approach will focus on the agent (national) level by looking at the European Defence through the juxtaposition and comparison of French and German national interests/strategies, and then analysing the effects caused by those two member-states to the EU (structure) level of the CSDP. By focusing on the “national interests” and “national strategies” of the two main EU powers (France and Germany), the goal is to balance most of the recent literature on European defence which my paper argues has been too dominated by neofunctionalist theories that focus on the EU system as a whole and thus has moved away from more agent-level analyses that focus on the Member-States. The key hypothesis to be validated or disproved concerns the primacy that French and German interests have when it comes to the key decisions regarding EU Defence and Security policies, put to test across (1) defining security policies, (2) investing in security capabilities and (3) creating security institutions in the EU context. I argue that the CSDP has not yet evolved towards a ‘true’ European army, and that the main reason is the continued lack of convergence in French and German national interests and strategies. The paper follows an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of International Relations, Security Studies and EU/European Studies, using a predominantly documentary method drawing on academic literature, public speeches by elected officials, and official strategic documents.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/JPW2019-citizens-attitudes-to-edc-in-uk-france-and-germany 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Thomas Scotto Konstantin Gavras

The question of European aspirations for a defence autonomy distinct from NATO dates back to the European Defence Community proposed in the early 1950s, and recurs today as global tensions, questions about Russia's intentions, population displacements and doubts over the United States' commitment to NATO under President Trump have the French again pondering a new model for continental defence. There is scholarly debate over the role of public opinion in driving foreign policy, but Britain's vote to leave the EU should give leaders pause to consider their electorates before building an alternative to NATO. This paper examines the extent to which elite concerns over NATO are reflected in public attitudes in three major European states — the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Drawing on a unique set of YouGov surveys of the British, French and German publics conducted in 2019, it first compares support for NATO and for EU defence across the three nations, paying particular attention to whether the British public is an aggregate outlier, then probes the demographic and political undertones of the divide over NATO within Germany and France, and asks whether coherent segments of the public might form a basis for a European defence alternative. The British prove distinctly Atlanticist, while significant numbers of Germans and French are open to alternatives, a pattern with clear implications for the future of the Alliance.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-european-perceptions-of-nuclear-deterrence-in-the-era-of-trump-and-putin-and-the 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Tara Varma

Despite growing insecurity all around them, Europeans remain unwilling to renew their thinking around nuclear deterrence. In 2018, the European Council on Foreign Relations conducted a comprehensive survey of attitudes towards nuclear issues across the member states of the European Union. Two overarching themes emerged. Firstly, despite the growing insecurity all around them, Europeans remain unwilling to face up to the renewed relevance that nuclear deterrence ought to have in their strategic thinking. Secondly, and as a consequence, national attitudes remain much where they were when the subject dropped off the agenda at the end of the cold war – which is to say, scattered across the entire spectrum from those who continue to see nuclear deterrence as an essential underpinning of European security to enduring advocates of unilateral nuclear disarmament. “Strategic autonomy” will continue to be an empty phrase unless Europeans engage seriously on the nuclear dimension. There are many ways in which Europe can move towards this goal, but without taking into account the nuclear dimension of their autonomy, Europeans will continue to believe that Russia will always hold the whip hand in any military confrontation with a Europe not backed by a credible US nuclear guarantee. The absence of a European deterrent, thus, may prove to be a fatal flaw. No immediate European initiative to declare strategic nuclear autonomy is practicable, desirable, or even conceivable – but a strategy to hedge against the uncertainties of the future is certainly available. President Macron is expected to give his keynote speech on nuclear deterrence in 2019 – as his predecessors have done before him. One will see whether cooperation with Germany or the UK will be put forward, but UK and France could convert the idea of a European deterrent from a mere notion into a credible offer, by thickening their bilateral nuclear cooperation and hinting ever more clearly at their readiness to protect others.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-france-european-defense-and-deterrence-since-the-end-of-the-cold-war 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Guillaume de Rougé

In the recent developments and prospects for a further rapprochement between European countries in the realm of nuclear deterrence, France has appeared as a key but veiled player, mirroring the perceived ambivalence of French defence policy in the conventional realm. Thus, this communication assesses France's European defence policy through the lens of the links and linkages between conventional and nuclear cooperations projects. It proposes a history of the debates related to the europeanization of the French « force de frappe », reconnecting the rational for such initiatives with pending conventional cooperations, in order to contribute to a better understanding of France's European defence policy as a whole. Two sets of questions are addressed, based on a chrono-thematic approach: 1/ To what extent did the idea of a French- or Franco-British-led Euro-deterrent played a role in European conventional defence cooperations in the aftermath of the Cold War, whether under NATO/ESDI or EU/CSDP auspices? Did the relative marginalization of nuclear threat and nuclear issues in the 1990s and early 2000s shaped a permissive environment for conventional cooperations, or did it represent a “glass ceiling” for NATO-EU member states keen to preserve the strategic transatlantic “coupling”? 2/ To what extent, despite its “virtuality”, the debate on a Euro-deterrent, reemerging since the 2014 Crimean crisis, has “unearthed” three key issues for France, namely the articulation between conventional defence and deterrence, the participation to the Alliance deterrence policy reform, and the strategic and operational constraints weighing on a potential European component (whether in the realm of information sharing, consultation, planning or execution)? To address these questions, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining post-Cold War historical materials based on French archives (until 1995), an oral campaign of semi-directed interviews with an updated historiography.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-german-view-on-a-european-deterrent-the-cold-war-and-prospects 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Julia Berghofer

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-inhibition-or-control-european-autonomy-and-us-grand-strategy 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Paul van Hooft

For seven decades, American policymakers have been adamant that the US security guarantee and nuclear umbrella both pacified intra-European rivalries and deterred external attacks on Europe. However, a closer examination of US behavior towards Europe since the end of the Cold War in fact shows that US grand strategy is more puzzling than it seems. Despite the US and European allies sharing values and interests and the absence of a common threat, the US government still undermined attempts at European strategic autonomy at various points. Washington could have seen European efforts towards autonomy as an opportunity to pass the costs of European security rather than a risk, yet a desire for control seems to have been driving US behavior. The question of American motives is only more relevant again, now that European allies are confronted with an age of American ambivalence about its alliance commitments in Europe and Asia. Arguments in favor of retrenchment have increasingly become part of both public and academic debates, most obviously in President Trump’s undiplomatic language. Indeed, President Trump has changed the debate in Europe on European autonomy, including deterrence. This paper looks at whether, when, and how attitudes of past and current American officials towards Europe have changed or are changing. It takes into account structural pressures, domestic politics, and the emergence of new ideas in American strategic thinking.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-parties-exit-and-european-security-and-defense 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Stephanie Hofmann

Governments have contested European integration, at large, and national policy domains, in particular, ever since the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community. The policy domain of European security and defense is no exception in this regard. When the Netherlands and Germany were against a France-led European security and defense policy in the 1960s, the Fouchet Plans failed. But when Denmark objected to the European Security and Defense Policy, this policy did not fail but Denmark was granted an opt-out. The institutional depth, one could argue, had changed over time. In the context of institutional depth, the UK was always ambivalent towards a European security and defense policy. It joined it at first, then blocked much of its institutional development and now that Brexit is on the table, it wants to be as closely related to it as possible. What explains these variable interpretations of European security and how does it impact the institution? In this paper, I will look at British political parties, their understanding of European security and the institutional depth based on which their decision to participate or not to participated rests.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-private-diplomacy-and-transatlantic-burden-sharing-during-detente-a-view-from-th 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Albertine Bloemendal

The Trump administration’s insistence that the European NATO countries need to increase their defense contribution, while casting doubt on America’s NATO-commitment in case they do not, has put a severe strain on transatlantic relations. While the outspoken uncertainty of the American NATO commitment is new, the burden sharing debate at the heart of current transatlantic tensions is not. This paper will focus on the role of private diplomatic actors in mediating transatlantic tensions amidst the burden sharing debate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when American frustration about asymmetric transatlantic defense spending led to the introduction of Congressional amendments proposing a reduction of American troops permanently stationed in Europe, meant to induce the Europeans to pick up a greater share of the defense burden. This happened as anti-Americanism was on the rise in Europe while public support for defense spending waned as citizens’ experience of the perceived Soviet threat decreased in the context of detente. Meanwhile, citizens on both sides of the Atlantic demanded to have a greater say in matters of defense and foreign policy, making them an important force to be reckoned with. These developments did not only lead to serious transatlantic tensions and a major public diplomacy challenge for NATO, but also to an increasingly complex transatlantic diplomatic space. As this paper will show, the diplomatic playing field that developed also opened up new avenues for private actors to play diplomatic roles in mediating transatlantic tensions while pursuing their own transnational agendas. This will be demonstrated through a case study of the unofficial diplomatic role played by the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel, based on research in both public and private archives, including personal correspondence made available by Henry Kissinger following an interview by the author.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-franco-german-security-dialogue-as-a-first-step-for-a-deeper-french-european 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Ilaria Parisi

In the 1970s and especially the 1980s, when European concerns over the NATO flexible response strategy increased, the Franco-German bilateral cooperation reached one of its highest point. Thanks to the personal engagement of personalities like Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, the routine of Franco-German contacts evolved into a very special relationship even in the controversial defence and security domain, at the expert as well as the political level. Nevertheless, these exchanges proved that one issue could hardly allow the two partners to find a common view: the nuclear question. With the Germans asking the French to precise where and when they would use their force the frappe, and the French hiding behind their national independence, it seemed that time for a cooperation in the nuclear field had not come yet. However, it is through the evolution of the Franco-German security dialogue that France began to lay the foundations of a future European security dialogue – that is yet to come. Through the lens of newly released archives, this presentation will show that at a time in which Europe hesitated to overtly question the American deterrence, France and Germany found a path towards a fruitful dynamic to cope with security issues in a European framework and to preserve European security. So, the creation of a Franco-German institutionalized security forum was a preliminary step to favour a better understanding of the two partner’s defence postures. Then, this forum helped France to better express how her defence posture might profit to the Federal Republic and to Europe by large. Finally, this dialogue led to common initiatives (such as the Franco-German brigade or the Franco-German security Council) that effectively inspired the first steps European security project after the end of the Cold War.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-future-of-european-security-architecture-back-to-lady-thatcher-and-her-enten 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Liviu Horovitz

This paper asks what next if the two core pillars of European security wither away. For seven decades, the transatlantic alliance ensured external and internal security on the continent. The ever expanding and deepening European economic and political integration enhanced prosperity and ensured stability. Today, the US government seems increasingly reluctant to sustain its alliance system, and populism and nationalism undermine the European integration project. Thus, I leverage insights from declassified governmental documents to investigate likely alternative European arrangements. I go back to the last known pertinent historical junction and trace the dilemmas policymakers faced. I argue that the end of the Cold War was the last moment at which the current architecture was doubted. Three decades ago, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher distrusted the American pledge to remain engaged in Europe. She also resented European integration as the means to tie down the reunifying German Gulliver. In a competitive international environment, Thatcher considered returning the continent to a system of balancing alliances. Overall, she sought to keep Russia engaged in European affairs as a means to counterbalance the Germans. She abandoned her plans only when the Americans restated their intentions, and when the French and the Germans pushed integration ahead despite British protestation. What might have changed in the interlude? First, the competitive nature of European politics of lore might have given way to a more congenial approach. And yet, the observable behavior of European governments does not suggest such transformation. Second, external threats – particularly, from a rising China and revisionist Russia – might pose sufficient of a challenge for Europeans to abandon their internal disputes. However, little suggests concerted European action vis-à-vis Beijing or Moscow. In conclusion, I argue that if the two pillars wither away, a system of continental shifting alliances appears to be the most probable replacement.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-theories-of-balancing-and-us-grand-strategy-unpacking-the-europe-vs-east-asia-tr 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Linde Desmaele Luis Simón

Much of the scholarly debate on US grand strategy revolves around the question of whether the United States should adopt a forward-leaning global military posture or rather leverage its quasi- island status to let the world’s great powers balance against one another. Such debate is often held in relation to Europe and East Asia, for those are the only two regions with the wealth and military- industrial potential needed to credibly challenge the United States. However, the reality of US forward presence since WWII means that this debate has been fought primarily on prescriptive ground. In fact, a more relevant question – one with which policymakers have to grapple with on a daily basis – is which region matters most under which circumstances. It is surprising that the issue of resource tradeoffs between regions in US grand strategy has not received much attention in the IR literature yet, especially since the US 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy identity both Russia and China as “long-term strategic competitors.” Therefore, in this paper we present a theory of US balancing behavior in Europe and East Asia to elucidate which factors account for the prioritization of one region over the other. We hypothesize that, in a permissive environment, the United States balances against elements of power of competitors in both regions simultaneously. Yet, once a single competitor reaches an advantage across many elements of power, scarcity of US resources compels Washington to set regional priorities and to prepare for balancing against that single competitor across all elements of power. This is because the fungibility of the competitor’s power resources – through spill-over effects and issue linkage – logically increases as its overall amount of power increases. To illustrate the plausibility of our hypothesis, we select two case studies: The Cold War and the Pivot to Asia.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-an-eu-inspired-cloud-of-multilateral-antipathy-the-british-public-and-foreign-po 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Thomas Scotto

In the aftermath of World War Two, Winston Churchill spoke of Britain's international engagement in terms of three co-existent, neatly linked circles: "the [Empire and] Commonwealth"; "the English-speaking world"; and "United Europe." Public opinion on Britain's role in the world, if it was respected or paid attention to by elites, likely was assumed to fall along an "all or nothing" isolationist-interventionist axis. Following the breakup of the Empire and the passage of the European Communities Act of 1972, these interlocked circles appeared to morph into separate spheres. Attention paid to each varied, with interest in the European Union project and the "special relationship" Britain had with the United States frequently overshadowing engagement with the Commonwealth. Aside from periods of UK involvement in US led military action, questions of European Integration became the focus of the bulk of day-to-day attention by media and political elites. In this paper, we ask how the politics and debate over Britain's membership in the European Union shaped wider aspects of the British public's beliefs concerning multilateral engagement. Did contentiousness over Europe cloud the atmosphere so much that "leavers" also were those wanting less engagement with non-governmental organisations, American allies, and developing nations? Or, did Euroskeptics want to unshackle themselves from the Continent to be freed to engage more with the rest of the world? This paper/chapter will be an attempt to explore further British attitudes towards multilateralism.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-european-military-capability-needs-in-an-age-of-american-restraint 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Mauro Gilli

This paper examines what type of military capabilities Europe (the European Union) needs to ensure its security under three different scenarios: deep engagement with the United States, self-sufficiency, and assertiveness. It looks at the minimal requirements under each scenario, in terms of conventional and non-conventional capabilities. What investments are needed in each case, especially with regards to cyber-capabilities, unmanned vehicles, and maritime capabilities? The paper will also analyze what type of deterrence Europe could generate vis-à-vis Russia, and its options for power projection into the Asia-Pacific.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-it-s-the-americans-stupid-is-it-understanding-the-french-suspect-plebiscite-for 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Cyrille Thiébaut

Our goal is to contribute to the debate on public opinion about foreign policy by studying French opinion on European defence. According to surveys, around 80% of French people support it. From a minimalist point of view, such a support must result from answers given au hasard to questions that only political elites are interested in. But such an explanation is short-sighted. People may lack information about European defence and may not pay much attention to it, but even though: why would the hazard be so much positively inclined? To answer this question, this paper proposes to use James Stimson's public policy mood applied to French opinion on European defence, in order to observe its evolutions over time (1991-2016). This aggregate measure reveals that behind this support, there are movements in the public opinion linked to international events, demonstrating people's capacity to think about this issue and connect the dots. It also shows that the support to European defence is correlated to opinions towards the transatlantic relationship, whereas it is not correlated to attitudes towards European integration. However, one question remains: how can this correlation be explained? The way the media frame European defence is assumed to explain this trend. By looking at the way surveys questions on these topics are asked on the one hand, and by comparing surveys results to media coverage of European defence on the other hand, we demonstrate this relationship between public opinion and media frames.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-now-end-of-history-ruptures-and-tectonic-shifts 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Beatrice Heuser

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-party-political-contestation-of-military-interventions 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Wolfgang Wagner

The Democratic Peace debate and the 'domestic politics turn' in International Relations more broadly have highlighted the importance of democratic politics in foreign policy decision-making and the use of military force in particular. Yet, some three decades of research into the distinctiveness of liberal democracies' security and defence policies, our understanding of the democratic politics of foreign and security policy, is still limited. Although a large number of case studies have by and again confirmed the importance of a country's domestic politics for understanding decisions to use armed force, we still lack a systematic understanding of the patterns that characterize the politics of using armed force in liberal democracies. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the democratic politics of military missions by zooming in on a key actor in the politics of liberal democracies: political parties. The paper examines empirically a) to what extent the use of force is contested amongst political parties; b) to what extent party political contestation is structured along the established left/right cleavage or along new cleavages pitting cosmopolitan post-materialists against traditional nationalists; c) to what extent the party's political composition of government impacts on actual decisions to use armed force. Based on analyses of party manifesto-, expert survey- and parliamentary roll call vote-data, the paper finds that a) the extent to which foreign and security policy is contested varies considerably across countries and periods, b) party political contestation is first and foremost structured along a left/right dimension in a curvilinear way and only to a lesser extent along a nationalist/cosmopolitan dimension; c) the party's political composition of government has a limited impact on state policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-policy-mood-and-policy-responsiveness-on-the-eu-s-common-foreign-and-security-po 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Pierangelo Isernia Francesco Olmastroni

Our goal is to explore the determinants of aggregate public opinion support for a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), operationalized as the European public's mood towards this policy area. To answer this question, we look at four sets of determinants and their workings both over time and cross-nationally. First, we examine the Left-Right ideological dimension. For many years, in several countries, this has been the main source of contention on how foreign policy should be coordinated between European countries and with the US. Second, there is the European dimension. The CFSP mood, and its evolution over time, could be seen as a manifestation of the wider politicization of the European integration process, started with Maastricht in the 1990s and since then a persistent, and increasingly, relevant, cleavage in the European political space. While both factors look at what could be defined as ideological orientations – being them on the Left-Right space or on the more or less EU integration – the third set of determinants simply ignore the role of ideology and look at the national dimension and countries' international posture as sources of explanation for the ebbs and flows of the CFSP mood. In this perspective, the different level of coordination the public supports has to be traced back to the economic, historical and geo-political characteristics of each single state, irrespective of the ideological landscape. Fourth, we examine the impact of Anti-Americanism on support for a common European foreign and defence policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-quo-vadimus-u-s-eu-counter-terrorism-cooperation-in-an-age-of-uncertainty 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Carlotta Minnella

This contribution will explore the current state of U.S.-EU counter-terrorism cooperation. It will outline the main patterns that have characterized the transition from the Obama to the current Trump administration, focusing both on cooperation on kinetic counter-terrorism operations and on preventive initiatives adopted by member states and by the Union at large. The main goal of the paper is to highlight trends concerning evolving priorities for engagement, new actors, platforms, and issue areas, in particular in the field of preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE). The paper will offer an assessment of the extent to which existing patterns of cooperation in counter-terrorism have been affected by the changing dynamics of U.S. global leadership after the 2016 election. The analysis will seek to evaluate the likely impact (if any) of a diminished U.S. involvement on the effectiveness of the multilateral counter-terrorism regime and the Union’s prospects to achieve its key counter-terrorism objectives.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-what-political-forces-shape-european-security-on-the-world-stage 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Luis Simón

The purpose of the paper is to identify the main ‘cracks’ in Europe’s post-war geopolitical architecture. The paper’s central contention is that Europe is undergoing a balance of power crisis that is animated by three structural developments. The first is U.S, retrenchment in Europe. The second relates to Germany’s economic, political and diplomatic ascent in Europe, and its emerging leadership position within the EU. And the third is Russia’s push to recreate a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and subvert the Western liberal order on the continent. A key theme in this paper is the powerful tension between power and weakness that defines the role of Europe's three main powers: the US, Germany and Russia. The paper argues that even though these three countries are and are likely to remain the most significant powers in Europe, none of them has the wherewithal, legitimacy (notably in the case of Russia) or willingness (in that of Germany) to provide order in the way the U.S. has done in the past. The result: it's no one's Europe.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-what-european-women-really-want-a-critical-feminist-approach-to-understanding-ge 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Karen Devine

Given consistent Eurobarometer data-based claims by the EU, that 'large majorities in all Member States would like to see “more Europe” in security and defence' (CSDP), and in the wake of EU legislation establishing an EU army ("PESCO") passed in December 2017 to operationalise the EU's mutual defence clause (Article 42.7 TEU), it is timely to critically examine the relationship between the use of opinion poll data and EU member-states' true public preferences on security and defence, with a particular focus on gender. Whilst there is a literature on feminist/critical security studies, and a literature on gender and public attitudes to the use of force, to date, there is has been little integration of the two fields. This paper problematises the current discourses on public support for EU CSDP and provides a data-based, feminist critique of how the European Union uses surveys to capture public attitudes to European Security and Defence Policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-what-are-the-eu-s-grand-strategic-options-in-response-to-american-restraint 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Marina Henke Paul van Hooft

This paper will examine European options to respond to American restraint. What does it take to keep the U.S. engaged in Europe? Is increased defense spending enough? What alternative policies could Europe adopt in response to American restraint? What does it mean to increase self-sufficiency? What would assertiveness entail? If such options are to be implemented, is the E.U. the best option to enact such a grand strategic posture? The paper engages in this intellectual thought experiment, using IR theory alongside empirical evidence. It will outline three grand strategic scenarios, and engage in a first attempt to describe a possible, grand strategic landscape for European action.