Daniel Fiott

Europe and the Pentagon's Third Offset Strategy

Faced with the prospect of its adversaries mitigating its long-held superiority in sophisticated weapons systems, the US announced in 2014 that it was about to embark on a ‘third offset strategy’ in order to maintain its military-technology edge. In its quest to harness new technologies and operational concepts however, the third offset strategy is likely to raise important questions for Europe and NATO. Daniel Fiott addresses some of the major issues at hand related to alliance politics in NATO and some of the potential defence-industrial effects.

The European Commission and the European Defence Agency: A Case of Rivalry?

This article analyzes relations between the European Commission and the European Defence Agency (EDA) as they relate to European defence-industrial co-operation. To undertake the analysis, the article departs from a strictly intergovernmental-supranational study of institutional relations by building upon the concept of ‘mandate overlap’. Additionally, the focus is on the constitutive policy approach of each institution. The EDAs approach is characterized as ad hoc and project-based in nature, and the European Commissions approach is structural and market-based. Once the two approaches are delineated, the article then investigates whether either of the bodies has deviated from their respective mandates over a period beginning in 1996 and ending in 2013. On this basis, the conclusion is that there is evidence of rivalry between the two bodies, especially when European Union Member States decide to use either entity to secure their interests.

Reducing the Environmental Bootprint? Competition and Regulation in the Greening of Europe's Defense Sector

As part of the European Union’s (EU) renewable energy and climate targets and its drive for sustainability, energy efficiency, and environmental protection, various elements of the defense sector in Europe are undertaking their own green initiatives. This is particularly important as the defense sector is one of the biggest public consumers of energy in the EU. This article asks to what extent, how, and why elements of the defense sector in Europe have engaged in greening. By examining four categories in a relevant typology of greening—ceremonial greening, holistic greening, regulatory greening, and competitive greening—this article argues that the defense sector in Europe is far from being a holistic green actor. Rather, Europe’s militaries, defense institutions, and defense firms exhibit a strong sense of self-interest in greening—embodied in defense market competition and regulation—and tend toward delegating green innovation to the market within an increasingly regulated context.

The ‘TTIP-ing Point’: How the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Could Impact European Defence

The European Union and the United States are on the verge of agreeing to a transatlantic free trade agreement. The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is aimed at boosting EU and US economic growth, but the negotiating partners have not excluded the defence sector from negotiations. Europe is at a tipping point regarding the rationale for its defence-industrial integration efforts. Any TTIP extending to the defence sector will raise questions about the nature of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, and, crucially, how it impacts the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Common Security and Defence Policy.

1493: how Europe's discovery of the Americas revolutionized trade, ecology and life on earth

policy consensus. That is only to be expected. Nevertheless it is consistent with a growing sentiment among professional economists that there is something wrong with the official narrative of the European crisis. Europe did not get into trouble because of excessive indebtedness, as the official narrative insists; it got into trouble because of a “sudden stop” in crossborder capital movements. Moreover, as Sandbu rightly points out, this sudden stop affected countries outside as well as inside the single currency. Hence the key to resolving the crisis – and to preventing future outbreaks – is to look for ways to contain or influence the causal mechanism that underlies sudden-stop dynamics. Sandbu offers three solutions: write-downs; capital controls; and eurobonds. The write-downs cut into the stocks of crossborder exposures before they can be liquidated; the capital controls slow the flow from one country to the next; and the eurobonds channel investor flight to quality into a restricted pool of assets. If European policymakers could couple these instruments to a broader framework to underpin market confidence like that found in early proposals for a European banking union, then this could do much to prevent the financial disintegration that did so much damage during the crisis. There is significant merit in this argument, particularly as a corrective for current conventional wisdom. In fact, Sandbu’s book is among the best sustained analyses of the crisis that I have ever read. Nevertheless, Sandbu starts the story too late and so misses the crucial link to the functioning of the internal market. His book contains all the necessary elements, from the redistribution of savings through the free movement of capital to the goal of promoting productivity growth through the development of the European periphery. Where it does not go far enough is in acknowledging that there are two sides to every market transaction: money that is borrowed is also lent; assets that are sold are also bought. The power relationships here are asymmetric. Lenders and buyers have the upper hand. This asymmetry is as unavoidable as it is unfortunate. And it explains why Sandbu’s priorities need to be inverted. The first goal for European policymakers should be to maintain the confidence of cross-border investors. Capital controls and write-downs should be a last resort. The distinction is subtle but important. It explains why Cyprus should never be a model for how to handle a banking crisis in the euro area. It also explains how Greece got into trouble long before November 2009, how Belgium suffered a loss of market confidence and then escaped from a full-blown crisis and why Italy got into trouble at all. These are elements that Sandbu glosses over in his otherwise excellent analysis. They do not detract from Sandbu’s diagnosis. European policymakers should be held to account for their failures – including the failure to provide both the euro and the wider European project with a more rigorous and coherent defence. What these anomalies or omissions in Sandbu’s argument suggest is that we need to think harder about how to stabilize the functioning of Europe’s internal market and specifically the free movement of capital. Europe’s crisis is about more than just debt.

European defence-industrial cooperation: from Keynes to Clausewitz

The European Union is still far from having a consolidated defence market but the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) has emerged as a policy framework through which to liberalize and regulate defence markets, protect and sustain jobs and to improve the interoperability of Europes armed forces; all at the EU level. This article argues that a purely economic rationale for defence-industrial cooperation is being reformulated to include also questions of strategic relevance. Indeed, by charting the transition from a past policy framework called the European Defence Equipment Market (EDEM) to the EDTIB, the article examines the European Commissions role as a key driver in this policy evolution. This article shows how the European Commission is using dual-use technologies to increase its policy relevance in the defence-industrial policy milieu, but it also reaffirms the enduring role of the member states and the importance of national interests.

A Revolution Too Far? US Defence Innovation, Europe and NATO’s Military-Technological Gap

ABSTRACT The United States is launching another defence innovation initiative to offset the growing military-technological might of countries such as China, Russia and Iran. However, by utilising emerging technologies from the commercial sector to achieve greater military power the US may further open up the technology gap within NATO. This raises serious questions for NATO’s European allies. This article probes the nature of the US’s latest innovation strategy and sets it within the strategic context facing Europe today. Whether European governments, firms and militaries will join the US in its new defence innovation drive will hinge on politico-military and industrial considerations.

The EU, NATO and the European defence market: do institutional responses to defence globalisation matter?

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are both institutions through which European states can engage in European defence–industrial cooperation. Each organisation embodies a unique set of institutional tools through which to manage issues such as the high and rising costs of defence procurement, technological innovation, defence R&D, standardisation, multinational capability programmes and interoperability. In short, the EU and NATO are institutional tools through which European states can manage the positive effects and negative consequences of defence globalisation. By drawing on an innovative conceptual framework derived from the institutional interaction literature, this article analyses how the EU and NATO interact with one another for defence–industrial issues. In doing so, the article principally aims to provide a conceptually informed analysis of the appeal of each body as a mechanism for defence–industrial cooperation and how each institution affects the other.

Realist Thought and Humanitarian Intervention

This article seeks to test the assumption that realism is completely hostile to the ethical and political notions of humanitarian intervention. The popular understanding of realism states that the national interest and international order will always trump the moral impulse to assist those suffering gross human-rights abuses at the hands of their government. The article makes the argument that this understanding of realism emerged from a particular period of history and under the pens of specific individuals reacting to these conditions. By affording a much deeper historical scope to the term ‘realism’, this article shows how realism cannot be damned uniformly by those writing and thinking about humanitarian intervention in the present period, and the role it holds in contemporary debates on humanitarian intervention.

How Europeanized Has Maltese Foreign Policy Become

This essay focuses on the degree to which Maltese foreign policy has become Europeanized because of its membership in the European Union. The author focuses on three trends resulting from the Europeanization process: first, the ways in which Maltas national policies and political structures have become altered to meet the demands of EU membership; second, the manner in which Malta projects its own interests at the EU level; and third, the degree to which Maltese national identity has transformed since becoming an EU member state in 2004. The author then provides a brief overview of the particular national characteristics of Maltese politics.