Sven Biscop

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.

The European Union and Mutual Assistance: More than Defence

Abstract The first activation of the European Union’s “Mutual Assistance Clause”, following the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, demonstrated that this article can be used very flexibly, not just to help defend French territory but also its expeditionary operations. But if flexibility is an asset, improvisation is not. In order to maximise the potential of the clause, the role of the EU institutions needs to be clarified, in addition to that of the member states, and new capacities must be created at the EU level, notably in intelligence and planning.

The state of defence in Europe: dependence, deterrence and deployment

As the challenges in Europes neighbourhood are multiplying, so its American allys commitment is declining. Europe therefore has to decide which responsibilities it wants to assume as a security provider outside its borders, and translate that into capability targets that allow for it to act autonomously when necessary. The EU is best placed to express that ambition, through the European Council, and to detail its capability implications for expeditionary operations, which NATO can then integrate in overall capability targets for Europeans, including their collective defence obligations. The European Defence Agency is best placed to be the “architect” of cooperation to develop and acquire these priority capabilities together. Bringing these capabilities up to standard through manoeuvres is best done through the NATO command structure, of which Europe will avail itself in most scenarios demanding large scale, high intensity military intervention. Coordination, cooperation and eventually integration: those are the keys to building an affordable and coherent set of European forces.

European defence : give PESCO a chance

Several projects for European Union defence cooperation have been proposed before, and none has ever really been implemented. The latest attempt feels different.

Game of zones: power struggles in the EU's neighbourhood

In the 25 years since the end of the Cold War there has rarely been a year without conflict in one or other of Europe’s neighbours. In 2015 many crises are coinciding, which reduces the bandwidth that European leaders can devote to any one of them, and thus creates a pervasive sense of continually running behind the facts. The European Union (EU) feels ill at ease in this “game of zones”. With an assertive Russia trying to establish an exclusive zone of influence in the East and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) taking control of a large zone in the South, this clearly is a game for high stakes. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the EU’s framework for dealing with its six eastern as well as its southern neighbours, has obviously been unsuccessful in stabilizing Europe’s periphery. But is Europe really as ill-equipped to play the game as it feels? In spite of policy failures in its eastern and southern neighbourhoods, which do demand a strategic reappraisal, the EU is intrinsically well placed to assume long-term responsibility for security in its own neighbourhood – if it finds the political will.

The dangerous geopolitics of populism

The neo-authoritarian trend in Europe creates a fundamental problem for NATO, because it is at odds with how its basic purpose has evolved since the end of the Cold War. The purpose of NATO today is to defend not just the territorial integrity of its members, but also the model of society that they have constructed. In European society, the state is to guarantee security, prosperity and democracy for its citizens. This triad cannot be disentangled: a citizen can only benefit from security, prosperity and democracy together or not at all. Security from violence does not mean much if one dies of hunger, just as wealth does not mean much if the government can take it away, or even imprison you, arbitrarily. If an ally no longer upholds this European way of life, then what exactly is NATO supposed to defend? A government that undermines its country’s democracy thus ipso facto puts its security at risk too. The more authoritarian a government becomes, the more it puts the bond of solidarity in theAlliance into question. To put it very starkly: which democratic government could justify to its citizens putting its forces in harm’s way in order to defend an eventual dictatorship in another NATO country? This, of course, is obvious to NATO’s potential adversaries too. Russia definitely will not hesitate to use any opportunity that presents itself in order to weaken NATO, if only to stop the Alliance from interfering in its strategic design of re-establishing predominance in the former Soviet republics. Hence Russia actively supports various populist actors. In most cases, populist tactics include Euro-scepticism. It is both acceptable and necessary in a democratic polity to criticize EU policies, and even the EU project as such. But when countries decided, by democratic means, to join the EU, they subscribed to a set of objectives and limitations. If a government no longer is willing to abide by them, it cannot expect that its country’s status in the EU will remain unaffected. But certain governments not only violate the EU’s values, they also actively undermine EU policies, notably the Common Foreign and Security Policy. What is worse, they appear to be doing so under the influence of foreign powers such as Russia and China. In full contradiction with their nationalist rhetoric, some governments have willingly become instruments of outside actors. Worryingly, not only protoauthoritarian but even some fully democratic governments are undermining the EU in this way, having become hostage, it seems, to Russian energy or Chinese financial power. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for the EU to take a resolute and united stance in issues involving China and Russia. Certain governments even undermine EU positions on general human rights policy, directly affecting the core of the Union’s valuebased foreign policy. The risk is that at some point other EU countries will stop investing in a foreign policy, and other policies, at 28, and forge ahead in a core group. A multispeed EU is in the offing anyway, and it is the (suboptimal) solution if there is no other way to advance European integration. But a multispeed EU should be a positive choice, a way of moving ahead with a view to all member states re-joining the core eventually. It should not be a negative choice, a way of

Powers, great, smart and not so smart

Between great powers, cooperation and competition have always co-existed. They simultaneously compete on one issue and cooperate on another, in varying constellations. They compartmentalize their relations with each other: even a very serious dispute in one area need not block dialogue and cooperation in others. That is one way of preventing a deadlock in world politics and an escalation of crises that might lead to war. But even so, the question what will be the basic orientation of each of the great powers remains crucial: it will determine the course of world politics in the twenty-first century. The great powers of the day are Russia, the US, China and, perhaps, Europe. Will they share power and cooperate? Or will they try to grab more power and seek to dominate?

Finally: a new EU strategy

On 28 June 2016 High Representative Federica Mogherini presented the long-awaited Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) to the European Council. Many pundits will present it as another example of Brussels’ otherworldliness to table an external strategy just a few days after the UK created a huge internal challenge by voting to leave the Union. But would it have demonstrated a better sense of reality to pretend that because of the British decision to put a stop to its EU membership, the world around Europe will come to a stop as well? The EU needs the EUGS and that “is even more true after the British referendum”, as Mogherini rightly says in the foreword. The EUGS introduces a new overall approach to foreign and security policy, which can be read as a correction on the 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS) that preceded it. “The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states”, the EU said in 2003. Unfortunately, spreading good governance and democracy proved more difficult than expected, and when their absence provoked crises, the EU did not always muster the will and the means to respond. Where the ESS proved to be overoptimistic (and optimism is a moral duty, as Karl Popper said), the EUGS is more conscious of the limits imposed by European capabilities and by others’ intractability, and therefore more modest. It charts a course between isolationism and interventionism, between “dreamy idealism and unprincipled pragmatism”, as I put in a 2014 policy brief, under the new heading of what the EUGS now calls “principled pragmatism”. This represents a return to Realpolitik. Not Realpolitik as it has come to be understood, as the end justifying the means, but Realpolitik in the original sense of the term. As John Bew usefully reminds us, Realpolitik as coined by the German liberal Ludwig von Rochau in 1853 meant a rejection of liberal utopianism, but not of liberal ideals themselves. Rather, “it held out a vision of the future and a guide for how to get there”, for how to achieve those ideals in a realistic way. Or, as the EUGS has it, “responsible engagement can bring about positive change”. This, says Bew, is the “real Realpolitik”; given that other actors still pursue the Machiavellian version, let’s call it Realpolitik with European characteristics. The fact that for the first time ever an EU document lists our vital interests (which is a breakthrough in its own right) is a reflection of this new approach. Policy is about interests; if isn’t, no one will invest in it. That applies to the EU as much as to a state and, states the EUGS, “there is no clash between national and European interests”. The vital interests that the EUGS defines are vital to all Member States: the security of EU citizens and territory; prosperity (which, the EUGS states, implies equality – otherwise we would indeed not be talking about the prosperity of all citizens); democracy; and a rules-based global order to contain power politics. Setting these interests off against the analysis of the global environment that Mogherini presented to the European