European defence policy between dependence and autonomy: A challenge of Sisyphean dimensions

Abstract

There have been two critical moments in Europe’s tortuous attempts to generate a viable, collective, relatively autonomous, trans-national defence project: the first decade after World War II, and the early decades of the 21st century. In both cases, the main features of the project were similar and in both cases there was an implicit or even explicit symbiosis between European integration and defence integration. In both cases, the same underlying weaknesses in the project stymied progress. These involved disagreements between France and the United Kingdom over the nature of the project itself; American ambivalence; differences among the European member states over how to handle relations with Russia; and unresolved tensions between the European entity and its member states. In the earlier case, these challenges proved fatal to the project. In the later case, they risk nudging it towards irrelevance.