Defence cooperation and change: How defence industry integration fostered development of the European security community

AuthorOndrej Ditrych,Tomas Kucera
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221099086
Published date01 March 2023
Date01 March 2023
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221099086
Cooperation and Conflict
2023, Vol. 58(1) 129 –152
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367221099086
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Defence cooperation and
change: How defence
industry integration fostered
development of the European
security community
Ondrej Ditrych and Tomas Kucera
Abstract
This article situates recent initiatives to deepen security and defence cooperation in the
European Union in the historical perspective. It proposes a model of constitutive relationship
between the process of change in a security community and the formation of a transnational
defence industry community of practice which yields positive feedback (‘productive returns’) to
the security community as a broader assemblage within which it was constituted. This model is
applied to the paradigmatic case of European security community that formed after the World
War II (WWII). The analysis shows that the key driver for defence integration traced by means
of social network analysis (SNA) in this case was economic rather than political, and for an
extended period of time it developed without formal institutions. The productive return of the
‘defence industry machine’ as a distinct community of practice that was constituted through the
integration process consisted in the sense of deeper belonging and a shared sense of working well
together in a traditionally highly nationalised defence milieu.
Keywords
defence industry, defence integration, Europe, security community, social network analysis
Introduction
Recent initiatives in the European Union (EU) to deepen security and defence coopera-
tion include defence industry integration as a key element, notably through the initiation
of a permanent structured cooperation (PESCO; Biscop, 2018; Crosson and Blockmans,
2021; Fiott et al., 2017) in defence. Furthermore, European Defence Fund worth of
EUR 8 billion was created as a part of the current multiannual financial framework
Corresponding author:
Ondrej Ditrych, Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, U Krize 8,
150 00 Praha 5, Czech Republic.
Email: ditrych@fsv.cuni.cz
1099086CAC0010.1177/00108367221099086Cooperation and ConflictDitrych and Kucera
research-article2022
Article
130 Cooperation and Conflict 58(1)
(2021–2027; The European Parliament and the Council, 2021). It makes the European
Commission, the par excellence supranational institution, more deeply involved in com-
plementing Member States’ endeavours to develop European defence capability, weak-
ening the so far dominating intergovernmentalism in the security and defence field
(Håkansson, 2021). Last but not least, investment in collaborative enterprises to develop
strategic enablers and next generation capabilities is part and parcel of the new Strategic
Compass intended as a guide for further integration in the domain of defence and secu-
rity, and progressive evolution of a common strategic culture (Borrell, 2021a, 2022b).
In this article, we situate these recent developments in the historical perspective. We
posit a constitutive relationship between the process of change in a security community
and the formation of defence integration community of practice (Adler, 2008; Adler and
Pouliot, 2011; Pouliot, 2008; Wenger, 1998). The latter, we argue, reinforces the security
community’s basic norm that conflicts among members are resolved peacefully, and
there is a durable expectation to that end (Deutsch et al., 1957). This relationship is first
explored theoretically from a process perspective (Rescher, 1996; cf. Whitehead et al.,
1978) that reaches beyond formal institutions and instead emphasises the importance of
informal communities of practice as constitutive elements of the broader security com-
munity assemblages. This groundwork is then used to advance existing analysis of the
paradigmatic case of European security community (Adler and Greve, 2009; Buzan and
Waever, 2003; Lavenex, 2004; Waever, 1998; cf. Flyvbjerg, 2006).1 The innovation con-
sists in proposing a mechanism in which the defence integration and the related transna-
tional defence community of practice (‘defence industry machine’) emerged first as
conditioned by the presence of a security community, and later yielded positive feedback
(termed here ‘productive returns’) to the security community as a broader assemblage
within which it was constituted.
The key driver for deepening of defence integration was economic rather than politi-
cal: following an early stage of restoration of national defence industries in the late 1940s
and 1950s motivated by a securitisation at the strategic level, it was the parochial eco-
nomic securitisation of the U.S. defence industry’s domination in the defence market that
facilitated the community of practice’s cognitive evolution and network expansion. This
process unreeled in the community of practice as a distinct social space yet, for an
extended period of time, without any formal institutions. These institutions only fol-
lowed as results of this economic securitisation, remaining only modestly effective as
drivers of further integration.
This mechanism is traced by means of the social network analysis (SNA) toolbox.
SNA’s virtue lies in capturing structures of social relationships as ‘emergent properties
of persistent patterns of relations among agents that can define, enable, and constrain
those agents’ (Hafner-Burton et al., 2009: 561; cf. Maoz, 2011: 6). It is thus suitable for
investigations of socialisation processes and group dynamics within the defence field
beyond institutional perspective – and, more generally, ‘the diffusion of norms based on
the strength of ties between states [and] collective state identities such as security com-
munities’ (Hafner-Burton et al., 2009: 569). SNA situates agents in relation to one
another based not on predetermined criteria (e.g. regime type) but rather patterns of their
interaction. It illuminates – in a structural rather than micropolitical fashion – the becom-
ing of particular communities of practice but also the (elusive) nature of security com-
munities in general. Indeed, that was the ambition already of the first use of SNA in the

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