Neutrality and the development of the European Union’s common security and defence policy
| Author | Karen Devine |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836711416958 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Cooperation and Conflict
46(3) 334–369
Neutrality and the
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836711416958
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European Union’s common
security and defence policy:
Compatible or competing?
Karen Devine
Abstract
This article examines the content of concepts of neutrality articulated in elite and public discourses
in the context of the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence
Policy (CSDP). In parallel with security and defence policy developments in successive EU treaties,
many argue that the meaning of neutrality has been re-conceptualized by elites in EU ‘neutral’
member states (specifically, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) to the point of irrelevance and
inevitable demise. Others argue that the concept of ‘military’ neutrality, as it is termed by elites
in Ireland, or ‘military non-alignment’, as it is termed by elites in Austria, Sweden and Finland,
meaning non-membership of military alliances, is compatible with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty.
An investigation of these paradoxical discursive claims as to the status of neutrality yields findings
of a divergence in public ‘active’ and elite ‘military’ concepts of neutrality that embodies competing
foreign policy agendas. These competing, value-laden, concepts reflect tensions between, on the
one hand, the cultural influences of a domestic constituency holding strong national identities and
role-conceptions informed by a postcolonial or anti-imperialist legacy and, on the other hand,
elite socialization influences of ‘global actor’ and common defence-supported identity ambitions
encountered at the EU level that can induce discursively subtle yet materially significant shifts in
neutral state foreign policy. The article concludes with an analysis of the compatibility of both
‘military’ neutrality and the ‘active’ concept of neutrality with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty and
draws conclusions on the future role of neutrality both inside and outside the EU framework.
Keywords
Austria, EU CSDP, Ireland, ‘Lisbon Treaty’ mutual defence clause, neutrality, Sweden
Introduction
Neutrality is an ‘illusive concept’ (Andrén, 1991: 67), a ‘wide-ranging, elastic concept’
(Joenniemi, 1993: 289) and ‘bears more than its fair share of different connotations’
Corresponding author:
Karen Devine, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9
Email: karen.devine@dcu.ie
Devine
335
(Keatinge, 1984: 3). Like many other commonly used political concepts such as
‘democracy’ or ‘sovereignty’, neutrality is an essentially contested concept – the
content of the concept, with different emphasis on legal, political, ideological,
economic and military dimensions and its ‘proper’ formulation and practice, can be
interpreted antithetically and disputed (see Agius and Devine, [this issue]). The lack of
universal or intersubjective agreement on the meaning of neutrality is a political
puzzle worthy of investigation in the context of an ongoing political struggle over the
content of the concept between different agents in their attempts to achieve varying
political goals at the national, regional and international levels.
This article seeks to establish the timing and nature of changes in the discursive
content of neutrality in parallel with the development of European Union (EU) foreign,
security and defence policy (see Beyer and Hofmann, [this issue]). Although there is a
substantial literature on the development of the European Security and Defence Policy
(ESDP) (renamed ‘Common Security and Defence Policy’ through the Lisbon Treaty
(shorthand for ‘the Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the
Treaty establishing the European Community’)) (e.g. Carlsnaes and Smith, 1994; Tonra
and Christiansen, 2004; Holland, 2005) and a smaller literature drawing attention to
changes to neutrality in Europe and the conduct of European neutrals (Jessup, 1936;
Ogley, 1970; Neuhold and Thalberg, 1984; Kruzel and Haltzel, 1989; Neuhold, 1992)
and individual studies of neutral states (Jakobsen, 1969; Salmon, 1989; Af Malmborg,
2001; Bischof et al., 2001; Agius, 2006), to date, variability in the two concepts has not
been compared directly in a qualitative, chronological analysis. The content of the
concept of neutrality is examined in the cases of Austria, Sweden and Ireland in a pre-
accession period from the 1960s to 1970s for Ireland and from the 1980s to 1990s for the
former two cases using referendum debates, parliamentary speeches, White Papers,
policy documents and media op-eds. The last phase examines the concept of neutrality
from the time of the agreement to merge the EU and the Western European Union (WEU)
military alliance reached by the European Council in December 1999, incorporating the
negotiations on the inclusion of the WEU’s mutual defence clause in the draft ‘Constitution
for Europe’ in 2002–2003, until the completion of the WEU–EU merger several years
later through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2009. These CSDP
developments are arguably important predictors in expectations of changes in elite-
formulated neutrality concepts.
Irish discourse is heavily focused on (1) because it was the first ‘case-study’ of a
neutral joining the EEC and sets the initial parameters of the debate that provides a basis
for assessing the continuity of discourses enabling successive neutral state accessions to
the EU and (2) because the requirement of binding referendums on successive EC treaties
has forced Irish elites to grapple with this issue given the long-standing support for
neutrality by the veto card-wielding public, compared with the lighter political pressures
on other neutral state elites. Finland is considered as a case apart, as the tradition is less
firmly rooted and Finnish elites appear to have experienced comparatively little political
pressure in shedding neutrality (Forsberg and Vaahtoranta, 2001: 70), so it features only
sporadically, as a juxtaposed, quasi-neutral case (until recently, elites have described
Finland as ‘militarily non-aligned’). Taken together, these cases should provide an
empirical basis to ascertain (1) whether state elites exhibit characteristics of elite
336
Cooperation and Conflict 46(3)
socialization (Checkel, 2005) and have followed a ‘logic of appropriateness’ according
to the given international norm in the pursuit of their policy aims and (2) whether their
own internal standards of appropriateness, taking into account past practices of neutrality,
are consistent over time. The article also evaluates (vis-à-vis elite concepts of neutrality)
the scope and content of the neutrality concepts supported by public opinion in these
states (see Table 1) using quantitative and qualitative public opinion data. This provides
evidence of the degree of norm overlap and implementation (Wiener and Puetter, 2009:
6) across several levels of analysis.
Changes in elite discourses on neutrality can be understood in the context of a ‘two
level game’ framework in which neutral state governments at the ‘EU table’ level agree
to ESDP/CSDP measures that may impact upon or eradicate neutrality, and at the
‘domestic table’ have to face their state populations that wish to retain neutrality and hold
direct veto cards through votes in binding referendums on EU treaties containing these
ESDP/CSDP measures and/or indirect veto cards through votes in national and European
elections (see Miles, 1998: 346–8). In the absence of sufficient empirical evidence to
establish direct causation, the relationship between the two variables is hypothesized as
correlative rather than causative: elite agreements on ESDP/CSDP developments precede
changes to elite concepts of neutrality; changes in the neutrality concept can set the
parameters of governmental discursive claims about the degenerative impact of the EU’s
ESDP/CSDP on neutrality. To paraphrase Putnam (1988: 434), ‘players (and kibitzers)
will tolerate some differences in rhetoric between the two games, but in the end either
[neutrality] is retained or it isn’t’. The changes in neutrality concepts in elite discourses
are mapped in parallel with a timetable of Treaty-based ESDP/CSDP developments not
only to draw conclusions on the compatibility of neutrality with ESDP/CSDP but also to
assess the political and legal status of the policies of neutrality formerly and currently
espoused by a minority of member states in the EU. Conclusions on the retention of
neutrality or otherwise raise further questions: first, whether ‘neutrality’ is still an
effective narrative used by elites for domestic consumption in order to take into account
public attachments to neutrality, and, second, whether there is dissonance between the
type of foreign policy expectations held by the public in their understanding of neutrality
vis-à-vis the foreign policy options that elites could or intend to exercise within the
strategic and political context of CSDP.
The approach
In efforts to understand the contested neutrality concepts at play in domestic-EU politics,
it is useful to draw on a post-structuralist discourse theoretic approach and Ferdinand de
Saussure’s linguist concept of ‘sign’ as a tool. To add critical and analytical purchase,
aspects of critical constructivism and critical discourse...
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