Upside down: Reframing European Defence Studies
| Author | Marco Wyss,Hugo Meijer |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718790606 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
790606CAC0010.1177/0010836718790606Cooperation and ConflictMeijer and Wyss
research-article2018
Article
Cooperation and Conflict
2019, Vol. 54(3) 378 –406
Upside down: Reframing
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718790606
DOI: 10.1177/0010836718790606
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Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss
Abstract
Since the end of the Cold War, the study of European defence has been dominated by a ‘Common
Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-centric’ approach, while largely neglecting the comparative
analysis of national defence policies. This article makes a conceptual and empirical case for turning
the dominant research prism of European defence studies upside down by returning the analytical
precedence to the national level. This approach privileges the comparative analysis of national
defence policies and armed forces, before focusing on the trans-/supra-national level. The case
for this analytical turn is made in three steps. Firstly, it addresses the different historical stages
in European defence integration and the transformation of national armed forces and thereby
brings to light the recent renationalization of defence in Europe. Secondly, it questions the
predominance of the CSDP in the scholarly literature on European defence. Finally, it seeks to
demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a démarche by empirically substantiating common patterns
and intra-European divergences in the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces
since the end of the Cold War. After having shown the need and added benefit of turning the
analytical lense of European defence studies on its head, the conclusion suggests future avenues
of research on national defence policies and armed forces in Europe.
Keywords
Armed forces, Common Security and Defence Policy, defence policy, European defence
Introduction
In summer 2016, the European Union (EU) released A Global Strategy for its Common
Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Under the heading ‘Security and Defence’, it calls
on Europeans to ‘take greater responsibility for our security. We must be ready and able
to deter, respond to, and protect ourselves against external threats’ (EU, 2016; see also
Council of European Union, 2016). This is probably the boldest among a number of the
strategy’s ambitions. Even though some leading European foreign and security policy
pundits have tried to portray the document as a good starting point to make the CFSP
more effective (Biscop, 2016), its weaknesses and unrealistic call for ‘strategic
autonomy’ have attracted sharp criticism (Techau, 2016).1 Despite the EU’s foreign and
Corresponding author:
Hugo Meijer, European University Institute, Villa Schifanoia, Villino, Via Boccaccio 121, Fiesole 50133, Italy.
Email: hlemeijer@gmail.com
Meijer and Wyss
379
security policy achievements, notably within the framework of the European Security
and Defence Policy (ESDP)/Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), strategic
autonomy remains a distant ideal. Not only has European defence integration been lim-
ited (Hyde-Price, 2018), but it is also evident that the era of enthusiasm for European
security and defence following the Franco-British Saint-Malo Declaration of 1998 (Joint
Declaration, 1998) and, especially, the first and preceding EU security strategy – A
Secure Europe in a Better World – of 2003 (EU, 2003) has ebbed away (Fiott, 2015:
11–12; Rynning, 2014). Moreover, the European project itself has come under increasing
pressure, and Britain, one of Europe’s major military powers, is in the process of exiting
the union (Heuser, 2017; Kienzle and Hallams, 2017; Lequesne, 2018). Ultimately, and
despite the questioning of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) strategic
rationale after the end of the Cold War, the US-backed Atlantic Alliance has remained the
cornerstone of European defence and armed forces transformation, and has even extended
its security umbrella well beyond the former Iron Curtain (German, 2017; King, 2011:
61; Terriff et al., 2010).
In light of the still limited defence integration in Europe, this article makes the case
for turning the dominant, ‘CSDP-centric’ research prism of European defence studies
upside down by returning the analytical precedence to the national level. This conceptual
approach privileges the comparative analysis of national defence policies and armed
forces, before focusing on the trans-/supra-national level for two interconnected reasons.
The first one is historical. Since the end of the Cold War, defence and security policy in
Europe has witnessed two concurrent trends towards European integration and national
transformation. On the one hand, European defence integration through the ESDP/CSDP
(hereafter CSDP) has undergone a pattern of emergence, rise and gridlock during the
1990s, 2000s and 2010s, respectively. Despite significant institutional development, the
political and military reach of the CSDP remains limited and hampered by diverging
national interests (Major and Mölling, 2013; Simón, 2017b). Moreover, while national
security concerns and priorities have always trumped European defence integration since
the end of the Cold War, Europe has recently witnessed a trend towards a renationalisa-
tion of defence policy (Keohane, 2016). In this article, renationalisation refers to the
renewed focus on territorial defence and the related national defence capabilities, the
ever-decreasing enthusiasm for European defence integration and, as a corollary, a clear
return to defence cooperation through NATO and a growing reliance on ad hoc minilat-
eral arrangements. On the other hand, Europe’s national defence policies and armed
forces have experienced significant qualitative, quantitative and organisational changes
in response to NATO’s US-dominated transformation agenda, a resurgent Russia, trans-
national terrorism, cyber-security challenges, the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs), civil wars and neighbouring failing states. Accordingly, the combi-
nation of the rise and decline of the CSDP on the one hand, and of persistent national
defence transformation throughout the post-Cold War period on the other, calls for a
renewed attention to national defence policy as the analytical starting point in the study
of European defence and security.
The second reason pertains to the extant literature on European defence. In this twin
movement of European defence integration and national transformation, the literature has
overwhelmingly privileged the CSDP at the expense of the cross-European comparative
380
Cooperation and Conflict 54(3)
study of national defence policies and armed forces. In fact, an inverse correlation exists
between, on the one hand, the relative depth and breadth of historical change in European
defence integration versus national defence policies and, on the other, the extent to which
they have been respectively covered in the literature. Despite the limited scope of the
CSDP and the persistence in the process of national defence transformation since the end
of the Cold War, the literature on European defence has been dominated by a focus on the
CSDP, and by a neglect of the comparative study of national defence policies and armed
forces in Europe. The time is thus ripe to lift the ‘fog’ of European defence integration,
which has distracted from the more significant national-centred defence cooperation in
Europe.
Addressing this imbalance by re-emphasising the crucial importance of cross-Euro-
pean comparisons of national defence policies and armed forces does not equate to aban-
doning the study of the CSDP and of the trans-European integrative patterns in the field
of defence and security. Instead of discarding the in-depth study of the CSDP, this article
argues that a renewed focus on the national level allows one to unearth the fundamental
challenges and obstacles that have hampered European defence integration.
Reinvigorating the national level as a key unit of analysis, and in a comparative approach,
is in fact a condition sine qua non for investigating defence cooperation in its multiple
configurations (bilateral, minilateral, multilateral) and levels (intergovernmental and
trans-/supra-national), but without losing track of the foundational dimension of the
national level. Despite the overwhelming focus on the literature on the CSDP, it has in
reality only played a relatively limited role within the complex patchwork of national
defence policies and of bilateral and mini-/multilateral arrangements that compose
Europe’s security architecture.
In light of the imbalance between the historical record and the focus of the extant lit-
erature, the aim of this article is to make the case for refocusing the attention on, and
giving analytical precedence to, national defence policy and armed forces in Europe in
three steps. The first addresses the different historical stages in the rise and decline of the
CSDP and in the continued transformation of national armed forces in Europe since the
end of the Cold War. The second then questions the seemingly unjustified predominance
of the CSDP vis-à-vis the comparative study of national defence policies in the literature
on European defence. The third section seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of such a
démarche by empirically substantiating common patterns and intra-European diver-
gences in the...
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