Prospect of the European Union to becomea Defence Union:Analysis of the major nation-state actors’perspectives on the European Security andDefence Policy

摘要

The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is a very young and innovative structureof the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Since its launch in1999 at the Summit of Cologne it has developed at such an incredible pace that even JavierSolana rhapsodised about the ESDP evolving in the speed of light. Seven years later, thisdynamic of integration has decelerated to normal speed and the coherency issues connectedwith the integration process of the European Union (EU) have also begun to affect the ESDPwhich is intergovernmentally organised and hence vulnerable to coherency cracks on certaintopics. The Iraq crisis in 2003 was the exemplar of this fragility. The ESDP’s decisionmakingprocess is based on the lowest common denominator among the EU member states. Ifthese countries cannot agree, which was the case on the Iraq problem, the ESDP becomes lessimportant as an EU forum of CFSP on defence issues.In consideration of the intergovernmental nature of the ESDP and its unanimous decisionmakingprocedure it appears that the future of the ESDP is to a large extent dependent on theco-operation and political orientation of the ESDP member countries. In particular, the bigthree ESDP members of the United Kingdom, France and Germany are very influentialpolitical actors within the EU framework. In the context of the ESDP these three nations leadin the possession of military and civilian capabilities and dictate the main political streams ofEuropeanism versus Atlanticism as well as Intergovernmentalism versus Supranationalismwithin ESDP.However, despite their similarities in terms of their degree of political influence, derived fromtheir capabilities in the ESDP, they differ in their political orientation of the main politicalstreams. For instance, the diverging views on the transatlantic relationship appeared to be thebone of contention leading to the aforementioned Iraq crisis. In view of the conflictingpositions one can ask where the ESDP is to go. Will it ever become a Defence Union?Referring to the influential role of the big three and the centrality of nation-state action inESDP this thesis attempts to give an answer to these two questions with a credible prospect ofthe ESDP from a nation-centred structural realist approach. Since the structural realist conceptemphasises the importance of national sovereignty in high politics this thesis concludes thatthe notion of the ESDP to become a Defence Union is very unlikely to occur. In addition tothe pessimistic neorealist/structural realist scenario, alternative scenarios, based on the holisticcurrent situation of the ESDP, which predict a more optimistic and probably more relevantfuture of the ESDP are also presented.