From a military standpoint, the European Union’s Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) defies logic. Why would the European allies seek to create a competing military force outside NATO when worried about American isolationism and when unable and unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources? This article suggests an alternative motive behind the European Union’s establishment of a defense program—the development and enhancement of a “European identity.” In short, the ESDP is designed in no small part to further the project of nation-building in a broadening European Union. This article proposes a social-constructivist framework for analyzing this development.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 28, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
2.
Ibid.
3.
In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty on European Union introduced the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The CFSP provided the basis for the discussion of security affairs within the European Union. Subsequently, in 1994, under the auspices of the NATO Council, the member states recognized the need to define a European identity vis-à-vis security and defense. This agreement led to the development of the European Security and Defense Identity to allow the European Union to borrow NATO capabilities to carry out narrowly defined military operations such as peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks, also called the Petersberg tasks. Unhappy with their ability to influence affairs during the Kosovo crisis and following a meeting of the minds between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac at Saint-Mâlo, the EU member states agreed to a full-fledged European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in Cologne in 1999. The ESDP was an important advance as it led to the formation of committees and other institutional structures such as the Political and Security Committee, the EU Military Committee, and the EU Military Staff, which pave the way for an autonomous EU defense. The ESDP is also referred to as the Common European Security and Defense Policy and, during the constitutional convention, as the Common Security and Defense Policy. Most academics and even Solana’s Web site refer to the ESDP.
4.
F. Stephen Larrabee, RAND, “The European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) and American Interests” (Prepared statement for a hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on European Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, March 9, 2000), 4.
5.
Jacques Delors, “European Integration and Security,”Survival33, no. 2 (March-April 1991): 100-100. Jacques Delors argues, “European must want to be European” if it wants its political ambitions to come to fruition.
6.
The European Union came into existence in 1993 with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. When discussing Europe before this date, I use the term European Community (EC).
7.
Jeffrey Simon, ed., European Security Policy after the Revolutions of 1989 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991).
8.
Martin Farnsdale, former commander North Atlantic Group (NATO Central Europe), Europe after an American Withdrawal, ed. Jane O. Sharp (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990), 454-454.
9.
Charles L. Glaser, “Why NATO Is Still Best,”International Security18 (Summer 1993): 48-48.
10.
Mette Eilstrup Sandiovanni, “Why a Common Security and Defense Policy Is Bad for Europe,”Survival45 (Winter 2003-2004): 193-206.
11.
Julian Lindley-French, “In the Shade of Locarno? Why European Defence Is Failing,”International Affairs78 (2002): 789-811.
12.
Eurobarometer 57 (May 2002). See also Eurobarometer 59 (June 2003) for similar statistics.
13.
See Eurobarometer 54.1 as cited in Eurobarometer special survey by Philippe Manigart, “Public Opinion and European Defence,” July 2001, http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_146_en.pdf.
14.
“A Secure Europe in a Better World: The European Security Strategy” (Adopted at the European Council in Brussels on December 12, 2003), http://ue.eu.int/cms3_fo/showPage.ASP?id=266&lang=EN&mode=g.
15.
John Van Oudenaren, “The Solana Security Paper” (American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University), http://www.aicgs.org/c/solana.shtml.
16.
The Western European Union (WEU) is a partially dormant, separate military organization with very close ties to the European Union. In the early nineties, the European Union looked on the WEU as a possible defense arm. Although it was supposed to have been merged with the European Union, and some of its subsidiary bodies have been turned over to the union, it is separate and may well remain so. Instead, the WEU was joined with the CFSP by having Javier Solana, high representative of the CFSP, made head of the WEU as well. For more detail, see L. M. de Puig, The Myth of Europa: A Paradigm for European Defence (Paris: WEU Assembly, 2000).
17.
Craig Covault, “WEU Seeks European Missile Defense Plan,”Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 18, 1993, 25-25.
18.
Reuters, “WEU Urges New Baltic Sea Force,” December 5, 1995.
19.
William J. Kole, “Western Europe’s Defense Chiefs Eye French Nuclear Arsenal,”Associated Press, December 4, 1995.
20.
See also North Atlantic Council, Final communiqué issued at the ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council (Berlin, Germany, June 3, 1996), http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1996/p96-063e.htm.
21.
Washington Summit communiqué issued by the heads of state and government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council (Washington, DC, April 24, 1999), http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-064e.htm.
22.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Joint Declaration on European Defence, December 4, 1998” (British-FrenchSummit, Saint-Mâlo, France, December3-4,1998), http://www.fco.gov.uk/text”only/news/newstext.asp?1795&printVersion=yes.
23.
The Presidency Conclusions, Cologne European Council, Annex III: European Council Declaration on Strengthening the Common European Policy on Security and Defence, June 3-4, 1999, http://europa.eu.int/council/off/conclu/june99/annexe_en.htm%23a3.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Jackie Gower, “Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” in Russia and Europe: Conflict or Cooperation? ed. Mark Webber (London: Macmillan, 2000), 88-88.
27.
Robert E. Hunter, The European Security and Defense Policy: NATO’s Companion or Competitor? (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2002).
28.
Stanley Sloan, NATO, the European Union, and the Atlantic Community: The Transatlantic Bargain Reconsidered (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
29.
Javier Solana, “Address by the EU High Representative for the CFSP to the External Action Working Group” (Brussels, Belgium, October 15, 2002).
30.
These same issues have been discussed under the Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice treaties as well as during the constitutional convention but without progress. Stephanie Anderson, “Testing the Liberal Aspect of ‘Liberal Intergovernmentalism’: Explaining the Development of an EU Common Security Policy from 1990-2000” (Unpublished article).
31.
See The Economist, “A Tale of Two Bellies; Demography in Americaand Europe,” August24,2002.
32.
For a more detailed investigation, see Karl Haltiner, “The Definite End of the Mass Army in Western Europe?”Armed Forces & Society25, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 13-13.
33.
Oana Lungescu, “Chirac Blasts EU Candidates”BBC News, February 18, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2774139.stm.
34.
Henry Hyde (R-IL), “Pathology of Success” (Opening remarks during a House International Relations Committee hearingfeaturingtestimony from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, February11, 2003), http://wwwa.house.gov/internationalrelations/108/newsO212.htm.
35.
Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,”Policy Review113 (June/July 2002): 1-1, http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan_print.html.
36.
and Roy Ginsberg, “The EU’s CFSP: The Politics of Procedure,” in Common Foreign and Security Policy, ed.Martin Holland (London:Pinter, 1997), 14-14.
37.
Henry Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1966).
38.
David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
39.
The definitions of nation-building versus state-building are discussed in more detail in the next section. In either case, both definitions are problematic considering that the European Union is a sui generis entity, that is, an intergovernmental organization with supranational characteristics. Indeed, the European Unionis involved in bothnation-buildingandstate-building(at the supranationalorsuprastatelevel). Forour purposes, rather than come up with a new label appropriate specifically for the European Union, this article will refer to nation-building as the effort to create a pan-European identity in keeping with the relevant literature.
40.
Eurobarometer 54.1 as cited in Manigart, “Public Opinion,” 9.
41.
See, for example, Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, “Lessons from the Past: The American Record of Nation-Building” (Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief No. 24, April 2003); and Marina Ottaway, “Nation-Building,” Foreign Policy 132 (September/October 2002): 16-24.
42.
and Jefferson Marquis, “The Other Warriors: American Social Science and Nation-Building in Vietnam,”Diplomatic History24 (2000): 79-105.
43.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 5-7,53-56.
44.
Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 14-14.
45.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 192-196.
46.
Honor Mahoney, “Mixed Feelings One Year after Enlargement,”EU Observer, May 1, 2005.
47.
Lars-Erik Cederman, “Political Boundaries and Identity Tradeoffs,” in Constructing Europe’s Identity: The External Dimension (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), chap. 1.
48.
Ibid., 3.
49.
Paul Kowert, “The Construction of National Identity,” in International Relations in a Constructed World, ed.in Vendulka Kubalkova, Nicholas Onuf, and Paul Kowert (New York:M. E. Sharpe,1998), 105-109.
50.
Martin Marcussen, Thomas Risse, Daniela Engelmann-Martin, Hans Joachim Knopf, and Klaus Roscher, “Constructing Europe? The Evolution of Nation-State Identities,” in The Social Construction of Europe, ed. Thomas Christiansen, Knud Erik Jørgensen, and Antje Wiener (London: Sage, 2001), 102-103.
51.
Robert Art, “To What Ends Military Power,”International Security4 (Spring 1980): 5-5.
52.
New York Times, December 16, 1990, I6-I6.
53.
Art, “To What Ends,” 10.
54.
President Jacques Chirac in Toulouse in June 1999, as cited in Jane’s Defence Weekly, “Building a European Force: New Key Figure on the European Union Stage,” June 23, 1999.
55.
Ole Waever, “Identity, Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in E.U. Studies,”Journal of International Affairs48 (Winter 1995): 407-407.
56.
Art, “To What Ends,” 10-11.
57.
Nuttall called the U.S.-European relationship one of the keys to understanding European political cooperation: “The United States’ view has fluctuated between supportfor a development which is in its long-term interest and suspicion of an emerging power which has not always followed the American lead. The Europeans for their part have been divided over the response to make to American policy, and have changed their views as US policy itself has changed.... Whether for or against, no member state of the Community could remain indifferent to the position of Washington”; Simon Nuttall, European Political Co-operation (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1992), 3-3.
58.
For a more detailed account of transatlantic relations during this period, see Douglas Stuart, “NATO in the 1980s: Between European Pillar and European Home,”Armed Forces & Society16, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 421-436.
59.
Michael Smith, “From the ‘Year of Europe’to a Year of Carter: Continuing Patterns and Problems in Euro-American Relations,”Journal of Common Market Studies17 (1978): 27-27.
60.
Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony, 44-64.
61.
Henry A. Kissinger, “The Year of Europe” (Address to the Associated Press Annual Luncheon, New York, April 23, 1973), in American Foreign Policy, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1977), 104-105.
62.
M. Smith, “From the ‘Year of Europe,’” 27.
63.
“Document on the European Identity Published by the Nine Foreign Ministers (Copenhagen, 14 December 1973), ” in European Political Co-operation, 5th ed. (Bonn, Germany: Press and Information Office of the Federal Government, 1988), 48-48.
64.
Ian Gambles, European Security Integrationin the 1990s (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 1991), 5-6.
65.
See Pauline Neville-Jones, “The Genscher/Colombo Proposals on European Union,”Common Market Law Review20 (1983): 657-699.
66.
Nuttall, European Political Co-operation, 184-184.
67.
The Draft European Act submitted by the German and Italian governments, publishedby EP Bulletin 50/81.
68.
and Mary Kaldor, ed., Europe from Below (London: Verso, 1991).
69.
Jean-Marc Hoscheit and Panos Tsakaloyannis, “Relaunching the Western European Union: An Overview,” in The Reactivation of the Western European Union: The Effects on the EC and Its Institutions, ed. Panos Tsakaloyannis (Maastricht, the Netherlands: European Institute of Public Administration, 1985), 16.
70.
New York Times, December 16, 1990, I6-I6.
71.
New York Times, December 26, 1990, A10-A10.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Scott Anderson, “Western Europe and the Gulf War,” in The Evolution of an International Actor: Western Europe’s New Assertiveness, ed. Reinhardt Rummel (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990), 147-147.
