Keywords

It goes without saying that the replacement of the EU’s fictive enlargement policy by the introduction of affiliate membership must be designed to augment European security. That Russia could invade Ukraine in the twenty-first century shocks all member states of the EU, including those famously ‘neutral’ sheltering under the patronage of NATO, into reconsidering their present security arrangements. Nobody can continue to rely just on the over-complicated and partially dysfunctional security and defence provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon. More radical innovation is required, necessarily involving all EU member and affiliate states.

We have noted before how the drafters of the Lisbon Treaty suffered from a form of constitutional schizophrenia—wishing the end without willing the means, proposing lofty federal ambition while condoning mundane confederal methods. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the treaty’s approach to security and defence. We read that member states “shall support the Union’s external and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the Union’s actions in this area”. They will “refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the Union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force in international relations”.Footnote 1 A common security and defence policy will be progressively developed, “which might lead to a common defence”.Footnote 2 Elaborate institutions and painstaking decision-making procedures are prescribed to progress such goals, including a special solidarity clause to be triggered if a state suffers a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.Footnote 3 A core group of states with military capability is even permitted and encouraged to create a permanent military structure within the EU framework (PESCO).Footnote 4 Other member states must come to the aid of a state under armed attack.Footnote 5

At the same time, and on the other hand, the reactionary mindset kicks in. We read: “In particular, national security remains the sole responsibility of each Member State”.Footnote 6 Although it is only NATO that guarantees collective mutual defence, the EU will respect NATO but not join it.Footnote 7 And whereas PESCO was meant to be exclusive, the European Council under Donald Tusk and Charles Michel have actually rendered it inclusive—so that almost all member states are now involved in PESCO in some vague non-combatant way or another.

The division between NATO and the EU has contributed greatly to the weakness of western security over many years. Not least among the flaws was that Britain refused to allow the EU to develop a serious common policy in foreign, security and defence while France, long influenced by General de Gaulle, harboured antipathy towards the Atlantic Alliance. Acting separately, and largely uncoordinated, the enlargement policies of both organisations have failed. Prudently, in an attempt to shore up the West, the Clinton administration created a Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme in 1994 under NATO auspices which came to include the entire European neighbourhood.Footnote 8 Imprudently, PfP was later allowed to fizzle out and a Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council became dysfunctional. Russia was kicked out of PfP after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. NATO’s (absurdly named) Open Door policy led in 2008 to a glib and half-hearted promise of NATO membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and, later, to the haphazard admission of Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia to full membership—none of which has added materially to Europe’s security.

What can be done? In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy wisely reversed De Gaulle’s decision to exclude France from NATO’s military structure. President Macron talks of the need to bolster the EU’s “strategic autonomy”, clearly frustrated by the inability of the Lisbon provisions on defence to take flight. In 2018, Macron improvised the European Intervention Initiative (E2I), launched outside the Union framework and PESCO, to develop a shared strategic culture among its signatories. He insists that E2I is compatible with both the EU and NATO. Encouragingly, eleven EU member states have so far joined E2I, including non-NATO members Finland and Sweden, plus non-EU member Norway.Footnote 9 Once Brexit was done, the British realised they can no longer veto the development of EU defence policy. The UK has now signed up to E2I, albeit nervously.

Provocation

If ever there was a time to strengthen western security, Vladimir Putin has hastened it. Behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine lies the suspicion, boldly articulated by President Joe Biden, that Russia and China are conniving to shape a new world order with the express intention of stemming the advance of liberal democracy. This postulates a battle of ideology reminiscent of the twentieth century. It deserves a cogent response from the West which will be understood elsewhere in the world, not least in Africa, India and Latin America. The immediate response to Putin’s war is a military refortification of NATO’s eastern border. But the ideological war can only be fought by the West on the basis of a sharper geopolitical strategy, a closer alignment of interests and values, and tighter coordination between political and military institutions. The European Union has a leading role to play at the heart of the battalion of the democracies in strategic rivalry against the autocrats.

At first, the Ukrainian crisis exposed real divisions both within the EU and between the EU and its transatlantic NATO allies about the future of European security. These problems of western cohesion were already stripped bare by the disastrously chaotic retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021. The EU and NATO had been left gaping since 2008 when Russia began to redraw the 1945 frontiers of Eastern Europe by invading South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Donbas and by effectively annexing Transnistria and Crimea. The West lacked the wherewithal either to defend the integrity of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova or to articulate a sensible buffer zone policy. The latter was inevitably a sensitive issue because no non-Russian wanted to deny these countries the sovereign right to decide their own future. But no coherent alternative strategy was ever articulated in Brussels. Dissonance between the EU and NATO contributed greatly to this failure.

We conclude, therefore, that a new institution, which we call a European Security Council, is now required to manage the conjunction of NATO and the EU, adding value to both. The intergovernmental body would unite the western democracies untrammelled by old institutional constraints. As things stand, NATO lacks strategic capacity and the EU lacks military capacity. Neither organisation can cope with the current security situation if left to its own devices. A European Security Council would underpin the Atlantic Alliance, helping NATO to think strategically while enabling the EU to act militarily. The new body would be tasked specifically to overcome the historic division between the two Brussels-based organisations.

A European Security Council

Europe’s Security Council would be a standing conference ready for emergency situations but committed to building over the long term a strategic consensus about the future of western security. It would keep under continual assessment Europe’s defence capabilities and review pooled intelligence. It would provide the platform to keep the US permanently engaged in the matter of European security and discourage the White House from talking directly to the Kremlin over the heads or behind the backs of the Europeans. It should help Germany, Europe’s most reluctant military member, to upgrade its contribution to collective defence. For France, the European Security Council would stimulate the EU’s own efforts in the defence domain—but as a complement to, and not a substitute for US engagement. Active participation in the European Security Council alongside the US and Canada would be a dignified and effective way for the British to find their way back to Europe.

The setting up of the European Security Council, probably chaired by a senior foreign or defence minister from an EU state, need not be cumbersome.Footnote 10 Analogy with the Permanent Security Council of the UN is misplaced. Actions to follow through the consensual decisions of the European Security Council would be taken through the offices of NATO or the EU with their own competences and under their own procedures, or by states acting individually or on a sub-regional basis. PESCO and E2I will be building blocks. Membership of the European Security Council would involve all EU and NATO member states. Although Sweden and Finland look set to join NATO in their own right, participation in the European Security Council should be an acceptable route for the EU’s remaining ‘neutrals’—Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta—to contribute more to collective western security.

The European Security Council should also welcome the participation of the wider neighbourhood, including Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and the Western Balkan countries. Engagement with the European Security Council would be integral to EU affiliate membership and could be made conditional on membership of a rebooted and enhanced programme of Partnership for Peace. By choosing to participate in the European Security Council, Serbia and Turkey would have the useful chance to reaffirm a western strategic orientation. Who knows, Turks and Cypriots might even begin to talk to each other. Working regularly together in the Security Council format, EU and NATO members should engender greater public confidence in Europe’s ability to defend their interests worldwide.

Concept and Compass

In March 2022 the European Council published a lengthy Strategic Compass document which incorporates the bloc’s first-ever joint threat assessment.Footnote 11 It identifies measures to reverse what High Representative Josep Borrell regrets as Europe’s “strategic shrinkage”. It emphasises the importance of solidarity against Russia and the need to enhance the resilience of all the EU’s security and defence arrangements, including hybrid threats and intelligence shortfalls. Making many commitments to future investment and activities, the Compass highlights three concrete proposals: to create a force of (only) 5000 EU troops for rapid deployment, to strengthen its Military Planning and Conduct Capability (in effect, an EU Headquarters) and to convene every two years a Security and Partnership Forum with its neighbours, chaired by Borrell. The Forum would embrace both the EU’s “bilateral partners” (including the US, Canada and Norway) and its “tailored partnerships” with East European, Western Balkan and friendly African countries.Footnote 12 Borrell’s rather insipid Forum would be better superseded by the more formal, regular and purposeful European Security Council.

The Strategic Compass urges the greater acceptance of constructive abstention in the Council by its less committed ministers. It promises actually to implement the treaty provision on the delegation of specific security and defence tasks to a core group of member states.Footnote 13 EU-NATO cooperation will function on the basis of “inclusiveness, reciprocity and decision-making autonomy”. There will be regular joint meetings of the EU Political and Security Committee and the North Atlantic Council. Attention is drawn to the EU’s specific role in offering mutual assistance to its members under attack alongside the collective defence guarantee of NATO.Footnote 14 If followed through, the Compass should help define a clearer purpose for PESCO and reduce duplication and waste in Europe’s defence and R&D efforts. At least in the short term, Putin’s provocations are working to reinforce unity among his western opponents. Joe Biden’s participation in the meeting of the European Council in Brussels on 24 March 2022 was an encouraging sign.Footnote 15 Time is pressing. Any new arrangements, including a European Security Council, need to be up and running before another possible Trumpian presidency takes over at the White House in January 2025.

Peace Process

The invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 takes Europe back to the Cold War. The failure of the West after the fall of the USSR to fully complete the re-ordering of Europe’s strategic affairs had encouraged Moscow to return to its old imperious habits. Although the Baltic and central European states were successfully incorporated into the Euro-Atlantic community, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and the Western Balkan states, along with Turkey (of its own volition), were left out of the grand bargain. The offer to Eastern Europe from the EU and NATO in Brussels was unconvincing and ambiguous.Footnote 16 And with Russia, in any case, left feeling slighted, Europe was to be encumbered by important unfinished business.

The present conflict may last a long time. When eventually peace of some sort returns to Ukraine, diplomacy will reconvene. If Ukraine emerges in some way victorious, one may imagine it will be a country transformed, paradoxically, at once more nationalistic and also in a great state of eagerness for European integration. The oligarchs and the corruption which frustrated President Zelensky’s previous efforts for reform will probably have been swept aside. An immediate offer of affiliate membership of the Union, coupled with membership of the European Security Council, would consolidate Volodymyr Zelensky’s position inside his country. Ukrainian security will need to be upheld by such western guarantees. How to achieve this on a stable basis while helping Kyiv to apply the rule of law, develop its free market and deepen democratic politics will be the top priority on the agenda of the EU and the European Security Council.

If the war is prolonged, however, the West will inevitably be drawn further into the conflict. Already, shipping lethal aid to Ukraine on a bilateral (non-NATO) basis, coupled with the increasing moral outrage at Russian atrocities, renders the EU complicit in whatever will be the political and military outcome. European unity will be put under severe pressure if the peace process involves the partition of Ukraine into Russian and western sectors. Putin knows this—not least because Viktor Orban, now re-elected until 2026, is disloyal to the Union. Germany, meanwhile, is still obstinately dependent on Russian oil and gas. The European Security Council will be at the centre of these arguments as the West adjusts its own military posture and faces a fundamental realignment of its relations with Russia and its allies.

Eventually, no doubt, there will be a conference under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to deal with all the unfinished business of the Cold War, including human rights, arms control, cyber security, energy supply and nuclear safety. This will involve exploring with post-Putin Russians the principles that should underpin collective security in the twenty-first century. The OSCE was a product of the Cold War. Its time has come again. The European Union, chastened if not fortified by recent events, and faithful to its own origins as peace maker, should play the leading role in its revival.

On 29 June 2022 a NATO summit in Brussels pronounced a new decennial Strategic Concept for the Alliance. Returning the compliment of the EU’s Strategic Compass, NATO finds the EU to be “a unique and essential partner” with which strategic partnership must be reinforced. Notwithstanding the presence of Brexiteer Johnson, the summit also insisted that for the development of the strategic partnership “non-EU Allies’ fullest involvement in EU defence efforts is essential”.